Welcome to the Roundup, where we correct, clarify and comment on media reports of family law, explain and comment on published family court judgments, and highlight other transparency news.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF FAMILY LAW, TRANSPARENCY etc
The BBC reported that Abandoned baby ‘doing well’ but parents still unknown (3 September 2024). This related to the ongoing saga (last covered in our June roundup) of Baby Elsa, who was found abandoned in January in Newham Park in east London, and turned out to be the third sibling similarly deserted by the same parents. This new report covered a recent hearing in East London Family Court which had been told that police officers had not been able to identify their parents. At an earlier hearing Judge Carol Atkinson had allowed the connection between the three siblings, established from DNA tests, to be reported under the current Reporting Pilot.
The Independent reported that Mother of Baby P back in jail after licence conditions breach (3 September 2024). It explained that Tracey Connelly had been jailed in 2009 for causing or allowing the death of her 17-month-old son Peter (known as Baby P) at their home in Tottenham, north London, in 2007. She was released on parole but had now been recalled, for the second time, after breaching her licence conditions. (Connelly had previously been released on licence in 2013 but recalled to prison in 2015 for breaching her parole conditions.) The BBC also covered the story.
The Times (£) reported that Mother accused of murdering her children fights extradition to US (4 September 2024). It said Kimberlee Singler had been arrested at a London hotel days after allegedly shooting her young son and daughter in Colorado and cutting the neck of a third child, and then blamed her former husband with whom she was engaged in a custody dispute. The report covered a hearing in which Singler contended that extraditing her to the US to face a trial would breach her human rights. There is also coverage of the hearing by the BBC.
The Independent reported that Husband ‘unlawfully killed’ heiress and cannot inherit her £4m fortune, judge rules (6 September 2024). This relates to the case of Leeson v McPherson [2024] EWHC 2277 (Ch) D, in which Mr Justice Richard Smith found that a wealthy heiress, Paula Leeson, was unlawfully killed by her husband, Donald McPherson, precluding him from inheriting her £4.4m estate. Ms Leeson, 47, had been found dead in a swimming pool while staying at a holiday cottage with McPherson in remote western Denmark in 2017. Within hours, the newspaper reported, ‘McPherson was transferring thousands of pounds from her accounts to cover his debts and he had taken out life insurance policies before her death worth £3.5million’. The Danish authorities seem to have treated the death as accidental, and a previous criminal trial failed after the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to found a conviction. But this was a civil claim brought in Manchester Civil Courts of Justice and, after ruling that the trial could proceed in McPherson’s deliberate absence (see [2024] EWHC 889 (Ch)), Richard Smith J was satisfied to the civil standard of proof of the defendant’s guilt in this case, sufficient to deprive him of any right to his late wife’s estate.
The Times (£) reported on Children left in limbo as family courts in crisis (5 September 2024) citing the backlog of public law child welfare cases and some of the other dire statistics highlighted by the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane in his View from the President’s Chambers report at the end of July (see last month’s roundup), together with quotes from a family law firms and representative bodies such as Resolution and the Family Law Bar Association, arguing for better funding of the family justice system.
However, Local Government Lawyer reported Care proceedings quicker with more disposals within 26 weeks (27 September 2024). MoJ stats were showing gradual reduction in the length of proceedings over the past year. This story also cited MoJ stats on the increasing numbers of children subject to deprivation of liberty (DoL) orders. The Nuffield FJO are quoted as observing that the number of DoL orders now greatly outnumbers secure accommodation applications because of the shortage of registered secure homes.
The BBC (17 September 2024) reported on two DoL applications observed by Sanchia Berg and Katie Inman at Liverpool Family Court: Unlawful care homes profiteer from at-risk kids. Their story incudes analysis of the national statistics and details of placement costing Liverpool as much as £20,000 per week.
The Express and Star had a report that Family in legal battle with NHS trust ask judge to keep woman’s life support on (6 September 2024) which concerned a case in the Court of Protection involving a woman, referred to as HX, who had suffered a severe brain injury following a cardiac arrest in July this year and had since remained in intensive care, needing support to breathe, eat and drink. The NHS trust having care of her had concluded that it was no longer in her best interests to continue the treatment keeping her alive, but her family applied to the court for an order requiring the trust to continue treatment. However, the judge (Mr Justice Cusworth) has since given judgment, on 9 September, refusing the family’s application and allowing the trust to begin to implement ‘a palliative care regime, the consequence of which (but not the aim) will be the end of her life’: Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust v HX & Ors [2024] EWCOP 52 (T3).
BBC Wales reported on how Belongings of care children put in bin bags and lost (7 September 2024), listing a number of cases where children in care and care leavers were made to pack their belongings in black bin bags when moving placement, only to lose precious items in transit. The National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) is now running a campaign, called My Things Matter, asking local authorities to pledge never to ask a young person to move their belongings in a bin bag or throw away a young person’s belongings without their consent. Nine of the 22 local authorities in Wales have committed to the campaign pledge since it launched in 2022.
The Mirror reported that Nine dads accused of child sex abuse given access to their alleged victims (6 September 2024) based on the ‘shocking’ findings of a report by University of Manchester researchers led by Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno. It included claims that in one case a father accused of abuse had been allowed access to the child because the mother had been branded an ‘alienator’ by the family court; the child’s father was then allowed access to the child and repeatedly raped her over many years. The study was based on the experience of 45 women from across England who had been involved with the family courts. Of the 45 fathers studied, who were all accused of some form of abuse of the children, 43 were given access. ‘In nine of these cases, the mums, along with some of their children, had accused the men of abuse, including child sexual abuse’. The Mirror’s story appears to be based on Dalgarno’s report ‘Let’s excuse abusive men from abusing and enable sexual abuse’: child sexual abuse investigations in England’s private family courts (published 28 August 2024 in the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, Volume 46, 2024 – Issue 3), which was the subject of a press release from Manchester University.
The Guardian reported that Barrister applies for ‘boys’ club’ disciplinary case to be thrown out (9 September 2024) about a closed hearing of the Bar Tribunal and Adjudication Service in disciplinary proceedings brought by the Bar Standards Board against the family barrister Dr Charlotte Proudman. Dr Proudman faced four disciplinary charges alleging breach of the Bar Code of Conduct in respect of tweets she published commenting on the judgment of Cohen J in the case of Trehane v Limb [2022] EWFC 27 in which Dr Proudman appeared as junior counsel for the wife. She applied to the tribunal for the case to be struck out on the grounds of sex discrimination under the Human Rights Act 1998 and her feminist beliefs protected under the Equality Act 2010, citing by contrast examples of male barristers whose tweets criticising judges were not the subject of disciplinary proceedings. The judge, HHJ Carroll, refused to hear the application in public or allow reporters to cover it, but later released his judgment refusing her strike-out application. That judgment has been published by Joshua Rozenberg, as has the skeleton argument of Proudman’s legal team, led by Alison Padfield KC: see also this post Proudman fights on. The story was also covered in The Times (£): Barrister Charlotte Proudman accuses regulators of sexism. The substantive hearing has yet to take place.
The BBC reported that Man who stabbed woman 60 times cleared for release (9 September 2024) about the parole board hearing of Stephen Ling, who had been convicted for the murder of Joanne Tulip in a savage and sadistic attack, including rape, in 1998. He was jailed for life with a minimum term of 20 years, later reduced to 18 years, but following earlier refusals of parole he has served another 9 years. The parole board hearing was held in public, something that still appears to be happening only in a minority of cases despite attempts by successive Lord Chancellors to impose a more transparent regime. The decision to allow Ling’s release now, despite opposition from the victim’s family, has been published in the form of a redacted decision letter, for which there is also a summary on the parole board’s web pages. The case does not make for comfortable reading, but reinforces the view that early intervention in the case of so-called ‘minor’ sex offending, such as self-exposure, could prevent escalation to more serious offences such as rape and murder.
The Observer reported that Father who is convicted rapist stripped of parental responsibility for daughter (14 September 2024). This was about Kristoffer White, who apparently failed to turn up to court for a hearing to determine the involvement he could have in his daughter’s life. The report, by Hannah Summers, noted that despite the serious findings made against him, including rape, by District Judge Sophie Harrison, White had previously been granted unsupervised access to his daughter after a recommendation by Cafcass. DJ Harrison’s order permitting contact, made in February, was overturned after a successful appeal by the mother. (That earlier judgment has been removed from TNA; we will post an update when it’s back.) After the appeal, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the freelance journalist Suzanne Martin successfully applied to the court to name White. His contact with the girl was suspended pending the court’s final orders, and the matter was referred to Judge Kambiz Moradifar, who has now granted the mother’s application to strip White of parental responsibility. After the hearing a Ministry of Justice spokesperson vowed to bring forward legislation to restrict parental responsibility for any parent convicted of child sexual offences.
The BBC reported that Nurse whose baby died after she left him alone jailed (11 September 2024). Ruth Auta had left her baby unattended all day while she went to work – as a nurse! – and then attempted to conceal the facts leading up to the baby’s death. Cause of death was unclear but she pleaded guilty to child cruelty at a hearing at Manchester Magistrates’ Court on 24 May, then tried to flee the country before sentencing at Bolton Crown Court the following month. She was jailed for three years.
The Times (£) had a story entitled ‘Earn more’, judge tells lawyer who tried to fight her own prenup (15 September 2024) about a lawyer whose application to overturn the prenuptial agreement that she had drafted herself was refused by a judge, who ruled that the agreement was binding. There was a lawyer vs lawyer flavour to the proceedings, it seems, given that the 58-year-old wife was described as ‘head of the family team at a legal chambers in London’ while her 69-year-old ex-husband was ‘a solicitor-advocate in criminal law’. The report explained that the prenup, signed just a day before the couple’s wedding, had stipulated that in the event of a divorce the ‘normal’ 50-50 split in assets would only apply to matrimonial property, and not those assets owned solely by the other party. The case, heard in the family courts in July, therefore focused on whether property could be classed as ‘matrimonial’ or ‘non-matrimonial’ in the light of the prenuptial agreement. The headline referred to the judge’s comments that the wife was ‘not taking steps to maximise her income’ and had failed to build up a pension. The case, NM v PM [2024] EWFC 199 (B) has been summarised by the Financial Remedies Journal.
The BBC had a piece entitled ‘I’m trapped in a joint mortgage with my abuser’ (15 September 2024) about a woman who, more than a decade after leaving her abusive ex-husband, was still trapped in their joint mortgage. The report was prompted by recent publication of a survey by charity Surviving Economic Abuse of 1,000 women who held a joint mortgage in the last two years, which found one in eight experienced joint mortgage abuse. Such abuse is part of a wider problem of financial abuse alongside other forms of abusive or coercive behaviour. ‘The charity is calling on ministers to set up an urgent cross-government task force alongside the banking trade body, UK Finance, to better handle cases of mortgage-based abuse’, the report said.
The Times (£) reported that Boy ‘thrives’ after life support is switched off (23 September 2024) concerning a case in the Court of Protection where ‘a four-year-old boy whose life support was turned off despite his mother’s pleas after doctors told a judge he was certain to die has shown an improvement in his condition’. It referred to the case of R v King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Re NR (A Child: Ceilings of Treatment after Survival of Withdrawal of Life Sustaining Treatment) [2024] EWHC 2400 (Fam) in which Mr Justice Poole reversed his earlier decision that limited treatment, saying: ‘Having anxiously reflected on the previous judgments, I am satisfied that the conclusions I reached were justified on the evidence provided but it is right to acknowledge that the expectations that NR could not be cared for at home and would not survive long after extubation have not been fulfilled’. He added that ‘NR’s case is highly unusual and raises some challenging questions for the court which must be addressed openly and objectively. Counsel could not point to any reported case in which a child has survived for months after the withdrawal of life sustaining treatment following a Court decision.’
The Guardian published a detailed history of the case of Claire Throssell, whose two sons Paul and Jack were murdered by their abusive father. Why had the family courts granted him contact? (1 October 2024). It cited Dr Dalgarno’s recent report (see Mirror story above) and discusses the controversial ‘presumption of contact’ which is currently under long-delayed review: for more on this, see our recent post on this blog, The presumption and ‘contact culture’.
LEGAL BLOGGING
Having finally (after five months) been able to obtain the relevant transcript, we were able to publish or update a group of connected posts (on 24 September 2024) about the attempt by our legal blogger Paul back in April to cover a case before the magistrates at East London Family Court, which was refused by the magistrates in a procedure, and for reasons, which we say were flawed and inadequate.
- The first post is by Paul himself, explaining his experience and observations: Keep out! When justice cannot be seen to be done, how do we know it’s been done?
- Then there is a post by the Reporting Watch Team analysing the transcript and making their observations about what went wrong: ‘Have you thought about giving notice?’
- You can also read the updated saga about our attempts to obtain the transcript: Frustrated: our attempts to report on family court hearing before Magistrates – a system in overload.
- Finally, you can read the full transcript here (of the separate ‘hearing’ in which Paul was required to justify his entitlement to attend, and the magistrates’ decision nevertheless to exclude him).
In International contact after a defended abduction (4 October 2024) Julie discusses the first full final hearing in a High Court case that we have attended and reported on as legal bloggers. It raises interesting issues about international abduction; the aftermath regarding international contact; and the differing perceptions of two parents of their autistic child.
In When is an intermediary necessary? – a case study, Julie reports on an interim hearing which she attended earlier this summer in which the Cardiff Designated Family Judge, HHJ Paul Hopkins KC, was asked to consider the appointment of an intermediary to help one of the parents to fully participate, for the entirety of a two-week trial. She discusses the case in the context of two recent High Court judgments giving guidance on the appointment of intermediaries under the current rules.
RECENT CASE COMMENTARY
The Financial Remedies Journal had a piece, Absence of Authority (1 September 2024) in which Sir Nicholas Mostyn discussed the effect of section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 (AJA 1960) in the context of a recent decision by Her Honour Judge Reardon in G v S (Family Law Act 1996: Publicity) [2024] EWFC 231 (B). Both Sir Nicholas’s view of the matter, and that of Judge Reardon, have been further discussed by David Burrows in a post on the ICLR blog, A tale of two judges: ‘private’ hearings and permission for publicity .
There is a more general discussion of section 12 of AJA 1960 in another post on this blog, in the context of contempt of court, and the current Law Commission consultation on proposed changes in the law: see Contempt of Court : The Law Commission’s Consultation – A Response.
The Open Justice Court of Protection Project blog had a piece Balancing open justice and P’s right to privacy: A protected party says NO to a public observer “and her voice shall be heard” about a case in which an observer, or would be observer, was excluded from the hearing because the protected party, N, said she did not want an observer as ‘she doesn’t know who they are or what their ethics and values are‘, and the judge ruled that a public hearing was not in N’s best interests. The post is by Eleanor Tallon, an Independent Social Worker, Expert Witness and Best Interests Assessor, who was trying to observe and blog about the case in the Court of Protection, which normally sits in public, but subject to reporting restrictions preserving the anonymity of the protected party. She explains that after a short preliminary hearing to discuss the matter of her attendance, ‘the judge ruled that it was not in N’s best interests to continue the hearing in public, so it became a private hearing, and I had to leave’. Since then, the judgment in the case has been published: Stockport MBC v NN & Anor [2024] EWCOP 51 (T1).
The Law & Religion UK blog in Limits on anonymity (30 September 2024) discussed a recent ecclesiastical case in the Consistory Court, Re St. Margaret Ormesby [2024] ECC Nor 5, concerning an application to exhume the remains of a stillborn baby, ‘Baby A’, buried in the churchyard of St Margaret Ormesby over 10 years ago, in the grave of his paternal grandfather. Baby A’s mother had applied for the exhumation, but did not want Baby A’s father, with whom she had had a former relationship described as ‘abusive’ and ‘toxic’, to know where the baby would be reburied. The matter had arisen because the father’s mother had died and the paternal family wished her to be buried with the grandfather with whom Baby A had been buried. The baby’s mother wanted to avoid ‘psychological harm and distress including nightmares and flashbacks to extremely distressing incidents’ when visiting the baby’s grave. Reburial was permitted, the chancellor ruled, but declined to make any order keeping its location secret from the father, as he ‘had a right to know where his child is buried’, and in any event ‘the record of burials in a churchyard is public information’.
On X/twitter, Louise Tickle expressed horror at a decision that had been made in the High Court by Mrs Justice Lieven to allow two children to have three sessions of contact with their father in prison where he is serving a 12 month sentence for raping their mother. The mother has now successfully appealed against that order in Re M (Children: Contact In Prison) [2024] EWCA Civ 1104. The Court of Appeal said that the gravity of the father’s offending had being overlooked, with priority given to a limited assessment of the children’s wishes and the judge’s own perception of their need for contact. A number of other commentators on X/twitter, including some lawyers, inaccurately stated that Lieven J had ordered the mother to take the chidren on the prison visits, although her judgment explicitly said she wasn’t going to order that.
Joshua Rozenberg (A Lawyer Writes) also commented, in Barristers lose £2.75m (27 September 2024) on a recent case in which a set of barristers chambers, Pump Court Chambers, sought in vain to preserve their anonymity, largely for commercial reasons, in proceedings concerning an application to freeze the assets of their former credit control manager Gillian Brown, also known as Gillian Goodfield, who had admitted embezzling large sums of the barrister’s money. The case had initially been subject to an anonymity order, but in Pump Court Chambers v Brown [2024] EWHC 2428(Ch) Charles Morrison, a solicitor sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, refused to hear the application for a freezing order in private, saying:
‘I am not persuaded that non-disclosure of the party names is necessary so as to secure the proper administration of justice, nor is it necessary in order to protect the interests of PCC. Whilst it was appropriate to make such an order at the ex parte stage, in light of the admissions of Mrs Goodfield, such an order is not now necessary on her account.’
NEW JUDGMENTS OF INTEREST
Other than mentioned above.
Re Y, V & B (Fact-Finding: Perpetrator) [2024] EWCA Civ 1034
This was an appeal against a Family Court judgment which had concluded that although a nine-month- old baby had been seriously injured and her mother couldn’t explain why, the judge had neither identified who had caused the injuries nor had identified what’s known as ‘a pool’ i.e. a list of people who may have been responsible. The judge, HHJ Madeleine Reardon, had explained that her conclusion was that either the mother had inflicted the injuries or she knew did, which she didn’t describe as a ‘pool’. The Cafcass guardian successfully appealed on the basis that, having correctly concluded that the injuries were inflicted (i.e. directly caused) by someone, the judge was wrong to refuse to identify who had caused them, whether a single perpetrator or a pool of perpetrators. Alternatively, if the judge had identified a pool of perpetrators, then it was a pool of the mother and a ‘hypothetical other person’ and that was unsatisfactory. The case was sent back for re-hearing.
For lawyers, this judgment is useful in summarising the case law on identifying perpetrators, which is important before decisions on a child’s future welfare can be made. There is a useful summary in Local Government Lawyer.
Re G (Non-therapeutic circumcision: religious/cultural grounds)[2024] EWHC 2363 (Fam)
16-month-old twins were in the care of Hackney Council. Their father, supported by the mother, had applied under the High Court inherent jurisdiction for a declaration that the male twin (G) should be circumcised for non-medical (i.e. cultural) reasons. Hackney and the Cafcass guardian opposed the application. The plan was for the twins to be placed together for adoption. Although care and orders had been made, the birth parents retained parental responsibility, shared with Hackney. The judgment is a useful summary of current law and practice regarding non-therapeutic male circumcision, including medical advice to the court. The father didn’t actually follow any religious practices but wanted the boy to preserve his identity as part of Lebanese culture. Deputy High Court Judge Nageena Khalique KC concluded that it was not in G’s best interests to make the order, and that G can make the decision for himself when he is old enough to understand the consequences.
R (on the application of XYM) v Kingston Family Court & Anor [2024] EWHC 2372 (Admin)
This isn’t a Family Division judgment because it’s about judicial review. A father had been applying since 2022 for permission to bring judicial reviews of decisions made in West London Family Court private law Children Act 1989 proceedings and in Kingston Family Court financial proceedings. It’s a brief judgment although has taken into account a very detailed application by the self-representing father. The applicant raised many concerns about procedures and ‘the system’. Mr Justice Fordham concluded that all the issues raised by the father had been addressed in a previous judgment by HHJ Willans and therefore refused permission to appeal against that. The case was notably fact-specific but there’s an interesting transparency issue – the High Court had made anonymity orders in 2023 because the usual restrictions in the family courts wouldn’t still apply in the Administrative Court. The father had wanted to identify himself but Fordham J concluded that anonymity was still necessary to continue to protect the children from being identified.
LB of Lewisham v NB & ors [2024] EWFC 256 (B)
The mother in this case suffers from serious PTSD, as a result of a violent upbringing. Following an incident where she hit her two young children in public and they went into police protection, Lewisham have now obtained care orders and both children are doing well in long-term foster care. The judge, HHJ Robertson, analysed the advantages and disadvantages of foster care for children where they are no family members to care for them. The judge noted that she wanted to see the ‘route map’ that the local authority was drawing up so the mother knew what she needed to do to get her children back, but in the meantime, she specifically sought reassurance from the social worker that these foster carers were genuinely committed to the children. Foster care was the only realistic option and the judge was thankful such a positive placement had been found.
LB of Lambeth v RF & ors [2024] EWFC 257 (B)
This is another humane judgment from HHJ Robertson at the Central Family Court in London , where two boys aged ten and eight have been placed with a grandparent under a special guardianship order (SGO), as neither of their parents were able to care for them safely. The judge cited the good practice guidance on SGOs that discourages the addition of a supervision order to SGO but concluded this was an exceptional case where it was necessary for the SGO to be supported by a 12-month supervision order. She also made prohibited steps orders to prevent either parent going to the children’s home or school, even though they had expressed support for the placement. The boys’ behaviour since living with their grandmother had remarkably improved. The judge was generally positive about the local authority’s work with the family but went into quite some detail of her expectations for future support.
S v Birmingham City Council & ors [2024] EWFC 244 (B)
We’re including this case because it dealt with the issue of an intermediary for a parent in care proceedings, a hot topic we wrote on last month. Although the judgment is dated April 2024 it was only published by TNA within the last couple of weeks. District Judge Parker considered what would then have been the recent guidance from Mrs Justice Lieven on the necessity for an intermediary. The mother in this case was asking the judge for permission to appeal his decision on care and placement orders and to reopen his findings as the previous hearing had been procedurally unfair because she hadn’t been able to participate in them without an intermediary. Permission to appeal was refused; the judge concluded that the mother’s participation wouldn’t have been assisted by an intermediary so an appeal had no prospect of success.
Dorset Council v Mother & ors (Care proceedings: Future risk) [2024] EWFC 246 (B)
In this case, the father did have an intermediary throughout the final hearing, as well as an advocate (and his lawyer). It was also ‘exceptional’ in ending with a SGO supported by a supervision order. HHJ Simmonds at Bournemouth Family Court emphasised the complexity of the decision he had to make on risk of future harm from the parents where there had been no history of harm. Another interesting aspect of this judgment is that the expert psychology witness is anonymised, although no reason for this is given or can be found in the judgment.
OTHER TRANSPARENCY etc NEWS
New guidance on the Reporting Pilot now operating in 19 family courts was issued by the President’s office during September. We saw this mentioned in Family Law Week although there doesn’t appear to have been a press announcement. It’s been published on the TIG webpages. In January 2024, the Pilot was expanded to a significant number of areas to allow further evaluation on a larger scale, with a view to long term implementation. The new document sets out the basis of the expanded Pilot and the rules. It is intended to be authoritative guidance for all those who take part in the Pilot.
The Co-Producing Accessible Legal Information ( COALITION) project produced a report (July 2024) on Making Legal Services More Accessible. It came out of research workshops designed ‘to explore barriers to access to legal services for people with learning disabilities, and to investigate how legal services could be made more accessible to disabled people with cognitive impairments’.
COALITION is a collaboration between Professor Rosie Harding of Birmingham University Law School, Amanda Keeling of Leeds University, Sophie O’Connell of Salisbury law firm Wilsons, and Philipa Bragman and Andrew Lee from self-advocacy organisation People First, which is for and run by people with learning difficulties. Their report found that people with learning disabilities experience barriers to access to justice at every stage of seeking advice about a legal problem. It calls for legal regulators, legal service providers and disabled people’s organisations to work together to develop an accessible web database of easy read information about law, and for legal service providers to develop easy read information about their services to make them more accessible.
Joshua Rozenberg on his blog (A Lawyer Writes) posted Young killers won’t be named (3 September 2024) explaining the decision by a High Court judge not to name ‘the youngest defendants to be convicted of murder in more than 30 years’. Mrs Justice Tipples refused an application by media organisations seeking to lift the reporting restrictions imposed last November under section 45(3) of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 anonymising the two 12-year-old boys who last year stabbed 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai through the heart with a 16-inch machete in an unprovoked attack. The judgment – one of the first using a newly minted form of neutral citation, is now published as R v BGI & Anor [2024] EWCR 5. (EWCR stands for England & Wales Crown Court.) Sentencing was due to take place at the end of September but we have yet to see any sentencing remarks.
The Judiciary website published sentencing remarks on 9 September 2024, from a hearing on 11 July, for the murder of Damion Russell which we reported in our July roundup, following up a story in Lancashire News. Mrs Justice Hill, sitting in Preston Crown Court, sentenced the defendant, Daniel Hardcastle, to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years.
The Youth Justice Board published Freedom of Information (FOI) responses made during August 2024 (via Gov.uk on 9 September 2024), on the questions:
- (1) Is data on children collected by sex (biological sex) or self-identified gender? The answer was: on sex.
- (2) Roughly how many youths (under 18s) appear in court each year, and of these how many of them are under 16, and how many are 16 and over? The response was to refer the requester to the annual statistics obtainable via the Ministry of Justice (MoJ)’s Criminal Court Statistics publication.
The Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, published a briefing, Shifting the Scales of Justice, (September 2024) highlighting her immediate priorities for change in the criminal justice response to domestic abuse. The briefing includes early findings from her report into this subject which will be published and laid before Parliament at the end of the year. Her recommendations include better data sharing between police forces and other agencies, better vetting of police officers, and the re-establishment of Specialist Domestic Abuse Courts.
The 2DRJ blog from chambers at No 2 Dr Johnson’s Building published an explainer by one of their family law barristers: Sophia Stapleton explores and explains orders made under Section 91(14): Protection from further applications under the Children Act 1989. Such orders are sometimes known as ‘barring orders’, but she says this is misleading as they operate more as a filter to prevent unnecessary or vexatious applications. We’ve written the use of s 91(14) orders here and here.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
The Family Law Bar Association (FLBA) is holding its 2024 National Conference and Annual General Meeting at The Queens Hotel, Leeds on 12 October 2024 – 9am-5pm. The Conference will be chaired by Mr Justice Poole, with speakers including Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division, Lady King, James Roberts KC and Jacqueline Thomas KC, Taryn Lee KC, Nicholas Stoner KC, Charlotte Worsley KC, Jo O’Brien KC, Nikki Saxton KC and DJ Patrick Troy. There will be a panel discussion on transparency, including representatives from the judiciary, practitioners and the media. The full programme can be found here.
Family Law Week is promoting the Public & Private Children Law Conference later this month. The conference is dedicated to the latest developments, challenges, and innovations in the field of children’s law. It takes place at the Cavendish Conference Centre on 24 October 2024 and will host a forum of leading Kings Counsels and other expert speakers, including HHJ Stephen Wildblood KC who will host a thought-provoking debate on adoption. Nagalro held a conference on post-adoption contact on 4 October chaired by Mrs Justce Frances Judd, who leads the Adoption sub group of the President’s Public Law Working Group. We understand her report is due to be published shortly.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) will run a series of events, mentoring and practical “at-court” support for journalists around the country as part of its first Family Court Reporting Week, running for five days from Monday 4 November to Friday 8 November 2024. See our earlier post: First ever ‘Family Court Reporting Week’ is launched by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
FAMILY LAW IN OTHER JURISDICTIONS
Canada
SLAW, the Canadian online legal magazine, had a post, Momentum for Child and Youth Meaningful Participation and Voice in Family Justice by Kari D. Boyle, discussing The Youth Voices Initiative (sponsored by the BC Family Justice Innovation Lab Society). This youth-led group has been working for over seven years to advocate for children’s right to have their views heard about issues affecting their lives resulting from parental separation. That right derives from art 12 of the UN Convention on the Right of the Child (UNCRC). Youth Voices is working with the Transform the Family Justice System (part of A2JBC) which has a Meaningful Participation Community of Action to pursue this same goal in all areas of family justice including parental separation and the foster care system. The movement aims to make meaningful participation of children and youth the default in all areas of family justice.
Sweden
The Observer had a piece, ‘Not our tradition’: calls in Sweden to ban fathers walking brides down the aisle (31 August 2024) about dwindling adherence to the Swedish tradition for the bride and groom to walk up the aisle of the church together when getting married, and the increasing fashion for the more ‘Hollywood’ style wedding practice in which the bride is walked up the aisle and ‘handed over’ by her father. A motion was submitted by one pastor to the autumn meeting of the Swedish church seeking to ban the practice of fathers handing over their daughters at the altar, which they criticised as ‘paternalistic’. But at a time when fewer couples are opting for a church wedding, others in the church seemed anxious to accommodate ‘family inclusion’ in the ceremony.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
Seen something to go in the next Roundup or that you’d like us to write about? Send it to info@transparencyproject.org.uk
But finally…
We have a small favour to ask!
The Transparency Project is a registered charity in England and Wales run by volunteers who mostly also have full-time jobs. We’re working to secure extra funding so that we can keep making family justice clearer for all who use the court and work in it. We’d be really grateful if you were able to help us by making a small one-off (or regular!) donation through our Just Giving page.