As Mr. Bumble said in Oliver Twist, “The law is a ass — a idiot,” sometimes anyway. That’s certainly the case with the couple in England who had their kids taken away four years ago when they were accused of child abuse. It turns out it was the social workers and the doctors who were wrong.
Though they never abused their children, as originally thought, a court now says the couple can’t get their three children back because it’s “too late.” Too late?! I’m sorry, but that’s just not a good explanation. Here’s the judge:
‘The court concluded that after three years it was in any event too late to set the orders aside, and that it would not be in the interests of the children to do so.’
The judge admitted that the potential miscarriage of justice was ‘regrettable and embarrassing’ to the court and the Family Justice system.
The case had also been a ‘worrying and deeply regrettable experience’ for Norfolk County Council which took the three eldest children into care, he said.
Yeah, I feel so sorry for the bureaucrats who screwed up and took these kids from their parents unjustly. The judge had more to say:
‘Mr and Mrs Webster believe that they have suffered a miscarriage of justice. They may be right. A family which might well have been capable of being held together, has been split up.
‘From their perspective, they have been wrongly accused of physically abusing one of their children, and three of their children have been removed wrongly and permanently from their care.
‘The only mitigation, from their point of view, is the local authority’s belated recognition that they are fit and able to care for Brandon.’
Gee, thanks, judge, for letting them keep their fourth child, which they still have only because they fled to Ireland to escape overzealous doctors and social workers.
