How Britain's most secret court imprisoned a grandmother | Hacker News Reader

How Britain's most secret court imprisoned a grandmother

telegraph.co.uk

123 pointskoenigdavidmj69 comments

Be careful of the source here. Booker is variously a climate change denier and professional contrarian. He's very smart, but one of those iconoclasts who does get on a high horse. In this case it's worth knowing that he has been crusading against family and other civil court secrecy and rulings for years. ANd it's a worthy cause, but he's nt the world's most level headed journalist: hes sceptical of very reasonable judgements, like 99% of scientists re climate, for example.

In this case, some of his cases (and there are many articles, and they are worth a read) appear to be for good reason, and rthere will be some substance to some of them; but we don't know - which is partly why he rails against them. However, it is clear that he doesn't bring all the facts to our attention (like why the authorities may have had courts rule against unfit, manipulative and dangerous family members). Nonetheless, there is likely significant merit in at least some of his qualms.

Dig deeper using other sources, before coming to premature judgements. These stories are designed, DailyFail-style, to tug at your heartstrings. It's also worth knowing that The Daily Telegraph has always been the UK Rightwing broadsheet, but has since its change of ownership in recent years, turned more to Daily Mail-like reporting and sensationalism. IT has also taken a hard turn to the neoliberal Far-Right (think Brexit), and so you should take its stories with as much caution as perhaps the 'Washington Times', and worse than Murdoch's WSJ. It's not yet as bad as Beitbart, as it still advertises to octogenarian Colonels in Tunbridge Wells, but that may change.

Booker is reporting the attempts by Lord Justice Munby, who should be in a position to know, to correct the selection of miscarriages of justice in the 11 years the Court has existed. It's bordering on systemically broken.

The whole way the court was set up was a mess. The 2005 Mental Health Act was shoddy legislation, and created the Court, which was also set up shoddily. Labour almost immediately lost an outrageous ECR case and had to amend the the Act in 07 or 08. I think there might be another going through the ECR.

There have been endless complaints about it's operation, with reports going back years, in all political flavours of the media. So I for one welcome what the Telegraph, Christopher Booker and the judge are doing. The Telegraph is not my usual choice of view or politics.

All the cases except the most recent have been extensively reported.

Were it on climate change or one of the other Torygraph axes being ground, I'd agree with your critique, I don't think it really fits here.

Thanks for these extra data. I hadn't been aware of these details at all. More please, anyone! It seems there is much merit here but we must have caution, because of the unusual arrangement of Booker's metaphorical marbles / spoons. I I have read in Private Eye about some of these stories, but hopefully here we might learn of others, and other journalists interested. Journalists from what used to be Exaro News may have investigated some of these too.

In any case source caution is also worthwhile. I welcome that more investigators and actors are interested in this.

Oh I don't disagree there, given some of Booker's climate change pieces, starting with extreme suspicion is rarely harmful.

> The 2005 Mental Health Act was shoddy legislation, and created the Court

The Mental Capacity Act. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/9/contents

There are some problems with the mental health act, but they are different bits of law.

Something to read for background on Booker's flakey reporting: http://www.headoflegal.com/2013/12/04/booker-hemming-and-the...

There are a decent number of factual refutions of Booker's claims in several past cases.

"...it still advertises to octogenarian Colonels in Tunbridge Wells."

I'm merely curious - can you explain this reference to a US native?

Tunbridge Wells is a well-to-do town in Kent, southeast of London. Octogenarian = > 80 years old. So I think what he means by this phrase is "typical retired conservative voter: wealthy with traditional views".

"The phrase Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells is a generic name used in the United Kingdom for a person, usually with strongly conservative political views, who writes letters to newspapers in a tone of moral outrage.[1] The term may have originated either with the 1944 BBC radio show Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, or with an editor of the letters page of the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser." - Wikipedia

Colnels. How to explain. It's the kind of person who flies a Union Jack from a pole attached to their garden shed. They probably think it's ridiculous political correctness that we don't still celebrate Empire Day.

The "Tunbridge Wells" line is a contemptuous descriptor for traditionalist ("small-c") conservatives, generally used by people who regard themselves as progressive. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgusted_of_Tunbridge_Wells for a discussion of the phrase's origins.

As with all such derogatory epithets, the wielder either doesn't realise how powerfully and instantly doing so undermines their chances of changing hearts & minds, or doesn't care because they only wish to preach to their own choir.

Ad hominem. His views of climate change have nothing to do with tragedy of this family court case. Why do you bring it up?

If you want to challenge the story, present other sources with the other view point. Don't go after one messenger, and use prior bad or not-bad acts to cast the journalist in a negative light. That's very not helpful.

Yes yes, a series of bad journalism can show a pattern and that's how prosecutors go after organized crimes and serial killers. But don't pretend there are bias and unbias journalists. Everyone has a bias. Most of what we see is propaganda and not news.

> But don't pretend there are bias and unbias journalists.

I really hate to do this, but this one drives me nuts (and I have no idea how people make the mistake): it's biased and unbiased.

When it comes to a reporter summarizing a story, there is a lot of trust involved that they aren't distorting the truth. If they have been historically unreasonable, it is not ad hominem to point that out.

Not believing in climate change is relevant to thinking about whether someone is likely to be a trustworthy source because not believing in c.c. means we should be skeptical of that person's writing and conclusions. It's equivalent to believing the world is 8000 years old, or evolution doesn't exist, or jesus rode on dinosaurs.

It doesn't have anything to do with liberal or conservative. It has to do with being educated and drawing reasonable conclusions about the world.

Being a "climate change denier" can mean almost anything today.

Such as that you believe that climate is changing not because of CO2 levels but rather due to other atmospheric gases or pollutants, or the sun's emissions, etc.

Or maybe you believe that the models being used are politically driven (which is a provable fact BTW).

You can still agree that there is a problem, but you just don't agree on the causes 100% or the solutions 100%.

So unless you know the specifics of what this person is not agreeing with you on, it is a meaningless and non-relevant label.

Please prove that the models of client change are used politically. You appear to be trying to dismiss concerns around climate change are some kind of irrelevant politically driven scheme. Asserting that it's a conspiracy, only politically driven requires some evidence. You can't dismiss it just on your whim.

Your smug 'we're all good liberals here, and therefore must always distrust the Daily Telegraph and the Washington Times and the WSJ' attitude grates.

We're not all good liberals, here.

And even though I'm diametrically opposed to their politics, I don't discount stories which appear in the Manchester Guardian, just because they're in the Guardian.

tripplesec isn't saying that we're all liberal[1], but explaining the biases of that author and that newspaper.

People need to be aware of biases no matter what their personal politics are.

[

I think the argument is that you likely not see a similar comment as #1 if the journalist were on the opposite end of the spectrum.

I think it's okay to be outright skeptical of some "news" outlets, particularly those who trope in sensationalism and/or have a knack for unresearched, unverified reporting. I don't know enough about the Daily Telegraph, but the Daily Mail is definitely one of those "news" sources that put hyperbole before facts... the Washington Times doesn't have the greatest reputation either.

This really isn't a liberal or conservative thing; while it's not a Daily Mail I'm often skeptical about The Guardian as well. Actually I was a little surprised to see the Wall Street Journal in the OP list because I thought they had a pretty decent reputation for quality reporting. The main complaint I've heard about Mr. Murdoch's ownership is more that he tried to add too much general interest stories in an effort to attract non-business readers, not that he's tabloid-ized the Journal.

For this article, it was pretty easy to Google a blog of a family lawyer / barrister who added quite a number of counterpoints to one of the cases. (http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/i-am-calm/). Whether you agree or not with her counterpoint and what happened within the cases, I personally found the blog article more sober and with more data backing it. You knew you were in trouble even with the headline of the Telegraph article. (Britain's "most secret court"? Citation needed!)

The problem I've found with most sensational articles is this sort of pattern: light on facts, heavy on emotion, many weasel words designed to tug your heartstrings that probably aren't justified. They usually aren't worth reading.

> 99% of scientists re climate, for example.

This is not true. If you care about truth, stop spreading this myth. If you care about science, stop spreading this myth--it is like a termite eating away at the foundation of science itself.

When the state takes such invasive action, it needs to pass a very high bar. Even with the best intentions, state institutions rarely treat people under their care better than relatives and close friends.

You can see the other side of this, of course: each decision derives from laws and judgements that were made or justified on the basis of wrongdoings.

It follows the same pattern as anti-drug legislation. Drugs do damage, so let's outlaw the drug. But the state's attempt to outlaw the drug means using its monopoly on violence, and that causes more total harm than the original problem. Laws against abusive situations in families or preventing vulnerable people being scammed out of their money need to take into account the possibility that the state will make things worse.

Each and every one of these cases is - assuming this is the whole truth - a total disgrace to whatever goes for justice.

The degree of petty vengefulness on display is revolting.

> assuming this is the whole truth

Agreed - although something about how the author has written their summaries sets off all my "I'm very deliberately being given a one-sided version of this story" alarms.

So check the case coverage on the Guardian. I think except the most recent one they're on there.

You can also find some righteous indignation from the social workers that caused some of these cases. In the past, nearly all the media has been critical of the court, including the Guardian

> So check the case coverage on the Guardian. I think except the most recent one they're on there.

The details still seem pretty thin though, and finding a source which reliably summarises quite chunky texts is a job in itself.

For example, here's one ruling linked from the Guardian which implies a very different story to that being told by the press:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2012/B31.html

(a quite incredibly poorly-edited or mistyped or, I dunno, redacted ruling at that!)

It doesn't take an age to read, but it does take a good amount of time to digest and understand - and even then you walk away with an incomplete picture.

I'm still on the fence.

Seems very clear to me - the Court has ordered a stop to a pattern of behaviour, the person so ordered has not stopped, and so the court is "turning up the volume" by using the powers it has available to it.

Regardless of what you may think of the duration of the sentence (and I'll assume that it's within the bounds of both legality and jurisprudence for the circumstances), the Judge takes into account that the ordered person probably didn't believe that the Court would follow through on things.

Or may have believed it but chose to stand by their family member in a time of need.

This is indeed the trouble here. Because the family courts are (for some very good reasons, like protection of children) held _in camera_, (which counterintuitively for english speakers means no cameras, nor direct reporting allowed), we don't have many details. This is of course something which we might be able to fix better with newer human-information technology approaches, or more oprn meta-processes regarding feedback loops for justice. But, it's a torny problem. We used to trust the authorities. Often, they mean well, but they can be corrupted by specific interests in specific cases (rich people networks), or make grave errors due to institutional cultural corruption.

How is an absence of reporting meant to protect children?

Because sometimes reporting can be harmful to children. Think about the sort of cases with abusive parents and relatives. It does no one any good for the details of those cases to be splashed over front page of the Sun.

Wouldn't measures like just keeping the names and images of the people involved out of the press be sufficient?

There's reform happening at courts of protection and the family division to publish more, with appropriate anonymisation.

Remember that these courts deal with really vulnerable people.

Have a read of some of these: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2016/9.html

Not really relevant here, but "in camera" means literally in a room or chamber, and hence private. The modern word "camera" derives from the same word: early "cameras" like the camera obscura were literally rooms. Dark room in the case of camera obscura, which is also now a photography term with a different meaning.

Gotta "love" random appearance of latin in (english) law.

Yes, and English is full of them, especially in law. It's hardly random. English law was informed by Roman jurisprudence. And Latin was used in books and courts (especially ecclesiastical courts). I'd have to look up more details, and if interested, your searches further into this would easily surpass anything i can remember!

It's not the whole truth, it's blatant bollocks and it's really disappointing to see many on HN fail to do even simple debunking.

http://www.headoflegal.com/2013/12/04/booker-hemming-and-the...

http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/i-am-calm/

Without wishing to comment on the substance of the claims, I think it's both sexist and ageist to imply in the headline of the article that a "grandmother" must be so weak or ineffective that she could not commit a crime deserving imprisonment.

<s>You're right ! There are all sorts of examples of criminal grandmas - here's one I found http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Mona_Simpson</s>

The point here is that the substance of the claims is not in dispute. It is well documented and acknowledged by the court. There are a myriad of these cases, such as where a father (Gary Johnson) was jailed for wishing happy birthday to his grown up son (http://www.essexlive.news/sons-slam-jailing-father-facebook-...).

There are multiple problems with UK secret courts and their draconian and excessive powers being wielded in venomous ways. The UK is not a safe place to have a dispute with petty public officials as they resort to these powers and others to attack those who fail to comply with 'right-think' or question authority.

Sexism and ageism appear to be the least of this woman's problems at this moment.

Perspective, please?

Nobody's saying that those are _her_ problems.

Here's the ruling for the case: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2016/42.html

> The maximum sentence is one of two years' imprisonment. The options are limited. Mrs Kirk has little income and no assets. I have reluctantly concluded that there now being no other way, it seems to me, of enforcing the court order; that I am left with no alternative but to pass a sentence of imprisonment, however much I have made it perfectly clear that I do not wish to do so.

> Taking all those factors into account and having regard to the sentencing authorities, I shall pass a sentence of six months' imprisonment. However, I shall suspend the warrant for a period of seven days only to give Mrs Kirk one last chance to comply; I urge her to do so. If she changes her mind and signs the authority within seven days, the warrant will not be executed and I shall suspend the sentence for a period of 12 months. If she does not she will go to prison. If Mrs Kirk subsequently complies with the order, the matter should be immediately restored on an application to purge her contempt. What happens next is in Mrs Kirk's hands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Protection

This court's jurisdiction seems to set it up in direct conflict with family members who have power of attorney to care for ailing relatives, as it appears that the court has the power to decide what is in the ailing person's best interest.

Clearly, you do need a court system to prevent actual abuse of people with diminished capacity, but unless actual harm is being done, why does the court, or any government agency, need to decide what is the "best" care for anybody?

Imagine a mother with a child. She gets dementia and needs to go in a care home. The child can't afford to pay for this, the mother doesn't have much in savings, but does own a house. The child wants to sell the house to pay for the care home.

Everybody agrees that this is a good outcome for the mother, and that it probably leaves the child a bit worse off.

In this simple case the child will apply to the court to get power of attorney (or similar) so that they have the legal powers to sell someone else's home.

> but unless actual harm is being done, why does the court, or any government agency, need to decide what is the "best" care for anybody?

In most cases they don't get involved, or their involvement is a straightforward acceptance of the suggested actions.

This is one instance where 'terrifying' actually fits, but the real question is what can a regular citizen actually do about all this?

Investigate further because the Telegraph is probably only giving you half the story.

Unless you have specific evidence, accusations like this are just noise.

The Telegraph is a respected paper, and its leanings are Conservative (ie, supportive of the current government).

s/Telegraph/media in general/, then.

It's quite possible to be factual whilst being misleading, and that's not an "accusation", it's the general way of the world. I firmly believe large media organizations can not be trusted to remain anything resembling objective.

These cases concern the most personal of data and while allegations and evidence may be pertinent to (for example) allowing a child to continue to live with a parent they may not be sufficient to obtain a conviction or even warrant a prosecution. In this situation the court has to determine if justice is served by enabling a man or woman to continue as a parent of whether the safety of the child is an overriding consideration. In the second case the production of specific evidence in the public domain is libellous, and yet the child may be removed from the parent. Subsequently the defiance of the courts orders can be contempt, and yet the original orders appear unjust to those who have no knowledge of the case.

The problem is that the above may not be true, it could be simply that this is a front to enable the detention of people who are found to be inconvenient.

Did you read the article? There was't much content and the title is pure clickbait.

The Telegraph was a respected paper. Now it's just an upmarket version of the Daily Mail and less amusing.

"a judge, sitting in public, dictated the letter to be signed by the woman"

This, cannot be called justice or law, in any non-corrupt country.

Of all the cases of excessive government intervention I've read about in recent years, the ones about families are almost always the most distressing.

Obviously there are cases that really do involve serious abuse of someone who is not capable of protecting themselves, and intervention may be justified.

However, the state in many of our western countries has an awful record of providing real, genuine care for those at a disadvantage, and it has an awful record of interfering without reasonable cause. I therefore believe the law should require an unusually high standard of evidence before permitting such actions.

Mere reasonable suspicion that all is not perfect in the subjective view of some official is nowhere close to sufficient to justify things like removing a child from a parent's care or separating an elderly married couple who have lived happily together for 60 years, in my not so humble opinion, yet I have read far too many stories that are disturbingly close to that in recent times.

At least it is reassuring that a very senior judge in the UK does seem to have recognised the problem and to be trying to do something about it.

The Family Courts have seen a near doubling of cases within the past ten years.

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/pfd-...

2005-6: 6613 cases

2014-15: 11159 cases

> Mere reasonable suspicion that all is not perfect in the subjective view of some official is nowhere close to sufficient to justify things like removing a child from a parent's care or separating an elderly married couple who have lived happily together for 60 years, in my not so humble opinion, yet I have read far too many stories that are disturbingly close to that in recent times.

Here's what Munby says:

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/pfd-...

> Given the realities, we must continue to look for new, innovative and better ways of handling these cases, while never departing from the fundamentals, namely that:

> Care cases, with their potential for life‐long separation between children and their parents, are of unique gravity and importance

> It is for the local authority to establish its case

> Common‐law principles of fairness and justice demand, as do Articles 6 and 8 of the Convention, a process in which both the parents and the child can fully participate with the assistance of representation by skilled and experienced lawyers

As an example of how seriously the Family courts take their duty of involving children, here's one decision written so that the children can understand most of it:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2016/9.html

Why is our most secret court for _family_ matters of all things? I thought this was going to relate to national security in some form.

Should UK be viewed as the most unfriendly country to the aged people? I often come across stories that give that impression - care homes, courts being the most prominent bad actors

This reads more like a storyline from V for Vendetta or Black Mirror. A tourist was forced to undergo a cesarian in order to take away her child? Am I reading this correctly?!

The article is full of distortions.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCC/Fam/2013/B14.html

http://www.headoflegal.com/2013/12/04/booker-hemming-and-the...

Stories like this reinforce my belief that we should be a more libertarian society. Why should the governments or courts have such a massive say in such intimate things.

So, why does this need to be so secret?

Also, in what sense is it secret? Is there some punishment, the affected grandmother is facing for talking to the media about the case?

In the past we wanted to protect children and people who lack capacity, and part of that was protecting their privacy. So the courts had fierce reporting restrictions. Sir James Munby, current president of the Courts of Protection and the Family Division says that some degree of privacy is still needed, but that most case rulings should be public.

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Document...

> Also, in what sense is it secret? Is there some punishment, the affected grandmother is facing for talking to the media about the case?

In the past the case was held in a closed court. The press could not report it. Public weren't admitted to the court. And the rulings were not published.

That's changed a bit. The rulings are anonymised and mostly published now.

I think she can talk to the press, so long as she does not identify the child.

The submitted article severely distorts some elements of this case. Soundwave106 provided a really useful link about this case: http://www.pinktape.co.uk/cases/i-am-calm/

"a grandmother" - why is this relevant? It's possible for a female person to both 1) reproduce and 2) be a criminal.

It's the Telegraph, so to be expected. Still, the story is very interesting.

Dunno how well maintained the wikipedia article on him is, but he seems to be quite the character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Booker

Also, i am at a loss of finding his full column on the Italian tourist story.

> Also, i am at a loss of finding his full column on the Italian tourist story.

Here you go: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherboo...

Search for "Alessandra Pacchieri", the story has been published on most UK newspapers, including: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/03/caesar... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/15/pacchieri-ba... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/1050307...

So a much less clear cut (ugh, sorry) case than it first appeared...

TL;DR: Britain has no Bill of Rights

Where do you think the American one got its name from? It wasn't original.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

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