England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges)

IN THE FAMILY COURT
SITTING AT MANCHESTER
IN THE MATTER OF THE CHILDREN ACT 1989
AND IN THE MATTER OF: P (A CHILD)

		Civil Justice Centre 1 Bridge Street West Manchester M60 9DJ
		27th March 2015

HER HONOUR JUDGE NEWTON:

I INTRODUCTION

1. I am concerned with A, who was born on 16^th June 2014.
2. A's mother is B, born 23^rd November of 1987. His father is C, born on 11^th August 1987. So both parents are aged 27. I hope they will forgive me if I refer to them during the course of this judgment by way of shorthand as the mother and the father.
3. The other significant people in A's life and family are his maternal grandparents, D1 and D2; his maternal aunt, E; and his paternal grandmother, F, who is also a party to these proceedings.
4. On 18^th August of last year, A, then about 8 weeks old, was taken to Hospital A by his mother. When he was examined he was found to have suffered significant injuries.
5. This is the Local Authority's application for a care order in relation to A, issued on 29^th August 2014, following a short period where A was accommodated under section 20 of the Children Act.
6. The Local Authority's key social worker is now G and A's Guardian throughout has been H.
7. These proceedings have been allocated to me from the start and I conducted three case management hearings prior to a fact-finding hearing which commenced on 5^th January 2015. By that stage it was not in dispute, firstly, that A had sustained the injuries which are revealed by the medical evidence; secondly, that those injuries could not have been sustained by a simple accident; and thirdly, that the threshold criteria at section 31 of the Children Act were established.
8. The issues facing me for determination at that hearing were, firstly, who caused A's injuries, and secondly, if the perpetrator was one of his parents, whether the other failed to protect him from harm and if so in what respect? Prior to the hearing, I had reread all of the documents in the two lever arch files of documentation. Between the 5^th and 7^th January I heard oral evidence from

a. the mother;

b. the father;

c. E;

d. a lady called J, who is a friend of the paternal grandmother; and

e. the paternal grandmother.

I adjourned the hearing for delivery of my judgment until 16^th January, that being the first date upon which it was possible for all of the advocates to reassemble.

9. Shortly prior to that date, and subsequently in discussions with her very experienced counsel, Ms K, the mother began to make admissions as to how A's injuries were caused. There have been a number of hearings since then and the mother's position has been set out in two statements, the first is dated 30^th January 2015 and the second, is very recent although currently undated.
10. In one sense, the delivery of this judgment may be viewed as somewhat otiose since the orders for A's future are now agreed. However, the Local Authority and the Guardian are keen that there should be a full record setting out the history of matters and where we are today, so as to assist in future planning for A.

II A SUMMARY OF THE AGREED BACKGROUND

11. The parents' sexual relationship was apparently fleeting. The pregnancy was unplanned and the mother did not discover she was pregnant until around 20 weeks, by which stage the relationship with the father was already at an end. Once the father was informed of the pregnancy, he indicated that he did not want to play any role in the life of the child. His name does not appear on A's birth certificate and he did not see fit to tell his family that the mother was pregnant.
12. The mother, dismayed to find herself pregnant, suffered from mild depression. She continued to live with her parents up to and following A's birth. Initial reports were entirely positive as to her love for and emotional warmth for her son.
13. Immediately following the birth, the mother sent a message via a family member to the father to tell him. He was at his mother's home but pretended he was "working away". Thereafter, he and his mother came to visit A at the home of the maternal grandparents and the relationship between the parents was rekindled. This was far from acceptable to the maternal grandparents and there was then a degree of ongoing conflict between the mother and her parents.
14. Initially, the father would visit the mother and A at the maternal grandparents' home. He was employed as a chef working long and unsocial hours. Partly as a result of the tensions within the maternal household, the parents took A for a weekend trip to Blackpool. That occurred between the 18^th and 21^st July 2014. Thereafter, a pattern began to develop of the mother and A staying overnight at the weekends at the home of the paternal grandmother, both the mother and A sleeping in the father's bedroom.
15. The mother took A to her general practitioner, L, on the morning of 18^th August 2015 and he referred her to the PANDA unit at hospital A. I have the advantage of reports from the treating clinicians, M specialist registrar, and N, consultant paediatrician, dated 22^nd August 2014. Those documents and A's medical notes have been reviewed by

a. Dr Kate Ward, consultant paediatrician, jointly instructed by the parties, her report was filed 16^th December 2014, and

b. Dr Karl Johnson, consultant paediatric radiologist, whose report is dated 15^th December 2014.

16. The medical enquiries resulted in an agreed medical statement dated 22^nd September 2014. It is not disputed that A sustained the following injuries.

a. A metaphyseal fracture of the distal right femur that is linked with a metaphyseal fracture of the proximal right tibia. The causation of those injuries involve significant pulling, twisting and torsional forces applied to the bone and involve the use of significant and excessive force. The agreed medical evidence is that those injuries were sustained between 9^th July 2014 and 6^th August 2014.

b. Subsequently, and not before 9^th August 2014, A sustained a metaphyseal fracture of the distal right tibia involving the same types of forces and

c. a bruise to the base of his penis inflicted by squeezing or forceful gripping of the penis.

17. Greater Manchester Police have commenced enquiries and have conducted a number of interviews on 26^th and 27^th August 2015. No charging decisions have been made, the Crown Prosecution Service awaiting the outcome of these proceedings.
18. Fortunately, A has made a good recovery from his injuries. Initially, he was placed with a foster carer but on 22^nd December 2014 he moved to live with his maternal aunt, E. He is thriving in her care. Prior to the finding of fact hearing, the parents were exercising supervised contact at a Local Authority venue. The mother has attended conscientiously, the father less so.

III THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK

19. The relevant law is uncontentious. In the circumstances as they now arise, I will not dwell upon the well-known line of authorities. They are very usefully summarised in the judgment of Mr Justice Baker in Re: L and M (Children) [2013] EWHC 1569.

IV MY ASSESSMENT OF THE WITNESSES

20. The mother has no criminal convictions. She has held a number of different jobs. She has not worked since A was born. She was sufficiently depressed shortly before and after A's birth to have been prescribed antidepressants. She ceased taking them early in August but I think now is in receipt of appropriate medication. She was under a degree of considerable strain because of the dynamics of her relationships with her own family and also with the father. She is described and accepts that she was emotional, "up and down", following the birth. In recent statements she accepts, frankly, that she was not coping. It is agreed that the mother was A's main carer; the father would occasionally feed him or change his nappy. If A needed to be settled, it was understandably the mother who would generally do so.
21. The mother was an apparently straightforward, ordinary young woman. When she spoke of A it was with real affection and obvious warmth. It is, however, now apparent that her account to the court was fundamentally untruthful.
22. Nor was I impressed by the father. He is relatively inarticulate. His account lacked any emotional content and I had no sense of any real relationship between him and A or indeed of any depth of affection for the mother. He was prepared to lie, for example, as to the extent of his use of illicit drugs, only conceding something approaching the truth on that issue when pressed with the results of the hair strand testing. I am unable to place safe reliance upon his account of matters and I am concerned that during the period when A was injured he was using cocaine on most days of the week, partly to enable him to cope with the demands of his employment. His hair strand test results demonstrate concentrations of cocaine which exceed the maximum measurable concentration. The father has a long history of criminal offending, some 33 offences, resulting in 21 separate appearances before the criminal court and a total of ten sentences of imprisonment, many served consecutively, and all comparatively recent. His antecedents also reveal an alarming inability to comply with the orders of the court.
23. E's evidence was not really challenged but for the record I found her a warm person, her face lighting up when she spoke of A, and I am satisfied that she has his best interests at heart.
24. I did wonder if J had rather too much of a liking for drama, but it now seems that the basic elements of her account are accurate.
25. F, I found, like her son, to have some limitations and she processed questions slowly but it seemed to me with some care. She did not strike me as someone who was at all reflective. Her approach was simplistic and somewhat defensive. As the evidence emerged, it became very clear that her priority was her daughter, O. She was not trying to defend her son. Her desperate fear has been that these proceedings would result in O being removed from her care again. It has been a deeply unfortunate aspect of the difficulties in getting to the truth of what happened to A that O was actually removed from her mother's care at an early stage of these proceedings.

V MY FINDINGS

26. Having set out the injuries which it is agreed A suffered and the mechanism by which those injuries were caused, I am entirely satisfied that he suffered significant physical harm, attributable to the care provided to him by his parents, and that the threshold criteria at section 31 of the Children Act are established.
27. In terms of who caused A's injuries, prior to the mother's admissions I had already formed the clear conclusion that the only individuals who remained in the pool of potential perpetrators were the parents. Although members of the maternal and paternal family had sole care of A from time to time, none of them had the opportunity to inflict both sets of injuries. It is in my judgment, even in the absence of the mother's admissions, not probable that, during the first eight weeks of his life, A was so desperately unfortunate as to sustain two sets of bony injuries occasioned by a very similar mechanism, inflicted by two different members of the same family, each without the other apparently having any knowledge of what had happened.
28. Just so that F is clear as to what I am saying, I am satisfied that she safely can be excluded as a potential perpetrator of A's injuries.
29. During the hearing it was common ground that the most probable occasion upon which A sustained the first set of injuries was during the weekend in Blackpool, between Friday, the 18^th, and Monday, 21^st July 2015. It is agreed that on the first night the mother drank to excess in the lounge of the hotel and subsequently in the parents' room after A had been put to sleep. She consumed, it appears, about two pints of cider and a bottle of wine. At about one o'clock, the father left the room to go and get a pizza and he was away for over 30 minutes. The mother in her fifth statement of 30^th January describes the night as "a blur". She says she has no memory but thinks it possible that she picked A up whilst C had gone out. She accepts that it may have been the case, as J has described, that when C came back from the pizza shop he found A on the floor and the mother intoxicated in the bed and unable to wake. She does recollect that during the night she heard a high pitched scream from A but the rest of the night is a blank.
30. On the following morning, the parents observed two small bruises, one to A's thigh and buttock and the other to his lower back on the right-hand side. The paternal grandmother was "Face-timed" and shown at least one of the bruises by that method. It is agreed that the grandmother said words to the effect of, "You need to be more careful with him".
31. J told the court that the father had given her an account of the night in Blackpool which included him going out for a pizza and returning to find A screaming on the floor and the mother collapsed in bed. I now accept that J is telling the truth as to that conversation with the father, despite his denials.
32. Taking all of those matters into account, it seems to me that the evidence is very clear that the first two injuries sustained by A, namely the metaphyseal fractures to the distal right femur and the proximal right tibia were inflicted by the mother during the night of 18^th July when she was very drunk.
33. The evidence is that the second and third sets of injuries were probably inflicted over the weekend of the 15^th to 18^th August. Over that weekend A was quite unsettled because he had had vaccinations on Friday, the 15^th.
34. The mother sets out in her statement a description of massaging A after a bath at her home on 16^th August. She accepts that she was in a rush to get him ready to go to the grandmother's house, A was crying and she was getting frustrated and A was due a feed. She said:

"In my rush, I yanked his leg while massaging in the oil and significantly A made a high pitched scream. I now accept I was too rough and probably did not realise my own strength or what I had done. Significantly, now, looking back, I had heard this type of cry before, just once while we were in Blackpool".

35. The mother then went to stay with A at the paternal grandmother's home. On the morning of 18^th August, the parents identified that A's leg was swollen and that he needed to go to see a doctor.
36. On the basis of the mother's admissions, which accord with the evidence of the father and grandmother as to the approximate timing of A's injuries, the evidence of the doctors as to what was observed, I am satisfied that the second and third sets of injuries, namely the metaphyseal fracture of the distal right tibia and the bruise to the base of A's penis, were inflicted by the mother as she describes.
37. Clearly, in those circumstances I am satisfied that neither the father nor the paternal grandmother caused injury to A. However, that does not render them entirely blameless. Upon observing the bruising to A in Blackpool, or upon the family's return to Manchester, both the father and the grandmother should have ensured that A obtained immediate medical attention for what turned out to be quite significant injuries. Similarly, over the weekend of 16^th August, A was left untreated with a fracture. It is difficult to be critical of those who did not know what had happened but it was obvious that A was unwell over the course of that weekend.
38. I make it clear that those findings are not sufficiently grave for me to find that the paternal grandmother's contact to A needs to be supervised.
39. Turning to the future, I am not unsympathetic to the stresses that this young first-time mother was placed under. I am impressed that she has finally had the frankness to explain what happened and I hope that we can now move forward. However it is clear that the injuries to A, compounded by the mother's dishonesty, have had a very damaging impact upon the relationships within the maternal family and between the maternal and paternal families. There is a lot of dust which needs to settle.

VI ORDERS

40. It is agreed that,

a. there should be a care order on the basis of A remaining in the care of E. That seems to me to be entirely appropriate.

b. The level of contact between A, both sets of grandparents and his parents is agreed.

c. I am not entirely happy about suggestions of overnight staying contact for a baby who has had such a disrupted start in life and I think he really needs to settle with E before that is seriously contemplated. These are all matters for the management of the Local Authority in due course.

d. I approve the plan that the father's contact is to be supervised professionally in the hope that in due course his mother is positively assessed as a supervisor. I am pleased that the father has now gone to seek some assistance from ADS.

e. The mother would like to be considered for A's care in the future. I hope that she will succeed in participating effectively in all of the necessary work that has been identified and I note that she has made a very good start. However, I do not want anybody to be under any illusions. What I am approving is not a plan whereby E looks after A temporarily with a plan for him to go home to the mother in the future. The plan is that the mother does all of the work that has been identified and then the possibility of rehabilitation will be carefully assessed and reconsidered.

f. I would like it to be explained to the maternal grandparents in clear terms that E has taken on the most enormous responsibility. She needs everyone to support her in that task. That would include them not being so stupid as to try to go behind the Local Authority's back by negotiating additional contact for the mother. I do want to spell this out. If this all goes badly wrong, for example because E is placed under intolerable pressure, the alternative for A might not be a return to his mother's care. I would have significant qualms about him being placed long term in his paternal family. The alternative may be, given A's age, that he be placed for adoption. So, can we all be very clear that E needs all the help she can get, both from professionals but also from the family. I record F's offer of support and help and I and sure E will appreciate it.

g. I will direct a transcript of this imperfect judgment. The transcript will be ordered by my clerk and the parties will pay for it jointly, one-fifth each.

h. I record my gratitude to G and the other Local Authority social workers, who have managed a difficult case very well indeed. I am also, as always, grateful to H for her contribution.

[Judgment ends]