Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

The State doesn't kidnap children does it?

Well, yes it does.

We learnt in a news report today that a record number of children are being seized from their parents so that they can be adopted. It's not a surprise to me. Camilla Cavendish has devoted a number of columns to the scandalous behaviour and misdeeds of Britain's family courts. She wrote this recently:

Government figures show a significant jump in the number of babies being taken into care, from 1,600 in 1995 to 2,800 in 2005: a 75 per cent increase in ten years. While there has been an increase across all age groups, it is much, much greater for babies. More 10 to 15-year-olds are removed, but the rate of increase was only 21 per cent. One possible explanation is that the authorities are now monitoring pregnant women, especially teenagers and substance abusers. But there are also numerous examples of relatives being turned down by local authorities when they offer to take the children of a family member. Some of them may indeed be unsuitable. But the turning-down sometimes seems very peremptory. John Hemming, MP, who follows these issues closely, believes that "the (hard-to-place) children the targets were established to get adopted are not getting adopted; instead a completely new group of children are being taken into care, then adopted".

Looks like baby farming to me.

Robbie Millen

A mad debate

Camilla Cavendish in her comment article makes a powerful case for more compulsion in the treatment of the mentally ill.  I'm much more instinctively nervous about the authorities compelling anyone to do anything.

This article in The New Atlantis about the libertarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz helps put the debate about coercion in the treatment of the mentally ill in a much broader context. Szasz is an arch-sceptic about the claims made for psychiatry and an opponent of the attempts to medicalise human behaviour. There's also a Szasz blog which is worth a peek and Theodore Dalrymple's article from last week is an interesting counterpoint to Camilla's article.

Robbie Millen

When experts go wrong

Earlier this year a High Court judge ruled that all expert witnesses should be immune from disciplinary action and that Sir Roy Meadows, whose evidence was used to wrongly imprison mothers and break up families, was not guilty of serious professional misconduct and his striking off by the General Medical Council should be quashed.

Today the Court of Appeal overturned that ruling over immunity for expert witness, but dismissed the GMC challenge to the High Court finding that Meadows was not guilty of serious professional misconduct. So what should we make of the latest twist in the travails of Professor Sir Roy Meadow, the Dick Dastardly of "expert witnesses"?

Clearly expert witnesses must be held responsible for their intellectual errors and their blind faith in theories that don't actually make sense of the muddy world of family life. It's worth rereading this article by Camilla Cavendish about the terrors of Meadows and expert witnesses with pet theories. For the contra view turn to Theodore Dalrymple in another Times comment piece. He argues that Meadows is a scapegoat for a society that cannot cope with the hard truth that parents do wicked things to their children.

Robbie Millen

The scandal of the family courts

In a series of articles, Camilla Cavendish has been exposing the scandal of the family courts and the removal of children from their parents without adequate evidence.

She has written today on the subject, and here are the other articles in the series. I warmly recommend them:

• Guilty until proved innocent: the grotesque reality of the family courts - Will we be able to report if a mother kills herself through the grief of loss?
• Secret witch-hunt syndrome - The hunt for Munchausen's.
• How can this happen here? - US research overturns the child abuse canon.
• Innocent but presumed guilty - How many homes are broken by the closed and secretive family courts? Frighteningly, we don't know.
• What a way to treat our children - Young people needing a stable home may find one answer – but not through the State.
• The cruellest verdict of them all - Hysteria, not science, is producing a rush to judgment on baby deaths.
• The old boys' club and its inexpert witnesses can still hold juries in thrall - The GMC has still not set a date to consider if Meadow should be accused of misconduct until courts demand more of experts, more miscarriages of justice could occur.