By Ruth Green
It was a cold, but mercifully dry morning in February as I waited in the snaking queue to get through security at Manchester Civil Justice Centre. Dodging more queues outside the lifts, I braved the stairs to the seventh floor, not fully knowing what I was letting myself in for until I got there.
The hearing room, though light and airy, was soon filled with dark suits and jackets. Four barristers – one each for the mother, the father, the local authority and one representing the children’s guardian – fill the front row.
Behind them sit two juniors supporting the mother and father, with the children’s guardian sitting at the far end of the row. The family’s social worker and her manager are sandwiched between them. I sit in the back row, trying to keep out of the way. Another local authority solicitor sits just a few seats away.
This case is not like any I’ve ever come across before. It centres on a couple whose son – let’s call him Daniel – was removed from their care as a result of an alleged injury.
The injury aroused the suspicions of the local authority, Manchester City Council, not least because of its location – in the boy’s genital area.
The family was already known to social services. A family court previously found that Daniel’s mother had sexually abused and caused injury to an older son, who was removed from her care.
The mother, herself a victim of years of sexual abuse by her father – also the older son’s biological father – continues to deny any allegations of sexual abuse, but she acknowledges the court’s findings. The older son was placed in foster care. Another child, who has a different biological father, was placed in her father’s care.
The mother later remarried, and Daniel was born. As a result of the previous findings against the mother, within days of Daniel’s birth, the local authority placed him under an interim care order. The mother was ordered to leave the family home and underwent several psychological assessments. She only saw Daniel on supervised visits.
Daniel was placed under a final care order in early 2023. The local authority permitted the mother to move back into the family home over a transition period. However, the care plan restricted her involvement in the child’s care to such an extent that she was never left alone with him and did not participate in any intimate care tasks, including nappy changes or bathing. It was far from a perfect system, as the father was expected (and agreed) to undertake sole responsibility for these tasks 24/7, save for any time Daniel spent at nursery.
The family continued to have regular visits – announced and unannounced – from social services. Less than a year after the mother rejoined the family home, the parents took Daniel to the GP with an unexplained injury. The GP – a locum who did not know the family or their history – initially sent him home, only asking the parents to keep an eye on him. Later that day, the parents voluntarily took the boy to A&E to get a second opinion but left before he was assessed.
On learning about the injury, the family’s social worker raised the alarm and spoke to the GP. Daniel’s age and expressive speech delay ruled out any possibility of his articulating what had happened. The parents gave inconsistent accounts of the alleged sequence of events and which incident they suggested had caused the injury – from claiming he’d fallen on a toy truck at home not long before bedtime to recalling later that he’d also fallen in a playground earlier in the day – prompting the local authority to arrange for the child to be assessed at the local sexual assault referral centres (SARC).
Given the previous findings against the mother, she was not permitted to attend the appointment or even enter the centre. The social worker alleges that the father became aggressive and verbally abusive during the afternoon.
The police were called. Following a police protection order, Daniel was removed from his parents’ care. The parents were arrested under suspicion of child neglect, interviewed and their phones were confiscated for examination. The court also approved an application for an external company to extract phone data. The police took no further action.
Daniel was placed in foster care by the local authority and had no family time with his parents for about 10 days after the incident. Since that time, he sees his parents three times a week for 1.5 hours. Several weeks after the incident, the mother applied to the court to discharge the 2023 care order in a bid to return the boy back to their care.
Both parents maintain Daniel’s injury was caused accidentally and that he should be returned to the family home. Given the mother’s history, the local authority initially suspected the mother was somehow involved. However, they say the phone searches have brought to light evidence of the father’s drug dealing and unhealthy interest in pornography, including incest, which raised new welfare concerns and cast doubt over who might be to blame and what this means for the boy’s future care.
Almost 12 months on from the incident, a final hearing takes place before HHJ Singleton KC to decide Daniel’s fate. The social worker’s original decision to call the GP roiled the parents, but the judge is not having any of it. “That it was wrong of the social worker to inform the GP is not an argument that is going to persuade me,” she says.
As the evidence gets underway, it’s now up to both parents and professionals – doctors, social workers and the children’s guardian – to persuade the court what actually happened that day.
Blog post published on 15th April 2025
This is part one of a two-part series. For the other posts visit our main family court blog page
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