Press Still Silenced, Despite Family Court Reforms, say Lawyers

One year after ground-breaking reforms that were meant to open thousands of hearings to the media, more family courts are now more closed to public scrutiny, it is claimed today.

Media organisations and lawyers both say that the campaign to open up the family courts has largely failed.

Changes rushed through Parliament before the election was announced will also make it even more difficult than before to report on the family courts. They predict that as a result, even fewer cases than now will be reported and only then, giving the broad gist of proceedings, rather than any detail.'

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Judge in Charge of Family Courts Criticises ‘Arrogant Social Workers’

Social workers have been criticised as “arrogant and enthusiastic removers of children from their parents” by the judge who takes charge of the family courts today.

Lord Justice Wall said that the determination of some social workers to place children in an “unsatisfactory care system” away from their families was “quite shocking”.

In a separate case, on which Sir Nicholas Wall also sat, Lord Justice Aikens described the actions of social workers in Devon as “more like Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China than the West of England”.

The criticism of social workers from two of the most senior family court judges came as the number of children placed in care has reached a record high after the Baby Peter tragedy.'

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Brian Gerrish: Child Stealing by the State

Family Law: Men Are Kicked in the Teeth

Brian's family was the last I had expected to break up. Brian and Gail had been married 24 years. They had six children ages 7-18 and were active in the pro-life movement. At elections, they were the only ones with a lawn sign for the Conservative party.

Brian, 46, ruggedly handsome and dishevelled, was a carpenter and bricklayer. He quit grad studies in city planning because he couldn't stand the politics.

Brian is a very rare person. He is genuine. In April, he stopped a man from beating a woman on a downtown roadway. Hundreds of passersby just stood by and gawked. Ironic, he stood up for a woman, and now is being crushed by feminist family law.

Recently I met Brian, and learned why he and Gail had moved away.

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An Expose on the Child Abuse Industry

The unwarranted seizure of children from non-abusive, non-neglectful homes has become a national problem of staggering proportions. At any given time, there are, now, more than a half of a million children in custody in the United States. It has been estimated that nearly one out of every twenty children in the entire United States can be expected to undergo investigation this year.

Nearly three-and-a-half thousand children go into government custody, every single day. That means that, nearly every two weeks, as many children go into government custody, as there were American soldiers killed during the entire span of the Vietnam War. Counting the last 30 years or so, the victims of our Juvenile and Family Courts amount to one of the largest groups of people ever subjected to human rights violations in all of world history.

The new bastions of “child abuse protectors” and “social engineers,” who are out to build a better world, have destroyed more families here in America than all of the wars, plagues, and pestilences that America has experienced throughout its entire history. Child Protective Services routinely violates the Constitutional rights of parents and their children in the process of their “intervention”.

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Family Courts System Accused of Hiding Evidence From Parents

Parents fighting in the family courts for contact with their children are being denied access to their personal files by a corrupt system, a leading parental rights campaigner has said.

Alison Stevens, head of Parents Against Injustice, has called for Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to force social services and individual courts to comply with the Data Protection Act.

She said: “Local authorities have to send the requested files within 40 days . . . but they are often not following public law guidelines. It’s corruption within the system. They are playing God, and there must be some reason why — perhaps to hide things they have got wrong in the cases.”

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Openness of Family Courts is a 'Con Trick'

Jack Straw has been accused of a confidence trick over plans to open the family courts to the media.

John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP, has warned that although the Justice Secretary’s new rules will allow the media to attend family court proceedings for the first time, reports cannot be published without the judge’s permission.

The media, groups campaigning for justice for families and the English public had each been taken in, he said. “Whether it is by Jack Straw or by forces of reaction in the judiciary – we have all been hoodwinked.”

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