On 5th September the Nigerian parents of six children, ‘snatched' by Haringey Council in June 2010, waited all day in the London Family Court to oppose the Council's application to renew an Interim Care Order (ICO), as the Council and police had disclosed no evidence to support their spurious arguments that the children be separated from their parents and taken into care.
On 30th August Mrs Justice Hogg had specifically ordered that the case be heard on 5th September with the sole intention for the parents to bring further evidence and for the Council to produce the documents upon which they relied.
I arrived and spent the first hour trying to establish where the case was being heard as no one knew. Separate from me and unknown to me, the totally distraught parents were doing the very same from 9.30 onwards.
I eventually demanded a judge and a hearing be convened or there was going to be ‘trouble'. Staff clearly indicated something unusual was going on.
At 4pm a District Judge Berry informed the three of us, in a matter of nanoseconds, that the case was already over!
It transpired that the case had taken place in the very same building without any of us being told and obtaining, for the fourth time, a further one month Detention Order (IC0) by the simple use of a telephone call from the Council to District
Judge Hess.
After the court abuse, off we go to Hornsey police station, near Haringey Council, where the police had first jailed the parents, but are now refusing to disclose their custody records or copy interview tapes needed for the 8th September hearing in the Holborn family courts at 10am.
These frustrated parents are being blackmailed to leave the UK without their kids; that bit is obvious, but why does the police demand they report three times a week at Hornsey police station? For what?
On 6th September I suggested we go to the Nigerian Commission to establish what progress, if any, had happened since the parents had first contacted them in June 2010.
I arrived and waited inside, refusing to discuss the confidential matter until the parents arrived.
When the parents eventually arrived, I explained to a senior member of staff that these very worried parents had not seen or heard from one of the daughters for over a year and four months, at least, for the rest of the children.
There is information coming in, not as yet substantiated by me, that children from the Haringey Council and other Councils are being found in South Africa and elsewhere abroad, while their adoption service was also being brought into question where cash handouts were concerned.
There appears to be a serious situation elsewhere also, South Wales being very well documented, all due to the police not intervening, while judges take the word of council staff without any proper proof! Are judges also being given information, to issue an ICO on the phone, which is being withheld from respective parents? That is exactly the case with the Nigerians, is plainly obvious, with no chance of rebuttal.
The Haringey Council have no supporting evidence that would stand the test of a criminal court or they would disclose it to the parents and Nigerian Commission.
I was assured by the Nigerian Commission representative that it was fully aware of the seriousness of the separation of young children from their parents and ‘all that could be done was being done'. We obtained no documentation, however, to support their apparent answer that the Council was ignoring the Commission's concerns.
I did not leave without throwing in a ‘wild card': I was at school, I told them, with the first black head boy of a public school, Taunton School, Somerset in 1962/63. He went on to become a judge in Nigeria, it was rumoured and his father was also a judge. Peter Thomas's age now would be around 66 to 67 and I now need his help to get the kids out of here and back home.
He would remember me, as a number eight, his rarely getting past me on the front rugger pitch as I invariably took him by the ankles just ten yards from the try line!
I indicated, also, my own daughter was oh so nearly snatched, recently, by the South Wales Police, in operation Orchid and that it was only by quick thinking of her mother that their plan was foiled. I knew only too well of the horrors of forced separation from one's children, it being my ‘driving force' now to help this family and others embattled in a judicial system riddled with plain avarice and apparent anomalies contrary to the Rule of Law and basic human rights.
It appears UK family courts operate on a completely different level, when considering a standard of proof for evidence, as to what should be required to separate frantic children from their loving parents. This case clearly stinks with cover up after cover up, all of which should be turned over, now, to an outside police force to investigate the Haringey Council, NOT the
police investigating the injured family.
In exasperation, with intention to return, we finally left the Commission, hoping at least to have had some evidence of action. We must find the whereabouts of all these children and send them home to Nigeria.
On 7th September we three decided to visit the Haringey Council to examine the children's medical records upon which the Council relied for the ‘snatch' being lawful.
The parents were not just refused they were denied any information as to whether the children were even still alive!
There is big money, tax payers' money being shared out in all this which is why the child industry will not allow the united family return to Nigeria.
Tomorrow, in the Holborn Family Court, these parents will be refused disclosure, for the fourth time, of the documents upon which the Council rely, because the judge already knows there is no such evidence.
Is not lawful rebellion long, long overdue?
Time to distribute the Lewis machine guns?
Meantime,on behalf of Liz Watson and Norman Scarth,I am taking into court my mega megaphone should anyone be found to be a little hard of hearing concerning this clearly criminal matter.