“4. The importance comes from two directions. If a young person is a child, and otherwise meets the qualifying criteria, he must be provided with accommodation and maintenance under sections 20(1) and 23(1) of the 1989 Act. This brings with it a wider range of services than other forms of housing and benefit provision. These include the services for young people who leave social services accommodation which were described in R(M) v Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council[2008] UKHL 14 ,[2008] 1 WLR 535 , paras 20-24. While once upon a time young people may have resisted the quasi-parental services provided for children in need, many now recognise that they bring distinct advantages over the housing and welfare benefits available to ‘home’ claimants (as in R(M) v Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council, above, and R(G) v Lambeth London Borough Council[2009] UKHL 26 ,[2009] 1 WLR 1299 ) and the National Asylum Support Service (‘NASS’) support available to asylum seekers, as in the cases before us. 5. The Home Secretary also adopts different policies in relation to asylum seekers who are under eighteen. Legally, these may not be relevant to the issue which we have to determine, and in practice they are much more susceptible to change than is primary legislation such as the 1989 Act. But they are an important part of the factual background. Not only are unaccompanied asylum seeking children looked after by the local children’s services authorities rather than by NASS while their claims are decided. Currently, if a claim is rejected when the child is under the age of seventeen and a half, the Home Secretary will not remove him for three years or until he reaches seventeen and a half, whichever is the earlier, unless there are adequate arrangements to look after him in his country of origin. Also, such children will not be detained under the Home Secretary's immigration powers, save in exceptional circumstances and then normally only overnight.”
“… the advantages of persuading the authorities that they are under 18 are well-known. Those advantages include the automatic grant of leave to remain until the age of 18 coupled with the inability to return to Member States of the European Union if the individual would otherwise be returnable in accordance with the Dublin Regulations. In addition, as children they will usually be entitled to the care and accommodation which a local authority is obliged to provide to children in need.”
“2. ... Some young people may be obviously and uncontroversially children. Others may accept that they are adult. It is for those whose age may objectively be borderline, between perhaps 16 and 20, that an appropriate and fair process of age determination may be necessary. A process has developed whereby an assessment is undertaken by two or more social workers, trained for that purpose, who conduct a formal interview with the young person at which he is asked questions whose answers may help them make the assessment. It is often necessary for there to be an interpreter. The young person may or may not be able to establish or indicate his age by producing documents, which themselves may require translation. 3. In R (B) v Merton London Borough Council … Stanley Burnton J gave guidance in judicial review proceedings on appropriate processes to be adopted when a local authority is assessing a young person’s age in borderline cases. The assessment does not require anything approaching a trial and judicialisation of the process is to be avoided. The matter can be determined informally provided that there are minimum standards of inquiry and fairness. Except in clear cases, age cannot be determined solely from appearance. The decision-maker should explain to the young person the purpose of the interview. Questions should elicit background, family and educational circumstances and history, and ethnic and cultural matters may be relevant. The decision-maker may have to assess the applicant's credibility. Questions of the burden of proof do not apply. The local authority should make its own decision and not simply adopt a decision made, for instance, by the Home Office, if there has been a referral. It is not necessary to obtain a medical report, although paediatric expert evidence is sometimes provided in these cases, and there is some difference of view as to its persuasiveness in borderline cases. If the decision-maker forms a view that the young person may be lying, he should be given the opportunity to address the matters that may lead to that view. Adverse provisional conclusions should be put to him, so that he may have the opportunity to deal with them and rectify misunderstandings. The local authority is obliged to give reasons for its decision, although these need not be long or elaborate. This decision and its guidance have led to the development of what is sometimes referred to as a 'Merton compliant' interview or process.”
“It seems to me that once the court is invited to make a decision upon jurisdictional fact it can do no more than apply the balance of probability to the issue without resorting to the concept of discharge of a burden of proof.”
“In my view, a distinction needs to be made between a legal burden of proof, on the one hand, and the sympathetic assessment of evidence on the other. I accept that in evaluating the evidence it may well be inappropriate to expect from the claimant conclusive evidence of age in circumstances in which he has arrived unattended and without original identity documents. The nature of the evaluation of evidence will depend upon the particular facts of the case.”
“… Neither party is required to prove the precedent fact. The court, in its inquisitorial role, must ask whether the precedent fact existed on a balance of probability.”
“In the present case there was a range of powers and duties exercisable by public authorities dependent upon the single issue of age. Where the issue is whether the claimant is a child for the purposes of the Children Act it seems to me that the application of a legal burden is not the correct approach. There is no hurdle which the claimant must overcome. The court will decide whether, on a balance of probability, the claimant was or was not at the material time a child. The court will not ask whether the local authority has established on a balance of probabilities that the claimant was an adult; nor will it ask whether the claimant has established on a balance of probabilities that he is a child.”
“… the decision maker cannot determine age solely on the basis of the appearance of the applicant. In general the decision maker must seek to elicit the general background of the applicant, including his family circumstances and history, his educational background, and his activities during the previous few years. Ethnic and cultural information may also be important. If there is reason to doubt the applicant’s statement as to his age, the decision maker will have to make an assessment of his credibility, and he will have to ask questions designed to test his credibility.”
“ … The appellant is recorded as giving a reasonably consistent factual account, and the initial apparent inconsistency between his claimed age and his claimed date of birth was capable of being explained. There were no glaring inconsistencies in his account, nor clear analytical reasons why his account was unbelievable. … We take account of the fact that the social workers will have been able to judge his general appearance and demeanour, and to make a general credibility judgment from the manner in which he answered their questions. It does not follow that the court would be bound to make the same judgments; nor is general credibility, judged by others, alone sufficient for the court to refuse permission for a factual hearing before the court, when it is for the court to determine in a disputed case the fact of the young person’s age.”
“We accept that, in the absence of any documentary evidence of AE's age nor any reliable dental or medical evidence, the starting point for the deputy judge's task of assessing the age of AE was the credibility of his own evidence.”
“46. Given the deputy judge’s conclusion on AE’s age, the inevitable inference is that she did not accept his evidence about the birth certificate. But she gave no reason for not doing so. The inference must be that the deputy judge decided that because of the inconsistencies in his evidence about his arrival at the Home Office and because she did not find that part of AE’s evidence credible, that enabled her to conclude that his evidence about the birth certificate was not reliable and could not be accepted. 47. There is an illogical jump from a finding that one specific part of AE’s evidence is not credible to a further, implicit, unreasoned finding that his evidence on another topic cannot be accepted, particularly when the deputy judge held that she found his account of the incident of his early life in Iran and his journey ‘mostly credible’.In my view the deputy judge erred by failing to confront the fact that AE had given evidence about his birth certificate which was not challenged in cross-examination as either being a lie or that he was mistaken about his recollection of the date he saw on it. The deputy judge should either have accepted that evidence or she should have explained why it was not to be accepted. The only possible basis for not accepting it was her conclusion that AE’s evidence about his arrival at Croydon and the Home Office was inconsistent and not credible. So it is necessary next to examine the evidence on that issue.”
“Inherent probability, which may be helpful in many domestic cases, can be a dangerous, even a wholly inappropriate, factor to rely on in some asylum cases. Much of the evidence will be referable to societies with customs and circumstances which are very different from those of which the members of the fact-finding tribunal have any (even second-hand) experience. Indeed, it is likely that the country which an asylum-seeker has left will be suffering from the sort of problems and dislocations with which the overwhelming majority of residents of this country will be wholly unfamiliar. … .”
“There seems to me to be very little dispute between the parties as to the legal principles applicable to the approach which an adjudicator, now known as an immigration judge, should adopt towards issues of credibility. The fundamental one is that [the immigration judge] should be cautious before finding an account to be inherently incredible because there is a considerable risk that he will be overinfluenced by his own views on what is or is not plausible, and those views will have inevitably influenced by his own background in this country and by the customs and ways of our own society. It is therefore important that he should seek to view an appellant’s account of events, as Mr. Singh rightly argues, in the context of conditions in the country from which the appellant comes. The dangers were well described in an article by Sir Thomas Bingham, as he then was, in 1985 in a passage quoted by the IAT in Kasolo v SSHD 13190, the passage being taken from an article in Current Legal Problems. Sir Thomas Bingham said this: ‘An English judge may have, or think that he has, a shrewd idea of how a Lloyds Broker or a Bristol wholesaler, or a Norfolk farmer, might react in some situations which is canvassed in the course of a case but he may, and I think should, feel very much more uncertain about the reactions of a Nigerian merchant, or an Indian ships’ engineer, or a Yugoslav banker. Or even, to take a more homely example, a Sikh shopkeeper trading in Bradford. No judge worth his salt could possibl[y] assume that men of different nationalities, educations, trades, experience, creeds and temperaments would act as he might think he would have done or even – which may be quite – different – in accordance with his concept of what a reasonable man would have done.’”
“A person such as a teacher or even a family member, who can point to consistent attitudes, and a number of supporting instances over a considerable period of time is likely to carry weight that observations made in the artificial surroundings of an interview cannot carry.”
“What about the evidence of experienced social workers who claim to be skilled in age assessment? Mr Smith QC, for the respondents, submits that there is no such thing as expertise in this field or, to be precise, that there is no such thing as expertise which can reliably instruct the Court in the precise determination of chronological age. Mr. Smith acknowledges that in a sense the independent social-worker assessors acting for the petitioners, Kenneth Ambat and Rose Palmer (non-witness), are experts: but he argues that their expertise in this context lies in implementing the Merton guidelines; and that the Merton guidelines are not a scientific methodology but a framework for procedural fairness [R on the application of B v London Borough of Merton [2003] EWHC1969 (Admin) (14 July 2003 )]. The independent social workers would possibly claim expertise, as well, in eliciting information by skilled interviewing and in writing cogent reports. However, I have come to be persuaded that essentially Mr Smith's submission is correct. There may be situations in which social workers bring expertise to the assessment of age, for example specialist knowledge of coming-of-age rituals or familiarity with identity documentation in particular countries. Otherwise, and particularly as regards evidence of impressions formed during interviews intended to assess age, I am not convinced that social-worker age assessors can aspire to be called expert witnesses in the full legal sense.”
“In our judgment, it is axiomatic that an applicant should be given a fair and proper opportunity, at a stage when a possible adverse decision is no more than provisional, to deal with important points adverse to his age case which may weigh against him.”
“Elementary fairness requires that the crucial points which are thought to be decisive against an applicant should be identified, in case the applicant has an explanation for them.”
“Member States shall ensure that, where the age of a person subject to trafficking in human beings is uncertain and there are reasons to believe that the person is a child, that person is presumed to be a child in order to receive immediate access to assistance, support and protection in accordance with Articles 14 and 15.”
“… Where the age of the victim is uncertain and there are reasons to believe that the person is a child, that person is presumed to be a child … .”
“Whether the concluded decision of the competent authority is favourable or adverse to the individual it will have been made by an authority vested with the responsibility for investigating these issues, and although the court is not bound by the decision, unless there is evidence to contradict it, or significant evidence that was not considered, it is likely that the criminal courts will abide by it.”
“Nevertheless, the UK have accepted your client as a minor. Your client’s asylum claim now falls for substantive consideration in the UK. …”
“An assessment that is challenged must surely stand until the challenge succeeds, otherwise there would be no basis upon which any provision for the claimant could be made.”
“… That cannot be right in principle, because it would mean nobody could adopt any view of the claimant’s age between the grant of permission and final judgment. But, in any event, the grant of permission is too readily obtainable in cases of this nature. … .”
“27. But the question whether a person is a ‘child’ is a different kind of question. There is a right or a wrong answer. It may be difficult to determine what that answer is. The decision-makers may have to do their best on the basis of less than perfect or conclusive evidence. But that is true of many questions of fact which regularly come before the courts. That does not prevent them from being questions for the courts rather than for other kinds of decision makers. … 33. … the children’s services or the UK Border Agency, has to make its own determination in the first instance and it is only if this remains disputed that the court may have to intervene. But the better quality of the initial decision making, the less likely it is that the court will come to any different decision upon the evidence.”
“…the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”
“By abuse of a position of vulnerability is meant abuse of any situation in which the person involved has no real and acceptable alternative to submitting to the abuse. The vulnerability may be of any kind, whether physical, psychological, emotional, family-related, social or economic. The situation might, for example, involve insecurity or illegality of the victim’s administrative status, economic dependence or fragile health. In short, the situation can be any state of hardship in which a human being is impelled to accept being exploited. Persons abusing such a situation flagrantly infringe human rights and violate human dignity and integrity, which no one can validly renounce.”
“Children are more vulnerable than adults and therefore at greater risk of becoming victims of trafficking in human beings. In the application of this Directive, the child’s best interests must be a primary consideration, in accordance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
“(22) In addition to measures available to all victims of trafficking in human beings, Member States should ensure that specific assistance, support and protective measures are available to child victims. Those measures should be provided in the best interests of the child and in accordance with the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Where the age of a person subject to trafficking is uncertain, and there are reasons to believe it is less than 18 years, that person should be presumed to be a child and receive immediate assistance, support and protection. Assistance and support measures for child victims should focus on their physical and psycho-social recovery and on a durable solution for the person in question. Access to education would help children to be reintegrated into society. Given that child victims of trafficking are particularly vulnerable, additional protective measures should be available to protect them during interviews forming part of criminal investigations and proceedings. (23) Particular attention should be paid to unaccompanied child victims of trafficking in human beings, as they need specific assistance and support due to their situation of particular vulnerability. From the moment an unaccompanied child victim of trafficking in human beings is identified and until a durable solution is found, Member States should apply reception measures appropriate to the needs of the child and should ensure that relevant procedural safeguards apply. The necessary measures should be taken to ensure that, where appropriate, a guardian and/or a representative are appointed in order to safeguard the minor’s best interests. A decision on the future of each unaccompanied child victim should be taken within the shortest possible period of time with a view to finding durable solutions based on an individual assessment of the best interests of the child, which should be a primary consideration. A durable solution could be return and reintegration into the country of origin or the country of return, integration into the host society, granting of international protection status or granting of other status in accordance with national law of the Member States.”
“Most children are trafficked for financial gain. This can include payment from or to the child’s parents, and can involve the child in debt-bondage to the traffickers. In most cases, the trafficker also receives payment from those wanting to exploit the child once in the UK. Some trafficking is carried out by organised gangs. In other cases, individual adults or agents traffic children to the UK for their own personal gain3. The exploitation of trafficked children may be progressive. Children trafficked for domestic work may also be vulnerable to sexual exploitation or children initially trafficked for sexual exploitation may be resold.”
“… - Claims to have been exploited through sexual exploitation, criminality, labour exploitation, domestic servitude, drug dealing by another person. … - Withdrawn and refuses to talk/appears afraid to talk to a person in authority. … - Exhibits self assurance, maturity and self confidence not expected in a child of such age. …”
“… - Located/recovered from a place of exploitation (brothel, cannabis farm, involved in criminality etc). … - Unable or reluctant to give accommodation or other personal details. … - No passport or other means of identity. … - False documentation or genuine documentation that has been altered or fraudulently obtained; or the child claims that their details (name, DOB) on the documentation are incorrect. …”
“To protect and assist trafficking victims it is of paramount importance to identify them correctly. Article 10 seeks to allow such identification so that victims can be given the benefit of the measures provided for in Chapter III. Identification of victims is crucial, is often tricky and necessitates detailed enquiries. Failure to identify a trafficking victim correctly will probably mean that victim’s continuing to be denied his or her fundamental rights and the prosecution to be denied the necessary witness in criminal proceedings to gain a conviction of the perpetrator for trafficking in human beings. Through the identification process, competent authorities seek and evaluate different circumstances, according to which they can consider a person to be a victim of trafficking.”
“Potential victims of trafficking (particularly children) are often reluctant to give information and may tell their stories with obvious errors. Such errors, or a lack of credibility, may be a sign their stories were made up by their trafficker.”
“In order to understand the environment the Claimant claimed he was from I referred to the Home Office Country of Origin Report. The Claimant appeared to be confused about the name of the town and the province in which he grew up. He stated that the name of the Town was THAI NGUYEN and the Province was PHO YEN District. As far as I am concerned this raises issues about his credibility. A young person even of the age claimed by the Claimant can reasonably be expected to recall the Town and Province where they grew up. Neither the Town nor the Province showed up on the Google Map search that I carried out.”
“Leaving Vietnam When did you leave Vietnam? May 2010 How did you know it was May 2010?I remember it was May 2010. … How did you leave Vietnam? Dad had a friend, Du, he came to see me, I said I want to look for Mum. Du said he will try to help me to go to the UK. … … Du made a fake passport.”
“Who were you left with when your father died? [MVN] replied: ‘Nobody’. Did anyone come round to see you? [MVN] replied: ‘Yes occasionally some people from the village would pop round’. How long were you on your own for when dad died? [MVN] replied: From February to May 2010. What did you do when/at the time and after your father died? Nothing, I did not go to school, I wondered [sic] about, slept at the house alone.”
“Who was with dad at the time of his death? [MVN] stated that some people in the village helped. Who were the people? [MVN] stated because I was so young, people helped. He then stated, yes I do know the names of the people who helped. …. About the house he lived in: … Who was cooking and shopping? When my parents were around they taught me how to do all this. … Did you have school friends who came to the house? Yes, they did come occasionally. Did your friends have parents? Yes Did you eat there at friends’ house? Yes, sometimes. What were the names of the people who helped when Dad was sick? Hung – male; Du – male; An – Female.”
“6 Victims trafficked to the UK 6.1 Labour contracts and travel visas Although 80,000 legal work visas are issued every year, this does not meet the demand from Vietnamese people for overseas labour contracts. This is therefore another push factor for illegal migration. Most of the 58 children identified as being trafficked to the UK in the 2010 CEOP STA entered clandestinely (although some may have been issued a visa for Russia). The 2010 CEOP STA highlighted that the first leg of the trafficking route for many children trafficked into the UK was to fly from Vietnam into Russia. According to information supplied by the Russian Embassy, Russia issues approximately 50,000 visas to Vietnamese citizens every year. There are no Russian immigration staff based in Vietnam, and Foreign Service officers issue visas, for the most part without referral and with few, if any, checks. There appear to be few barriers to trafficking networks moving victims into and through Russia. Some will complete the remainder of the journey in the UK clandestinely and soon after arriving in Russia. Return tickets on Aeroflot for flights to Moscow from Hanoi cost approximately£300 and can be readily absorbed in the debt bond.”
“According to his stated age, MVN left Vietnam at the age of 13 using a passport that would indicate he was a man in his twenties. From our experience of working with Vietnamese young people, they do tend to look younger than their stated age when compared with children in the UK. Taking this into account, it sounds implausible that MVN would have been able to pass through customs as a mature man in his twenties without being challenged. If he was in fact aged 13 he would have looked younger but it is evident that he looked (to the Border Agencies who are trained in looking and assessing individual) as if he was the age on his passport.”
“It should be noted that … coaching victims to provide a vague story is a measure of control as the agent wants to ensure that the victim is not immediately deported. The victim will comply by recounting a fabricated story believing they are in the process of being facilitated, whilst the trafficker hopes to stall authorities long enough to get the victim out of their control and into exploitation.”
“Nevertheless, the UK have accepted your client as a minor. Your client’s asylum claim now falls for substantive consideration in the UK. …”
“Age assessment is apparently only applied when the age-disputed person appears to be older than claimed. …”
“An untrue history, while relevant, is not necessarily indicative of a lie as to the age of the applicant. Lies may be told for reasons unconnected with the applicant’s case as to his age, for example to avoid his return to his country of origin.”
“Health: MVN has been diagnosed with a Vitamin D Deficiency. The health issues noted would correspond with his claim to have been locked in a house watering plants for two years.”
“I’ve got a god-daughter who is 8 years old. She cooked me rice. She stood on a stool. It was the best rice I had ever had. What you’ve been exposed to in life; some children are exposed to much earlier. It is sometimes a game of survival.”
“[MVN] presents as suffering some trauma from his experiences and will need time to acclimatise to his situation. … [MVN] presented as quite shocked and worried about his situation and clearly needs time to adjust emotionally to being in care.”
“[MVN] has been traumatised by his experience over the last couple of years. Firstly his mother leaving when he was 10 years old, then his father dying when he was 12 years old and being left alone. Later being smuggled into the UK and subsequently abducted. [MVN] needs some time to settle.”
“[MVN] presents as quite nervous and anxious after his experiences since leaving Vietnam and is probably experiencing some emotional trauma due to these experiences. However, he does not present with any emotional or behavioural problems.”
“Nevertheless, any problems identified in the respondent’s assessment process, may prove instructive to a Tribunal tasked with establishing a person’s true age.”
“[MVN]’s account of his life, his journey, his deliberate efforts to conceal information, his interactions and demeanour, would strongly suggest that he is an adult man.”
“It was explained to you at the end of your interview that you have the right to disagree with the outcome of the assessment, and to challenge your decision; you may do so by contacting a manager …”
“Relationship with parents: His first description of his relationship with his father was one of contention and family violence which he states he experienced at the hands of his father. His relationship with his mother, he initially did not describe except to say that she left for the UK in 2008 as a result of the domestic violence. He remembers his mother leaving in 2008 without telling him. In the second interview, when asked about his relationship with his mother he stated they had a close relationship but would not elaborate further. In a later interview, he then described his father and mother as being protective. He stated they took it in turns to take him to school, look after him, teach him to cook, etc. In discussing further the violence he experienced from his father, he said he was beaten regularly and his mother would try to intervene. He also mentioned that his mother was subjected to domestic violence regularly when his father was drunk. He consistently described his father as a chronic alcoholic and later said his father also gambled. … Developmental Considerations … A visual timeline was drawn in order to assist [MVN]’s memory of his childhood. [MVN] was not able to recall any activity or describe his life from birth to 5 to 6 years. His recollection starts from 6 years old where talked about playing and studying. He also described his parents’ relationship as loving, contradictory to what he initially described. In this exercise, he recalled the domestic violence as starting from when he was 11 years old. This also contradicts his initial statements as his mother would have left by this point.”
“What was his [MVN’s] relationship like with dad? When he was not drunk dad was quite calm, normal, no shouting.”
“He described his life in Vietnam as poor and humble. He states that he did not have access to a computer and when asked about a computer he stated that he does not know what a computer is. However, both his foster carer and social worker note his advanced computer skills i.e. he can do the following on a computer: download files, making his own music on the computer.”
“Education: [MVN] attended school up to the age of 12 in Vietnam. There were no gaps in his recollection of his education in Vietnam. From his stated age, he would have missed three vital years of education. His attainment demonstrates his resilience. He mentions not knowing what a computer is yet his foster carer reports him to be very skilled in his use of the computer and helps others in the household to understand it.”
“Did you ever have a computer? No. Did you get a chance to use a computer? I don’t know what is a computer. A laptop? (No answer). When was the first time you used a computer? 11 or 12 years. Where was that? I used a friend’s, or go to the shop and play computer games.”
“What does [MVN] do when he is in the house? [MVN] goes on the internet as he has a laptop. He listens to music. He interacts with other children in the house. He is well liked. [MVN] plays the guitar – he is learning the guitar at the Refugee Council – he makes his own music – he downloads music and dances and sings.”
“Development in light of his journey from Vietnam … According to his stated age, [MVN] left Vietnam at the age of 13 using a passport that would indicate he was a man in his twenties. From our experience of working with Vietnamese young people, they do tend to look younger than their stated age when compared with children in the UK. Taking this into account, it sounds implausible that [MVN] would have been able to pass through customs as a mature man in his twenties without being challenged. If he was in fact aged 13 he would have looked younger but it is evident that he looked (to the Border Agencies who are trained in looking and assessing individual) as if he was the age on his passport. Throughout his journey, he expressed no fear or anxiety yet he was the only young child travelling in the various modes of transport, various countries, with complete strangers. Even taking into account the fact that he had to fend for himself after his father died, it is questionable that a young child of 13 years old, would possess the level of maturity, the insight and knowledge to organise such complex arrangements for his departure from Vietnam through various countries, claim asylum and take it through judicial review and then abscond from that country (Hungary). At no point prior to his arrival in the UK did he claim that he was a minor. He travelled as an independent person, unaccompanied, and had a knowledge of complex information for example the open borders across Europe. He also was able to maintain contact with the agent by phone over several months.”
“An adult could exhibit all of those criteria. It is not a substitute for professional judgement as to age”