Posted on 09/03/2007 4:35:20 PM PDT by Alouette
A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of "emotional abuse", even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way.
Hexham children's services, part of Northumberland County Council, said the decision had been made because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy, a condition unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself.
Under the plan, a doctor will hand the newborn to a social worker, provided there are no medical complications. Social services' request for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates on the same day.
From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.
Miss Lyon, from Hexham, who is five months pregnant, is seeking a judicial review of the decision about Molly, as she calls her baby. She described it as "barbaric and draconian", and said it was "scandalous" that social services had not accepted submissions supporting her case.
"The paediatrician has never met me," she said. "He is not a psychiatrist and cannot possibly make assertions about my current or future mental health. Yet his letter was the only one considered in the case conference on August 16 which lasted just 10 minutes."
Northumberland County Council insists that two highly experienced doctors - another consultant paediatrician and a medical consultant - attended the case conference.
The case adds to growing concern, highlighted in a series of articles in The Sunday Telegraph, over a huge rise in the number of babies under a year old being taken from parents. The figure was 2,000 last year, three times the number 10 years ago.
Critics say councils are taking more babies from parents to help them meet adoption "targets".
John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the Justice for Families campaign group, said the case showed "exactly what is wrong with public family law".
He added: "There is absolutely no evidence that Fran would harm her child. However, a vague letter from a paediatrician who has never met her has been used in a decision to remove her baby at birth, while evidence from professionals treating her, that she would have no problems has been ignored."
Mr Hemming was concerned that "vague assertions" of Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy - now known as "fabricated and invented illness" - had been used to remove a number of children from parents in the North-East.
Miss Lyon came under scrutiny because she had a mental health problem when she was 16 after being physically and emotionally abused by her father and raped by a stranger.
She suffered eating disorders and self-harm but, after therapy, graduated from Edinburgh University and now works for two mental health charities, Borderline and Personality Plus.
Dr Stella Newrith, a consultant psychiatrist, who treated Miss Lyon for her childhood trauma for a year, wrote to Northumberland social services stating: "There has never been any clinical evidence to suggest that Fran would put herself or others at risk, and there is certainly no evidence to suggest that she would put a child at risk of emotional, physical or sexual harm."
Despite this support, endorsed by other psychiatrists and Miss Lyon's GP, social services based their recommendation partly on a letter from Dr Martin Ward Platt, a consultant paediatrician, who was unable to attend the meeting.
He wrote: "Even in the absence of a psychological assessment, if the professionals were concerned on the evidence available that Miss Holton (as Miss Lyon was briefly known), probably does fabricate or induce illness, there would be no option but the precautionary principle of taking the baby into foster care at birth, pending a post-natal forensic psychological assessment."
Miss Lyon said she was determined to fight the decision. "I know I can be a good mother to Molly. I just want the chance to prove it," she said.
The council said the recommendation would be subject to further assessment and review. "When making such difficult decisions, safeguarding children is our foremost priority," a spokesman said.
• A recording of social workers threatening to take a newborn into care has been removed from the YouTube website after Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire started legal action, claiming the Data Protection Act was breached.
Vanessa Brookes, 34, taped social workers telling her and her husband that they would seek to place the baby, due next month, in care, while admitting there was "no immediate risk to the child."
What is wrong over there? The Brits just put up with this crap as though it is normal.
1984
If the physician who made this recommendation “could not attend the hearing” as the article states, then I suggest there is not case.
THE SOLUTION: Mom, cross the channel or go to a non-EU country. Give birth there. (Glorious socialized medicine is not just cradle to grave, it is now pre-birth to grave.)
Is there a husband? I don't see a sign of one. In some cases, are these loony fascist policies used as a backhanded effort to eliminate a source of genuine scandal, such as a woman raising a bastard?
In other words, since political correctness no doubt forbids the state from making the obvious statement that this woman is not a fit mother because she's unmarried, do bureaucrats pull out these bizarre theories to achieve a result less disorderly to society?
Of course, the very intrusiveness of these idiots destroys all social order by arrogating authority over family matters to social workers, making fathers irrelevant. But I wonder if some of these "1984" measures are a pathetic work-around to avoid some of the consequences of their socialist family law policies.
The social workers have an adoption quota which must be filled. Something about taking away babies from “inferior” breeders and giving them to more “deserving” childless couples, such as homosexuals.
And liberals and rabid feminists.
Looks like we’re heading there, too.
John Edwards’ Universal Health Care Plan Would Make Regular Checkups Mandatory
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1890471/posts
I could see this kind of scenario from Edward’s health care plan
ping
From then on, anyone discussing the case, including Miss Lyon, will be deemed to be in contempt of the court.
What a racket. This is kidnapping the baby, plain and simple.
This is so absurd. Threatening to take away some mother's baby because she might engage in a made up behavior.
This crap happens here, folks. A friend of mine went through it in the ‘80s. Her husband had left her and her 14-yr-old son was running away and getting snared by Child Protective Services on a regular basis. She had no drug or alcohol problems, no criminal record, and her baby was not born out of wedlock. Yet before she ever laid eyes on the newborn, the hospital had conferred with social services (because of the boy, who was in foster care) and the hospital started proceedings to take the baby from her. According to the paperwork she showed me, the reason was “child abuse.” Of a child she had delivered just hours before, and never seen. In the fine print it said the doctors had reason to believe she would abuse the child. No reason was given. No psychiatric exam was ever done. She had absolutely no history of any criminal behavior or abuse, by her or to her. Just a shiftless husband and a son determined to find his dad.
It took a team of lawyers to get the hospital to back off. They wanted to discharge her and keep the baby. To this day I suspect they had financial motives to take a healthy newborn from an innocent mother. (She was destitute, I had paid all her expenses, but they seemed surprised and dismayed when the pricey lawyers entered the picture, like they had expected her to be defenseless.)
There’s a market for healthy babies. The scum who engage in this trade, generally do not call themselves scum. They present themselves as humanitarians, selfless and pure of heart.
Maybe she should abort the baby.
You are a very sick person.
The exact opposite of what they are. People like that belong in prison.
Most of us are ignorant of the issue unless we read the particular paper.
Appalling and I hope the British media ‘runs with it’.Cueing a backlash..
“Cueing a backlash”.
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