W (fact-finding) [2014] EWHC 4347 (Fam)

This judgment was delivered in private. The judge has given leave for this version of the judgment to be published in accordance with his Order of 6 July 2015 on condition that (irrespective of what is contained in the judgment) in any published version of the judgment the anonymity of the children and members of their family must be strictly preserved. All persons, including representatives of the media, must ensure that this condition is strictly complied with. Failure to do so will be a contempt of court.Case No LU13C03205[2014] EWHC 4347 (Fam)Sitting at:Venue Royal Courts of JusticeDate Friday, 17 th October 2014
Before
HIS HONOUR JUDGE SIR GAVYN ARTHUR(Sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge)(In Private)B E T W E E N :
Between
LUTON BOROUGH COUNCIL Applicant“FAMILY W”Respondents
J U D G M E N T

Introduction

[1]This is a fact finding hearing following an application by Luton Borough Council for care orders in respect of five children. C is a teenager. C has made sexual abuse allegations against three of the parties in this case. She, in fact, is already the subject of a full care order made in July 2013, but has more recently been rejoined as a party for the purposes of these proceedings. She is represented by her guardian, Ms King.[2]The other children are the 3rd to 7th respondents respectively to the application. P, K and D appear through their guardian, Mr. Peatfield. A is separately represented by counsel.[3]The parents of all five children are referred to as M or mother and F or father. They are the 2nd and 3rd respondents respectively and oppose the applications for care orders. The mother and father between them have a number of older children. One of the older children is T whose allegations of sexual abuse by F, her stepfather, are also at the core of these proceedings. Other adult children who feature in these proceedings are S, L, and B.[4]B has been joined as a party for the fact finding element of these proceedings, as he too is the subject of allegations of sexual abuse by C, his younger sister. He is the 8th respondent. Finally we have a 9th respondent: V. He is an acquaintance of the family and is also the subject of a sexual abuse allegation by C.[5]The local authority seeks findings of very serious sexual abuse by father of his daughter, C, and his stepdaughter, T, and by B and V of C alone. There are also other findings sought to which I shall refer later. All allegations are robustly denied by the father, mother, B and V.[6]Normally the task of the court in considering whether serious child abuse allegations are proved is one which is sadly but routinely undertaken across the jurisdiction each week of the year. The fact that the evidence alone in this case has lasted 19 days, and that nine of the ten parties are represented by both leading and junior counsel, indicates that the instant task is not straightforward.[7]From a conventional beginning in front of HHJ Davies at the Luton County Court, the case has taken unprecedented twists and turns with the intervention of the Court of Appeal, a re-hearing in front of myself, and the collapse of that re-hearing after three days in the most dramatic manner. This occurred when a key social worker in the case contacted me directly by email through the court office to allege ‘corruption and malpractice’ within the local authority in relation to this particular case as well as other cases.[8]Following what was effectively a whistle-blower email sent to myself, the local authority sought to abandon the fact finding hearing and withdraw all allegations, saying that it could no longer rely on the key social worker as a witness of truth. The local authority’s counsel, Mr. Bain, withdrew from the case for professional reasons. Fresh counsel were then instructed; they withdrew the application by the local authority to abandon the proceedings, and thus these have continued ever since.[9]The proceedings have been surrounded by suspicion and mistrust, for reasons which have become obvious. These emotions have been shared, it must be said, at times by the court, and have been exacerbated by serious problems about disclosure. Despite strict orders made by the court for full disclosure by the local authority, these have not been complied with in full. Indeed, more than 1,300 pages of important material were disclosed to the court during the current hearing, and 1,000 pages of these were disclosed only in the second week of this hearing, after Mr Geekie for the local authority organised a search of its premises following a social work assistant’s evidence. This failure to disclose added some three days to the case. Disclosure continued even into the fourth week of this hearing. Furthermore, many important documents have been shredded or are still missing.[10]According to the lead social worker there were six, not four, ABE interviews of the child, C, as contended by the police and the local authority. Indeed, there is even the suggestion that an alleged meeting on the 30th September 2013, reported by social workers to have happened, may not have taken place at all. The court therefore has the unenviable task – unparalleled in the history of this particular tribunal – of deciding how many ABE interviews there were, and whether one meeting ever occurred.[11]So much has gone wrong in this case. In fact, almost everything that could have gone wrong has, almost to the point of defying credulity. In consequence the court has no choice but to undertake the arduous task of scrutinising all aspects of the case very carefully. This judgment will therefore be longer than would normally be the case. This is for several reasons: a) Reaching the complex truth requires a detailed analysis of all that happened; b) In view of what they have suffered, those accused of serious abuse deserve nothing less; c) The consequences for individuals beyond the parties in the case, for example within the local authority and the police, may be profound; d) It is unlikely that any other will have the time or resources to trawl through the immense body of papers in the way the court has done, and thus what has been uncovered must be recorded fully; e) Lessons need to be learned so that what happened in this case never happens again.[12]I am most grateful for the assistance given by all counsel in the case, both leading and junior, who have ably assisted the court in its unenviable task. I include in this commendation not only all those who appeared in front of me during the current hearing but also Mr. Giles Bain, who appeared for the local authority during the earlier part of these proceedings.[13]Normally at this stage of the judgment the court would give a definitive chronology of the case but this is impossible; so much is disputed. As there is so much conflicting evidence to assess, the history of the case which I shall now outline will be skeletal in parts where events are disputed, particularly where they relate to purported allegations. Matters not in dispute will be outlined in more detail. Later, as part of its findings, the court will have perforce to assemble the full and accurate chronology.

History of the proceedings

[14]The father has been employed in various capacities over the years. He has a minor but undoubted learning difficulty. Unfortunately he now suffers from poor health which has undoubtedly been exacerbated by these proceedings. Over the years the mother has preferred traditional maternal duties caring for her children and one stepchild. The mother and father, neither of whom have any previous convictions, nor the advantages of education or riches, have brought up their children with little, and certainly no relevant, local authority intervention, at least until the end of 2012.[15]In May 2012 C self-harmed at school. Then from September 2012, according to her teachers, she continued from time to time to self-harm at school. In addition she made increasingly frequent allegations that the father was being violent and threatening towards her at home, and that her older brother, S, was also threatening her. She said that she was beating up her brother and wanted to kill herself. Eventually C was alleging that she had been beaten up at home virtually every day. She was also making alarmingly macabre drawings, and writing notes in which extreme unhappiness was expressed. All this took place at school.[16]In her writings she said inter alia that she wanted to die, she hated her family and she wanted to kill members of her family. She also wrote that she had hurt her siblings. She would also show, from time to time, signs of extreme reluctance to go home at the end of the school day. Most regrettably, with one or two exceptions, the various teachers did not keep records of dates when C made allegations or when she self-harmed. The school was satisfied that, despite allegations by C of repeated violence at home, they never saw any marks on her that could be attributable to any incidents in her home.[17]On 20th November 2012, at school, C made allegations of violence by her father, both historic and recent, including an allegation that he had hit her with a slipper and a belt and threatened her with knives. The following day the school made a child protection referral to the local authority. This was an entirely appropriate course of action. A social worker spoke to C. She also spoke to her parents and school staff, and then closed the case in early December, deciding to take no further action.[18]On 14th December C made fresh allegations saying her parents were beating her up at home most days, and that she did not want to be at home with them. The school, entirely appropriately, referred her case once more to the local authority. Meanwhile that same day (14th December) C’s older sister, T, when asked by a social worker for Luton Borough Council whether she had been abused as a child, said that she had, but would not specify what sort of abuse this was. T was seen by a social worker in another context which had nothing to do with this family.[19]On 14th December, that same day, the local authority allocated C’s care to SW, who visited C on 17th December 2012. According to SW, on this date, C alleged both physical and sexual abuse by her father. The sexual abuse alleged on this date is strongly contested by the parents, who also dispute that such allegations were even made. Virtually everything that SW reports from this date, in respect of any allegations of violence or misbehaviour by the parents or other parties, is disputed.[20]On 20th December the local authority applied for and was granted a without notice Emergency Protection Order (EPO) at Luton. This meant that C was removed from her parents’ care at a hearing of which they had no knowledge. She was placed with a foster carer that very day. (She has remained with that carer ever since.) The following day a bench at the Luton Family Proceedings Court made an interim care order (ICO) in respect of C.[21]On 1st February, according to SW, who was never T’s social worker but became increasingly involved with her, T alleged sexual abuse by the father. On 8th March, according to the same social worker, C alleged that she had witnessed sexual abuse of T by the father, and on 11th February T confirmed what C had said she had seen.[22]On 12th March 2013 the local authority applied for ICOs in respect of all of the children other than C who had, of course, already been made the subject of an ICO. The local authority asked for the immediate removal of the children from their parents’ care. Wisely the court did not remove the children, nor granted the orders sought, but made Interim Supervision Orders on the basis that the father had agreed to leave the family home pro tem., and would have no unsupervised contact with the children. The local authority’s application for ICOs was further heard on 27th March and Interim Supervision Orders in similar terms as before were made.[23]Meanwhile much was happening. According to the local authority, other relations were coming out of the woodwork to allege sexual abuse: S made allegations against his uncle, as did his cousin; S’s aunt made allegations against her father. Around the same time T was alternately retracting her allegations of sexual abuse to various persons and then reasserting them. The local authority also reported that C was making further allegations of physical abuse by the father, the mother and her brothers.[24]From 18th to 21st June 2013 there was a fact finding hearing before HHJ Davies sitting at the Luton County Court. On 21st June the learned judge made findings as follows: a) The father had sexually abused C and T. The mother knew of T’s allegations and chose to ignore them and thus failed to protect the children; b) The parents failed to understand the need to protect the children from members of the extended family; c) The mother and father put pressure on T to withdraw the allegations.[25]These findings were set aside by the Court of Appeal on 6th November 2013. On that date the court did not set aside three further findings made by HHJ Davies: a) The father physically abused C which caused her emotional harm. The physical abuse involved physical chastisement and the mother knew of father’s actions. (The court notes in respect of this that the only specific finding recorded in the judgment of Her Honour Judge Davis is that the father smacked C’s bottom at the age of 13, and to smack a child at the age of 13 was inappropriate and has caused her severe emotional harm. The learned judge said that having made that finding of a smack at 13, she did not need to go any further.) b) The mother on occasions took the youngest child to a named property, that is, the property of the grandfather, in contradiction of a written agreement with the local authority. c) The children had suffered significant emotional harm by being drawn into the detail of the case by the parents.[26]The reasons for the successful appeal are not relevant in this hearing save in one respect which I shall address shortly. Suffice it to say that the learned judge had before her four ring binders of documents when she heard the case. I have 18 ring binders. More importantly, relevant evidence was not placed before the learned judge and such evidence as was placed in front of her, as I shall determine in due course in this judgment, was highly incomplete and wholly inadequate.[27]Immediately following the fact finding hearing on 21st June the learned judge made interim care Orders and ordered the removal of the other children, A, P, K and D that day from their parents’ care.[28]Meanwhile, during the summer of 2013, T continued retracting and then repeating allegations of sexual abuse by the father. She alternately alleged that she was receiving pressure from family members to retract, and then alleging that SW was pressurising her to make allegations of sexual abuse. As for C, she was being repeatedly questioned about sexual abuse, the full extent of which will be recorded later.[29]On 21st August 2013 PO of the Child Abuse Investigation Unit at Luton Police Station visited C to talk to her about giving an ABE interview. On 13th September 2013 T gave an ABE interview in which she alleged sexual abuse by the father. On 30th September, according to the local authority, C further alleged that she had been sexually abused not only by her father but also by her brother, B, and that the mother had hit her with a rolling pin.[30]On 4th October C gave an ABE interview in which she alleged that her father had touched her inappropriately. In the days and weeks that followed, according to the local authority, C continued to make allegations of physical abuse by the father and B, whilst T alleged that, according to what C had told her, V had raped C in October, 2012.[31]On 24th October 2013 the Court of Appeal set aside the findings of sexual abuse and failure to protect made by Her Honour Judge Davis in June of that year, and remitted these for a re-hearing in front of myself. Reasons were handed down on the 6th November. Importantly, the Court of Appeal expressed concern that T’s evidence was only hearsay. The Court of Appeal did not set aside the final care order in respect of C, which the parents had not opposed at an earlier stage.[32]Soon afterwards preparations continued for C to have a further ABE interview. She was shown anatomically correct dolls and pictures on 19th November 2013. She had an alarming number of interviews. In mid-December alone C had at least four interviews with professionals. During these, according to the local authority, she said she had been raped by B, V and now alleged rape by her father.[33]In January 2014 following four formal interviews with professionals, C had three, four or five further ABE interviews. In these interviews C made allegations of sexual abuse against father, B and V. On 31st January 2014 SW left the local authority employment. In the four months that followed I, who was now seized with the case, was asked by the local authority to give various directions, including directions for SW to provide a statement.[34]By April, 2014 it became obvious to all that SW was reluctant to give a statement. On 14th May the court asked Mr. Bain, counsel for the local authority, to take instructions as to why that was, and in particular to inform the court whether there was anything in the circumstances in which she had left the local authority employment which had a bearing on the proceedings, and which might affect her credibility. Counsel faithfully relayed his instructions from the social work assistant sitting behind him, namely that SW had left in entirely amicable circumstances. ‘They were all sad to see her go, and asked her to stay working for the local authority.’[35]In April 2014 the court permitted fresh matters to be included in the schedule of allegations to be proved. These related to evidence not before the court in June 2013. The first was that the mother had hit C with a rolling pin. The second listed general allegations of neglect by the parents of the younger children.[36]On 27th May 2014 the final hearing began. On the third day of that hearing, on 29th May, the court suddenly received a ‘whistle-blower’ email from SW, directed to myself personally, in which she alleged corruption, malpractice and bad work practices by the local authority in respect of both C and T, and in respect of other matters too.[37]On 30th May, having taken instructions, counsel for the local authority confirmed that the local authority no longer relied on SW as a witness of truth. It would robustly challenge some of her assertions in her email, and in the circumstances was no longer seeking further findings. It sought leave to withdraw their application for such findings to be determined. Unsurprisingly, the parents consented to this course of action, but the guardian for the younger children, who was absent from court, was not able to give instructions himself. In due course the guardian objected to the course proposed by the local authority.[38]On 3rd June 2014 Mr Bain, counsel for the local authority, who, the court is satisfied, had faithfully and innocently transmitted incorrect instructions, withdrew from the case ‘for professional reasons’. Accordingly the whole hearing collapsed. The court gave the local authority until 16th June to decide whether it wished to continue its application to abandon the fact finding hearing. On 24th June new counsel for the local authority informed the court that the local authority was still seeking the findings and would rely upon SW as a witness of truth. The new stance was that the local authority had been wrong previously to seek the withdrawal of the remaining allegations.[39]On 15th July, upon the application of the parents, V and B were joined as interveners. This was because allegations against them had been purportedly made at the same time (and in more than one instance in the same interview) as those against the father, and thus were inextricably intertwined with C’s allegations. In due course C was also joined as a party in her own right. (As I have already noted, C had already been the subject of a full care order which had not been overturned by the Court of Appeal.) Subsequently the case was transferred to the Royal Courts of Justice to be heard by myself sitting as Deputy High Court Judge. Thus, the current hearing at last commenced on 9th September 2014.[40]In September 2014, in the fourth week of the hearing, to the surprise of all, counsel for the local authority suddenly put two very serious, entirely new allegations to the father in cross-examination. The first was that the father had been grooming “another child” A for sex, and secondly that C had conceived two babies while living at home. As the determination of these allegations would add little or no extra time to the proceedings, because they were so serious, and because the court believed they might assist in the assessment of the credibility of the witnesses, the court insisted the allegations should be articulated in the correct form and added formally to the schedule of allegations to be proved.[41]At the conclusion of the evidence I invited all parties to set out, prior to written submissions, any concessions made by any party in relation to the evidence. In respect of the local authority, I asked them to set out any concessions about whether allegations were being pursued or not. The local authority was the only party to respond and did so with the following concessions: a) The local authority no longer sought to rely on any statement made by C in the three ABE interviews held in January 2014. This was subsequently clarified to include anything she said at the police station before or after the interviews, or in breaks, save, astonishingly, for comments about pregnancies and babies she may have made during a break in, or after, the interview on the 31st January, 2014. b) The local authority no longer pursued the allegations that the mother was aware of the abuse of T and chose to ignore it, and that the mother remonstrated with T on the 13th March, 2013. The local authority also abandoned the allegations of neglect of the three younger children. c) The local authority had already put in train preparations for a Serious Case Review of their conduct of the case. This would take place regardless of what findings were made.

The remaining allegations

[42]They are as follows: 1. The father sexually abused T by touching her breasts and genital area on more than one occasion and that it began when she was a child as follows: a) The father held T’s breasts in both hands while she was naked. He had been drinking at the time. He told T that if she was not the mother’s daughter he would have sexual intercourse with her. This happened when T was aged between 11 and 16 years. b) When T was 14 years old the father held T’s breasts in both hands, he kissed T on the cheek and suggested that she have sexual intercourse with him and the mother. c) The father rubbed his genitals against T on three or four occasions when both were fully clothed while kissing T, fondling her breasts and making sexually suggestive comments. 2. The father sexually abused C by touching her inappropriately over a number of years, starting when she was about 6 years old as follows: b) The father touched C on her breasts and on her vagina over and underneath her clothes when she was aged between 6 and 7 years old. She was upstairs at the time. 3. The father raped C on two separate occasions: a) When C was 6 years old in her bedroom at home. b) When C was a teenager. 4. Physical abuse: on one occasion the mother hit C with a rolling pin on her leg. 5. The parents failed to understand the need to protect the children from members of the extended family. 6. Emotional harm: both parents put pressure on T and C to withdraw their allegations, and on S to withdraw and minimise the allegations he made. a) In respect of T:(i) During April 2013 both parents, along with S, put pressure on T to withdraw her allegations by writing letters.(ii) Prior to T’s ABE interview on 13th September 2013 she received an excessive number of text messages, some of which were abusive. b) In respect of C: the father told her that, “If you say anything I will hunt you down and kill you”. 7. In relation to B: when C was aged about 7 or 8 C was threatened with a knife, beaten and raped by B. He raped her five or six times. He threatened her that if she told anyone what he had done he would beat her up and kill her. 8. V raped C; this happened on one occasion.[43]The two final findings sought which were added during the last week of the evidence: a) C conceived two babies whilst she was living at home. b) The father was grooming A for sexual activities.[44]The foster carer believed that C was the victim of sexual abuse and treated her accordingly.’ C must have therefore have picked up the clear message that ‘it was a good thing to speak of sexual abuse’. Miss G ‘lost her professional objectivity and failed to present a balanced view in evidence of C’s views’ of family and home life.[45]Counsel for B and V are also heavily critical of the local authority.[46]Miss Akman on behalf of A submits that it is safe to conclude that she has never been the victim of sexual abuse and, indeed, has never heard of V. A does not believe her father or B would ever abuse anyone. The guardian for the three younger children professes to be neutral as to the findings of fact, but, like C’s guardian, makes swingeing criticisms of the local authority and the police.[47]I now turn to give reasons for my findings. I cannot, of course, recall all the court has seen and heard and taken into account in coming to the court’s conclusions, and the judgment will be long enough as it is, but I shall endeavour to include those matters which the court considers most important and which have been most helpful for the court to come to its conclusions. The Relevant Law General principles

The Relevant Law

[48]In determining the issues in this fact-finding, I apply the following principles:[49]The burden of proof is upon the local authority. The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities. (Re B [2008] UKHL 35). "If a legal rule requires a fact to be proved (a 'fact in issue'), a judge or jury must decide whether or not it happened. There is no room for a finding that it might have happened. The law operates a binary system in which the only values are 0 and 1" – per Baroness Hale in Re B at paragraph 2.[50]Findings of fact must be based on evidence. Lord Justice Munby (as he then was) observed in Re A (A child) (Fact finding hearing: Speculation) [2011] EWCA Civ 12:
“It is an elementary proposition that findings of fact must be based on evidence, including inferences that can properly be drawn from the evidence and not on suspicion or speculation.”
[51]“No case of alleged sexual abuse, where there is an absence of any probative medical or other direct physical evidence to support a finding, can be regarded as straightforward.” Re J (A child) [2014] EWCA Civ 875, McFarlane J at paragraph 73.[52]When a Court looks at a case of suspected abuse, it must take into account all of the evidence (positive and negative) and consider each piece of evidence in the context of all the other evidence. As Butler-Sloss P stated in Re U, Re B (Serious injuries: Standard of proof) [2004] EWCA Civ 567 the Court “invariably surveys a wide canvass.” In Re T [2004] EWCA Civ 558 at paragraph 3 she stated:
“Evidence cannot be evaluated and assessed in separate compartments. A Judge in these difficult cases must have regard to the relevance of each piece of evidence to the other evidence and to exercise an overview of the totality of the evidence in order to come to the conclusion of whether the case put forward by the local authority has been made out to the appropriate standard of proof.”
[53]The inherent probability or improbability of an event remains a matter to be taken into account when weighing the probabilities and deciding whether, on balance, the event occurred: "Common sense, not law, requires that in deciding this question regard should be had, to whatever extent appropriate, to inherent probabilities" – per Lord Hoffmann in Re B at paragraph 15.[54]A Judge is not ‘required slavishly to adhere to a schedule of findings placed before her by a local authority’, not least as ‘care proceedings are frequently dynamic and issues emerge in the oral evidence which had not hitherto been known to exist. It would be absurd if such matters had to be ignored.’ - per Lord Nicholls in Re G & B [2009] 1 FLR 1145 at para 15. However, when a local authority has prepared its schedule with care, ‘it requires very good reasons […] for the judge to depart’ from it, and such departure must be ‘securely founded in the evidence’ and made in circumstances that the ‘fairness of the fact-finding process is not compromised.’ – ibid at para 16.[55]The court should also consider the possibility of an unknown cause. In Re R (Care proceedings: Causation) [2011] EWHC 1715 (Fam) Hedley J (in a different context) stated as follows at paragraph 10:
“A temptation there described is ever present in family proceedings too and in my judgment should be as firmly resisted there as the courts are required to resist it in criminal law. In other words, there has to be factored into every case which concerns a discrete etiology giving rise to significant harm a consideration as to whether the cause is unknown. That affects neither the burden nor the standard of proof. It is simply a factor to be taken into account in deciding whether the causation advanced by the one shouldering the burden of proof is established on the balance of probabilities.”
[56]In Devon County Council v EB [2013] EWHC 968 (Fam) Baker J gave the Lucas direction in the following terms:
“… it is not uncommon for witnesses in these cases to tell lies in the course of the investigation and the hearing. The Court must be careful to bear in mind that the witness may lie for various reasons, such as shame, misplaced loyalty, panic, fear, distress and the fact that the witness has lied about some matters does not mean that he or she has lied about everything: See R v Lucas [1981] QB 720.”
[57]Accordingly I give myself such a direction in this case.[58]In Lancashire v R [2013] EWHC 3064 (Fam) Mostyn J commented thus upon the difficulties faced by litigants / parents when giving evidence some considerable time after the event – “The assessment of credibility generally involves wider problems than mere “demeanour” which is most concerned with whether the witness appears to be telling the truth as he now believes it to be. With every day that passes the memory becomes fainter and the imagination becomes more active. The human capacity for honestly believing something which bears no relation to what actually happened is unlimited. Therefore, contemporary documents are always of the utmost importance: Onassis & Calogeropoulos v Vergottis [1968] 2 Lloyds Reports 403, per Lord Pearce: A County Council v M & F [2011] EWHC 1804 (Fam) [2012] 2 FLR 935 at paras (29) and (30).”[59]In relation to hearsay evidence where the evidence of a child stands only as hearsay, the court weighing up that evidence has to take into account the fact that it was not subject to cross-examination. (Re W [2010] UKSC 12, [2010] 1 FLR 1485). Furthermore, “There is often a mass of documentary evidence, much of it hearsay, from which a picture can be built up or inferences drawn. A child may reveal what has happened to her in many different ways” – per Baroness Hale at paragraph 10.[60]I remind myself of the approach adopted by the Court of Appeal in relation to the current case: “Assuming none of the available measures secures direct evidence from the witness, the judge has to have regard to the reasons for this in weighing the hearsay evidence on which reliance is placed instead. A judge may be less uncomfortable in giving weight to such evidence where there is a good reason for the witness’ non-engagement (such as the sort of profound psychological difficulties from which C is suffering or a protracted physical illness) than where the reason is hard to divine or the non-engagement appears to be a matter of deliberate choice on the part of the witness.” – per Black LJ in Re W (Fact-Finding Hearing: Hearsay Evidence) (2013) EWCA Civ 1374, (2014) 2FLR 703 at paragraph 25.[61]Furthermore: “The retraction of a complaint normally requires careful and specific consideration and this case was no exception. Obviously the fact that a complaint is subsequently retracted does not prevent a judge from accepting that it is in fact true but it gives rise to questions which must be addressed sufficiently fully and directly in the judge’s reasons so that one can be confident that the fact of the retraction has been given proper weight in the judge’s conclusions about the subject matter of the retracted allegation” [para 28].[62]The court should be wary of placing undue reliance on alleged improvement in children after being removed into care. Wilson LJ (as he then was) in Re L (Children) (Care Proceedings: Significant harm) [2006) EWCA Civ 12282] gave a specific warning about the dangers inherent in social engineering where children are removed from a home where material possessions and wealth are not great to a foster home where the children receive one to one attention.[63]Douglas Brown J in Rochdale v A (1991) 2 FLR 192 warned that:
“Affidavits, particularly affidavits for use in an ex parte hearing, should be drawn with care and should be accurate, balanced and fair, and, by analogy with Mareva or Anton Piller applications, ex parte affidavits should contain material, if known, which militates against the relief sought. Local authority solicitors should be particularly aware that they owe a duty to the court in this respect.”
[64]In his conclusions he said: “It is however important to bear in mind that those who have a responsibility to protect children at risk, such as social workers […] have in the past been criticised for failure to act in sufficient time and to take adequate steps to protect children who are being damaged. […] It is difficult for professionals to balance the conflicting interests and needs in the enormously important and delicate field of child sexual abuse. We hope that professionals will not as a result of the Cleveland experience stand back and hesitate to act to protect children….. “In many Inquiries it is social workers who are under scrutiny for their failure to act in time. We are concerned that in advising a calm, measured and considered approach to the problem of child sexual abuse, we are not seen to imply either that there are never occasions when immediate action may need to be take or that there is not a problem to be faced and children to be protected. It is a delicate and difficult line to tread between taking action too soon and not taking it soon enough. […]

Law in relation to interviewing children

[65]In relation to the interviewing of children the principles which underpin the guidelines are applicable to both care and private law family cases and to interviews of children conducted by social workers, medical and other health professionals. (Re W).[66]Where there are no facilities for video recording, the next best record of an interview should be prepared (for example an audio recording or manuscript note of essential parts) - KS v GS (A minor: Sexual abuse) [1992] 2 FLR 361.[67]It is desirable that interviews with young children should be conducted as soon as possible after any allegations are first made - Re M (Minors) (Sexual abuse: Evidence) [1993] 1 FLR 822.[68]Spontaneous information is more valuable than information fed to the child through leading questions or prompting. Further, some children have to be helped to give evidence, but the greater the help provided by facilitating the answers the less reliable the answers will be. (Re D (Child Abuse: Interviews) (1998) 2 FLR 10 (18).[69]If it is necessary to prompt in the investigative stage, it must be done so far as possible in a non-leading form so as not to indicate to the child the possible answer.[70]Whilst it might be necessary to interview the child on more than one occasion, the more often a child is asked questions about the same subject the less one can trust the answers given.[71]“…Painful past experience has taught that the greatest care needs to be taken if the risk of obtaining unreliable evidence is to be minimised. Children are often poor historians. They are likely to view interviewers as authority figures. Many are suggestible. Many more wish to please. They do not express themselves clearly or in adult terms, so that what they say can easily be misinterpreted if the listeners are not scrupulous to avoid jumping to conclusions. They may not have understood what was said or done to them or in their presence.” – per Hughes LJ in Re B (Allegations of Sexual Abuse: Child’s Evidence) (2006) 2FLR 1071,at paragraph 34.[72]When a child has been interviewed on a number of occasions, the Court may attach diminishing weight to what is said as the interviews progress through time. (Re E (A minor) (Child abuse: Evidence) [1991] 1 FLR 520 and in particular Re M (Sexual abuse allegations: Interview techniques) [1999] 2 FLR 92: “For these and many other reasons it is of the first importance that the child be given the maximum possible opportunity to recall freely, uninhibited by questions, what they are able to say, and equally it is vital that a careful note is taken of what they say and also of any questions which are asked. All this and many other similar propositions, most of them of simple common sense, are set out in nationally agreed guidelines entitled Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings …” – per Hughes LJ (ibidat paragraph 35). “There was no question of this evidence (which fell well short of being ABE compliant) being inadmissible for failure to comply with the ABE guidelines…In a family case evidence of this kind falls to be assessed, however unsatisfactory its origin. To hold otherwise would be to invest the guidelines with the status of the law of evidence and it would invite the question: which failures have the consequence of inadmissibility? Some failures to follow the guidelines will reduce, but by no means eliminate, the value of the evidence. Some may be purely technical and have no impact at all on value. Others may reduce the value almost to vanishing point.” – per Hughes LJ - ibidat paragraph 40.[73]“The purpose of the ABE guidelines is not disciplinary; it is to present the court and for that matter the parents with the most reliable evidence which can be obtained. In every case the judge cannot avoid the task of weighing up the evidence, warts and all, and deciding whether or not it has any value or none. Everything will depend on the facts of the case” – per Hughes LJ (ibid at paragraph 42).[74]“…the Guidance makes it clear that the interviewer has to keep an open mind and that the object of the exercise is not simply to get the child to repeat on camera what she has said earlier to somebody else. We regret to say that we were left with the clear impression from the interview that the officer was using it purely for what she perceived to be an evidence-gathering exercise and, in particular, to make LR repeat on camera what she had said to her mother. That, emphatically is not what ABE interviews are about and we have come to the view that we can place no evidential weight on it.” – per Sir Nicholas Wall P in TW v A City Council (2011) EWCA Civ 92011) 1 FLR 1597 at paragraph 52.[75]“There should be proper and intensive training of those engaged in interviewing children, whether ritual abuse or sexual abuse is suspected. That training should be carried out by those skilled and experienced in the task, such as child psychologists, although that is not a closed list. At the very minimum, all social workers engaged in this work should read the whole of the Cleveland report.” – per Douglas Brown J in Rochdale v A (1991) 2FLR 192.[76]The court also bears in mind the observations of Hollings J in Re A & Ors (Minors) (Child abuse: Guidelines) [1992] 1 FLR 439 at 443. The guidance given regarding the forensic preparation of sexual abuse cases identified the following faults in the interviews in that case: a). Use of untrained and inexperienced interviewers; b). Failure to approach the interview with an open mind; c). Use of leading questions; d). Too many interviews for each child; e). Interviews conducted at the pace of the adults, rather than the child; f). Grossly inadequate video and audio recording; g). Lack of background information in possession of the interviewers; h). Use of too many interviewers, either together or in sequence; i). Telling the child what another child had said; j). Pressure and anxiety to obtain results.[77]There should be proper and intensive training of those engaged in interviewing children, whether ritual abuse or sexual abuse is suspected. That training should be carried out by those skilled and experienced in the task, such as child psychologists, although that is not a closed list. At the very minimum, all social workers engaged in this work should read the whole of the Cleveland report.

Cleveland Guidelines

[78]The court bears in mind the strictures contained in paragraph 12.34) of the report: a). The undesirability of calling them “disclosure” interviews, which precluded the notion that sexual abuse might not have occurred. b). All interviews should be undertaken only by those with some training, experience and aptitude for talking with children. c). The need to approach each interview with an open mind. d). The style of the interview should be open-ended questions to support and encourage the child in free recall. e). There should be where possible only one and not more than two interviews for the purpose of evaluation, and the interview should not be too long. f). The interview should go at the pace of the child and not of the adult. g). The setting for the interview must be suitable and sympathetic. h). It must be accepted that at the end of the interview the child may have given no information to support the suspicion of sexual abuse and the position will remain unclear. i). There must be careful recording of the interview and what the child says, whether or not there is a video recording. j). It must be recognised that the use of facilitative techniques may create difficulties in subsequent Court proceedings. k). The great importance of adequate training for those engaged in this work. l). In certain circumstances it may be appropriate to use the special skills of a “facilitator” in interview. That type of interview should be treated as a second stage. The interviewer must be conscious of the limitations and strengths of the techniques employed. In such cases the interview should only be conducted by those with special skills and specific training.

The evidence

[79]General comments. The court has heard oral evidence from T; the mother; the father; B; V; Miss G, a teaching assistant; Miss Z, a school teacher; SW, the lead social worker for C; SWA ‘Y’, her co-worker; Mrs Kurrwen Edwards, the social worker for T; C’s foster carer; PO, the officer in charge of the criminal investigation of C’s allegation; IO ‘W’, the investigating officer who assisted PO; and finally, the mother’s sister. Hearing them and seeing their demeanour has been of inestimable benefit to the court in assessing their credibility.[80]The court has also been referred to and read thousands of pages in the 18 ring binders. It is worth pointing out that the court was referred during the course of 19 days of evidence to all ring binders. These include statements, reports, notes and transcripts of interviews. The court has also viewed and listened to video records of no fewer than seven ABE interviews, four of them twice. The references to the evidence which follows cannot perforce record everything the court has seen and heard and taken into account in coming to its findings. This judgment will be long enough as it is. I shall endeavour to include those matters which the court considers most important, though these will perforce be many.[81]At the conclusion of the evidence, I invited all parties to consider whether they wished to recall any of their witnesses to deal with matters which had arisen since he or she had given evidence. In all cases the invitation was refused.[82]Because so much is disputed in this case, the court must determine and create a definitive chronology, indeed to create a trustworthy history.[83]The court reminds itself that this is not an inquiry into the failings of the local authority, save insofar as they relate to the issues it must determine. In particular, save for witnesses whose evidence the court has seen and heard, the court should and does not seek to identify individuals within the local authority, police or C’s school who may have failed in their duties.[84]Similarly, I remind myself that it is not the court’s function in this judgment to make findings about other family members, such as S, the grandfather and the uncle. The court has not heard from them, and the evidence relating to them is incomplete. To make findings would be in breach of their Article Six Rights to a fair trial. Furthermore, the evidence is by and large irrelevant to the issues in hand.[85]Counsel for the guardian for the younger children, in particular, asked copious questions about alleged improvements in those children since their removal into foster-care. I made it clear that I found these questions unhelpful. First, they were largely irrelevant to the fact-finding. Secondly, comparisons between the children’s presentation, when they would have been at their lowest ebb, following their removal from their home and months of anguish about their prospective removal, and the present, would not help the court in making the findings sought. Thirdly, it is undeniably the case that the children have been placed in households with more one-to-one attention and greater material benefits than those of their parents. Bearing in the words of Wilson LJ in Re L, the court places little or no weight on this aspect of the evidence. Putting it bluntly, it is no part of the judicial process to remove children from the less affluent and place them with the more affluent. The Parents The Father[86]His overall cognitive ability (according to the reports) cannot easily be summarised because his non-verbal reasoning abilities are better developed than his verbal reasoning abilities. His reasoning abilities on verbal tasks are generally only in the borderline range, whereas his non-verbal reasoning abilities are in the low average range. His ability to sustain attention, to concentrate and exert mental control is in the low average range. He found it difficult to follow the court proceedings. Despite his difficulties, he held a number of employments over the years.[87]He has a number of significant health problems. He has high blood pressure for which he takes medication. I am wholly satisfied that these proceedings have taken a severe toll on his health. He has shown dignified and appropriate distress at times. During his evidence and following some forceful cross-examination on behalf of the local authority, he became noticeably and alarmingly red in the face. He explained he had been suffering from stress for some time. In the third week of the trial he had chest pains and his blood pressure went, “sky high”. The court notes that paramedics had to be summoned to the court to attend to him and he was then unable to attend for the rest of the day or for two days the following week as well. (This inevitably resulted in some loss of court time.)[88]He robustly denied ever sexually abusing any of his children. He said he loved them. All were special to him. C was special. He had only smacked her the once when she was 13. She had pinned K up against the wall, K being only young at the time was upset. Three times he had told C to stop and then he smacked her and she apologised. He did not accept HHJ Davis’s unappealed finding that smacking C on the bottom at 13 was abusive in the context of her age. The court noted that when counsel for the younger children was asking questions about neglect in relation to an allegation no longer pursued by the local authority and which I shall therefore not record, the father’s face lit up and he smiled with great and natural affection as he described how D loved to open the front door for visitors. A small event for D but something which clearly he was very proud of and which animated him.[89]In his statement of 12th June 2013 he said:
“I accept that something has happened to C as her behaviour is very worrying. I do not know what has happened to her but I accept that she could have been abused by a family member.”
When questioned in June, 2013 in the fact finding hearing in front of HHJ Davies about this statement, he said, “Right, she could have been I am not ruling that one, yes”. He also said:
“Well, as she stayed out at my sister. She stayed round at one of the boy’s girlfriends or that or something. It could have happened when she went out. I don’t know.”
[90]The court notes that when the father made these statements he was utterly in the dark about what was really going. Neither he not indeed anyone else save the few in the know could have imagined the reality. Accordingly the father, on the basis of his then knowledge, was being no more than realistic in considering the possibility of abuse. It certainly constituted no admission.[91]It has been very difficult for him to cope with the order limiting contact with the children following the June 2013 finding of facts by Her Honour Judge Davis. He described how it felt ‘as if a bit of him was missing’, as all the children meant the world to him. For some fifteen months he did not see any of his younger children. Contact had only restarted in June, 2014 (with A only) 2014 by virtue of an order made by myself. This first contact was with A only. Contact sheets relating to his meetings with the younger children which followed that first successful visit report glowingly about his relationship with the children:
“Dad enters, P jumps on dad, K and the A gives him a hug. A reluctant and watches but soon seems comfortable with dad. All the children sit laughing and joking with him. Summary of contact records that children enjoy dad’s company. Lots of hugs and kisses by children to dad and he reciprocates.”
[92]Another contact note from 25th July records that:
“The children were very excited to see him and jumped up and down shouting ‘daddy’. All give him kisses and cuddles. P wants to play outside with him. Summary of contact: Dad interacts and plays with children. Children all jump for joy to see dad and give him kisses and cuddles.”
[93]The court found him to be an essentially honest and sincere witness who adores his children, a family man without the benefits of education or financial advantages, who has done what he can to bring up his family as best he can. He has struggled to understand the calamities that have overwhelmed his family since the involvement of the Local Authority, which is unsurprising in the circumstances.[94]This is not to say that he always told the truth when giving evidence. For example, he did not accept HHJ Davies’s unappealed findings that the children had suffered significant emotional harm by being drawn into the details of the hearing by the parents, claiming that they had not discussed the case with A. It was clear to the court that he was minimising what he and the mother had actually done, and was being untruthful about this. There are other examples of untruthfulness on his part to which I shall refer in due course.

The mother

[95]She impressed the court as a kindly, maternal person. Like the father she does not enjoy the benefits of education or prosperity, but she has done her very best to provide a home for her family. As she told the court, the length of these proceedings and their various twists and turns had had a great effect on her. She misses her children terribly. She wants them home. They mean the world to her. They are her life. Life is empty without them. She shed many tears for C on the day she was taken and has shed many since then. Every day is a nightmare for her. She does not hate any of her children, and certainly not C. The court notes that during the course of the proceedings the mother was, on occasion, very tearful in the back of the court, although in a very quiet and dignified fashion. At times during her oral evidence, she also shed tears - again in a discreet and natural way.[96]She denied ever making disparaging remarks to others about C during the proceedings, such as that she hated her, would never forgive her and never wished to see her again. The court does not accept this part of her evidence, and is satisfied that she has, on several occasions, ‘sounded off’ to others about C. The court is equally satisfied that these comments were made in the heat of the moment and in despair and bewilderment, and were not meant seriously.[97]The last time she saw C was in January 2014. She wanted to see her. She broke down in the witness box when she said, “I love her. I’d give my life for her”. She came over to the court as being wholly sincere in this. She said she had received a letter from C yesterday, it was the first she had had since C went into care and now she wanted to set up a meeting with C.[98]It was clear that the mother, like the father, does not accept the findings made by Her Honour Judge Davis which were unappealed and thus not set aside by the Court of Appeal. For example, the mother said that she did not accept that the father had physically abused C by smacking her on the bottom when she was 13. She said, “I know he smacked her bottom, but this did not cause her emotional harm”. She said that she still kept an open mind about the truth of the allegations, and she was prepared to end her marriage of many years if she was satisfied that the father had abused C. She went on, however, to make it quite clear that she did not have an open mind, and in fact disbelieved the allegations. She also insisted that, although she accepted the finding of the court in this respect, she did not take D to the grandparents’ home, as HHJ Davis found, an allegation which remains unappealed. In this respect the court is satisfied that she was being untruthful. Nonetheless, with these exceptions and others to which I shall refer later, she impressed the court as being - in general - an honest witness, at least in comparison with some of the professionals for whom the court has heard.

C in 2012

[99]The evidence about C comes principally from three sources: her parents, her teachers, and herself in the form of her writings and drawings. As for the evidence which come from C, the court reminds itself that HHJ Davies (who made the final care order in respect of her) has already found that she was functioning in many ways as a six or seven year old. No party has sought to go behind that finding.

The parents’ evidence about C in 2012

[100]According to the father, at the end of 2012 C was happy at home. He repeatedly and readily asserted this during his evidence. She would complain if she had a bad day at school just like a normal teenager. She would, for example, talk about a lesson she had not liked. There would be disagreements with her brothers and sister about tidying up her room or doing the washing up, normal family issues. She was always talking; they just could not keep her quiet, he said, save at family gatherings. He described her as a “happy kid”, playing football and going out. She was helpful, she was cheery, she liked to help me with the grass cutting and repairing the car. She drew bright, happy pictures at home. When further questioned, however, he freely volunteered behaviours which were very worrying. He described how she could become angry and could have a go at the other children and punch walls at home. She once kicked a wall so hard it made a hole and he had to buy plaster to fill it up.[101]The first he knew of C’s self-harming was from the school. After this the family took precautions after the warning, they checked that she had no sharp objects in her bag such as pencil sharpeners. The mother would go through her bag. When she came downstairs to do her drawings on her table they would remove her pencil case. They talked to her many times about the self-harming, but C always became angry, accusing the school of lying. Towards the end of 2012 A told him C was self-harming once more, and he believed this. He gave other examples of destabilising factors in her life which I shall record below in my findings about C in 2012.[102]The mother’s evidence was similar. In 2012, there were happy times; there were tough times too. The family struggled to make ends meet. The children wanted things, but the family could not afford them. Despite this, even by the end of 2012 C was still bubbly and fine at home. There were, however, problems at school. The Mother had first been made aware of the self-harm in May 2012. There was no inkling of such behaviour before that. She received a call from the school and talked to C when she returned home. C denied self-harming and when she examined her she could find no marks on her body: “She showed me her arms and there was not a single mark on them” she said. In the autumn of 2012 the school reported that C was self-harming.[103]The next time she heard about self-harming was from A in October. A had heard at school that C was going to the lavatories and self-harming there. She sat down with C but she would not show her mother her arms, so she kept an eye on her and checked her to see that she was not harming at home. Then, just a short while before C was removed on 20th December, a box belonging to C was found containing blades removed from pencil sharpeners, screw, nails, straightened paper clips and other materials which C had picked up around the school. On that occasion the mother noticed there were scratches, though not deep ones, on “C’s arms. She told her she must not do this. She said she had been ‘worried sick’ when she saw the box containing the sharp materials. She locked the box away in the shed until she gave it to SW in December. Between October and December, 2012 C was not self-harming at home. she knew that the school was watching, “and I was watching….To be honest I didn’t know where to go” she said. As a result of all this now, she could not be sure whether C was as happy at home as she thought previously she was.[104]She was asked about the three books C kept at home and at the foster carer’s house. She said she was not aware that C had the sort of feelings shown in the books when living at home.

The teachers’ evidence about C in 2012

[105]Miss G. She is a teaching assistant at C’s school. She is clearly a sensitive and somewhat fragile personality. The court was told that when originally asked to make a statement she had broken down in tears and said she was afraid of giving evidence. Before the incident hearing she asked if she could give evidence behind screens so that she would not have to see the mother, the father, B and V. This was not because any of them had ever threatened or intimidated her. Indeed, she had met only the father out of the four, and in entirely amicable circumstances. It was made clear by Mr Geekie for the local authority that she needed the screens because she herself had a troubled history including self-harm, and would find it very difficult to give evidence unless screened from these four people. As the court wished to obtain the best evidence, it eventually acceded to this unusual request by the local authority. (In fairness to Miss G and other witnesses, the court can understand that giving evidence in a large court in the Royal Courts of Justice in front of a large number of persons must be a considerable ordeal.)[106]In the event, Miss G broke down in tears part way through her evidence despite the court’s being satisfied she was not subjected to any oppressive cross-examination. Having left court she apparently stated that she did not wish to return, but was persuaded eventually to do so by a solicitor assisting the local authority. All in all she came over to the court as a kind, well-meaning, gentle person, not resilient, somewhat easily shocked, easily upset, rather naïve and extremely needy. I mention this because of the relevance of these traits to how she coped with C’s allegations and to the nature of the relationship between teacher and pupil.[107]On the 25th May 2012 C self-harmed at school. Miss G told C that she too had self-harmed when she was younger. According to Miss G, she told C that this was because of matters at home, including arguments between her mother and father, but never told the child she had been abused, let alone sexually abused, by her father. If C said that, it would be untrue. Then from 19th September 2012 C began to make complaints about her family. The court looked at a note prepared by Miss Z and Miss G dated 19th September 2012. This recorded that C was behaving badly at school. She said that everything was getting on top of her and everyone was annoying her. It said that C was threatening to “burn her back”. Later C said, “I want to sort out anger, I not want anger, I want it out”. When asked what made her angry she replied, “Family annoying, want to kill myself. I beat up brother. Don’t want to and hit myself for it”. After some sentences which do not entirely make sense the note goes on, “I’d kill myself, rather die. Rather be ill than eat but not stay at home…” Similar phrases followed. According to another note of 24th September, 2012 C asked Miss G whether her own father had hit her with shoes or a belt.[108]Thereafter, according to school records as well as drawings produced at school, C continued to complain of unhappiness at home saying she hated her family and wanted to kill her brother and indeed wanted to kill everyone. She was beating up her family to stop them beating up her. When she was a baby her father would hit her on the hands and face and would hit her with a slipper. He would also threaten her with knives. Her older brother would also threaten her if she did not ‘sell fags’ for him. Friends would also ring her and threaten to kill her. Her older brother would beat her up, her mother and father would just stand by and laugh and watch. But, she never said, at any stage, that her mother had hit her or been violent.[109]Later in 2012 C was saying on an almost daily basis that she was being beaten up at home. Miss G said she found it quite stressful to hear all these things, so C would print off poems and pictures and write things to comfort her. Miss G had never before come across abuse allegations in her teaching career. She repeated, “I was stressed and upset”. She accepted the relationship with C was quite intense and that in some ways C had become the supporter and comforter rather than the other way around.[110]According to social services records of 21st November, 2012, Ms H a senior staff member noted that: C often has attention seeking behaviours and can become fixated on people. She is fixated a bit with Miss G. Then there had been things on Facebook which had ought be addressed.”[111]This document clearly came as a surprise to Miss G who had never seen or heard of it before, nor could she help with details of the Facebook entries. (The court notes that it has no information as to what these Facebook entries contained. Astonishingly, it would appear the local authority has, at no stage in its copious investigations of this case, sought to find out to what the Facebook issues were. This was and is very remiss.)[112]C loved drawing and writing things down on pieces of paper. Before the commencement of the current hearing, the local authority provided a selection of drawings and writings as part of its case. They are all undated. I shall record the contents of one of these notes of them so that the tenor of what the local authority was then alleging typical statements by C to be may be gauged. “I am so sorry a lot. What I said to you and I did not want to question home on Monday. Do not make me go home please. I wish my family go away. I do not want to go home. Please, I want to tell but I will get beaten up. I want to tell you but I can’t tell you I’ll get beaten up my some people and I do not want to go home no more, I hate everyone and my family. I hate my family so much. I do not want to go home. I hate my family so much. I hate my family a lot. My family hate me so much. I want to tell you but I can’t tell I am scared a lot I will get beat some people. Your nan and I got to f… your girlfriend.”[113]A further note prepared by Miss Z and Miss G dated 19th September, 2012 recorded that C was behaving badly. She said that everything was getting on top of her and everyone was annoying her. C was threatening to “burn her back”. Later C said, “I want to sort out anger, I not want anger, I want it out”. When asked what made her angry she replied, “Family annoying, want to kill myself. I beat up brother. Don’t want to and hit myself for it”. After some sentences which do not entirely make sense the note goes on, “I’d kill myself, rather die. Rather be ill than eat but not stay at home…” and similar phrases followed.[114]Miss G was referred to an important LAC review note dated 16th April 2013 which reads thus:
“The social workers agree that C sometimes says what she thinks people want to hear so ascertaining wishes and feelings may be difficult to ascertain.”
Significantly, she did not demur from its sentiments.[115]Miss G described how she had almost daily conversations with the child. All in all she had hundreds of conversations with C, some, an unquantifiable number, about sexual abuse. While she did send notes to her superiors at times, she stopped keeping records of the various conversations and that when she did this she could not remember. Thus she did not keep notes of conversations when sexual abuse was discussed. Of the hundreds of conversations she had with C perhaps fewer than dozens were actually about being hit. Curiously, in her oral evidence, she said C did not very often say that she had been hit at home which seems to contradict what Miss G is recorded as alleging elsewhere. In particular, C never said that her mother had hit her, nor that her mother had a rolling pin, let alone hit her with it.[116]As for self-harm, on 25th May, 2012 Miss G saw marks on C’s arms. They looked like scrapes, they were grazed and red but there was no actual blood. This was the first time she had ever seen examples of self-harm on C. She reported this to Mrs. B, her superior, who said that she would monitor the situation. On other occasions, whose dates she could not specify, Miss G saw marks on C. These were always self-inflicted injuries she was sure. Despite the child’s allegations she had never seen any bruises or marks of any sort attributable to any sort of violence in the family home. Once she had seen C limping and holding her side but had not seen any marks. Once C said she had a bruise on her knee from an injury caused at home, but Miss G had not seen such a bruise. Like many other pupils, C played sport and changed into her sportswear on occasions, giving opportunities for injuries to be noticed. There was no suggestion that anyone at the school had ever reported any injuries that could be attributable to harm suffered at home.[117]Turning to allegations of sexual abuse, an important feature of the case is that, although Miss G was undoubtedly C’sclosestconfidante, someone upon whom she was fixated, Miss G was never the recipient of any allegation about sexual abuse until many, many months had passed after the initial allegations made on 17th December, 2012 to SW. Miss G was worryingly imprecise about dates, although she recalled that when sexual abuse was first mentioned she wrote a note about it. After consideration she said that the first time she had written anything down about sexual allegations in connection with the child was recorded in a note, dated Thursday 12th December, 2013, which is documented in the court papers. This would place the first mention of sexual abuse by C to her as on that date. (The court also notes that Miss G in her statement, when describing C in the spring and middle of 2012, said, “She did not, at this time, make any allegations of sexual abuse.)[118]Miss Z is also a teacher at C’s school. She too comes across as well-intentioned and honest, though somewhat naive and inexperienced. Although she does not display a very strong personality, she is palpably less vulnerable than her colleague. She, like Miss G, was very vague about dates. Both asserted that they made notes of events prior to December 2012, together with dates, and gave these to a senior staff member, and the court accepts this. Unfortunately, these notes have not, with a very few exceptions, been produced to the court. She first met C in September 2011. C ended up being very closely bonded to both Miss G and Miss Z.[119]In September 2012 Miss Z ceased to teach C. Nonetheless, C still wanted to talk to her very often, she would often come to see her repeatedly during the day asking to talk to her. Miss Z would always agree to see her at the end of the school day. She took notes of what C said at these various meetings. Although altogether she said she had hundreds of conversations and meetings with C, it was the same for Miss G. Neither of them had never received training herself from social services or received any advice of what to do if a child started talking about worrying events in her life. But she knew she had to listen and not ask leading questions and when making notes to put quotations in quotation marks.[120]She was asked about a note of a social worker, SWA ‘Y’ made on 13th February 2013. This note reads:
“I said that Miss G had been very supportive of C. She had been empathising with her saying that she had had a very difficult childhood herself and had self-harmed but it had not helped her. She said Miss G was trying to discourage C from self-harming.”
Miss Z said she could not be sure whether C was already self-harming when Miss G talked to her of her own self-harming.

Findings about C in 2012

[121]The court does not accept the parents' contention that C was a happy child in 2012. In fact, when giving evidence, while each parent made this bland assertion, each then readily accepted the various worrying behaviours that it witnessed. The reality is that these parents, battered and bewildered by all that has happened during the past two years, are desperately clinging to the happy memories they have of C. The court is satisfied that in that part of their evidence they were not deliberately lying in voicing their sepia-tinted memories of what C was like. The court is satisfied that there were indeed happy times at home as well in 2012. Certainly, there is no evidence that her behaviour there was anything like as alarming as her behaviour at school; that is demonstrated by the fact that she does not seem to have been self-harming at home.[122]The court is also satisfied on the evidence before it, such as it is, that the parents were not kept fully apprised of what was happening at the school. It seems that, according to the school records before the court, the mother was telephoned once about the situation, Fiona Johnson spoke to the parents in November. There was also a conversation about when C was reluctant to go home. Otherwise, there are no records that the school kept C's parents properly informed of how serious the situation was at school, nor about her alarming drawings and writings.[123]Taking into account all the evidence of the parents and the teachers, I am wholly satisfied that by the autumn of 2012 there was in fact an unhappy confluence in C’s life. In the private judgment, the Judge listed 9 factors which affected C’s life. These included the following factors: a) She was frustrated by her learning difficulties [and] her confidence was seriously undermined. b) Her father smacked her on the bottom when was 13 years old. Not unnaturally she thoroughly disliked being punished in this way. This caused her some emotional harm, as the court has already found. c) C was destabilised by the effective loss of a much loved “member of her family” d) Finally, in September, there was a family fracas. I am satisfied that it distressed C and, indeed, all the children very much. I am also satisfied that both parents were untruthful in their oral evidence about this fracas, in that they each underplayed the effect it must have had on C and all the children.[124]These cumulative factors, save, of course, for the“fracas”, which came later, caused C first to self-harm at school.[125]While all this was going on in C's life, at school she developed a very close relationship with two teachers, especially Miss G of whom the court is satisfied she was fixated. C was told by Miss G that she herself had self-harmed and this was because of her father. The court cannot be certain whether this conversation preceded C's self-harm or not but, on the balance of probabilities, the court is satisfied it came after the May self-harming and in response to that. This conversation had a huge impact on the impressionable C. C found that, in contrast with life at home, at school she was now the centre of attention, particularly with Miss G and Miss Z. By self-harming she was doing the same as the one she idolised. By making allegations against her father, she was becoming even closer to her through what she considered to be shared experiences. The more she made allegations about life at home, the more attention and fuss the other teachers made of her. She seems to have been speaking to her teachers up to three times a day and more. She had, perhaps, for the first time in her life become, in her own eyes, someone of importance. In short, there was every incentive for her to make up allegations.[126]Miss G took C’s allegations very seriously, was upset by them and, most unfortunately, revealed that she was upset by them. This allowed C to comfort Miss G, to write poems to her to manipulate her teacher's emotions. It was a very damaging relationship in the sense that there was a role reversal. The pupil became the comforter of the teacher, not the other way round as it should have been. This, too, gave C an enhanced status. Miss G and the school should never have allowed this situation to occur.[127]C began to make allegations of physical abuse with increasing frequency by the end of the year. It seems they became almost daily and increasingly dramatic. (It is regrettable that the teachers in the school do not seem to have kept precise records of all the dates, nor of precisely what was said on all occasions. This was most lax of the school.) I am also satisfied that C, with her intellectual limitations, did not foresee where her allegations of physical abuse were leading, namely, the formal involvement of the Local Authority.And of course, she could not have foreseen - indeed, no one could have, save perhaps for the Local Authority - the unique role SW was about to play.[128]In coming to these findings, the court is satisfied that the school never found any marks on C, save for marks inflicted at the school. Marks made at home would surely have been there had her allegations of abuse at home been true. Their absence shows that they were not. (In any event, the allegations of physical abuse have already been determined by the court by HHJ Davies in June of last year. Those findings, looking at the Judgment, are limited to the father’s smacking C on her bottom when she was 13. In the circumstances the court must, and does, proceed on that basis in relation to physical abuse, save of course in respect of fresh allegations.)[129]The court emphasises that none of these findings should in any way be seen as ascribing to C any blame for what happened. She was doing no more than reacting – inevitably in the light of her difficulties - to a remarkable confluence of circumstances.[130]In addition to these matters, the court, mindful of Hedley J strictures in Re R (Care proceedings: Causation) [2011] EWHC 1715 (Fam), must also consider the ‘unknown cause’. In the instant case this must surely involve analysis of what was going on in C's mind generally in 2012.[131]The exercise book and diaries. A matter which has caused the court considerable disquiet is the disclosure, very late in the proceedings, of C’s exercise book and two diaries. Only on the second day of this hearing were the court and the parties provided with copies of these. The entries run to 122 pages in all and contain drawings as well as written entries. Most are by C but a few are by Miss Z and Miss G in response to entries written by the child. The entries in the exercise book start on 15th October, 2012 and conclude that year, well before the proceedings began. One or both of the diaries also commence in 2012. These diaries are very important. They were never kept secret. If it is correct that the Local Authority knew nothing of them at a time when, as is undisputed, its social workers were seeing the teachers on an almost daily basis, then it should have done. Its failure to do so is inexcusable. It is incomprehensible that lines of communication between professionals were so poor that no social worker knew of their existence.[132]Until this late disclosure, the local authority had disclosed, in general, only writings and drawings which depicted C as being very unhappy at home and with the family. The newly disclosed materials reveal a far more complex situation, however, including expressions of dislike for her school. The first entries are 14 pages from the exercise book. These start with apologies for misbehaviour and anger at school, and requests for help with her anger. Miss G and Miss Z responded kindly, more than once saying they will always be around to help her. In the case of Miss G she would be around for a chat at lunchtime. Later Miss G wrote of ‘sessions’ with C to help her with her anger.[133]On 20th October 2012 C wrote, “Can you help me to stop hurting everyone and stop hurting me, please”. On 21st October C asked the teachers to ‘go away and please could they kill her’. She hated herself. She asked for them to go away now; her anger was getting worse and she did not need their help anymore. The two teachers immediately responded with sympathetic and reassuring messages. There are further messages to her teachers saying she ‘hated her family so much’ and she ‘hated everyone so much’. She thanked her teachers and then said this, “Please would you go away now too” and that she wished she was dead. The next messages are similar, but now C stated that she hated school too and no one cared about her. It seems this message was meant for Miss G. C said she was hurting herself because no one cared about her and everyone hated her. She asked if Miss G could please help her. Twice she said Miss G was like a big sister to her. She wished she was not at school and did not want to go home.[134]Then came messages that she did not want help from the school, “Go away now.” She hated herself and her family. She thanked the teacher for her help. She did not want to go home; she hated everyone at her home. Miss G was the best teacher but she asked if she could ‘please go away now.’ She did not want to talk to her anymore.[135]The diaries are in places bizarre and profoundly disturbing. One page has in large letters, “I hate you”. There are whole pages filled with words “Kill you” dozens and dozens of times or, “School is gay”, a criticism in playground slang. Then there is a page of the words repeated many times, “Kill me”, another page “F… school” and a regular theme during the diary is “Dead name [C]”. There are large black hearts, with angels wings and a devil’s tail attached. There is another black heart with devils horns on as well and a black crucifix.[136]Many pages carry contradictory messages. Some examples include, “I miss you”, “I miss my teacher” and then large drawings of hearts taking up the whole page. “I hate school a lot”, “I hate myself”, “I hate my family a lot” and “I hate you a lot”. There are two whole pages with all the family’s names including the father, the mother and all the children. Then the words, “I love my granddad”, “I miss my granddad”, “I love [D]”, “I love you a lot”, “I miss you”. There are drawings with the words saying she will kill everyone now. There is a liberal use of four letter words. There are several hearts with, “miss” on them and hearts with “love” and angels wings and halos drawn on them.[137]There are then some very disquieting, very dark drawings. There are further black hearts with devils horns, tails and a trident, and very unpleasant facial expressions on the face of the heart. They appeared to the court to be macabre, even satanic. There are notes saying, “You are my best teacher”, “You are my family”, but then “I am going to kill teacher”, “I hate you so much” and “I do not want to know you no more”.[138]There are then affectionate, even romantic, messages. There appears the first stanza of Keats’s ‘Endymion’, which begins, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”. Another message says this:
“I just wanted to remind you that I love you a lot, thank god every day for me with a friend that is just simply amazing… remember that I love you”
. Another long entry, clearly also directed at Miss G, starts:
“A love that lasts forever, a friendship none can sever. A courage never failing though evil seems prevailing”
. That poem ends, “Love, faith and sweetness to make up its completeness”.

Another long entry, clearly also directed at Miss G, starts:

[139]Then there are bizarre entries such as:
“The ability to provide this at the University of Texas at Austin is as immediate a contribution a public university can make to education. It effects (sic) people’s relationship with literature.”
[140]Repeated messages follow:
“I hate it here”, “I hate my school”, “I miss my family”, “I love my family” and “I want to kill everyone so much”
. There are drawings of her hanging from a noose tightly filled with the words, “Kill me” and “Dead name [C]” hundreds of times. There are even more disturbing drawings of macabre figures, long messages and two pleading messages saying, “I hate it here, please can I go home, I miss my family a lot” and “I do not want you. Please help no more. Please go away now. I want to go home now”. Then the message:
“I hate everyone but not my family, I love my family a lot. Please let me go home now because I miss my family and I do not like it here and I hate you because you will not let me go.”
[141]There are some fifteen long, pleading messages of this sort. There are messages saying that A will not talk to her as she, C, is a bad person. There are more drawings of hearts saying, “I love my family a lot” and hearts with the word, “Family” and “Nan” written in it. There are pages with just “Family” written in large letters and the names “Granddad” and “Nan”. There are pages filled with what could be more than a hundred repetitions of the phrase, “School is gay” and “I miss my family”. There is a third page filled with “I love my family”, written a hundred times or more. Another message says that the lives of both herself and Miss G are in danger.[142]Throughout this case it was plainly the local authority’s stance that the macabre drawings and bleak writings had taken place while C was living at home or very soon afterwards, and that once in foster care the drawings became lighter and even brighter. Yet at the very end of the evidence counsel for C’s guardian reported that the foster carer had confirmed to her that the entries in these notebooks, although less frequent by the end, carried on right up until December 2013 or January, 2014, that is, at least a year after C was taken into foster care.[143]The diaries and exercise book contain drawings and writings which leave the court, as the court has already said, with a sense of profound unease. They need to be analysed by an open-minded psychologist or psychiatrist, or both, as a matter of urgency, together with an analysis of the court's findings and other reported behaviours, eg that C has frequently reported hearing voices, sometimes telling her to kill others.

First Local Authority investigation

[144]On the 21st. November, 2012 C alleged that her father had hit her with a slipper and a belt, and threatened her with knives. The school quite properly referred the matter to the Local Authority, which, in the form of Mrs. Fiona Johnson, carried out a measured and proportionate investigation of C's allegations in November and early December 2012. Mrs Johnson took particular note of the fact that, although C was by this stage alleging daily beatings by her father and family, they had not once seen any injuries on her that could be attributable to these.

Second Local Authority Investigation - involvement of SW

[145]On the 14th December 2012 C alleged that she was being ‘beaten up’ almost every day by her parents, and said that she did not want to go home. The school quite properly once more made a Child protection referral to the Local Authority. This time, however, the case was allocated not to Ms Johnson, but to SW, and was to take a very different direction. That same day C’s elder sister, T, when asked by a social worker whether she had been abused as a child, nodded her head, but gave no details. She was being interviewed about a separate matter which was very important to T, although nothing to do with this family.[146]SW, a Senior Social Work Practitioner, has been a social worker for ten years, but has worked in social care for 27 years. She was the lead social worker in C’s case. She was in charge of the investigation, save when there was a criminal element to it in which case – technically - the police would take the lead.

Credibility of SW – court’s findings

[147]She was at times truculent and downright rude to counsel and to the court and sometimes quite threatening and menacing. She variously accused counsel for B of raising his eyebrows at her in an inappropriate manner (he was in fact doing no such thing), loudly demanded to know the names of all the counsel in court, said that she had ‘clocked what you lot are up to’, and accused the court and counsel of trying to prevent her having her say when, in fact, wholly proper efforts were being made to curtail seemingly unquenchable outpourings. She was dismissive and disdainful of correct social work practice and the way the court operated. She was liberal in blaming others for things that had gone wrong. Apart from blaming the court (by inference both HHJ Davies and the Court of Appeal), she blamed the police, other members of the local authority, teachers at C’s school, the school itself for obstructing her, (this was wholly unfounded), counsel for the parents and counsel for the guardian. SW’s evidence – general matters Her current memory of events

SW’s evidence – general matters

[148]She explained that she had been very reluctant to give evidence. In her tenth and last statement she had said that she could not trust the local authority case notes in view of the time lapse. She had resisted making that statement as she did not think she could usefully add anything, for now she could no longer recollect any details but, as the case had progressed, some matters had come back to her as she was questioned and shown documents, and so things had become more alive for her. Even so, she said that all the events with which the court was concerned took place over two years ago and she had not retained memories of the case in the same way she would have done if she was still the social worker. This is something she repeated many times during her evidence.

Disclosure of her own notes

[149]She was referred to the email of the local authority’s in-house counsel, Miss Manassi, on 28th February of this year which asked for her notes and said that a comprehensive statement would be needed from her. She was referred to the current President of the Family Division’s words twelve years ago, “Professionals should keep comprehensive notes. Social workers should routinely exhibit notes to statements”. SW said that, contrary to this, she had shredded all her notes. In fact, she had tried to shred all her notes on a daily basis when she worked for the local authority. She could not keep them because they might be stolen from her car or lost and she had no desk in the office where they could be kept. “I shredded notes because I did not need them”.[150]Furthermore, in February 2014, Dawn Smith, her supervisor at Luton Borough Council, had told her to delete all her own records including all texts and emails from T. She deleted, she thought in all, about 500 texts to and from T. She was ordered to delete or shred all this material. She did so, she accepted, knowing that the proceedings were still underway and that a retrial of the sexual abuse allegation for C had been ordered, and that in relation to these T’s own allegations of sexual abuse against the father were relevant.[151]She was reminded of one text in particular. T had alleged that SW had sent her a text telling her not to be in denial. Ms Lynne Jackson, the psychologist, had reported that this text had, in fact, been read out to her by T. SW said this: “I knew all about this allegation of unprofessionalism and that T was saying this and other things too. I remember thinking whether I should delete this trail but I was told to”.[152]In any event, she said she had never sent T this text.[153]We have not heard from Dawn Smith. So whether or not SW was generally ordered to delete all her records, texts and emails still remains to be decided. Further investigation is needed. But the court notes that it seems very surprising that SW should have deleted a trail of texts which would have exculpated her from this particular accusation. (For the avoidance of doubt, I make no findings that any member of staff obstructed the Local Authority.)

Disclosure by C’s school

[154]She was given some pictures and notes by the school but she was never shown any diaries or drawings and certainly none where C said she loved her home and her family. She said she had been concerned at the time that the school were not disclosing all the information they had. She had even discussed this with Pauline Levins, the independent review officer. This was, she thought, about the time of the Child Protection Conference in 2013. She and SWA ‘Y’ had had the feeling that the school were not complying with the court’s disclosure directions, and she found this frustrating.[155]She had no idea that C was talking to staff at the school about the allegations. It was hard for the social workers to get past Ms H, a senior teacher, who wanted to be in control. It was Ms H who prevented communications coming from the school in an orderly way to the local authority.

C’s mood, wishes and feelings

[156]C’s mood was variable. This effected how easy it was to obtain her wishes and feelings. She could be stable when picked up from school and she could be ‘grouchy and uncooperative. At times she could be very ‘closed’ but at other times spoke more freely. It was clear that SW was referring to conversations particularly after school, at a time when she or SWA ‘Y’ was driving C to and from school each day. Depending on traffic, the journey would take between 45 minutes and one and a half hours.[157]She conceded that on one or two occasions C had told her that she wanted to go home, although she could not remember when. She was shown a note of 9th January, 2013 as an example of this. This records C as saying that she wanted to go home. SW’s instant response was very dismissive, “You’d expect a young person to say these things”. She said she could not recall C ever saying she loved her father but it was possible she had. She did not recall what she had said about loving her mother. She had heard C say she hated school but then she said, when referring to all these conversations, (again in a rather dismissive manner), “But C says lots of things typical of young people. You have to place them in context”. C was often agitated. One could see the anxiety on her face. She would have taken the comments seriously, but her positive comments about school outweighed the negative comments. She believed that by the end she understood C well enough, although not as well as if she had been a member of her own family. C found it difficult to trust people, “I can’t trust no one” she had said, as well as similar things to CAMHS. Therefore it took time for her to trust others. If she liked people then she would engage more quickly and talk more freely. She felt that C never fully engaged with her.

Interviewing a child

[158]She was aware that, with a child who has learning difficulties, the interviewer has to be very careful of suggestibility. She said she herself would have been outraged if anyone had asked C leading questions, “One should be sensitive of this” she said emphatically. She was reminded that, according to Miss G, she had hundreds of conversations with C, some of which referred to sexual abuse or abuse allegations. SW assumed that Miss G would have had the appropriate training about how to talk to children who had made allegations. The school should have given her advice about this. The social workers were quite disappointed with the school about a lack of training and had to discuss giving general training to the staff at the school or arranging for that to take place.[159]SW was very strident when giving evidence about how allegations of child abuse should be dealt with. She said, “Research shows that we must be more direct with children in abuse cases”. This was accepted in her social work team at the local authority. Dr. Van Rooyen, a psychiatrist in the instant case, too had said they have to be ‘more direct’ with the child. She said, “I suspected that she meant we had to talk to C and perhaps initiate conversations”. She then seemed to contradict this by saying, “We had to wait for C to speak, we know”.[160]She repeatedly referred to research by Keir Starmer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions. “His work should be accepted by the court”, she said. Her tone and demeanour made it clear that she was very critical of the courts. Later she said the social worker should keep an open mind in investigations like this. She hoped that she herself had kept an open mind. When asked whether it was her working hypothesis that C and T were sexually abused, she said that C’s behaviour especially was indicative of abuse but she repeated, she hoped she had kept an open mind. Her actual words which follow are important. Her tone was distinctly barbed as she uttered them:
“I do not know whether C was abused or not. As her voice in social care I am directed by our research at the local authority even though the court may not be… C’s behaviour led to a very strong correlation with sexual abuse. The first time she presented as a victim of sexual abuse was on 17th December.”
[161]When asked what was indicative of sexual abuse on that occasion she answered:
“C’s behaviour. I was hearing all sorts of things from the school and what she had done… It’s the skill of a social worker to ascertain what is the likely cause of her behaviours.’

Use of the word “disclosure”

[162]She said:
“I was told this judge doesn’t like the use of the word ‘disclosure’ for allegations by children. I understand that courts in general don’t like the use of the word ‘disclosure’.”
She had not read the Cleveland report of 1987 and did not know if it criticised the use of the word “disclosure” by professionals. 17th December 2012[163]I must examine the events of this day very carefully, for they set the tone for what was to follow and go to heart of the case. This was the day of SW’s first meeting with C. The case had been closed by the local authority a couple of weeks before following earlier complaints by C. On the 14th December, as we know, the school told the local authority that C was still unhappy and did not want to go home. When she was allocated the case, probably on Friday 14th, SW skimmed through the electronic file provided to her by the local authority. She would have done this as quickly as possible, she said. (The court notes that this file was in fact just seven pages - a very short file indeed, and would not have taken long to read fully.) Part of this short file comprised the handover notes of Fiona Johnson, the previous social worker. These were reported as follows: a) C had alleged being hit, though the school believed there were no marks ever left on her. According to her, everyone seemed to cause her upset. The family upset her and all the family hurt her, except for D. Her brothers, especially B, beat her up. b) Other children had all been spoken to and all had said that they had never been hit by the parents. c) C had reported no major health issues. d) There were no concerns about A. e) All the other children were happy at home.[164]SW appears not to have accepted this. ‘I wondered if C was unhappy, did it mean that the other children were unhappy.’ On skim-reading the notes, ‘I wondered if something was going on.’ Although, she accepted that there was nothing in the notes to this effect, it was her impression on reading them that this was Mrs Johnson’s impression too. So she had gone to the meeting believing that there was more she needed to understand about C’s self-harm, and about the pictures and drawings which she had drawn and made at the school. She had no idea of what this might be. She was asked whether she had any suspicions and there was a noticeable pause before she answered, “No” but she then added, “But we can partner certain behaviours with certain types of abuse”.[165]On the second page of the seven pages of files notes handed on from Mrs Johnson, there is mention that, “The child has a bit of a fixation with Miss G”. The note also referred to Facebook entries which needed to be dealt with. SW said she did not recall this entry or how she had dealt with it. At any rate she had not known whether the fixation comment was correct or not. She was quite dismissive in giving evidence about this topic, the court noted from her demeanour. It is obvious that she did not think, and has never thought, it to be of any relevance whatsoever.[166]SW duly met C at school in the presence of Miss Z on the 17th December, 2012. The child was anxious and ‘difficult to engage in so many ways”, she elaborated. She found the meeting very difficult. Sometimes her head was down, she was kicking the chair, her head was behind her ‘hoodie’, she was challenging and unwilling to talk about anything. Most of the time she was ‘a shrinking violet’. She seemed frightened and anxious and unwilling to talk and engage. There were very long silences. Nonetheless SW that she wanted to engage. In spite of this, the meeting took what the court considers a quite extraordinarily long time. According to SW, it started at 12 noon and ended at 3:30 or 4 p.m. (The note she wrote in her car afterwards was timed at 3:30 p.m.) During those 3½ hours she had left the room to contact the child abuse unit at Luton Borough Council and in particular Mr Graham Cole, the head of legal services there. And of course a lot of time, she repeated, there was, silence. As her evidence progressed, the court’s impression was that she trying to row back from her original time estimate. Eventually she said that the interview was perhaps ‘1½ hours, maybe shorter, maybe longer’. C had been given the chance to leave the meeting several times. Once she did leave but returned of her own volition. In this meeting it was difficult to understand what C said. Miss Z would say what C had said and C would either nod or shake her head. She soon realised that C hated to be asked to repeat what she had said. Neither she nor Miss Z took a note during the meeting, “It would be an abnormal thing for a social worker to take notes when interviewing a child other than during an ABE interview.’[167]At 3.30pm, in her car, she made notes of the meeting. It was her practice to note down as soon as possible the important points of an interview note, which appears to two pages, is one of the few handwritten notes by her before the court: “Very difficult meeting”, “Comes in when no one is there”, “Does stuff, bad stuff”, “Really bad things”, “Secrets”, “Where’s mum? Downstairs, out”, “Have you tried to talk to her about it? No point”, “Not allowed to talk about it”, “Couldn’t expand”, “Hits me. Kicks”, “Notice leg was sore, limping a little. Said dad had kicked/hit her last Sunday”, “Wouldn’t show me”, “Appeared very frightened/frozen”, “Didn’t want anyone to know what she’d said”, “Wanted to go into foster care”, “Hate family, hate mum, hate him”, “Gets beaten up at home – brothers, dad”, “Doesn’t feel safe at home”, “Does not feel there is anyone she could turn/talk to at home”, “Said she wanted to die”, “Does stuff he shouldn’t”, “Happened more than once”.[168]A crucial element in this case revolves around what SW said in her statement of 20th December, 2012 about the interview three days before. The relevant part of the statement reads as follows:
“[C] disclosed sexual abuse by her father during this meeting. She told me that her father comes up to her room and does really bad things. Through discussion it was established that she clearly understood that there were areas of her body that no one should touch and this is where her father touched her. [C] found it extremely hard to expand on this although did manage to share that her father told her that she must not tell anyone and that the bad things would happen if she did. It was also established that [C] knew about her body, her sexual organs and other people’s. After ensuring I was confident [C] knew what sexual abuse was, she confirmed that this is what had been happening to her.”
[169]When it was pointed out to her that the handwritten notes make no mention of sexual abuse, SW caused, it must be said, considerable consternation in court in all quarters by asserting that there was a page missing from her notes. There was definitely a third page, she remembered. She remembered the Local Authority solicitor, Ms Abana Sarma’s collecting this document. She was most concerned that this page was missing because this page dealt with the sexual abuse allegations made by C on 17th December. Furthermore, this page had been before HHJ Davies at her fact finding hearing in June, 2013.[170]She was referred to a number of documents from the court bundle. First was a police note of 17th December which states, “[C] did not disclose sexual abuse”. Then she was referred to the transcript of HHJ Davies’s judgment at the end of the 13th June, 2013 hearing, which made mention of the content of the two pages long since disclosed, but none of the contents of the apparently now missing third page. Furthermore, the transcript of that hearing shows that the father’s counsel cross-examined SW on the discrepancy between the note of 17th December interview which did not record sexual abuse being mentioned and her later assertion that C had alleged sexual abuse at the interview. Indeed, when SW was specifically questioned about the fact that her notes did not include any mention of sexual abuse, she did not refer to any missing page. She was again referred to the transcript of evidence given at the earlier hearing when she was specifically herself asked under oath whether in the discussion of 17th December C had elaborated on “bad things” and she had answered, “No, not at this point”. Nonetheless, she said, she would not agree that C only went as far as saying “bad things”, although she did not recall what other words C had used. It was two years ago.[171]Mr. Geekie, for the local authority now rose and said that the local authority was totally unaware of any missing third page of notes. Indeed, he said the whole of the fact finding trial was conducted on the basis of the two pages of notes only. This accorded with the memory of all those counsel for the other parties who had been present at that earlier hearing. If that was not enough, it was pointed out by the Local Authority’s solicitor, and agreed by counsel who had been present at the earlier hearing before HHJ Davies, that the bundles that the court was using at the current hearing were those used then, merely brought up to date by the addition of further documents. The court bundles then and now, did and do not include any third page of notes.[172]In spite of being faced with what might have been thought an especially daunting body of evidence, SW was not to be budged. She repeated that she had given the third page of notes to Ms Abana Sarma of the local authority, that it was definitely referred to during HHJ Davies’s hearing, and that the missing page had stated that C had alleged sexual abuse. She could see the second page in her mind’s eye. There were several entries on it. Furthermore, it was shown to the police at the strategy meeting shortly after 17th December 2012, even though the police record of what happened on that date says that no sexual abuse was alleged by the child.[173]When further questioned, she accepted that pages one and two of the notes before the court were consecutive, and were a complete document, so the third page could not have been the middle page of the three. The missing page was, she said, a second note written at a different time in the interview. This was despite her earlier evidence that she had not taken notes during the interview, and that it was her practice never to do so during interviews. She said she had discussed the contents of the third page with the police and her team manager. She then said belligerently, “I want to know why the second page is missing”.[174]She then added that, apart from words, she relied on the non-verbal signals from C; the self-harm, the fact that she walked out of the interview, the hiding behind the hoodie, the fact that she started and stopped saying things and the fact that she wanted to go into care. She said this:
“Because of her words, in my professional opinion I felt she was the victim or at risk of sexual abuse. It is important that a social worker should be brave enough to say this.”
[175]She was then rude to counsel saying, “I’ve clocked where you’re going a long time ago” and then to me, “I hope this court does this case justice”.[176]SW agreed that C was very angry that the teachers were reporting what she had said and caused damage at the school. SW immediately said that this was because she was angry with herself for not being able to say what she wanted to say. (Bearing in mind that C, according to SW, had alleged sexual abuse at this very first meeting, it is not clear what more she could have said.)[177]After the interview, SW and Miss Z met A. C did not like that at all. SW believed that this was because she did not want A to know what she had been saying.[178]Miss Z’s recollection of the meeting on the 17th December is somewhat vague. She did not think she made any notes in the meeting. She did not remember whether the social worker took notes of the meeting. She herself just sat quietly during the interview and let SW get on with it. She said that C talked quite well She spoke of being unhappy at home but Miss Z could not remember what was said or how she said it or the words which were used. However she said, “I came away feeling she had said she had been abused at home”. Later she said, “I felt when I came out she had been sexually abused by her father and hit by her mother” ‘I felt quite proud of her.’ Although Miss Z like Miss G, had never been trained how to interview children, she did know that one must never ask a leading question of a child. In her view, SW did not, in any way, ask leading questions or lead C in any way on 17th December.

SWA ‘Y’s evidence on this point

[179]At some stage – she could not remember when – SW had told her that when she saw C on the 17th December, she had been limping and ascribed this to being hit with a rolling pin. (The court notes that there is no mention of a rolling-pin in the records of this date kept by SW.)

Findings about the 17thDecember interview

[180]As for SW’s contention that C alleged sexual abuse to a total stranger on this occasion, this is plainly mistaken. The police note of the same date specifically records that no sexual abuse was alleged. The application for an Emergency Protection Order dated the 20th December and signed by the Local Authority’s Head of Legal services does not say that sexual abuse was actually alleged, only that C’s remarks ‘were suggestive of sexual abuse’. The notes made by SW after the conversation make no mention of sexual abuse. Her contention that a page of notes is missing, and that this page was before HHJ Davies in the earlier hearing, is simply ludicrous, for this would have meant that all counsel and solicitors, not to mention HHJ Davies, must have, unless through quite startling collective amnesia, willfully colluded in ignoring vital evidence during the hearing, and that the learned judge deliberately omitted mention of it in her judgment. It is also ludicrous to suppose that, when writing her notes in her car, SW wrote down relatively trivial allegations, but omitted to record the infinitely more serious accusation of sexual abuse.[181]The reality is that when one stands back and looks at what happened, one can see just how serious this situation was and is. Based in part on, the Local Authority now sought and obtained the peremptory removal of C from her family on the 20th December 2012, and the following day sought and obtained an Interim Care Order. In each case the tribunal notes show that the decision was made, in part, on the basis that C had alleged sexual abuse. The removal of children from their parents, especially without notice, is one of the most draconian actions any court can take. It strikes right at the heart of basic human rights, on family life; it is frightening and traumatic for the children involved, and profoundly distressing for parents and other family. Sadly, the courts are required from time to time to sanction such removal, but only when safety and urgency requires it. In making such urgent orders, the courts must rely on the accuracy of Local Authority evidence. Whilst they cannot know whether any allegation is true or false, the courts are entitled to be told the truth by Local Authorities as to whether such an allegation has been made at all. The Family Court and the child-care justice system cannot function if Local Authorities do not tell the truth about this, for justice will inevitably be perverted.[182]Responsibility for this cannot be laid wholly at the feet of one social worker. Others in the Local Authority must share responsibility, although, as I have said, on the evidence before it, the Court cannot and will not apportion this to particular individuals. The court freely acknowledges that all Local Authorities’ resources are over-stretched, and that social-work professionals are often alarmingly over-worked and under time pressures. Nonetheless, there should have been proper, efficient supervision of SW. Furthermore, the application for an EPO did not record an actual allegation of sexual abuse, whilst an application of the same date for an ICO did. With proper supervision and scrutiny this discrepancy should surely have been picked up by senior professionals at Luton Borough Council.[183]Thus far I have considered the allegation of sexual abuse. What about the other allegations C is alleged to have made on the 17th December? The reality is that the court cannot rely on anything else C is alleged to have said on that date in an interview which lasted some three hours, punctuated with long silences - a duration likely to be abusive in itself for a child who was uneasy and shy with strangers. Furthermore the court is satisfied that SW's method of dealing with C is more likely than not to have been that outlined in her note of 28th March:
“She asked me previously if I would speak for her and I was exceptionally mindful to pick the words carefully and check with her when I did speak. C would be asked something and then look at me with a very intense stare, and I would venture an answer which I checked with her and which were words, comments, etc. that she had used herself.”
[184]The court, therefore, cannot be satisfied, which words were suggested on 17th December and thus appear in the note by SW, and which were not; nor which were uttered spontaneously by the child, or which were merely nodded to by her or agreed by her in response to something volunteered by SW.[185]I do not accept Miss G’s opinion that no leading questions were put in the light of the countless leading questions in the months to come to which I am sure she was either a witness or the actual questioner, and none of which she recognised as leading.[186]Furthermore, and importantly, I am satisfied that this method of interviewing was more likely than not used by SW during subsequent meetings and discussions with C and others, thus requiring the Court to approach all her further evidence with even more wariness.

The arrival of SWA ‘Y’

[187]For approximately 13 years, she was a social work assistant. As to the hierarchy within the social work team she said she reported first to SW, and then to Ms Dawn Smith, who was the team manager. I accept this part of her evidence in preference to that of SW.[188]She is very different from SW. She appears more kindly, certainly quieter, less confident, more easily led. She has a personality less strong than that of SW, but by no means, the court is satisfied, a weak personality. She also gave the general impression of being more truthful than SW. Despite this, her evidence too must be approached with very great caution, the court being satisfied, for reasons which I shall explain later, she deliberately lied to the court in May, 2014 in what was a very grave attempt to mislead.[189]Her first formal visit to C was on 8th January 2013, shortly after she was allocated to the case to assist SW. She had, in fact, met C twice before at the foster carer’s home. Initially she was going to be involved just with C, her role being to build up a relationship with her so that she could become someone C could trust and talk to. This was important because trust was a big issue for C. At the beginning she was given a brief summary of the case so far. These included some details ’but she did not believe that she was told that there had been any sexual abuse; that came later.[190]From the start she and SW had a good working relationship. They worked closely together on the case. There were never any problems between the two. She herself kept careful notes. If, say, she went to the foster carer’s, then she would take a note that she would then place on file. She would also ring her colleague to feed back anything important. She then altered her evidence. Her view was that from the start SW was alleging that C had been sexually abused. She then altered her evidence again, saying that in January 2013 she and SW had come to the conclusion that, whilst it was not clear to what C was referring, sexual abuse was a possibility. After talking together both had come to the conclusion that ‘it was definitely a possibility that C had been sexually abused’. It was put to her that this was, in fact, their working assumption. She replied that it was in their mind, but only as a possibility. She went on to say this, however:
“We both had it in our minds that C had been sexually abused but was having great difficulty telling us. The way C talked to us it was more than ordinary abuse”
. She was adamant that C herself had never alleged oral sex or anal sex to her or in her presence at any time.[191]SWA ‘Y’ was a fairly punctilious note-maker, if sometimes after the event. It must be remembered that early in 2014 the court gave precise and copious directions for the local authority to disclose all the documents, records and notes concerning this family in its possession. The local authority gave all assurances that this direction had been complied with in full. It was on that basis that this hearing commenced. To the astonishment of all in court, however, well into her evidence SWA ‘Y’ freely volunteered that all the handwritten notes she had taken were in a drawer at the local authority’s office. She had kept copious handwritten notes and diaries, indeed, there were 15 books in all. Everyone knew where they were. “It was obvious that the original notes were very important and should be kept”. As a result of this counsel for the local authority immediately arranged for a representative to attend its offices to collect, if they were still there, the documents that had been mentioned by SWA ‘Y’.[192]Later that day a cardboard box containing a large number of notebooks and some loose pages were retrieved from the office. Some other papers were found nearby. The court must emphasise that these documents should have been disclosed well in advance of this hearing. It is truly reprehensible that they were not. In view of the speed with which they were recovered they could easily have been found had anyone either looked or asked the appropriate questions of SWA ‘Y’. For many months now the Local Authority has been fully aware of the serious issues in the case, and how full disclosure has been ordered, and re-ordered. Yet, self-evidently, it took woefully inadequate measures to comply with the order. In doing so it treated the court with what cannot be far short of contempt.[193]SWA ‘Y’ was also asked about many other documents disclosed after the hearing commenced. She was shown in particular C’s exercise book and her two diaries. She said she had never seen these before. The school had passed on a file of pictures drawn by C prior to her involvement in the case in 2014. More had come forward from the school in due course, but not the exercise book and the diaries. She had never asked the school directly if there had been more material. She had spoken to the school staff weekly or fortnightly and she would have expected the teaching staff to let the social workers know if there was more material. She knew nothing about C’s entries in the book, saying she loved her home and her family and that she hated school. In particular, she did not believe that SW would have known about these entries either.

C’s Foster-carer

[194]She has been a foster carer for six years, for Luton Borough Council and for other local authorities. C was taken directly to her home following the making of the EPO on the 20th December, 2012. She was given information about the background of C by SW and by Miss Z from the school as well as by Miss G. She had also had a write up from the fostering agency. The court notes this document is not in the court bundle and is missing. Her understanding was that, at school on the 17th December, 2012, the child had made allegations of both physical and sexual abuse. She was told this by SW although she was given no precise details of the allegations. She was clear that, although she was close to C and C to her, C had never made allegations of sexual abuse to her in her presence.[195]C’s foster carer is palpably, the court is satisfied, a genuine and kindly soul.

C between the 17th December 2012 and June 2013

[196]Unsurprisingly, following her removal into foster-care on the 17th December, the evidence of SW, SWA ‘Y’, the foster carer and her school shows that C was profoundly unhappy. She showed all the desperation and confusion one might expect of a child suddenly taken from her parents.[197]According to the foster carer, when C arrived she had no self-confidence and no self-esteem. She was no good at meeting strangers. At first she barely talked. She would go off and hide herself. She was angry with her teachers, saying that they should never have told anyone else, and that she did not need help from others. From December 2012 until June or July, 2013 she said that she hated school. At first she said this weekly or so, but less frequently as time went on. In these early days she self-harmed ‘a lot’, as much as weekly, mainly after a bad day at school when she had quarreled with a fellow pupil. She would harm herself by scratching with a paper clip or a blade from a pencil sharpener. This happened less and less now - since the beginning of this year only every few months. It occurred in June, 2014. It had last happened only a fortnight before she came to give evidence, in early September, 2014. In January or February 2013 the foster-carer started finding excrement wrapped up in paper in C’s litter bin. She did not mention this directly to C but she reported it to her fostering agency. In February or March 2013 C started attending CAMHS, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services every three or four weeks, and was much happier now.[198]According to SWA ‘Y’, ‘ In the early days of this case C was cross that her teachers had told the social workers what she had said. She wanted to change schools. C was upset by the fact that A was talking about the allegations. C and A had extreme fall-outs about the allegations. SWA ‘Y’ did not hear directly what A was saying, but C herself reported it. C also said she felt her father would come to the school and hurt Miss G and Miss Z. SWA ‘Y’ was clear that she never saw herself any threatening Facebook messages or texts at any time.[199]C displayed contradictory behaviours. According to SW, at a meeting on the 19th December, 2012, of which no notes were taken, C said she was afraid that her family would find her. She was worried about her siblings, and that she might have to see her family after what she had said. She was also afraid she might be abused by her new carers. She said that one of her brothers was threatening to beat her up, telling her to retract whatever she had said.[200]On the 2nd January 2013, according to an observation note (said by SW to relate to a conversation she had with C when collecting her after a visit to her sister, T):
“C tried to move on to other worries, especially around abuse by her father and that it was not just physical abuse. She was unable to progress this and I did not push her. I asked C about the comments her parents made about Miss G, apparently telling C that she herself had suffered abuse from her own father. C explained that Miss G had only told her that she used to self-harm because of her father and she had not been told anything else.”
[201]The court notes that this passage does not make sense if C had already, as SW insists, alleged sexual abuse.[202]Significantly, according to the foster carer, C displayed and still displays ‘a lot’ of photographs of her family on the shelves in her bedroom. There are group photos of the father and mother and grandfather and other family members.[203]On the 3rd January 2013 C told SW that she wanted to go home. ‘But,’ according to SW, ‘when this was explored, this was not her wishes.’ Quite what she meant by ‘explored this further’ is not clear. On the other hand, according also to SW, C on the 16th January told her how much she hated her family, and that she, SW was her family now. She was having bad dreams that her father would beat her up and kill her. She referred to ‘the one thing I can’t talk about…. There is something that is really bad, the worse thing. I just can’t get it out of my head. I can’t stop thinking about it. It never leaves me. I keep trying, but it won’t go what he did to me. I sat on the side of my bed and just cried, cried my heart out’. She was also critical of the school.[204]On 4th February 2013, SW appears once more to have spoken to C about the allegations. This was while she was taking C back from seeing her grandparents and her aunts. Her record of the meeting is as follows:
“C said, as she now has many times, ‘I am ready to talk about the big thing, I keep trying but I can’t find the right words’. C said, ‘I’m ready to talk I want to. I just can’t’ and then said that she was ready to. She said she had tried to speak to Miss G and Miss Z, but that she kept getting interrupted. C said it was the ‘big thing, the really big thing’. She also said she was not allowed to speak to Miss G or Miss Z anymore and would not expand on this.”
The court is satisfied that C felt under pressure. She was doing as best she could to make excuses as to why she had not made the allegations she knew SW so wanted.[205]By the 7th February C’s health had seriously deteriorated. She was self-harming. She claimed that she was having dreams in which she was watching her own funeral, being chased and killed by her father and some family members. The Local Authority was concerned about further self-harm and the possibility of suicide. We do not have all the medical evidence to explain what diagnosis was made, and what treatment was given. Until the court receives this, it is impossible to come to any conclusions. But there must be a real possibility that the deterioration in her mental health was precipitated not only by her removal from the family home, but also by the constant questioning by SW.[206]On 7th February SW visited C in hospital with SWA ‘Y’. Despite C’s frail mental health, once more she questioned her about the allegations. The observation note of this meeting records C saying as follows, “But I can’t tell you about the thing” and then SW wrote, “In discussions with her I had established that this is sexual abuse”. There is no clarification to which discussion she is referring in this note. If it refers to that day, then the court is in no doubt that C had not talked about sexual abuse. I am already wholly satisfied that she had not alleged sexual abuse before this date.[207]In March, April and May, 2013 C ‘continued to complain of unhappiness’, according to the Local Authority. She talked of death and nightmares, including to Dr. Van Rooyen, a psychiatrist. If C were not under enough pressure, she now began to be questioned by SW about her elder sister, T, but that is a topic I shall consider separately.

A and the other children before their removal in June 2013

[208]Unsurprisingly, there is copious evidence about their distress after C was taken into care. SWA ‘Y’ described how A misbehaved between January and June 2013. (The witness gave the date as 2014, but the court is satisfied she meant the previous year.) She believed this was caused by pressures at home and a need to convey messages to the school from the family. It is a sad example of how blinkered SWA ‘Y’ had become, so obsessed with the culpability of the family, that she did not even consider an obvious and much more likely explanation, namely, that A was desperately missing C with whom she was, despite their sibling rivalries, very close. Nor that she, like the rest of her siblings, was terrified that they too would be suddenly taken away from their much-loved parents. This was despite SWA ‘Y’’s herself acknowledging that A had always wanted to be at home with her parents.[209]On 6th February 2013 SWA ‘Y’ noted that K was reluctant to talk to the social workers about anything. That same day P had talked about the mother and said that the mother was upset. P said that C was making everything up, “Why would Dad hit C and not the other children?” SWA ‘Y’ commented that it was, “As if she was repeating what the mother says”. She herself had clearly never considered the logic of the question.[210]In March 2013, the Local Authority applied for and obtained interim care orders in respect of all the remaining children. It also applied for, but was refused, orders for their immediate removal. Naturally, the children knew about this, and not just from their parents. SWA ‘Y’ visited them all to obtain their wishes and feelings in early March, 2013, and specifically asked them their views about going into foster-care. Later that same month the Guardian spoke to them on similar matters. Despite this, SWA ‘Y’ blamed the parents for the attitudes of P and K when she visited them at school on 21st May 2013. According to her, K continued to be guarded and less friendly than he had been at the time of the March hearing. He had kept repeating what was said at home and what his parents’ views were. P who was usually more eager to talk was more guarded that day.[211]There can be no doubt that the parents did involve the children in details of the proceedings; indeed, the finding of HHJ Davies to this effect remains unappealed. But so too did social workers and the Guardian. The court was struck by the insensitivity of SWA ‘Y’’s evidence, in that she never appears to have considered, not once, that the children, having seen what had happened to their sister, would understandably have been wary, frightened and guarded.[212]The children continued to yearn for their parents. According to a statement of SW dated the 12th March 2013, P said the father had done nothing to her and she wanted to go to the park with him. She also wrote to the school asking them to help her with C living at home. That letter is missing, the court notes, just like so much other important material in this case. (SW also recorded that the mother had driven with one or more of the children in their pyjamas to her office to see how long the journey took.)[213]In the core group meeting notes of 3rd June 2013 the following note appears, “P not as happy as she used to be, not in a great place, missing Dad”.

The wishes and feelings of K

[214]On the 12th March, 2013, as we know, the local authority applied for interim care orders for A and all the other children, together with their and immediate removal from their parents’ care. Only five days before, on the 7th March, 2013, after visiting K to ascertain his wishes and feelings, SWA ‘Y’ had written this, “K is happy and sad about being in foster care”. Yet in the care plan presented to the court by the local authority as part of its applications for an ICO and immediate removal of the children, SW recorded under ‘K’s wishes and feelings’ only that, “K is happy to go into foster care”. There is no mention of his being sad as well.[215]SW gave wholly unsatisfactory evidence about this. First she said that SWA ‘Y’’s note could possibly be the source of her own description of K’s wishes and feelings. Then, thinking better of that response and doubtless realising where it was leading, she said that SWA ‘Y’ might not be the source. She herself had met K at regular intervals. Later she said that she believed that K” had told SWA ‘Y’ that s/he would be ‘happy’ about the prospect of leaving the family home. She herself had not asked K for the child’s views about going into foster care. The court considered by the end of her evidence about this the witness was accepting that the source of her statement of K’s wishes and feelings was, in fact, SWA ‘Y’.[216]The court is in no doubt that these had been sought and recorded by one person only, SWA ‘Y’, and that what she recorded was that K said s/he was happy and sad to go into foster care. This was reported to the court as merely "happy". As a young child s/he was entitled to have her/his wishes and feelings correctly reported to the court. For a helpless young child's wishes and feelings to not be reported accurately is unacceptable. In the instant case K's wishes and feelings were part of the care plan submitted by the Local Authority when applying for care orders. Courts are required to consider the wishes and feelings of children as part of the so-called welfare checklist.

(a) of the Children Act 1989 says this:

‘When a court determines a question with regard to the upbringing of a child, the child’s welfare shall be of paramount consideration.’
S 1 (3) continues: ‘in the circumstances the court shall have regard in particular to (a) ‘the ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child considered in the light of his age and understanding’ and (c) ‘the likely effect on him of any change in his circumstances’.[217]It might seem that to misrepresent ‘happy and sad’ as ‘happy’ is a minor issue. But it is not. To have wishes and feelings misrepresented in any way is not only a betrayal of the child concerned, but a body blow at the ability of the court to do justice to children and to carry out its judicial function. The misreporting of the child’s wishes and feelings should certainly have been picked up by SWA ‘Y’ or, at the very least, if not by others at the Local Authority.[218]In coming to this conclusion, the court is fortified by evidence from the Guardian for the younger children that, when he spoke to the children that same month, they all said they were happy at home. This must cast some doubt as to whether what SWA ‘Y’ recorded was itself accurate, though the court cannot make any finding on the limited evidence it has about this.

An incident involving S

[219]According to the father, whose evidence in this respect I accept, in the spring of 2013 SW telephoned him, and asked to meet him in St. George’s Square, a large public space in Luton near the court, before a court hearing. He duly met her there. She was accompanied by S. She told him that she had something to say to him. Prudently, the father declined to speak to her without his solicitor, so said that any conversation should take place at court. They duly went over to the court, where his solicitor was not yet present. Nonetheless, SW put him and S together on the small landing outside the court foyer. SW stood close by, either just inside or just outside the glass-panelled door of the stairwell. S then alleged to him that he had been abused by an uncle. He was shocked by the allegation, about which he knew nothing.[220]The court has no idea whether this allegation is true or not. What is relevant to this case is what is revealed about SW’s modus operandi, and the extent to which she would break the rules to achieve her ends. It was, to use an adverb used all too often in this case, shockingly unprofessional that she should have sought to ambush the father, in the absence of his solicitor, just before a court hearing with a distressing allegation.

Removal of the remaining children on the 21st June 2013

[221]This was the day the younger children were removed from the mother’s care. The evidence of the local authority and the mother in respect of this day reveals what was plainly an unimaginably awful ordeal for the children. The mother had returned from court just before the social workers arrived. S had texted A with the news of the judge’s ruling that the children should be removed. According to SW, A was angry saying that C would pay for this and she would, “Smash her face in”. P was nodding at that. The mother was saying that T was also lying and the father had done nothing. D just looked dumbfounded, with a white face and dark circles under the eyes. K was in the living room opening the door to cry out. Also present was a family friend, who had been babysitting.[222]When it was put to SW that SWA ‘Y’ had threatened the mother: “I’ll call the police if she don’t let the children come with us”, she deftly down-played her criticisms of the mother. In fact the removal went far more smoothly than she had hoped. She said that the mother was ‘het up’ and the children were indignant with arms crossed, but overall it was a smooth affair. One thing which concerned her was that the mother told P that she was now in charge of D and no one else was to touch the child.[223]SW described mixed feelings displayed by the children in the car en route to the foster carers. ‘The children felt a sense of relief mixed in with pain as well.’ (It is not clear to the court whether the children understood precisely what was happening or what they had been told as to plans for the future.) At first all the children were upset but it only took a short time for them to turn around. Within ten minutes of leaving the mother’s home they were asking lots of questions and were in a very normal, stable mood asking whether they would be attending the same school and would be going out or whether they would have a television in their room. She then went on to say that P was vocal and upset however when they got to the foster carer’s P said, “I think we’re going to like it here”. I should note at this point that in view of the general unreliability of the social work evidence, the court cannot know whether this description of the children’s behaviour is accurate or truthful, or whether the younger children even knew that they were leaving their parents, at the very least, for a long time.[224]SW said “We often see this behaviour”…. It did not surprise me that this was the way events unfolded… It was if the children were relieved to be lifted out of the situation which was particularly difficult for them.” She then explained that the fact that the children had left without too much trouble and settled so quickly suggested that the family had stirred them up in advance.[225]The court was concerned about the logic of this hypothesis, and asked SW if that meant that if the children had not settled and behaved very badly on removal, then that would suggest that the mother had not stirred them up. She replied, “It’s possible, yes”, although without much enthusiasm.

The ‘remaining’ children after removal

[226]Throughout this hearing the Local authority has sought to convince the court that the children settled down well after their removal, and have steadily improved ever since. Closer inspection of the evidence suggests that, although the children may be more settled now, this was not the case at first. It is clear that D was unhappy to be in foster care. On 22nd June, the day after the removal, according to the foster carer, D woke with a scream. She is then reported to have said that all the children settled down well. But this is not borne out by the Local Authority notes of the time: ‘The foster carer is concerned, as we are, about how pale D is and the dark bags under [the] eyes. [The child] needs more sleep and time to bond with [the] carer”. Meanwhile, P felt that it was his/her role to look after D.[227]As for P, a newly disclosed note by SWA ‘Y’ records that on the 30th June 2013, shortly after the children’s removal, “ P looked very frightened and on edge and asked for contact with grandparents, both with mum and dad”.[228]As for K, SW reported that on the 2nd July, “We collected the children from school and K said, ‘I don’t want to go’”. When this was put to the mother in court, she burst into tears, and said that on the day the children were taken, K had told her that she must hate K and must not want K anymore, because she was putting Kin a car and letting K be taken away to strangers. K had said that outside the house. That was why K might have said s/he did not want to go to contact. This evidence is plausible and the court accepts it.

Telling C about HHJ Davies’s findings of the 22nd June 2013

[229]SW visited C immediately afterwards to tell her of the findings. This was on the advice of CAMHS. C said that ‘he did it to A too’. SW had known then that there was going to be an appeal, but C was desperate to know what had happened and she was worried that C was at risk of suicide. The note of that meeting reads as follows: “I then began by telling her that the local authority, us, had, as she knew, concerns about a number of things but we had asked the court to make a judgment/decision on these. I asked C whether she knew what those concerns were, she nodded but I decided to go through these. I said from what you have told me so far and from what I have learned from working with you and your family, I have been concerned that you are a victim and have suffered sexual abuse. C looked at me eyes moist but intently listening, she nodded. I said the concerns were also that the person who caused this to you was your father. C starred very intently at me nodding again and I carried on. I said the judge decided that after hearing all of the information that it was mostly likely to have been him. C remained staring at me, eyes a little more moist and said, ‘It was’. I then said the judge also found/decided that this had happened to T. I clarified this and said that the judge decided it was more likely than not that your father had also sexually abused T. C remained looking intently at me. C then said, ‘He did it to A too. She told me and I promised to keep it a secret, you need to talk to A. I said that we would and could she tell me a bit more. C said, ‘I promised I would keep it a secret’”.[230]She herself has always been adamant that it never happened. The court is wholly satisfied that she was never abused by her father. It follows, therefore, that either C herself was making up the allegation to please SW in the light of the learned judge’s findings, or SW was making it up. On the balance of probabilities, the court is satisfied that SW was, as usual, putting words in the child’s mouth and then pretending they had come from the child.[231]A note of the foster carer dated 25th June 2013 records a conversation she had had with C. It reads:
“I told her it was not her fault in any way. I told her that she was so brave to have spoken out about what was going on at home. The only people to blame for what is going are her mum and dad. They are the adults in the whole situation so they should not have done what they have done. We talked about the threats and lies that had been told by mum and dad and the reasons why they have done this (to try to cover things up). I made it perfectly clear that she was in no way to blame at all, that it was only mum and dad to blame. C then said that she was, ‘Mental’. At this point I got fairly angry (inside!) as C had said this before. Mum and dad and some family members have called her this for a long time. I told her that it made me angry because it was absolutely not true. She may have a temper but that does not make her mental!!! ‘I also said that I guessed that mum and dad had said lots of horrible things to her and she said, ‘Yes, they have’ so I said that they were all lies, that none of them were true. I pointed out that she was a lovely, caring, generous girl who everyone that had met her liked a lot!!!”
[232]SW claimed not to recall ever seeing this note. (The court notes that as the social worker to whom the fostering agency reports were sent at the end of each month she should have seen it, so it highly unlikely that she did not read it.) She immediately criticised the foster carer for what she said. If she had read this note, she would have told the foster carer to stop. Any other social worker would have said the same if he or she had seen that note, for they were all keen to be positive in front of the children about the mother and father. The court rejects this assertion, being in no doubt that the foster carer’s views were drawn directly from SW’s views and those of SWA ‘Y’, and neither of these was ever positive about the parents to the child, or indeed to anyone else.

Events leading up to the 1st ABE interview on the 4th October 2013

[233]Although HHJ Davies had made the findings sought, the Local Authority knew that leave to appeal had been and was being sought by the parents. It was aware that the grounds were based, in part, on the fact that the evidence was hearsay, and that such evidence of sexual abuse as existed, was very imprecise. Accordingly, the social workers continued to question C about sexual abuse.[234]On 23rd July 2013 there appear to have been further discussions with C, first by Miss Z, and then by SW. The notes of these read as follows:
“C said, ‘A started to remember stuff that happened when she was little. Stuff I said she will remember if she stopped moaning all the time’. C chatted away, ‘It will be good if A can remember it all as that will help her so people stop moaning at her and blaming her’. She said she thinks A will remember soon. She said something about A seeing people soon to talk to them.”
[235]C believed that she was expected to say things about sexual abuse. For reasons which are entirely unclear, on 6th August, 2013 there was a phone call to the local authority from C’s foster carer about the CAMHS appointment of the previous week. The note of this reads as follows:
“C sort of agreed to see a psychologist and C’s foster carer and C talked about this a bit on the way as C had said, ‘They want me to talk about things’.”
[236]The court is deeply concerned about this note? Why was a psychologist needed? Again this will need careful investigation.[237]At some time in late July or early August, 2013 it was decided that C should have a formal Achieving Best Evidence Interview. This would be conducted by a police officer. The police officer dealing with the local authority was PO, of the Child Protection Team at Luton Police Station. She had already had some dealings with T. She would be the officer in charge of the ABE interviews of both C and T. In a criminal investigation, as she pointed out to the court, she was in charge, otherwise SW was.[238]At any rate, on 21st August 2013 the foster carer’s note records that SW and a police officer arrived at her home 10 a.m. to talk about what would happen if C wanted, “to disclose”. They spoke to C about this, and explained the ABE Interview process. C was very withdrawn. She appeared to understand, although she was not saying much. SW said it would be a good idea to have this meeting with C. One of the two visitors said to C that if she said a little bit it was fine, if more that was fine. She could talk about what had happened to her. The foster-carer believed that in August and September C was saying at school that she wanted to talk, but the note gives no specifics. In rather vague evidence, the foster-carer said that C had made the odd comment about wanting to talk, though she could give no dates. What she could remember was that there had been some talk of listening to C to ascertain whether she wanted to say anything, but there had been no mention of an actual ABE interview until 21st August. SW’s brief notes give further detail. According to these, which the court accepts are accurate, “Told her that the main offenders would be arrested. Going to court was explained to her”. Contrary to procedural guidelines, no full or even adequate notes were kept of this meeting.[239]It is clear that C was destabilised by this meeting. She was very withdrawn at the meeting. By the 10th, 16th, 17th and 21st September she was complaining of nightmares. She said she was hearing voices, her father’s voice and other voices. The voices were with her at all times of the day, telling her to harm herself and hurt others “Voices, sometimes her dad in her head keep telling her to harm herself and others and seriously”. 30th September 2014 interview[240]By this date, according to a local authority note by SW, there was a change of heart. C seemed to be outgoing and confident. She said that she wanted to make allegations of sexual abuse against the father and B, including rape from the age of six against either both or father alone.[241]When on 30th September she and SWA ‘Y’ had visited C at school, C was the most confident and outgoing she had ever seen her. According to SW she told the social workers that the father and B had sexually abused her. She knew what rape was and said that both father and B had raped her. She alleged that father drank heavily and that the abuse occurred when mother was out. A too had been sexually abused, though she gave no details. She alleged that her mother was physically abusive, using rolling-pins and other implements. The limp she displayed on the first day she met SW was due to being hit by her parents.’[242]There are some curious aspects to this alleged meeting: According to the running record of the local authority dated 30th. September 2013, notes of this conversation were to follow. These have not. SW did not know where these notes were or what had happened to them; possibly, she said, they had appeared in the next strategy meeting notes.[243]In fact the next strategy meeting appears to have been on 10th October 2013. We have the records of that. They do not mention B at all, but do mention V. The meeting was told, it seems from the minutes, that the day before T had reported that C had told her that she had been abused/assaulted by V. There then followed a considerable amount of discussion about V.[244]The court diligently strived to see whether there might possibly have been a discrete strategy meeting to discuss the B allegation soon after the 30th September. Accordingly, the court examined a document headed “Strategy Discussion” dated 11th October 2013. Underneath that heading appear references to a meeting on 12th December 2013, the details of which are recorded in great detail. But there is no mention whatsoever of B.[245]There are also many other references to events which are clearly occurred after 11th October 2013. The record, in any event, ends by saying it was completed on 11th December 2012. The court notes that the whole set of entries in this document, particularly in relation to dates, is hopelessly muddled. This reported record is, to put it plainly, an incompetent nonsense. But, crucially, nowhere is there any mention of any mention of the 30th September allegation about B.[246]Despite her alleged attendance at this interview, SWA ‘Y’s notes have no entry at all which is referable to such a meeting having even taken place, her notes cover the relevant period, and even include an entry for the 30th September, 2013 in relation to another case. SWA ‘Y’ was normally a punctilious note-keeper, if after the event.[247]Miss G was firm when being cross-examined that she heard the first allegation about B long after September, 2013, and that when he was mentioned in December of that year, all C alleged was that he had touch her tracksuit bottoms and made her jump. She was emphatic that until this day C had never made sexual abuse allegations to her.[248]When questioned by Mr Feehan for B about the absence of any records or meetings about the 30th September B allegations in the weeks that followed, SW became very defensive. She was hostile and rude to Mr Feehan, who asked questions of her entirely courteously and, in the court’s view, entirely properly. She accused him of not allowing her to speak and suggested he was getting ‘riled’. She accused him of being ‘factious’ and then she became personal, commenting about the way counsel was raising his eyebrows. The court, having a full view of the whole court, can safely say that counsel was doing nothing inappropriate in any way, nor displaying any inappropriate expressions upon his face.[249]Some time after this cross-examination, SW returned to court and produced together with a handful of other papers, a document dated the 30th September 2013. She said she had found this at home. This document purports to record an allegation of rape by B made by C on that date, with several quotations. She could not explain why it had never made its way on to the local authority system.[250]This document produced late and after the lack of proper notation had been drawn to her attention, is highly suspect. In oral submissions he refined his written submissions by wondering whether there was a meeting at all on the 30th September. It was bizarre that SWA ‘Y’ had made no record of it. Mr Tyler for the younger children, also questions the provenance of documents produced late, bearing the date 2013. I agree. The court is profoundly suspicious of the note produced late in the day, and is not satisfied that it was produced in 2013. On the evidence before me, I am satisfied that this document was typed much later. It is, quite simply, a false document. Accordingly, I find that no allegations whatsoever were made by C about B on the 30th September, 2014. I have also considered carefully whether there was a meeting at all on the 30th September. In view of the matters addressed above, this must at least be a possibility. On a fine balance, I find that there was a meeting on that date, but, as I have already found, there was no discussion about B at all. Nor was SWA ‘Y’present.[251]As to what else was said by C at that meeting, in view of the finding immediately above, previous findings about SW’s credibility, and the failure of C to make similar allegations shortly afterwards at the ABE interview, the court cannot be satisfied that C said any of the things alleged by SW on the 30th September, or, that if she did, she was not subjected to leading questions and prompting. The interview was thoroughly contaminated by what had gone on before.

Last minute preparations for the ABE interview

[252]As a result of C’s purported change of heart, an ABE interview was set up on 4th October, 2013. The very next day, the 1st October, there was a meeting with C at the local authority office with the foster carer present. This said to have followed a text sent by C to SW. Most regrettably, what took place and what was said at that meeting at the local authority office is not known to the court. There are no records whatsoever.[253]On the 2nd October there was yet another meeting. The reference in the local authority papers reads as follows:
“SW says what C had said on 2nd October 2013. C has begun to share a great deal of information both relating to sexual abuse and the physical abuse by her mother and father.”
Shockingly, but all too believably, there is a total absence of any other notes or records of what was said at this meeting.[254]At some stage just before 4th October, there were, it seems, one, two or three further meetings, this time involving C, SW, SWA ‘Y’ and Miss G. (These self-evidently do not include the meeting on the 2nd October.) I refer to the statement of Miss G:
“Before her ABE in October 2013 we, namely myself, SWA ‘Y’, SW and C had two meetings. The purpose of the meetings was to establish if C knew the names of various parts of her body. When asked if she knew the names of parts of her body she would just point and would not say anything. C was really nervous about attending for her ABE interview and we just wanted to make her feel more comfortable about this. At that meeting we did not suggest any names for body parts for her. We were just trying to make her feel more comfortable. It was not along meeting, about half an hour. When it was clear that she did not want to answer it was not pursued.” “After these meetings myself and Miss Z asked C if it would be easier if she wrote down what she wanted to say. She would not answer immediately but she came later and informed me that she would and that she was, ‘Ready to say’.”
[255]Later in her evidence Miss G suggested that these meetings in fact came later, and this may well be the case. If it was, then the meetings unquestionably took place before the January 2014 ABE interviews.[256]It seems that there was even another conversation on the 4th October, quite apart from apart from the ABE interview itself. Miss G noted:
“C had stated to me that her father had touched her. She said this before she went for her ABE interview. After she started the statement he had touched her, when she was asked where or how she was not able to say. She would just not answer.”
[257]Thus in the five days alone before the ABE interview on the 4th October, C was interviewed/questioned on the 30th September, the 1st, 2nd, 4th October, as well as on two unknown dates. This makes a total of four times at the very least (if one excludes the body-parts interviews) – an astonishing, indeed incredible number but, alas, true. And of course, these came on top of other meetings in July and August.

The ABE interview of the 4th October 2013

[258]This was watched twice by the court. It took place on 4th October 2013 when, as I have already said, C was a teenager, but, adopting the findings of HHJ Davies, functioning at the age of 6 or seven years. She was interviewed by PO, whose role I shall examine more closely when I deal with the January, 2014 ABE interviews. The social worker, SWA ‘Y’, was present. I am satisfied that the transcript provided an accurate record of what she said. Despite the reason given for holding the interview, namely that C wanted to talk, and despite the fact that C talked about her father ‘touching her early on in the interview, the court’s strong impression is that C was, in fact, very reluctant to speak about abuse at all. She was palpably distressed. (There are no records of the pre-interview discussions.) There were very long pauses before answers.[259]As for actual allegations, these were as follows: when she was 6 or 7 years old, when she was wearing her school uniform, her father came upstairs where she was doing her homework. She said that she was touched everywhere. On more than one occasion she said that she did not wish to name the part of the body touched by her father. After leading by the Detective Constable, she said she was touched at the front. Later, she said that her father touched her under her clothing everywhere. She was asked by the Officer, ‘Everywhere? So… was it…whereabouts…at the front was it? Or whereabouts in the front?’ C then said that it was “on the part for having babies”. She was then praised by the Officer, “Ok, that’s really good”. The leading questions about ‘the front’ were also followed later by “breast” being mentioned by C. (Until then there had been no allegation of touching the breast.)[260]On another occasion when she was 10 years old she was playing on B’s X Box when the father came upstairs. He was angry after a quarrel with the mother who had gone out for the night. He threw her X Box remote control onto the floor. Her distress became more acute and she said after some 22 minutes of the interview, “I don’t want to do this any more, I want to go home”.[261]Of the four ABE interviews the Local Authority says were given by C, the Local Authority seeks to rely on this interview alone. Mr. Geekie says that this interview is probative of the sexual allegations against the father. Of course, the Court must always take seriously what is said by a child – or indeed any other vulnerable witness. C is entitled to that. The interview is of further importance in that it is the first occasion on which the Court can be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that C actually made sexual abuse allegations.[262]The court must take into account the following factors when deciding what weight to place on what C said in this interview: a) C has not been cross-examined about her allegations, and quite rightly not. (The local authority took all appropriate measures to see whether she could give evidence through an intermediary, but her health, and the fact that she believes the previous sexual abuse allegations still stand, precluded this.) But this does mean that her evidence has never been tested. This must have an impact on the weight that can be placed upon it. b) There is no record of the introductory conversations (such as the standard ‘truth and lies’ talk, which must have taken place immediately before the interview. c) C was a reluctant and unhappy interviewee, although she did not cry or ask to terminate the interview until the end, when her request was immediately granted. d) She was subjected to leading and closed questions and leading gestures in interview. e) She was praised by the officer. f) Furthermore, the interview cannot be looked at in isolation. It took place after a fact finding in front of HHJ Davies where sexual abuse allegations were found proved. She had been told of the results of that hearing. She believed that a judge was satisfied that she had been sexually abused. g) C had been repeatedly over-questioned and over-interviewed in the five days immediately before the interview. Body-parts may even have been discussed. h) Those five days followed ten months during which she had already been interviewed and questioned about sexual abuse. i) C, who was shy and reluctant to meet strangers, had never alleged sexual abuse to those with whom she was closest and trusted most – her teachers and her foster-carer.[263]Accordingly the court cannot rely on the evidence of the October interview. It is thoroughly contaminated by all that happened before.

Aftermath of the 4th October interview

[264]C was acutely distressed after the interview. Enroute to seeing A she said that she wanted to die.[265]Both social workers were exceedingly disappointed and frustrated that A had not, in their parlance, “disclosed”. Both repeatedly referred to this interview as the “failed interview” as if a successful ABE interview must perforce involve the making of allegations. The Court is satisfied that C was fully aware of their reactions. Despite C’s obvious reluctance to make allegations, they would not let matters rest. Just 72 hours later, on the 7th October, according to the foster-carer, SW and CAMHS decided that C should be placed as an inpatient in a psychiatric unit at a hospital.[266]This seems in retrospect an extraordinary episode. The foster carer took C to a hospital. C was very reluctant to go; it took 45 minutes just to get her out of the car when they arrived. They arrived about 5:30 in the late afternoon. They were put in a room and they did not get to see a doctor until midnight. According to the hospital notes, “She is reported to be the victim of severe emotional, physical and sexual abuse with a family member”. The foster carer said the information in that note did not come from herself; it could have come from CAMHS. C did not want to stay at the hospital. The foster carer had known she would not as she was not comfortable with new places and with strangers. Even before they set out to the hospital, she had thought it was not a good idea. In view of the strength of C’s opposition, the admissions doctor refused to admit her, and in the small hours of the 8th October, the foster care took C home.[267]C must have been utterly terrified by this event. For a fragile child to be taken to a strange place to be seen by Doctors at midnight, to be told that she would have to stay there is in itself abusive and for what reason? The Court still has little idea as to why it was really thought necessary for C to be taken to the Hospital, to be left there as an inpatient if indeed she was, as the Court had been told by the Local Authority, thriving in foster care. True, she may have said she wanted to die, but she had been saying that or writing that sporadically for more than a year. What was the role of CAMHS?

Telling C the result of the Court of Appeal’s decision

[268]On the 24th October 2013 the Court of Appeal set aside the findings of sexual abuse, giving full reasons on 6th November. At the commencement of this hearing in September so far as the Court and all the parties were concerned there was no dispute that C had never been told of this. At directions hearings in 2014 C’s Guardian told the Court that she was unaware. Indeed, as I have noted, one of the reasons why the local authority decided not to call C to give evidence was that she was unaware of the appellate court’s decision and thus that the current proceedings concerned her in any way.[269]It therefore came as a considerable surprise to all in court when in oral evidence SW asserted that there had been a conversation when C was told of the Court of Appeal’s decision. Present was SWA ‘Y’, the foster carer and herself. When it was pointed out that there was no record in any note or narrative of this, she insisted she was sure that this had happened. The conversation had taken place shortly after the 24th October, 2013. It was done lightly so as not to distress the child but even so C was exceptionally distressed when she was told. The meeting was at the foster carer’s home, “I strongly suggest it was there in the kitchen”. It was probably she, SW who told the child. She then changed her evidence and said, “I don’t remember C’s reactions”. After telling C she did not set up any extra watch on her at the foster carer’s home, she said, nor did she tell the foster carer to be especially alert because there was an on-going watch by them on her in any event. However she said, “Of course, the school was told”. She did not recall whether she informed the school by telephone, email or letter but said, “I definitely did inform them”. She said she told CAMHS as well although CAMHS tends not to take notes. She did not think she had told the general practitioner. As she gave this part of her evidence her demeanour was distinctly truculent and indeed hostile.[270]All parties agree that C to this day has never been told of the appellate Court’s decision.

Preparing C for further ABE interviews

[271]The foster carer, by her own admission, spoke to C about body parts. SW and SWA ‘Y’ had started discussing with her C’s need to find words for body parts. Both Social Workers knew that she was having these discussions, and believed that PO also knew that she was. None of those present saw anything wrong with these discussions, for each had convinced herself that C was not being pressured to do something for which she was not ready. She was unconvincingly vague, the court finds, in her assertion that these conversations took place only every 6 to 8 weeks. The court is satisfied that they happened much more frequently.[272]SW had ‘discussions’ with C in late October. “She wanted to get it out and tell people what happened to her but she could not”. On another occasion C is reported to have said, “I didn’t say it all, I want to say everything”.[273]On 11th November 2013, following C’s first ABE interview the Police officially closed their investigation into C’s allegations. The note of this reads, “Case closed. Victim advised she can come forward when ready”. SWA ‘Y’ in oral evidence even denied that the Police case had been closed on 11th November 2013. She was surprised to hear this as, according to her, PO, rather than agreeing to close the case had definitely continued to work on the case. SWA ‘Y’ had believed it all the time to be an ongoing investigation. As for SW, she told the court, and the court accepts, that she, SWA ‘Y’, the Police and the foster carer all told C to come forward when she was ready.

Father’s birthday card

[274]During the fourth week of hearing the evidence the local authority produced a birthday card with an appropriately affectionate message sent by the father via the local authority for C’s birthday. The local authority through Mr. Geekie was profuse in its apologies that the card, although perfectly appropriate, had not been passed on by the local authority to C. Two matters flow from this. First, C embarked on her January interviews in the mistaken belief that, either her father had forgotten her birthday, or else he had not bothered to send her a card. Secondly, the local authority’s omission typifies the way it treated the father throughout.

Further interviews of C in December 2013

[275]C was interviewed on three successive days about sexual abuse. The dates are 11th 12th 13th December. She was also questioned about sexual abuse on 16th December 2013.[276]On 11th December, looking at the notes of the strategy discussion entered on the system by Dawn Smith, SW’s manager, it is clear that C was interviewed at school by SW. The note reads as follows:
“C disclosed again but in more detail to SW at school that she was raped by her father, B and V. C clearly identified what rape meant. C said that S and J had taken her to the home of V. She was supposed to be staying in the spare room. She didn’t want to as V was looking at her funny. So she then slept in the same room as J and S. She said she was scared of V and she did not want to go to sleep. S and J remained in the room together on a bed. C said she thought they were asleep. C then said that V came into the room and got into her bed (please see detailed write up on …). She said that he did the same as dad and B. V raped her. C stated that she felt they had won and requested that SW tells them. She said that she thought J and S were asleep during the rape….. She also confirmed it happening to all of them. She named A, P and D, she didn’t know about K. She confirmed sexual abuse and that he did it to all of them. She was highly distressed so the identity of the ‘he’ was not clear. C said he has not told SW all of it and she has more to tell but can’t find the words.”
[277]The court notes that, in that reported allegation by the child, the rape by V is said to have taken place in the room where S and J were also present.[278]There was then a further interview with C on 12th December 2013:
‘C was nervous and scared about what was going on, according to Miss G. She and Miss Z were comforting her on that day, saying that no one was judging her. C said she was very scared about telling things and had been told that she could talk to them if she wished to say anything. They took her to the library and asked what she wanted to say. She then froze again and did not say anything for 15 minutes and then wrote down the word, “sex”. The picture painted is as an extraordinary one: C sitting in the school library, the two doubtless expectant teachers in utter silence for 15 minutes. 15 minutes, the court notes is, a very long time, especially for a child and especially so in silence. Astonishingly, Miss G then asked C, “Was it your dad who did this to you?” pointing, as she did so, to the word ‘sex’
. C then wrote down a second word, ‘Yes’. (The piece of paper with these two words is in the court papers.) Miss G asked this of the child because the father’s name had been mentioned before by others in relation to sexual abuse. Also, ‘she had previously messaged me that her dad had touched her’. Miss G saw nothing wrong with the question nor considered it to be leading. She had never been told not to ask questions, nor, if she did, what sort of questions should or should not be asked of a child alleging abuse. She had received no training whatsoever about how to interview children.[279]Miss G went on to repeat that, despite having had no training, she had had hundreds of conversations with C and had discussed sexual abuse in these, though not in all of them. No one had ever told her not to prompt a vulnerable witness. In any event she did not feel that she had ever been prompting C. This is the way that she had spoken to C ‘in many other conversations’.[280]There was yet another long interview at the school by Miss Z on 13th December. Miss G was present. According to Miss G, she was surprised when Miss Z suddenly asked C about the involvement of V. This came rather abruptly after C had been talking of a world trip and wishing to see New York. In Miss G’s words she, “Jumped the gun”. She had never heard the child complain of V before or even mention him despite the close relationship between her and the child.[281]The note of this reads: “Myself (Miss G, the court assumes]: Can you tell us what happened? Answer: I was staying round my brother’s house. I wake up at 1 or 2 in the morning. I stayed up till then not wake up. Stay up ‘cos bad nightmares. He came into the room, you know, you know who I am, or about, yeah? Question: Can you say his name to me? Can you say his name? Answer: V Is it an Irish name? The questioner repeats her previous sentence. He came into the room? Answer: Yeah. C then spells letters in the air and on her hand, I cannot tell what these letters are. C then said, ‘‘S’ and ‘X’ I only miss one letter out’. Question: Can you say his name to me? Can you say his name? Answer: V Is it an Irish name?

The questioner repeats her previous sentence. He came into the room?

[282]Miss G, who was present, also asked questions: Miss G: What happened before that? He got into bed, then what? Answer: ‘S’ ‘X’ I don’t like the words. Question: Any other words you can use to describe what happened? Answer: No. Question: Can you describe what happened? Describe is like explain. Answer: Do I have to? Question: We will never force you, it is all up to you. What happened next? Answer: Do I have to? It were a year ago.[283]C then went off on tangent about marriage and people changing. Miss G then recapitulated what C had said, ‘He get into the bed, what happened?’ Silence Miss Z: How did you feel? C: Worried and upset. Miss Z: What did he do? Tears well up in C’s eyes, she stares at us. She hides behind doodle paper.”[284]If the three interviews earlier that week were not enough there was yet another discussion of sexual abuse at the school by Miss Z and C on the 16th. December, 2013. According to a local authority note of 16th December, 2013, ‘C said she was staying at her brother’s house. In the early hours of the morning V came into the room, went into the bed and took off his clothes. C then wrote down on a piece of paper, “And then he made me have sex and then made noises on the table”.[285]Another local authority note we have, which is patently incomplete, and was disclosed late in the day by SW, reads as follows:
“At half three he came in. V came in. His name is V. V came in the room and he went in the bed and took off his clothes. C writes down a name and question mark on a sheet attached and he make me have sex.”

Further pre-ABE Interviews in January 2014

[286]Come the New Year, after a break for Christmas, the pre-ABE interviews of C did not let up. Why did these take place? The answer can be inferred, the court is satisfied, from Miss G’s evidence:
‘C didn’t seem to be able to say anything more about sexual abuse.’
[287]On 17th January 2014 C met with SW, PO and Miss G. The ABE interviews were explained. The file note of this reads, “PO informed C that when she is ready to complete the ABE then she can tell more about V too”. According to Miss G, body parts for discussed, but C did not want to give any names for these. ‘She didn’t want the guidance we were giving….. C was nervous and scared about what was going on. We were comforting her and saying that no-one was judging her.’ It is unclear to the court what the ‘guidance’ was, but what is clear from Miss G’s evidence, which I accept, is that the two schoolteachers were in some rehearsing the child, who was in her turn very unhappy about the prospect of giving yet another interview.[288]Miss G was also asked by SW and PO to discuss body parts herself with the child. This seems to have taken place on 18th January. This was despite the fact that she is at teaching assistant and had no ABE training or any tuition about how to ask a child questions involving serious and sensitive allegations. She did as she was told. According to Miss G, C had received sex education that year in her class, and had used four letter words as far back as 2012.[289]On 21st January there were further discussions about the subject on the way back from school. According to the foster carer, C told her, “The main reason stopping her doing the ABE was that she did not know the words to use for the intimate parts of her and other people’s bodies.’[290]Later on that day there was another major meeting with C at the foster home. According to the statement of the foster carer: “SWA ‘Y’ and I spoke with C about the subject of helping her with names for body parts and finding names for them that she was comfortable with. C said that she was ready. SWA ‘Y’ then left and C and I sat down at the table and spoke. I explained to C that the body part name thing was not going to go away and that I could help her. I asked if she wanted to do this and she said yes. I was asked if she was sure and she replied, yes. She said, ‘Let’s do it’. We went into the front room and we sat down. I wrote down the words for body parts one at a time and showed the word to her and said to her to tell me a word for that body part that she would feel comfortable saying when talking to the social worker or police or whoever. ‘[291]The foster care then described how she wrote down adult words for various seven intimate body parts, and in each case the child C said slang names for them.[292]Then on 22nd January there were two further meetings. First, SW, together with SWA ‘Y’ and Miss G, met C at the school. C apparently said she wished to do her ABE interview that day. When asked whether it was appropriate for her, SWA ‘Y’ and Miss G to speak to C the day before an ABE interview, SW seemed reluctant to answer saying that she could not remember the context of the meeting. She generally made a number of excuses for its taking place. According to Miss G, when questioned by SW or herself, C gave slang names for various body parts including, “The place where babies come from”. Although Miss G, at one stage, asserted that at this interview C was not questioned about the allegations, she later said that the group had indeed talked to her about her father and the allegations of hitting and touching. Despite this, no one at this interview took any notes of what happened or what was said during the meeting. Miss G seemed utterly oblivious to any possible concerns about a vulnerable child with learning difficulties meeting with four people, three of whom with powerful personalities, and another of whom was a teaching assistant with whom she had a fixation.[293]Unbelievably, there was a further formal pre-ABE interview meeting on 22nd January. SW and SWA ‘Y’ were there again but not Miss G this time. She said she was not asked to attend and she said she could not think why another meeting would have been needed to get names for body parts as C had already given these. Miss G said that she had never been made aware that the child had also been shown dolls and pictures on a previous occasion. The court also notes that at this point, namely January 2014, one of the foster carer’s notes records that C knew the slang for the body parts.

Background of the January ABE interviews

[294]SW. She was asked how it was that the January ABE interviews came about. She said that all the Defence Counsel and Counsel for the Guardian were saying at Court that the Local Authority and the Police should get ABE interviews, “they heaped pressure on us about this. SWA ‘Y’ and I were fending off the pressure from the Barristers”. She said the Local Authority felt it was not right to do more ABE interviews but the Court itself pressurised for an ABE interview. She then retracted this last assertion. (I make it clear that never at any stage has this tribunal, which only became seized of the case after January ABE interviews, ever advised the Local Authority to arrange an ABE interview. Further there is nothing anywhere to suggest that HHJ Davies so advised).[295]Having blamed the defence counsel, counsel for the guardian and the court, she now blamed Ms. Manassi, the local authority lawyer. “She drove us to get an ABE interview”. She rejected wholeheartedly the suggestion that there was a tidal wave to persuade the child to make allegations. She then went on the blame the court again, “The fact is that it didn’t suit the court that we didn’t have an ABE interview. That’s the feeling I got” It seems as if she was blaming the Court of Appeal for the ABE interviews.[296]She believed that the child attended between 4 and 6 CAMHS sessions, or maybe fewer, in the time leading up to the January interviews. The purpose of the CAMHS, she said, was for a counsellor to speak to C to give her a non-pressured opportunity to talk freely about things. Interestingly, a note from CAMHS reads “Our views on the allegations of abuse? Cannot comment. C has never spoken of it, aware of something bad in her head”. SW claimed to be aware by the time the January interviews took place that C had in fact been using her own words for body parts. Instantly she blamed the Court. The first she knew about that was in Court today. If the Court was holding this information back she would want to know why.[297]Miss G was present at ABE interviews on the 23rd and 28th January 2014. She had been asked to attend the interviews as a witness supporter and to be able to say to the child ‘that she was doing well’. The court draws a logical inference that she was there to praise the child. She said that although PO, IO ‘W’, and SW all knew that she had been the alleged recipient of allegations about V, it was never suggested that she should not be present at these interviews.[298]PO. She said that when she carried out her investigation and conducted the ABE interview she had no knowledge of the following: a) That the school had reported C had a fixation with Miss G and there were a number of Facebook entries which needed to be addressed. b) That C had alleged that both her life and Miss G’s life were in danger. c) That anyone had interviewed C. If she had known that an unqualified teacher was having dozens if not hundreds of discussions/interviews with C she would have done something about it. She would have wanted to know what was going on. A lot of interviews could corrupt the formal ABE interviews which followed. She would have been expected to have been told about this by SW because she then might have said, “Enough is enough. If she had known that C had written sex and Miss G had then pointed to the word and asked, “Was this your dad” she would have been horrified. But she immediately qualified this by saying “It was not acceptable. However I can see why she would do that. C would expect that she would draw something and would then ask you to ask questions.”[299]Nor had PO, according to her evidence, any idea that the foster mother was carrying out interviews. She did not know that C had been saying that her family was beating her up every day but that the school had seen no marks on her. She did not know that C already knew the standard playground slang for body parts. She was told by professionals that C did not know the words for body parts. She did know that C had been having therapy at CAMHS but not that she had never alleged sexual abuse at CAMHS. She agreed that therapy and ABE interviews do not mix. She agreed that the police prevent corruption and witnesses by keeping them apart. She said it was important not to put T and C together for an afternoon because they could put their heads together. She had no idea that in March C and T had been put together by SW. If this happened this was bad practice.[300]The court accepts that PO was probably unaware of all that had happened before she became involved in July 2014. She had never expected people to nag C about sexual abuse virtually on a daily basis. She had no idea that dolls and pictures were shown to C. She was not aware of being telephoned about this by SWA ‘Y’. She would never have said that dolls could be used prior and during ABE interviews. Indeed in January when she carried out the ABE interviews she was not aware that dolls and pictures had ever been used with C. In any event, a social work assistant like SWA ‘Y’ should not be using dolls and pictures. Had she known of all these matters then her approach to the ABE interviews would have been affected.[301]As to the views of other professionals, she said that SW was utterly convinced that the girls had been abused. As far as she was concerned the only problem was that C did not have the words for body parts.

How many ABE interviews were there in January 2014?

[302]SW’s initial evidence was that there were six ABE interviews of C in all. One was on 4th October when “C said nothing” and another five in January 2014. When she returned to complete her evidence a few days later, she disclosed further documentation she said she had found at home, as well as her mobile phone she brought to court her 2014 diary and some loose sheets of paper she said she had found in the 2013 diary. She had not brought her 2013 diary with her to court as she did not think it was necessary.[303]It was interesting that some of the loose pages of typed notes do not appear in or are cross-referenced to the documents previously disclosed by the local authority. She was asked how she had typed these notes. She said she would ‘audibly’ type notes on the local authority’s Care First system and sometimes this would go down and so she would type the notes on a standard word document format and transfer them later onto the system. Many times she was asked by the local authority to type up her documents on her own computer. She complained about being required to do this by the local authority to their legal department. When she did type documents at home, she never saved them. She would scan them and then ask someone else to scan them into the system back in the office. She would have expected all the loose pages found by her to be on the local authority’s Care First system. She typed up the notes of every substantial meeting with C and would expect them all to be on the system. She did not know why these notes were not on the system.[304]She referred to her 2014 diary and to a number of entries in it. These contain the words, “C ABE on…” and then five dates …’ 23rd 27th, 28th, 29th and 31st January’. There are question marks next to the 27th, 28th and 29th January. She explained that the question marks were because the social workers were not sure whether C wanted to go through with the interviews. She still believed that C had done five ABE interviews in January, and six in all if the October ABE interview was counted, for that was what her records showed. She said, “My memory was that it went on for several days in January… I am ‘sure’ it was six interviews in all”. For the avoidance of doubt, there were no times when they took C to a police station and an interview did not take place.[305]She later was referred in due course to her a file note of 12th December, 2013 which reads as follows, “C has now completed five ABE interviews, disclosed rape by father and V. She has also said she has been pregnant twice”. The date of 12th December 2013 does not make sense in the context of the timescale, the court notes. As to the substance of the note, SW commented that the reference here to five ABE interviews, “accords with my recollection. I recall five that week”. She then changed her evidence, something she did very frequently whenever she was in the witness box, saying that there had been, in fact, one attempted ABE interview that week in January and one aborted ABE interview. Added to those ABE interviews for which we have recordings and transcripts, that made six ABE interviews in all.[306]It shows the extraordinary nature of this case that the court has had to consider whether C was ABE interviewed three or five times in January 2014. The evidence of the police officers, SWA ‘Y’ and Miss G collectively suggest that were but three. SW believes there were five. I prefer their collective memory. Accordingly I find that there were four ABE interviews only.

Second ABE Interview - 23rd January 2014

[307]This interview was in four parts, and was conducted by PO.[308]Part one. Unfortunately the first part of the interview was not recorded. It seems there was a fault with the recording machine. This is highly unsatisfactory, for the court is left wholly unable to see and hear the child at the beginning of the interview, nor to understand precisely how the interview began. All we have are some brief officer’s notes of what took place. According to the notes the interview started at 9:32. There were no notes of any introductory talks, or a chat soliciting what the child knew about truth and lies or any such preliminary matters. The notes read as follows:
“When asked at the station why at the station today (sic), she said. ‘I got raped when I was 6. Rape is when someone makes you have sex and causes to have a baby’. Happened in a bedroom at house when no one else present.”
[309]The child then gave unusually detailed recollections for an event which happened seven years before the interview when she would have been no more than 6 years old. According to the notes, C was on the floor doing maths homework. She was wearing pyjamas. The father penetrated her ‘where babies came from’. It lasted two hours. She knew it lasted two hours because she did maths homework at about 4 p.m. and she had a watch. She looked at it when the rape finished and saw that it was two hours later. The rape occupied the whole of the two hours. The officer asked, “Did sperm come out on that day?” There was no answer. The child then said that she had told no one about the incident afterwards.[310]Would this child with learning difficulties have had maths homework at the age of six? Would she have really timed the incident? Would it have lasted two hours? I find these details to be inherently improbable.[311]Part two. There was then a short break between 9:50 and 10:16 a.m., when the interview resumed. The only note of what happened during this part of the interview is to the effect that the child said she did not know how she was penetrated. Then everyone realised that the recording system had broken down, and a second break was taken.[312]Part three. From now on the court has had the benefit of a video recording and a transcript. The value however of the recording was, at times, reduced by the child’s face being obscured by a screen within the screen. It is hoped that officers conducting ABE interviews do ensure that the child’s face is not obscured for all or part of any interview. It is very important that those watching can see the child’s face; that, after all, is the whole point of a video recording.[313]During this part of the interview there were long pauses by the child. What she said came out very slowly. She started by talking of incidents which did not involve any mention of sexual abuse. When she was 6 years old she felt upset when the father was in the bedroom. She was also upset on another occasion when she was 7 years old. She was in B’s room playing on the X-Box or PlayStation. Her father came in and sat on the bottom bunk bed for an hour. He started beating her up. The father then hit her with flip-flops which were like hard slippers. This left marks on her arm and chest. He always left marks on her.[314]There was another incident about a year earlier. Her parents were angry with her. The social worker had visited the home in connection with allegations that she had been hit or beaten up. An allegation which had something to do with her knee. She said the father had hit her on the chest, side and arms leaving bruises on all these parts of the body. She also said the mother and father had arguments and would throw things at each other, and then take it out on the children, especially her. The mother had also hit her before.[315]Up until now, the child had not referred in the recorded part of the interview to sexual abuse in any way. PO asked:
“And the sexual things that happened to you, is there any other times when something sexuals (sic) happened to you with your dad that you want to tell me about? Can you remember the age that you were? Let’s work through your ages, so we’ve got you at 6… where you had been raped by your dad.”
[316]I should make it clear that, according to the brief notes, there had been talk of sexual matters during the earlier, unrecorded part of the interview.[317]C was very reluctant to talk, although on occasions she smiled when sexual abuse was not being discussed. Several leading questions followed. The interviewer herself then made a reference to “Dad” and “private parts”. PO asked at one stage, “Did your dad do anything else sexual to you?” and then, “Can you remember the last time something sexual happened to you?” C replied that the last time anything sexual had happened to her was about a year earlier. It had happened with three different people. C said that her father had come in and, “Did kind of the same things as when I was 6 and then beat me up”. When asked what he had done C replied, “I don’t want to say”. She then said, “He raped me. He took my jogging bottoms and t-shirt off”.[318]She was reluctant to describe the room where this happened and resorted to distraction techniques, going through the officer’s handbag, opening her wallet and talking about the currency notes inside. The officer then asked who was on the bed, who was lying down, and who was sitting, and the child asked for a break.[319]The fourth and final part of the interview: On 23rd January it commenced after yet another break. An interviewing officer, IO ‘W’, now took over the questioning. It is obvious that the allegations had been discussed during the break in the interview because , IO ‘W’ restarted the interview by referring immediately to what C had said outside the interview room:
“During the break obviously you’ve had time just to try and get yourself together a little bit and where we are going to now I believe is you want to talk to me about other people (sic).”
[320]C then made allegations against her brother, B. She was subjected – quite flagrantly in the court’s view - to leading questions by the interviewer. Earlier on came, “How many times have you had uncomfortable experiences with B?” to which the reply was, “A couple of times, like with my father”. C was then led to agree that B had raped her and beaten her and threatened her with a knife. “You said “B’s done to you a couple of times what Dad’s done. He’s beaten you and raped you, so which one of those?” asked the interviewer. C then became very unhappy. She was restless. She tried to divert the conversation again and appeared very unhappy. Eventually she went on to say that when she was 7 or 8 she had been playing on B’s PlayStation and he had been annoyed. She then made it clear that she did not want to say any more.[321]She was asked if B had cut her, and she replied, “Once”, although to the court this seemed to be in a particularly unconvincing manner. C was now bent double with her ‘hoodie’ over her head and face, which itself was against her knees. Still the leading questions continued, “Did he just threaten you with a knife?”, “When did he put the knife on you?”, “Were they one of the times he raped you?” In response to the latter question the child nodded.[322]The interviewer then – astonishingly - went on to put to the child that B had raped her when she had turned off the PlayStation. The child nodded. C then explained that she had been grabbed on the arm but did not describe a sexual encounter. She then made an unusually adult remark for someone with a functioning ability of a 6 or 7 year old, she said, “You expect your parents or your brother to be there for you, not to do these things to you”. Finally she lay back on the sofa, her hands over her eyes and refused to answer any more questions.

Events between the second and third ABE interviews

[323]According to the foster carer, on that day, SW told her in C’s presence that the latter had done very well and would do another statement about V and B. C’s foster carer said that the atmosphere ‘was lifted’ after the return home after the 23rd January ABE interview. She said, “SW, C and I were all happy because C had managed to get things off her chest”. C was aware that they were all pleased that she was on the right track. She plainly did not consider this to be inappropriate encouragement of the child.[324]The foster carer made a note for the fostering agency about the 26th January 2014. This note refers to the discussion between the foster carer and C about the allegations. Under ‘positive development’ the following words are written by the foster carer:
“She told SW and SWA ‘Y’ she was ready to disclose [This makes it clear that SW and SWA ‘Y’ would have been there on that day] what a fantastic step forward and she managed to get enough information about dad to get him arrested. A massive step forward for C.”
[325]There was then a rather mysterious quote “She is also going to disclose about B and V on 28th January 2014”.[326]SW conceded that the phraseology in the report of the foster carer of 26th January was not helpful. She herself would not have written, “Fantastic step forward” nor the comment about managing to get enough information. This was not sensitive. She agreed that the tone of the report was gloating and triumphalist but the foster carer had lived with C so from her perspective this was a positive step forward. Any impression that the words suggests that people were, “out to get the father” was not justified.

Third ABE interview - 28th January 2014

[327]The interviewing officer was IO ‘W’ once more. This interview lasted 75 minutes. Also present in the next-door room were PO, SW, SWA ‘Y’, and Miss G a teaching assistant at C’s school.[328]The interviewer started the interview by telling C that she had said before that B had raped her a few times, and then asked her to break this down into individual incidents. From the start the child was very reluctant to talk, “What - now?” she asked when requested to give details. By her body language she indicated she was unhappy, so much so that the interviewer asked, “What’s the problem?” This reluctance to talk was displayed throughout the interview. The child was restless, squirming at times. She yawned. She was clearly unhappy about the process. She used distraction techniques throughout to lead the conversation away from issues of sexual abuse.[329]When dealing with B she used the following distraction techniques: a) She asked what the ABE sign outside the door meant. b) She started a conversation about the interviewer’s hair, asking if it was dyed. c) She started asking the officer about the role of the television cameras. d) She questioned the interviewer about her eyebrows and the officer told her to stop. e) She said she heard coughing outside and asked who that was. f) She asked whether the people in the next-door room could hear what she was saying. g) She asked about the interviewer’s surname and if she was English and said the name sounded Irish. h) Then when questioned about V, she asked the following distracting questions: i) She made much of a cough by the officer asking if she was ill. j) C rolled up a piece of paper, put it to her eyes, and said she was a pirate. k) She asked about an item on the table and what it was for. l) She asked what the officer was writing down. m) She asked if the officer was in her thirties.[330]Twelve times in all the child used these distraction techniques to divert the questions about sexual abuse. At one stage the child asked for a break, “Am I allowed a break now?” This was refused politely, the officer saying that she wanted to finish off the topic before a break. Twice the child said to the interviewer, “You’re asking too many questions”. On one occasion the officer praised the child saying, “Cool, well done”. At one stage it appears the child darted in and out of the room; this was immediately after a break.[331]According to SWA ‘Y’, during the breaks in the interview of 28th January 2014 one, or possibly both of the interviewing officers were present. One of the police officers would have been taking notes and the other one, possibly the investigating officer, would have been outside. She said they have to take notes. Nothing about the sexual allegations was discussed during the breaks on 28th January, nonetheless she could not explain why IO ‘W’, on resuming the interview, immediately launched into, “I believe you want to talk to me about other people”.[332]When there were distractions (eg, when the recording equipment broke down, and after the ensuing break) C did smile. But throughout the interview there were long pauses - very, very long pauses - at times. The child continued to show signs of extreme distress. On two occasions she said she wished she were dead. In response to this she was told by the interviewer, “You’ve done well so far” and told that she was special. In relation to B the social worker said this, “It’s important we know what he’s done as it isn’t right”. She then went on to tell C that the people in the room next door, for example her teacher (although she did not mention any names), loved her. She said: “You’ve started to come out on the other side. You’re getting there and you’ll get stronger”.[333]As to the actual allegations of sexual abuse to which the interviewer was leading the child, sometimes the interviewer was successful, sometimes she was not. The child said that she and B had been in his bedroom playing at the PlayStation and he then turned it off. She was reluctant to say what happened next telling the interviewer that she had already said what had happened. The interviewer herself lent forward and said, “He raped you” and the child agreed.[334]Later she asked the child, “What did he use to rape you?” to which C answered, “What did he need?” Again, the question came, “What did he use”, and she answered, “There’s only one way to rape”. The interviewer then began to ask the child what she understood rape to mean. This got off to a somewhat shaky start when, bizarrely, the interviewer asked the child if she understood the meaning of the word “generic”. Unsurprisingly this went over the child’s head. C then said, perfectly straightforwardly, that rape was where what she called, “‘the worm’ went into the part of the female body where babies come from”.[335]In response to questioning about B during the course of this interview, C alleged B had raped her in the bedroom after they had been playing on the new PlayStation. He had threatened to beat her up and kill her if she told anybody. Asked why the assault had stopped, she gave two reasons: first of all, that she did not know, saying, “They all change didn’t they”. Secondly, she said it was because she had threatened to tell the police. The B allegation was elicited after the following questions were put to C by the interviewer: a) Did he ask you to have sex with him? b) He grabbed your arm? c) Did he take off your pyjamas or did you take them off? d) He put you on the bed? e) Did he rape you? f) Did he take your clothes off? g) Did he hurt you? h) Did he have a knife? i) Did he start to behave sexually towards you when you were 7 or 8? j) Did you ever see him do this to anyone else? You didn’t ever walk in and he was doing that to anyone else? k) Did he rape you on that bed? l) Were you raped more than once by B? Were you raped more than five times? As for the questions about V, this started when the interviewer asked bluntly, “Did V rape you?” The child then said it was in the house of her brother’s friends, in the bedroom there. She had been staying overnight. She was on a blow up bed. She had been to the lavatory and met V outside and he took her back to the bedroom and raped her. She did not remember whether it was on the floor or the bed because it was dark. (The court notes the lack of logic in her answer to that particular question.) After it was all over she went next door and woke up her brother.

Fourth ABE interview – 31stJanuary 2014

[336]I viewed and listened to this in court as well.[337]The leading or closed questions were of a quite remarkable frequency. They were accompanied at times, as I shall record in a moment, by long lectures. PO was the interviewer. The interview started with the child’s showing reluctance to talk about any abuse saying, “Basically what I said last time”. PO then reminded the child about their previous talk when they had talked about what happened when she was 6. She was unhappy, she was reluctant to talk. She was silent on many occasions and there were long pauses. She was squirming around on the sofa, occasionally leaning right back or to one side. Very frequently she huddled forward with her head on her knees and her hood pulled over her head and a hand in a protective position over her head.[338]She said she had hiccups. At one stage she said, “Can we talk about something else”. The child introduced and sustained a very long distracting conversation about whether detective constable wanted children or had been pregnant. She also displayed a vivid imagination when she questioned the detective constable about whether she had had a child which had died. She asked if that was why the officer did not want to have children so far.[339]Mr Geekie for the local authority stated at the end of the evidence that it was not relying, with one exception, on anything C said at the police station before, during breaks in the middle, or after the three ABE interviews.

The witnesses comments about the January 2014 ABE Interviews

[340]IO ‘W’. She is not a police officer but a civilian investigating officer with the Bedfordshire Constabulary. She said she had been ABE trained. This was a two-week course at headquarters in 2012 and then two or three updating interview training sessions since then. Although in terms of seniority and hierarchy, she clearly comes below PO, she came over to the court as possessing a strong personality, a tough personality an impression strongly reinforced by what the court has seen of her conduct during the ABE interviews with which she was involved.[341]She told the court she regarded an ABE interview as beginning the moment the child arrived at the police station and lasting to the moment the child left. She said there were no strict guidelines about taking notes of what happened outside the actual formal recorded interview, this purely depended on the officer in the case. There would usually be an unrecorded section of the formal ABE interview at the beginning when introductions were carried out and when the child was asked about his or her understanding of the difference between truth and lies. Her instructions from her police force were not to record this part of the formal interview. Later, she said there would be unrecorded “generic” conversations before interviews. She had never seen any notes of discussions with C at the police station outside the formal recorded interviews being taken.[342]She had been taught never to pressure a child or to make a child feel uncomfortable. She was told never to lead children but she said, “You can use questions in a funnelling process”. She gave an explanation of what this meant but the court was, and still remains, wholly unclear as to what her definition of funnelling actually is. According to her, C was the most difficult interviewee she had ever come across. She knew that C was having therapy at CAMHS and that if a child is having therapy the police had to be very, very careful about their interviewing. She was also aware that C had learning difficulties and it was the duty of the police to consider using an intermediary in the interview process. She said that PO had made enquiries about using an intermediary. She did not know what the child’s verbal IQ was nor that it was as low as 59 which, she agreed, was very low.[343]She did not know that C had been told that the judge had found that she had been sexually abused. She had no idea how many other interviews the child had undertaken. She was never told the child had had any other interviews at all, although she knew that C had spoken to her teachers and others. She was not aware that at the time of the interviews C already knew, and had done for some time, normal playground slang for body parts. She agreed it would be quite wrong for adults to suggest words for body parts in any case.[344]She had not been told that C’s teachers had reported that C could tell lies in certain situations. She knew that if a child had learning difficulties, extra care was needed, and that the greater the learning difficulty, the greater the risk would be of suggestibility, but she had enough adequate information to interview C. At any rate, she thought that C was “okay” in interview and did not need an intermediary.[345]She had read through all three January 2014 ABE interviews. They did not seem to her abnormal interviews. She asked about the desirability of multiple interviews and considered the police were ‘victim-led’:
“I was presented with C wanting to talk to us but it would get to the stage when she didn’t want to talk and we would stop, and then she would say she wanted to say more so we had another interview.”
[346]She said that when she had told C at one stage, “Cool, well done”, she had not meant to be encouraging her although she accepted it looked encouraging. She said, “I didn’t mean to encourage her, there was no need to encourage her”. She accepted that she had never heard any suggestion of oral sex or anal sex in the case yet had repeatedly asked the child about these. When asked why she had asked these questions, she replied, “This wasn’t an easy interview. C isn’t an easy person to interview”. When pressed, she conceded, “It’s not the best of questions,’ though with no apparent sincerity.[347]SWA ‘Y’’s only criticism of any of the interviews was that, ‘maybe one went on a bit too long’. Findings about the January ABE Interviews[348]Save with one exception, the local authority does not rely on anything said in these interviews.[349]It is submitted by Mr. Storey that C underwent literally hundreds of interviews. This is partly based on Miss G’s agreement that she had hundreds of interviews/discussions herself with C. The court is satisfied that this is, in fact, an exaggeration. The court must be cautious not to confuse spontaneous remarks made by a child or short informal chats with formal questioning. Nonetheless, doing its best, the court is satisfied that the child has had no fewer than 33 interviews about abuse with one or other social worker between 17th December 2012 and 31st January 2014. By "interviews" I mean either formal interviews or detailed question and answer discussions which went beyond the odd throwaway mark, or the odd question and reply. In addition, there appear to have been five similar discussions of a detailed nature with school teachers, seven with a foster carer and, of course, with Dr. van Rooyen and one with PO. On top of this, there were four ABE interviews. This makes, if the court's mathematics is correct, an alarming total of 51. 12 of them were conducted wholly by untrained interlocutors in the form of the foster carer and the school teachers, and the rest were professionals whose ability to follow guidelines seems to have been non-existent. In addition, there can be no doubt that there were many, many other informal unreported conversations at school, in the foster home and when social workers brought C to and from school, which happened ‘99 per cent of the time’.[350]Furthermore, the court’s criticism is directed not only to those who conducted the interviews, but to those who sat outside and saw and listened to what happened: the social workers and teachers in the room next door. As professionals working in the field of childcare, they should have intervened to stop the 28th and 31st January interviews. They did not.[351]Quite apart from the content of the interviews which were recorded, it is thoroughly reprehensible what was said before, during breaks and after the recorded parts was either inadequately noted, or not noted at all. The court is wholly satisfied that relevant matters were discussed at the police station at these times. All the professionals seemed to have operated on the false premise that what was said outside the interview room did not count.

Conceptions, pregnancies, two babies and instructions not to take notes

[352]During the course of the hearing, some important documents were unearthed. The first was a handwritten note made by SWA ‘Y’ of the 31st January 2014 ABE interview. At the bottom of this appear three lines, “Jack – missed one period. Rose – missed two periods. Given morning after pill not by mum or dad, wouldn’t say by whom.” SWA ‘Y’s handwritten notes were, of course, only brought to court during the hearing. This note, which contains a summary of other matters said in the formal interview, has written across the top, the words, “Not typed, advised by police”. It was then noticed that identical words appear at the top of her handwritten notes of the 28th January.[353]Next, together in the box containing SWA ‘Y’s notes which was brought to court during the hearing, were three loose sheets of paper. Two show drawings made by C. In each of the drawings, the baby wears a nappy and has a dummy in its mouth. The first drawing has the name Rose next to it and then next to the drawing the words, “a baby. I love you a lot. I miss you xxx”. The second drawing of a baby has the name Jack beside it as well as the other words I have just mentioned and the kisses too. Accompanying these two drawings is a third sheet of writing paper with the words, “I miss you babies a lot. I love you babies so much”. Nine kisses then follow.[354]Thirdly, the court was shown a file note of SW dated the 12th December 2013 which reads: “C has now completed five ABE interviews, disclosed rape by father and V. She has also said she has been pregnant twice”. (The date of 12th December 2013 does not make sense in the context of the timescales, the court notes.)[355]Until the discovery of these notes, neither the local authority nor the police, nor the foster career, had ever made any mention of pregnancies or related matters. These issues thus came as a considerable surprise to all counsel, not to mention the court. Inevitably, the relevant witnesses had to be recalled.[356]According to PO, she and IO ‘W’ were with C at the end of the 31st January ABE interview while the tapes were being sorted out next door. C started drawing the two pictures of babies. In relation to the first drawing, when asked who she was drawing, C had pointed to herself. She said nothing when asked who the baby was in the second drawing. PO than asked whether C wanted to tell her anything about the babies, and she said they were Rose and Jack, but would not say who they were. She then started talking about ‘two days’ and ‘three days’, PO did not know what she was talking about. She asked C to give her the drawings, but C refused at first. C then obliterated one word or phrase. (The court has examined the drawing. The word or phrase is still indecipherable.) PO felt she was ‘invading C’s personal space’.[357]According to IO ‘W’:
“We asked her a few questions about these drawings. C wouldn’t tell us a great deal about the babies but she said the babies were her babies.”
Later, she said she did not recall C’s actually saying that these were her babies. But she deduced from C’s gestures, and her placing her hands on her body when she was talking about the drawings, that she was referring to her own babies.[358]According to PO, as she was leaving, SW came in and said that C had just given her the drawings. PO responded by saying that she could not put C through another interview. SW gave her the pages, but she gave them back saying she could use them for an investigation. In hindsight, she felt she should have noted the drawings episode. She had never told the social workers not to write up any notes they had taken.[359]SWA ‘Y’ believed that the notes referred to a conversation during a break in the interview on the 31st January, rather than, as she had said in a statement filed earlier that same day, at the conclusion of the ABE interview. The episode followed directly after the questioning by C of the officer in the ABE after a break about losing a child in pregnancy. The officer conducting the interview had come in and told the others what C had said. SWA ‘Y’ had written down word for word what she was told as the officer spoke. SW also believed that this had all occurred in a break rather than at the conclusion of the interview.[360]According to SW, she was shocked when she was shown the drawings at the very end of the interview. As for SWA ‘Y’ she claimed that she had never seen these until the day before she gave evidence. She had not seen them at the police station, or back at the office. She was adamant that even though they had been found in the local authority office near the cardboard box containing her notebooks, she had never seen the drawings until the day before. This seems unbelievable, not least in view of the fact that as SWA ‘Y’ told the court, pregnancies and related topics had clearly been discussed with C and among professionals on several occasions after the 31st. January interview. SWA ‘Y’ herself said that C made lots of references to babies she had lost after the interview. C told her the names ‘Rose’ and ‘Jack’. She took it that C had, “miscarried two babies” and said, “This was from the information relayed to me”. Importantly, she then added, “but I knew this didn’t tie up with the timescales. We had her medical records, we knew there was no reference to that”. She said she was never shown a further note at the school dated 3rd February 2014, “I have two baby but they have die”.[361]She was asked about a number of references to the pregnancies which appear in the local authority papers. The first is a paragraph in the first local authority care record headed “brief summary of ABE interview” which is signed off on 31st January 2014 which reads inter alia, “he has also disclosed that she has been pregnant twice. This evidence is incomplete as C was unable to give further information at this point”. She said she did not fill in this form herself; it had to be signed off by her manager, Dawn Smith. The same document records later, “The issue of the pregnancies will require further understanding”. (Court’s italics.) SWA ‘Y’ repeated that her understanding from the information given to her was that C was alleging that she had had two pregnancies.[362]Referring to another recently disclosed note in her own handwriting, she confirmed that she had telephoned Eleanor Liddy, the CAMHS therapist, to tell her about what C had said about the babies. The note actually refers to, “C in ABE – pregnancies”.[363]In another document, a request for resources for foster placements which is also undated, but clearly created after 31st January 2014, the following appears:
“C has alleged that she has had two pregnancies aged 10 and 11 and she was given the morning after pill”. (The court notes, with growing exasperation by this stage, this is just another of many important documents in the case which are undated. This suggests carelessness if not negligence on the part of the local authority.) SWA ‘Y’ agreed that she had typed this entry. She could not recall whether she was told about the ages of 10 and 11 on 31st January. She did have a couple of conversations with PO after 31st January, but in neither did they discuss pregnancies. Nor did she discuss the pregnancies with C again, although the school note on 4th February C was writing about losing babies. She then changed her evidence, “I talked to C about the pregnancies after 31st January”
. She said she could not find the notes about this. They were neither in her cardboard box nor in the local authority’s system. “I don’t know why there were no notes of this” she said. In this talk C had spoken of Jack and Rose. She knew that these two were the names of the lost babies. C had also said she had an on-off boyfriend who wanted to have a baby.[364]A curious aspect of the pregnancy allegations is why the police kept no records of it whatsoever. IO ‘W’ agreed that records of pregnancies (at the age of 10 and 11) of concealed births or the morning-after pill constituted a very important set of allegations. It was put to her that the allegations were either very serious or very ludicrous to which she replied, “I agree. It needs investigating”. She accepted that it would have been reasonable to keep a note of such important allegations but then qualified this by saying, “But this wasn’t said in an ABE interview”. Then she contradicted what she said at the start of her evidence, namely, that ABE interviews lasted between the arrival of the child at the police station and the child’s departure from the police station, by saying she would not have made a note of this allegation about babies as it was a private discussion. She was not sure whether that was a conscious decision by the police or the local authority to take the matter of the pregnancies no further. She had no knowledge of such discussions. She agreed that the issues of the pregnancies seemed to have disappeared into the ether.

Findings about the 31st January pregnancy allegations

[365]It is incomprehensible to the court that the local authority, having conceded that no reliance should be placed on what was said by C during the three January ABE interviews, in the talks before it, in breaks or afterwards, should seek to rely on one short interchange about pregnancies, which took place during or immediately after the 31st January interview. How can a few words only, during or at the end of one of them, be exempted? It seems to the court illogical and perverse.[366]The evidence about this episode is far from complete. Nonetheless, the court is satisfied that either during a break or at the end of the 31st January ABE interview, C made drawings and said things which led the police and the social workers to believe that she was alleging that she had been pregnant twice when she was much younger, and had either born two babies or lost them for one reason or another. Their names were Jack and Rose. She had also been given the morning-after pill. We do not know precisely what C said because the note-taking was hopelessly inadequate. The allegations were and have been taken seriously, for allegations that C conceived twice were added to the schedule of findings to be sought during the currency of the present hearing. Yet these allegations seemed, as was put to IO ‘W’, to have disappeared into the ether until they were unearthed late in the day.[367]These allegations were very, very serious. So why was it that the first the court and the parties knew of this issue was during the hearing? Why did no social worker or police officer ever mention it? Why does it appear in no statements? The answer, regrettably, must be, not because the allegations were made outside a formal ABE interview, but because the local authority and the police realised only too well that they were ludicrous. They simply could not be true. They did not fit in with C’s medical records or the age when she attained puberty.

Allegations against B

[368]B has a specific learning disability in terms of understanding verbal information, particularly if such information is complex. The report assessing B said professionals working with him should use as simple a language as possible, preferably only using one concept per question or statement. It was important to repeat information frequently and test B’s” understanding of information given verbally. For example, whenever a new task was required to be taught, this should be taught through demonstration rather than verbal description. If necessary, simplifying the language to ensure that he understood. I was wholly satisfied that B does have a specific learning disability.[369]The court first viewed the ABE interview of B. It lasted 29 minutes and took place on 24th February 2014. PO was interviewing and B was there with his solicitor. B steadfastly, and without hesitation, denied all sexual allegations. He appeared naive at times. He answered all the questions calmly, save he became distressed at one point and was on the verge of tears. He and C were close. They played football together. He had helped her with her art and they had drawn Romans and Vikings together. “She was like my little shadow. She followed me everywhere”. She looked up to him as a big brother, chatted a lot to him, and they played a lot together especially on the X-Box. They would play on the X-Box or PlayStation upstairs. The other children would use the X-Box and PlayStation too, and K would play with his toys in the same room. He had never touched C sexually, even out of curiosity.[370]A couple of years earlier, C claimed to have a boyfriend, but S never met the boyfriend or knew his name. It was apparent to the court that B has simple views about life, seeing things in black and white. He said if he discovered that anyone had abused C, he would literally go and hunt for them and kill them. He had been brought up to protect his family. He said, “My family means a lot, my family, I love my family to pieces. My family is my world”. There were no signs of guile as he said this, and he came over to the court as being entirely sincere. He said that C told him everything but never about any problems. She never told him about self-harming nor did his parents tell him about this. He said, “I never hit C in the world”. Until C as taken into care he knew nothing of the social services involvement with the family.[371]C shared a room with A and also at times various younger sisters as well. The house rule was that the boys were not allowed in the girls’ bedrooms and vice versa. This rule had been in place all his life - since he was born. His father was very strict about this. He was a strict, but never scary. They could only enter each other’s room with parental permission. At one stage,B had possessed a knife. He never used it or threatened any one with the knife. He never really carried it round. It was kept in the back garden, never in his bedroom and he had certainly never threatened C with it. A family member found the knife when he was 14, and ‘dealt’ with him.[372]He said he had never been abused himself. Had he been, the first person he would have told would have been his own parents. He had never heard C talk about sex, not even with A. Sex was not spoken about in the house. He said:
“No offence, our family ain't really interested in sex, innit. Me, all I want to do is just to hang around with my mates. Not interested in sex or going on porn, too busy with my mates.”
Although B had lost his temper a lot in the past, he was never smacked by his father, not even a tap on the bottom. And he had never seen his mother hit C.[373]C had never held any grudges against him. There had been no fallings out. He could not think why she had alleged these things against him. He came over as particularly fond of C as he spoke. He was kind about her. ”She was a truthful girl”, he said, “She never lied in her life”. It had broken his heart when sexual abuse was alleged by her. He became visibly distressed and tearful as he gave this evidence. He described how he saw C in town in early 2014. She was with SW. C had shouted out his name and come over to him. They talked for 10 to 15 minutes. She was chatting away and did not look worried to see him; in fact she was perfectly fine with him. She had changed a lot,[374]He understood what C was supposedly alleging about his father, but he did not believe a word of it. As far as T was concerned, he said T was ‘a born liar’. She had always lied since she was a child. She was lying in court too. When he heard part of the evidence, he said he had never discussed with the mother and father what T had said, not at all. He had other personal things going on in his life and he never talked at all about the case. He said, “At home I go in, I get dressed, I grab a sandwich and I go out. I stay out until 9 p.m. when I am back and go to bed”.

Findings about B

[375]The court was impressed by B's oral evidence. He was clearly on his best behaviour, doubtless restraining his less generally respectful personality, of which he occasionally gave the odd flash, but he was a credible witness. He obviously adores his sister and misses her dreadfully.[376]The evidence against him is quite extraordinarily weak. Allegations relied on are now said to have been made on only two occasions, the 30th. September 2013 and the 11th December 2013. I have already found that no allegations against him were made on the 30th September. That leaves just the 11th December, by which time everything C was saying was badly contaminated by the exceptional pressure I have recorded. Accordingly, I have no hesitation is finding that there is no evidence whatsoever upon which the court can rely on the balance of probabilities to establish the allegations against B. Indeed, I am wholly satisfied that he never sexually abused or threatened C in any way.

Allegation against V

[377]V gave an ABE interview lasting 40 minutes which I have viewed. He was questioned by investigating Officer IO ‘W’. PO was also present. He was accompanied by his solicitor. V was very different from B. He has no learning difficulties and is clearly more intelligent. He has an eye for detail and gave precise answers. He is much more sensitive than B. He answered questions rapidly, without pauses to think what he ought to say. In fact, he had a tendency to rattle on. He had obviously carefully thought through the events relevant to the allegation.[378]He robustly denied the allegation against him. He remembered one occasion when C stayed overnight, when his sister and S, were also there. He and S met up with C and the mother. S told C that they were going to get a takeaway for supper, and C wanted to stay overnight. S wanted her to stay as well. C lacked confidence at the time.[379]That night C stayed in the same room as her brother, S and J. She was on an inflatable bed. V slept in the first floor bedroom. That evening, he locked himself in his room because he wanted to be alone. He had supper in his room. He left only to go to the lavatory which was half an hour or so after supper and then he fell asleep. The next day, C stayed until the afternoon, when she walked home with his sister and S. He heard them leaving because the walls were thin. He said he had only met C once or twice before this night. As far as he was concerned, she was a perfect stranger to him. He would not even recognise her if she passed him in the street.[380]During his police interview V was clearly very aggrieved about the allegation. He said he had lost his job because of the allegation. He had cried himself to sleep for the last three nights because of the stress. He could not move on with his life because of the allegation having over him.[381]In oral evidence V changed some of his evidence. He now down-played his mood on the evening, claiming that he had been ‘getting out of a rough patch’. He was not happy, nonetheless, keeping himself to himself. Then he changed his evidence. “I was happy.” He claimed that in the interview, he had not been referring to that particular night, but to other days. It must be said the court found this explanation entirely unconvincing.[382]He gave some more detail about the earlier part of the evening. Because he was bored and needed some cigarettes, he had accompanied S, J, and C to the shops. He did not even know C’s name until they got back from the shops. He walked about two or three yards behind the others as he still wanted to keep himself to himself. C had not wanted to stay overnight at first, but changed her mind when S promised to buy her not only takeaway, but alcoholic drink if she stayed. He bought her a two litre bottle of WKD, an ‘alcopop’, the alcohol proof of which is 4%.[383]It was suggested to him that C stayed in a spare bedroom. He denied this. There was a spare bedroom used by his brother when he came home, but his mother would not let anyone else use it.

The evidence against V - what C said

[384]The local authority relies on(a) what C said on the 30th September 2013,(b) the 11th, and (c)) the 13th December 2013. On the first two occasions, the chief reporter was SW. The note of the 11th December on the system contains only the bland assertion, without any detail, that, ‘V ‘did the same to me as Dad and B, he raped me.’ Her full note of her alleged discussion with C was only disclosed during the trial, and was never typed onto the local authority system. On the 13th December, the allegation was made to Miss G and Miss Z. The court has already expressed its disapproval of the whole approach of these two teachers to questioning the child. Both allegations, such as they are, in December, were made after more than a year of pressure by professionals on C.[385]The local authority does not rely on anything C said in the January 2014 ABE interviews. Nonetheless, Mr. Glenn for V correctly reminds the court that what she said remains evidence in the case. During that interview, C gave a different version of events, claiming that the rape had taken place in the spare bedroom where she was sleeping, whereas in December she had alleged that it took place in the bedroom she was sharing with her brother and J. In relation to this aspect of her allegation, the court must have regard for the inherent improbability of V’s raping the child on a blow-up bed where one of the adults could have woken at any time. This would have been an extraordinarily reckless thing to do.

Evidence of the mother’s sister

[386]She is the mother’s sister. She made it clear that she did not want to be involved in the proceedings. She told the court that just a week after Cwent into care in December 2012 she visited the father and mother’s house. An argument with raised voices was in full flow, involving the mother, S and J. There were no children there. She was not sure if the father was there. They were talking about someone called V, of whom she had never heard before. From what she recalled, C was said to have reported, the day after the incident, that V had touched her and hurt her between the legs. This is the only description she heard ever used about the incident. There was no mention of rape or sexual abuse. C had also apparently said that she had woken up S and J during the night, crying and saying that she wanted to go home. They had told her not to be so silly, and to go to sleep. C had apparently said that she had woken up S and J during the night crying, saying that she wanted to go home, but they told her not to be so silly and to go to sleep.[387]The first time the mother’s sister told social services of the argument involving V was on 8th October 2013, when SW rang her. This was some ten months or so after the argument. At first the name V meant nothing to her, until SW explained who he was and what C had alleged on the 30th September. She was adamant that in the call she never mentioned sexual abuse to SW - “just touching”… I never mentioned the words sexually abused or sexually assaulted”. Nor did she recall telling SW that V had come back into the room, merely that C had reported she had been touched, and had given no other details. Nor had she told SW that the mother had threatened to kill V.[388]SW’s note of this conversation refers to the culprit as V/another. The mother’s sister explained this is because she did not, at the time, know which brother was alleged to have done the touching. It is obvious from this that the mother’s sister did not actually heard V’s name mentioned at the meeting, whenever it took place.[389]Initially, she did not believe any of the allegations involving the family. She defended the father when she spoke to SW on 19th March 2013. But SW had subsequently convinced her they must be true. She had told her that the father had definitely had sex with C. Her enthusiasm convinced her. “SW carried the day.’ The mother and she had fallen out because of this. They had had no contact since July 2013, save that the mother had sent her a text at Christmas wishing her a happy Christmas.[390]As to her relations with the father, she said she had not got on well with him during the time that she had known him. They had never really been talkative with each other. A few years ago after a Christmas and after a few drinks, she said the father tried to kiss her when they went to the shops. She did not tell the mother, but S saw texts sent by the father saying how much he had always liked her and things like that. The father was saying that she had been flirting with him and had tried to kiss him. The mother was confused and did not know which of the two family members to believe. The court makes it clear at this stage that it is insufficient evidence to determine who flirted with whom, if at all, at the time of this incident. It took place many years ago, it is not one of the allegations I am being asked to determine and its relevance, if it has any relevance to these proceedings, must surely be limited.[391]T had spoken to her just once about abuse. This was several months after C was taken into care. She said that when the mother was out, her dad had touched her. She could not recall how the conversation had come about. T had never told her she had denied the allegations to various people; this was news to her.[392]According to a file note of SW dated 15th March 2013, the mother’s sister rang her to say that the father and mother had posted messages on social media. In particular the father had posted “Ding ding. Looking forward to round two. You know who you are, be wary”. The mother’s sister was very clear she did not remember any such conversation. She received no message from the father on Facebook. She had recalled no such message. At the time, she believed the father and she were not even Facebook friends, “I honestly don’t remember saying anything like this to SW”.

Mother’s evidence about V

[393]She denied the entire conversation in December 2012 ever took place. C had made no complaint on her return from staying overnight, save to say that she her stomach was hurting. She had had a bath. The mother had not known she had been given alcohol the night before.

Findings about V

[394]The court has considered very carefully the evidence of the mother’s sister. She impressed the court as a reluctant, but honest witness, doing the best she could to remember events which took place a long time before. The court is satisfied that she did overhear a conversation of sorts about a night spent by C at the parental home of V. There was indeed talk that C had been unhappy when she was away. This conversation took place in December 2012. The court is satisfied the mother was lying when she denied that such a conversation had ever taken place. But the court is not satisfied, having heard the mother’s sister's evidence, that touching between the legs was actually mentioned during this conversation. It may well have been heard later by her, and then interpolated innocently into her recollections. It may have been that the mother’s sister was recalling a different conversation many months after the event, and eliding the two.[395]But, even if the court were to accept the mother’s sister's evidence as accurate, how far does this establish the truth of the allegations? The mother denies the conversations ever took place. The evidence before the court is thus what the mother’s sister says mother said about what C had told her - double hearsay. Even if the social worker's records of C's allegations about V are accurate - there seem to be inconsistencies in the story recorded at various times; different places are identified. In one, the rape took place in the bedroom occupied by S, and J In another version, it took place in a spare bedroom. If the rape did indeed take place in the bedroom occupied by other persons, the court must consider the inherent unlikelihood of that.[396]It is more likely than not that C, who did not like strange situations, was unhappy staying in a strange house, particularly overnight, and had wanted to return home. She appears to have been given alcohol for the first time so is very likely to have felt extremely unwell the following day. But, on the balance of probabilities and bearing in mind the extraordinary pressure on C to make allegations of sexual abuse, the court cannot be satisfied on the evidence before it that V sexually abused C. The T allegations Evidence of T

The T allegations

[397]Impression: She is in her twenties and she has learning difficulties. These have been well documented and the diagnosis was substantiated, in the court’s view, by her manner when giving evidence. She came over as a very vulnerable young woman. The impression conveyed to the court was that in some way she functions at well below her calendar age. At other times, she appeared confident about details of events and dates. She was allowed to give her evidence from behind screens.

The ABE interview of 13th September 2013

[398]This is the first direct evidence from T. It was 35 minutes long and took place when she was in her twenties, and has been viewed twice by the court. Also present was the social worker, SW. This interview took place during the currency of ongoing social work involvement in crucial matters relating to the care of her own children. T made very serious allegations against the father. a) There was nothing before she was 11 or 12 but then he touched her breast with his right hand and rubbed her leg. b) The abuse carried on for a few years. It was always when he was drunk, most weekends and Thursdays. He would come into the bathroom and touch her breasts and say that he would have sex with her if she were not her mother’s daughter. c) When she was 14 or 15 he tried to kiss her, rubbed her leg and said he had an erection inside his clothing. Three or four times he rubbed her bottom against his penis and said he would, “like to do it doggy style”. d) She would tell the father to stop but he would not. e) This went on right until she was 16 and left home. f) She never told her mother about any of this. Her mother was always out when it happened but she told a friend, when she was 12 or 13 and then a cousin. The cousin had said that it was lies. The next people she told were social workers, Mrs Goody and SW, but she had not mentioned what had happened in detail until the day of the interview. g) She had spoken to the police some three weeks before the interview herself to say that she was not pursuing the allegation. She had done this because she was under pressure from her family to retract as she was scared of them.[399]The court noted that the manner of her delivery was perhaps a little unusual bearing in mind her learning difficulties. I have deliberately described some detail about her allegations for, despite the nature of them, T was clearly not distressed at all when she recalled what one would have expected to be very painful memories. Indeed, she was very relaxed both in posture and delivery as she described the abuse she said she had suffered. She was extremely, indeed, unusually fluent with virtually no pauses. In particular, she answered questions involving precise detail about the abuse without even pausing to think. She said she recalled how when she was 11 or 12 her father had commented that she was now becoming a woman and that he wanted to measure her breasts. She even recalled what the father was wearing at the time and what films she had just seen. On one occasion when he abused her it was, “The Parent Trap” at the ABC cinema in Luton.[400]Curiously, her manner of response when dealing with less painful and less detailed but unexpected questions, such as the ages of her siblings, was very different. She was confused and uncertain and paused before answering.[401]In the interview she said she was giving the interview as she now wanted to, “break the cycle”. It struck the court that “break the cycle” was a rather adult phrase for someone with her learning difficulties and her vocabulary; this must surely have been learned from an adult.[402]From the fluent manner of her delivery, the swiftness with which she embarked upon her allegation interview, and the considerable detail which she recalls seemingly effortlessly, the court received the strong impression that what she had said had been rehearsed, if only by herself.

T’s statement of the 19th December 2013

[403]This, her only statement, was made when T had only just arrived to stay with her grandmother. She felt her grandfather, her brother S, and her sister L, would pressurise her. They were saying that she was lying. For a month, they had been phoning and texting her and coming round to see her. As to how she came to speak to the police, she described how SW and SWA ‘Y’ had driven her to stay with her grandmother that day, the very same day that she told the paternal grandmother that she wanted to talk to the police.[404]Curiously, bearing in mind the Local Authority’s assertions that she had first alleged sexual abuse as far back as the 1st of February of that year, she began by saying that until now, she had been unable to talk about the abuse to professionals, but had been ABE interviewed by the police on 13th September 2013, and interviewed by PO. Previously, she had been very reluctant to say anything because she had found it very difficult. The issue was of a sensitive and troubling nature and she was worried about repercussions:
“I am now telling the truth because I realise in order to move forward and […] I need to be open and honest about the past and deal with these issues.”
[405]According to her statement, the father started to sexually abuse her when she was 11 or 12 years old. It started when he touched her breasts over her clothes and said he would have sex with her if she were not her mother’s daughter. This abuse continued. He would fondle and touch her breasts. Sometimes when she was in the bath, he would rub his leg against her and would make suggestive remarks saying her breasts were getting big and would then try to kiss her. She always made it clear that she was not interested. On one occasion when she was in the bath he held her breasts and said he was measuring them.[406]To summarise what followed: most of the abuse occurred at weekends and on Thursday. This also happened most weekends until she left home. When she was 13, he started to kiss her. He would rub his genitals which were covered by his jogging bottoms against her. He rubbed himself against her three or four times, she said, “He always came up behind me, rubbed himself against the bottom and said that he’d like to do it doggy style”. When she was eleven or twelve years old she had told a friend about the abuse.[407]The last time the abuse happened was when she was about to leave home. In front of her mother, he asked her not to leave, he said he loved her and kissed her on the cheek. He then tried to kiss her on the lips but her mother told him to stop, said she did not want to be kissed and he should stop fussing as she was old enough to leave home anyway. Her mother, she believed, was not aware that his affection was anything other than paternal. She had never accused the father of abusing any of the other children. She then appeared to contradict her previous assertion about telling her friend when she was 11 or 12. She said she did not mention the abuse to anyone until 2013, when she told a cousin who reported it to her grandfather who did not believe her. Her aunt M had also disbelieved her, but her grandmother and Aunt B had believed her.[408]She ended her statement:
“Clearly this has impacted on me and I am willing to undertake any therapy or counselling that is required. Because I am aware of what happened, I will make sure that I do everything to protect my children and will be aware of the triggers, and also have insight to the fact that it is very difficult for children to talk of these things. I will also make sure that my children are protected from F and any extended family who disbelieved me … I will do everything in my power to make sure my children are always protected from this man.”
The court notes that this statement was clearly aimed with the entirely understandable objective maintaining the integrity of her own family.

T’s oral evidence

[409]Family relationships. At first she had her own room, but then, as more siblings arrived, she shared with others. First with L, whilst B shared with S, C and A, and then she, L and C and A shared a room with bunk beds.[410]There had been difficulties at home. She had never got on with her sister, L. S did not get on well with the mother and father. He was naughty. He, the mother and father would fight and the three would all hit each other. The father would use a shoe and the mother a spoon, and this fighting happened most days. The mother would sometimes ask her to, “Have a go at S”. She did not specify whether this “having a go” was oral or physical but, nonetheless, until the proceedings had begun, she and S had enjoyed a good relationship.[411]As for her relationship with the father, she accepted that she had told Dr. Sewell in October 2009, whom she was seeing for the purposes of a mental health assessment, that she had always had, and still had, a good relationship with her father barring the normal child-parent arguments. Significantly, she then told the court that when she said this to Dr. Sewell she was, in fact, telling the truth.[412]On 12th December, she first spoke about the abuse to a social worker, Mrs. Goody (who was investigating the care of T’s children, a matter unrelated to these proceedings). She told her about being hit as a child but not about sexual abuse. Then step by step, she had spoken to others; to her worker at MIND at Luton, to SW and to SWA ‘Y’. It was to the former that she first alleged sexual abuse. She told Mrs. Goody about the abuse by the father but not the sexual abuse. She felt uncomfortable about answering such questions about abuse with a teacher present. “I was not willing to talk of these things”. She said she felt embarrassed and so ashamed about people knowing in case they thought that she was lying but since receiving counselling and having sessions with MIND, it became easier to talk.[413]After she left home, there were difficulties with her parents, but she saw them from time to time, visited them at home and indeed baby-sat for them on occasions. For example, she brought her children to the father’s birthday party. This ended in an unpleasant fracas with the police being called. Even after she is alleged to have made allegations of sexual abuse against her father, she continued to have contact with him and her mother. On one occasion she stayed overnight with her parents and indeed took them a cup tea upstairs in bed in the morning.[414]She accepted that in March 2013 she telephoned her father repeatedly about social services involvement with her own children. She then said that the calls which went on all night on that occasion were to her mother and her grandmother as well as to the father. She said she had spoken to the father two or three times only that evening but he had been very supportive. He has said she was a good mother. Never once, she said, did he put pressure on her to retract her allegations. She gave somewhat differing evidence later.[415]The court was asked by the Local Authority to examine two texts dated 21st July 2013. This was a text trail between the father and T. I mention these texts, although it is not entirely clear what they mean, the first text reads as follows, “Do know wot fek it I had it if u lot think he I not help no more”. T said this was from the father to her and that the father also wrote to her, “We are u not going to tell them about me then I done nothing to u in any way”. She said that what was meant in these texts was that the father was threatening to tell the social services something about her. It must be said the court struggled, and still struggles, to understand what these texts actually say and what can rightly be inferred from them.[416]During June 2013 she attended court on one day. She went to court to see her aunt and her grandmother. At first, she accepted she spoke to both her parents, but then changed this to, “I spoke to my mum not my dad”. It was put to her that she had sat with the mother and father chatting away together and she said that was a lie. However she went on to say that on another occasion at her request, they had given her a lift to Cambridge and supported her in other ways.[417]During the course of the hearing, counsel for the father produced a small bundle of text messages taken from the father’s home relating to the period between 13th July and 12th September 2013. The messages were purportedly from T to her father. The telephone number she accepted belonged to the mobile telephone of her husband. She agreed that some of the texts were hers; she was using his phone as she had no credit on her own phone. At first she said the texts were not so much to the father as to the mother but it was pointed out that the texts said, “Dad”. She agreed that she had in fact been seeking the father’s help when she had sent these texts. She had repeated that she had never told her mother what her father had done to her. She only did so after C was removed a few weeks after that. The mother had not believed her; nobody believed her.[418]After the proceedings begun, and even after the family understood from the Local Authority that T was making allegations against the father, “My mother was sort of giving me support too”. Altogether she had seen her mother quite a few times since the June 2013 case.[419]After the proceedings had begun, the mother said she hated C for what she had done to the family. She believed the mother really hated C now and would not even talk to her.[420]Her relationships with the social workers. T found her own social worker, Ms Kurrwen Edwards very difficult. Ms Edwards, from who the court heard, accepted that her relationship with T was quite volatile from time to time. At times, T had requested that Mrs Edwards only communicate with her via SW, rather than directly in the usual way.[421]Mrs Kurrwen Edwards, as formidable a witness as the court has ever heard, was clearly reluctant to give too much away, but stated that she had no idea of the extent of SW’s texts and meetings with T. She did, however, recall a core group meeting when T asked for SW to stop texting her. She was also aware that T had said she received a text from SW saying that she was in denial. She was aware that T felt pressurised by the local authority. Mrs Edwards was asked about the minutes of a meeting of 4th April 2014 which had suggested that there was a rift between her and SW. According to the minutes, the latter was complaining that Mrs Edwards, was not doing enough, and not following procedures. Mrs Edwards was wanting SW to “butt out”. She was vague about this meeting, rather unconvincingly in the court’s view, but conceded that at times she felt that SW was ‘overstepping the mark’.[422]According to T, SW was very different. Although she was never a social worker allocated her, she would listen to her when Mrs Edwards was not around. The two exchanged at least 500 texts. There were many meetings and telephone calls.

Allegations made to others

[423]T was very clear that she had told no family member what had happened until after the proceedings had begun but she had told a school friend, about the father’s sexual abuse - the touching. That was in the playground at school when they were 12 years old. On a different day, she ‘would tell her friend about being hit’. Furthermore, her friend witnessed her father hitting her with his hand on her right shoulder and back. This was in front of the whole family.[424]By mid-2013, T was seeing a Step by Step worker at MIND and was telling this worker all about the sexual abuse, but only about some of the violence of which she had been the victim. She had told the MIND worker of the father’s violence before the September 2013 ABE interview and only after the ABE interview, she clarified, did she tell MIND about the sexual abuse. She never told CAMHS about any sexual abuse.

Genesis of T’s allegations

[425]Taken in isolation, the evidence of abuse given by T on the three occasions detailed above is generally, though not wholly, consistent, and must be considered very seriously. But of course, it cannot be viewed in isolation, either from other evidence directly relating to her, or more generally. In particular, it must be viewed in the light of the genesis of the allegations and the many retractions T has subsequently made.[426]The first mention by T of abuse by her father was on the 12th. December 2012. She was being interviewed by Mrs Goody, a social worker investigating the care of T’s own children. At the end of the meeting she asked if she had been abused as a child. T nodded. When asked whether this was emotional, physical or sexual, T said nothing. According to Miss Goody, there was some talk about the fact that T was not seeing her parents at the time. Mrs. Goody could not recall whether she herself asked whether it was because of the abuse that T did not see her parents or whether T had volunteered it. 1st February 2013 meeting[427]SW had access to the notes, and naturally picked up on this reference. She questioned T about this on the 1st February 2013. This was her first meeting with her, although she had seen her before on one occasion at the beginning of January, when C and T had contact with each other. According to SW, just as had happened with C, T immediately opened up to her. SW’s record of the meeting is as follows:
“I noted that when I was reading her own file/notes that she had told a worker that she was abused as a child. She said, yes, she had, and that her stepfather, confirmed as F had sexually abused her. She told her mum who did not believe her and who then sent her off to live with Aunty B who did not believe her either until she caught it happening. T said this is why she does not get on well with mum and dad and why she won’t leave her children with them. T did not think he had sexually abused other family members but noted that she was now thinking maybe C had also been (she does not know why C was accommodated). T is willing to give a statement to the police but would like me to be there. She later said over the weekend that she is frightened of the family taking revenge and would like to be moved.”
[428]The court notes that, just as with SW’s assertion about C’s allegations on the 17th December, no details of the sexual abuse are recorded.[429]T in her oral evidence disputed much of SW’s evidence about this meeting. She was particularly adamant that on 1st February 2013 she had never mentioned sexual abuse by the father. They had not really talked about this at all. Furthermore, she had never told SW that she had reported the abuse to her mother. “This was wrong!” Nor had she ever said that her mother had sent her off to live with her Aunt B, because of the abuse, nor was SW’s note accurate when it recorded that T had said that Aunt B had not believed her until she caught it out actually happening. “I did not say these things”.[430]T then denied that she had ever told SW that the sexual abuse was the reason why she did not get on with her parents and why she would not leave her children with them. The reason she did not get on with her parents was, “because they always have a go at me’. She clarified this by explaining that her parents had not approved of her sleeping with a boyfriend from school. When she had left home she did it not because she was forced to and because she wanted to. Furthermore, she had, indeed, left her children in the mother and father’s care on many occasions. Indeed, she had not had a conversation with SW about her own children at all.[431]During this part of her evidence, the court noted that T spoke with particular conviction. The court accepts her version of what was said, not least because the pattern here is similar to what happened on the 17th December.[432]T did not like this. SW was aware of that. On 5th February 2013 she rang T, “To tell her that she did not have to do anything she did not want to”. This was in response to a telephone call from the mother to the Local Authority earlier that day. The next day, 6th February, the Local Authority received a typed letter signed by T. The key passage of that letter is as follows:
“SW from the children’s social services department in Luton keeps ringing me and keeps trying to contact me regarding me to make a statement about my dad, F, saying he had molested me at a young age to which of my knowledge none of this has happened. I am not willing to make a statement as it would be a false allegation. In my eye SW is dealing with my sister’s case, C, as she has no success in that one she is trying to manipulate and intimidate me to make a statement which I will not do. I would like SW to have no contact with me.”
[433]For reasons I shall give later, I am satisfied that this letter did genuinely reflect T’s feelings. Furthermore, I am wholly satisfied that T did not make any allegations of sexual abuse on the 1st February 2013. 8th March interview of C[434]On this date, the unfortunate C was languishing in hospital in a mental health unit. This did not deter her from interviewing the child at length in an interview which must have been quite appallingly distressing to her. SW noted that:
“I spent almost three hours with C [yet another three hour long interview, the court notes]. She was in a grim place. She would/could not explain what made her so sad. She said she wanted to go home and we talked this through.”
At one stage C had asked for a rope and a room to hang herself.[435]It was pointed out to her in cross-examination that three hours was a very, very long time for a child especially one with C’s learning difficulties and in fragile mental health. Furthermore, the notes of the interview were very, very short. SW said that a lot of the interview was silence. When it was suggested that C clearly did not want to talk at this interview, she said that she could not remember. As for C’s request to go home, SW was dismissive about this. C fairly frequently said she wanted to go home. (The court notes that this flatly contradicted other assertions by her that she had only asked once or twice to go home.) There were also silences at CAMHS. Once at CAMHS, C had also said that she wanted to go home but “They talked it through”. (What is meant by that much repeated phrase the court is unaware.) As for the length of the interview, some three hours, far from being criticised for it SW said she should be praised for taking up so much of her time to deal with C. She was working in her own time, even working at nights.[436]The observation note of this interview reads as follows:
“C referred time and again to the ‘big thing, the really big thing’. She said she feels ‘dirty, bad, death is the only way out’. I told her that T had talked to me about her childhood. C looked interested and asked me what she had said. She said she knew about had happened to T, that F used to come in at night and get into T’s bed and do stuff. This is when they all shared a room. C would pretend to be asleep. She did not know whether the others saw. C had told her about it and told her it was a secret. C looked very sad and heavy and said she did not know what to do, that she was young and she didn’t know I asked her.”
[437]A slightly different version was given by SW in one of her statements:
“C then said she knew what had happened to her sister T when she was younger and said that T had told her what her father, F, had done to her. C said that T had told her and said it was a secret. She said she saw and heard what was happening outside of T telling her because when they shared a room her father would come in at night-time and get into T’s bed. C would pretend to be asleep. C advised that she did not know whether L or A had seen. I asked C whether she wanted to tell someone and she said she had but didn’t know who she could tell or how. She pointed out that she was only little and didn’t know how to deal with it all. I asked C whether she had worried that what she had been told and what she had seen had also happened to her. C said, ‘It did. He did the same to me’. I asked her whether she had told anyone and she looked away and shook her head. C stated the abuse happened when she was on her own. She asked me if I had spoken to L and A about his issue.”
[438]In oral evidence SW repeated that it was she herself who had introduced the name of T and told C that T had talked to her about her childhood. She could not say why she had mentioned T, it was possible she and T were talking about other family members but C had looked interested and asked what T had said. SW was asked, “Did you tell her what T had said?” Her answer is very significant, “I can’t recall what was said then”. She then went on to say, “This was not a pre-ABE interview or an ABE interview”. (The inference the court draws from this is that, in the mind of SW, in a non-ABE setting the guidelines about questioning vulnerable witnesses do not apply.) SW then accepted, and this is very important, that on 8th March she herself told C what T was supposed to have said about sexual and physical abuse at the 1st February meeting. (This was confirmed by T herself in oral evidence: “SW disclosed some stuff about me” about what C said.)[439]When it was put to her that it was shocking to put such allegations to a learning disabled child SW was unrepentant. She said:
“Yes, this was needed for C … She needed a context for her own life… Young people think they are alone… Keir Starmer shows that we should not keep things secret from young people. There is a progressive movement led by Keir Starmer which I hope is adopted by the courts.”
[440]She was reminded that by 8th March T had retracted her supposed allegation. SW’s response was instant and dismissive, “It’s perfectly normal for victims to retract. We know it is common from victims”. Later she said, “I agree with the Court of Appeal that we should take retractions seriously”. From her demeanour, however, the court did not infer that she was in any way convinced by what she was saying. She further accepted that she had asked C whether she was worried about what had happened to T also happening to her. She saw nothing wrong with this question:
“It was in accordance with social worker practice… It is a practice all good social workers use… The fact that the court sometimes does not catch up with research is very unfortunate.”
[441]The 8th March interview was quite astonishingly improperly conducted. To interview a learning-disabled child in fragile mental health and on what appears to have been suicide watch for three hours was unacceptable. Then to feed to her allegations made by her sister on the 1st February would be bad enough, but to feed her allegations that had never been made, was even more reprehensible. She was tricking C. It is impossible to know what, if anything, C said during this long interview. On the balance of probabilities, I am satisfied that her interlocutor used the same techniques she had used before, namely, to volunteer words and phrases. Certainly, no reliance whatsoever can be placed on what C said. 11th March 2013 interview of T[442]SW interviewed T again on this date. Her observation note records this:
“T confirmed what C had told me on Friday, that she had told C about the sexual abuse by Father when they were younger and gave a few more details. T was surprised that C had remembered it. T said it started when she was very young but could not recall her age but that it continued until she left home. She had told C because he had felt close to her. T was clear that she had told her mum.”
[443]In her statement, the 11th March meeting, at which SWA ‘Y’ was said to be present, is described by SW as follows: “T relayed all of the allegations, shared her own history of abuse. T confirmed all that C had said. T was shocked and saddened to hear that C had seen and heard some of what had happened to her and expressed concern that she had carried this for so long. She remembers telling C that she had done so because she felt closer to C than to any of the others. T does not remember the exact age at which the sexual abuse started. She relayed that it began when she was very young and that it continued until she was a teenager and left home.[444]T advised that she told her mother who did not believe her and that in later conversations about this with her mother, she hit out in frustration. T said that when she left shewent to stay with her maternal grandmother who had encouraged her to try to talk with her mother again about the abuse. This proved unsuccessful for T and relations between mother and daughter has been fraught ever since. T believed her grandmother reported the Father to social care.[445]T asked, as C had, whether I had spoken to L and A. Again, I advised I had not. T is unsure whether she will provide a statement to the police at this point. This is, she says, because she has and does suffer from depression as a result of the abuse and making a statement will bring back a lot of painful memories. She is also very worried about the consequences from the families by speaking to the police.[446]Important parts of this note are disputed by T. A reference to allegations of sexual abuse made by her on the 1st February was wholly wrong, for, as she repeated, she had not alleged sexual abuse. Similarly, the references to her mother were untrue.[447]All in all, as must be obvious, the whole genesis of the so-called allegations of sexual abuse in February and March 2013 is deeply flawed.

T’s retractions

[448]As Black LJ held in the appeal hearing in the instant case: “The retraction of a complaint normally requires careful and specific consideration and this case was no exception. Obviously the fact that a complaint is subsequently retracted does not prevent a judge from accepting that it is in fact true but it gives rise to questions which must be addressed sufficiently fully and directly in the judge’s reasons so that one can be confident that the fact of the retraction has been given proper weight in the judge’s conclusions about the subject matter of the retracted allegation” [para 28].[449]I accordingly follow that guidance, especially bearing in mind that there are multiple retractions by T.

Retraction 1

[450]This is the handwritten letter sent to the local authority, and purportedly signed and dated by T. This letter, the contents of which have already been laid out, states that her father did nothing to her and SW was trying to intimidate her and manipulate her into making allegations against him. T read aloud slowly but accurately the first part of the letter in court. She said that the handwriting in the body of the letter was that of S, whilst the signature and date were hers. She said she did not read the letter before signing it. Her brother, S, had told her that it was to do with the case and she should sign it. She did not even know what the word “manipulation” meant but she knew what intimidation meant. The contents of this letter were not true.[451]She was questioned about a telephone call by the mother to social services. This is recorded by the local authority as being received on 5th February, 2013, a day before the first alleged retraction letter was received. In this call the mother said that T had just rung her to say that she was being made to make a statement about dad that was not true. In the oral evidence T denied making such a call; she had no phone credit at the time and had never told her mother any such thing. She had no idea how the mother knew that she was about to say something as she had not spoken to her. Maybe the information had come through a cousin, to whom she had spoken about the case.

Retraction 2

[452]This is a letter dated 23rd April 2013. She confirmed that the signature on that second retraction letter was also hers. Her brother, S, had typed it in her presence. Later she contradicted herself saying that she did not know who had typed it but S, had brought it to her to sign. She said she had not read the letter nor did he read it aloud to her. He said he prepared the letter for her as it was to do with Mrs Edwards. S had cheated her by writing this letter.[453]The court noted that the letter, although typed, is much less adult in content and presentation than the previous retraction letter. It also rambles much more. She confirmed to the court that much of the content of the letter was correct“There are a lot of true things in this letter”. But some things were not true.

Retraction 3

[454]This is an attendance note of the father’s solicitor dated the 14th December 2012. The relevant parts of this were read to her. The interview lasted 1½ hours. I shall refer only to the relevant parts of the attendance note, namely those which deal with the question of retraction. “Gail Goody brought it up about my dad and I said this was not true… She asked me if I was abused as a child. I was lucky to have the step-dad that I did, I said that to her. I told her that we have had our ups and downs but when I needed them the most I could call and they would be there. I was not even in the room with her for two minutes because I did not want to talk to her about it. I did not say that I was abused by Father. I would have gone straight to my mum and my aunt, B, we are like sisters in a way. I would not take my friends back there if I was being abused. My friends used to stay sometimes… I do not know why C is saying this. I do not know. I think that she has a split personality disorder. One minute she can be okay with me and the next minute she can turn on me… I never told C what happened to me. Nothing happened against me. If anyone I would have told it to it would have been my sister. This did not happen. He did not get into bed with me I was there and D, L and me and D, L has a bottom and my sisters would sometimes share the bed. Sometimes my mum would find all of us in bed. My dad never came in and did things. He would come to the door and make sure that we were all okay. He would say goodnight and turn the telly off. I never saw him coming to bed with C. C was never left on her own, “there were others around”. He used to grab us and calm us down if we were really fighting, he would pull us apart…. I decided that I would move out and be clever and do it without any rules defending themselves against me. I was shouting at them and I was difficult. I went out of control when I was 13 or 14 years old… One day me and my mum and A in the house, C came home. I overheard it. She said that my teachers were sexually abused. She told me and I told her to tell mum so C went to tell my mum and went to the school the next day and I understand that the teacher denied it… Stand by the letter is true. When not pressurised, I asked my brother to help me, he read it out properly for me. I phoned him and asked him to do the letter to SS. I told him not to talk about it. I met him in town and spoke to him about it. The day before I met him in town, we met up and went and wrote. I wrote at my granddad’s flat, private away from kids. I gave it in an envelope, my granddad put it in the envelope and gave it to my dad, gave it to her solicitor. They did this for me at my granddad’s computer. Stand by the contents of the letter.”[455]T did not dispute the accuracy of any part of the solicitor’s note as a true record of what she was told. But her statement that she was being pressured to make false allegations was not true. S was present in the room when she spoke to the solicitor. Otherwise the note was true. In particular, she reiterated that when in December 2012 Mrs Goody had asked her if she had been abused as a child, she had indeed told her that she was lucky to have had the stepfather she did. She had also told Mrs Goody that she had had her ups and her downs in her life and when she needed her parents the most, she would call and they would be there for her.

Retraction 4

[456]She accepted she had indeed sent texts to SW saying she had not been abused. She was going through a lot at the time and just did not want to get involved in the proceedings. She was sending SW quite a few texts at the time.

Retraction 5

[457]Her General Practitioner’s records of the 5th July 2013 state as follows:
“T says that she was not sexually abused by stepdad but social services are saying that she said this”
. T seemed evasive as she answered this question, and after a little pause she said she could not remember saying this, as she had a lot of things going on at the time. It was pointed out to her that only a week before, on 28th June 2013 she had told another General Practitioner that she had been abused both sexually and emotionally by the father. This GP had noted that she was very distressed when she said this. She was asked to explain the difference between the two reports to two General Practitioners. She said she found it easier to admit the sexual abuse to a female doctor, and much more difficult to a male doctor. On 5th July the doctor was male. It was pointed out to her that on 28th June when she had alleged sexual abuse the GP had in fact been a male, and on 5th July when she had retracted the allegations the GP had been a woman, on Dr. Joanne Campbell T then changed tack, saying that she had retracted because, her ex-partner, was there and she did not want him to hear the allegations and judge her. She had asked him to come with her as a “support”. (The court notes that there is copious evidence elsewhere that he knew about the allegation).

Retraction 6

[458]On the 19th July 2013, she saw a psychiatrist, a Dr. Siddique. She was on her own when she saw him. According to Dr. Siddique’s his notes:
“T told us social services had become involved with her family almost a year ago when C reported being abused by the father. Social services had told her not to maintain contact with her family”
[459]Dr. Siddique recorded the family history including her schooling and a good relationship with her brother, S. She notes, “She described her upbringing as good, they used to go on family holidays together”. She had left home due to her parents not approving of her boyfriend at the time. Dr. Siddique goes on:
“T also talked to us about the accusation of sexual abuse and told us that although her sister is accusing her stepfather of sexual abuse, and also indicating thatT was abused by him, T was denying the accusation.”
[460]T accepted that Dr. Siddique’s record of the meeting was entirely accurate. She accepted that she had lied to the psychiatrist. The reason she denied the abuse was that she had not wanted to talk about the subject to a man. The court notes, however, that on this occasion, the whole subject of sexual abuse, according to the notes, was brought up not by the psychiatrist but by T herself.

Retraction 7

[461]On the 7th August 2013 T went to the Luton Police Station with S and her paternal grandfather. There she spoke to PO. She could not remember whether she and the officer were alone or not. The police record show that T reported that she had not been abused by her father, but was being asked repeatedly by social services if she has been abused. T said she remembered the conversation at the police station but only vaguely.

Retraction 8

[462]On the 20th August 2013 when T saw psychologist, Lynne Jackson. According to the psychologist’s report T said:
“My sister said my dad sexually abused me. It hasn’t happened to me. My social worker and my mum’s social worker “Social workers” say it happened to me. It hasn’t happened to me.”
[463]The psychologist goes on:
“She described receiving a text from her mother’s social worker telling her, ‘to stop being in denial’. She found it on her phone and read it out to me.”
[464]T said she had lied to Lynne Jackson. It was pointed out that Lynne Jackson was a woman, to which she responded “I lied because I didn’t know her”. T accepted that she had indeed received a text from either SW or her own “another” social worker telling her to stop being in denial. She had found this on her phone and read it out to the psychologist. Later in her evidence T said something quite different, namely that the ‘in denial’ text had just come up on her phone, and because of what it said she had assumed it had come from a social worker.

Retraction 9

[465]This appears in a Facebook conversation between her, allegedly, and a friend. I shall read a short extract from this trail. It starts, purportedly, with a message from T:
“I have and I am and keep say that my dad did something to two and I keep no and they call me a lie.”
[466]The court notes this was repeated later in the trail. The trail goes on in these terms: Allegedly from the friend:
“What else did they say? Why, what’s your dad done?”
Answer from T:
“They say that he had sexly abused me when he never did that to me.”
The friend:
“Oh my god. Why would they make that up? Someone must have been saying summit to them ‘bout you all.”
T: “Yes, my sis,” The friend “What, she told them he had done that to you?” T: “Yeah, she did.”[467]The conversation continued discussing a number of matters of fact the detail of which was personal to T and the content of which were entirely correct. When asked to explain this Facebook conversation, T gave what the court finds to be an entirely unconvincing explanation, namely that that the phone must have been hacked into by someone else. She accepted that the phone number was that of her husband, at that time. She responded that it could have been her husband who had hacked the phone. Whoever did it had changed the password. The court notes that this seems an unusual act for her husband to have committed, bearing in mind that she claimed he had even come to support her at her various visits when she gave retractions. As she gave this part of her evidence the court noted, T’s demeanour changed and she became very, very uncertain.

Retraction 10

[468]This appears in another Facebook conversation of the 3rd September 2013. According to the print-outs, T wrote: “Look. They say my dad sexly (sic) abused me and my sis when he never so then they I am lie so I give up”.[469]T said she did not remember saying this, and had never spoken to this person.She repeated that her Facebook account had been hacked. In reference to another part of the conversation, T confirmed that C had indeed told her that one of her teachers had said she herself had been sexually abused. She went on it for about 30 or 45 minutes, so much so that she, T, had tried to change the subject. She eventually told C to tell their mother as she felt the teacher should have been protecting the children from this sort of thing not exposing them to it.[470]In relation to all these retractions, T said that she had come under a lot of pressure from family members, her mother, her paternal grandfather, S and L, though never her father. In fact, so frequent were the texts that on the 14th July 2013 she texted her to engage his help in getting S and L, to delete her number from their mobile telephones. L’s texts were particularly abusive.

Findings about T’s allegations of sexual abuse

[471]The court must be cautious when weighing the force of retractions. It is not uncommon for genuine victims to retract. There may be many, understandable, motives for this. Fear of reprisals and pressure by others are common examples. And in the case of T, the court is amply satisfied that some family members were putting pressure on T to retract, though not the parents. Some of the pressure may indeed have contained threats. But just as the court must be wary of relying too heavily on retractions, so it must be cautious not to reject them out of hand merely because of pressure to retract. Retractions can be genuine even when they co-exist with pressure. Here we have so many retractions, all made at different times to different people - doctors, social workers, the police, a solicitor, friends and relations. Furthermore the court cannot forget that while T was being pressured to retract, she was undoubtedly being subjected to counter-pressures by SW to make allegations.[472]For the avoidance of doubt, the court is satisfied that the two retraction letters reflected T’s true sentiments. Nothing sinister can be read into the fact that the letters were each written by another. T has learning difficulties. As for the other reasons given by T in her oral evidence namely, that she was reluctant to speak openly to males, that her phone was hacked into, possibly by her husband, that she was reluctant to speak in his presence, these are wholly unconvincing. I am afraid that T was being very untruthful in this respect. The reality is that there were just too many retractions made by T to ignore. The court also takes into account the fact that T has continued to see her parents since the accusations were made, and sought their help from time to time.[473]These allegations cannot be viewed in isolation from the evidence relating to C. The court cannot compartmentalise, but must look at the evidence as a whole the court cannot be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the father sexually abused T. In coming to this finding the court does not ignore T’s ABE, statement and oral evidence that abuse did occur. The court considers this most carefully, but it is out-weighed by the other factors. In addition to those recorded, the note takes into account two matters which seems inherently improbable. If the allegations were true, then the father must have abused T in a room where others slept – an act of considerable recklessness. Furthermore, C would have been only four or five years old at the oldest when the abuse occurred. There must at the very least be some cogent doubt as to whether with her learning difficulties, she would have had a real memory, and in such detail, of what happened when she was so very young.[474]Nor should it be forgotten that, sadly, T is herself very vulnerable. She bombarded T with texts and telephone calls, and put her under enormous pressure to make and in due course maintain the allegations. Just one example of this is text from SW telling her to stop being in denial. This did come from her, and was a shockingly unprofessional message to send. T undoubtedly believed that by making the allegations, she would retain the support of a powerful social worker who would support her. She must have been desperate, torn between pressure from her family to tell the truth and from SW to lie. And so she hovered uncertainly between the two, retracting and reiterating allegations repeatedly.[475]T, with her learning difficulties, may even have come to have a false memory of her father. After all, for two years now she has lived in an environment where all the social workers and other professionals believed that she had been abused. And the impact on her of learning that the court itself in 2013 found that she had been abused must have been enormous. Allegations of violence by

The Parents

[476]Counsel for the younger children asked T a large number of questions about a number of alleged incidents of violence by the father against T and S. In view of the need for complete transparency in this case, I permitted the Guardian’s counsel at first to pursue this line of questioning being uncertain as to where it was leading. I am now wholly satisfied, however, that this was leading to no destination which is relevant to the findings of fact which I am asked to determine during the incident proceedings. HHJ Davies has made findings about abuse involving violence and they are limited findings. They were not set aside by the Court of Appeal. No party has asked for them to be revisited.[477]The court is concerned with the allegations on the composite Scott Schedule before me and they do not include any allegations of violence, save for one fresh allegation that the mother hit C with a rolling pin. Exceptionally, I permitted this to be added to the matters remitted by the Court of Appeal for fresh determination because the allegation was a new one and had not been before HHJ Davies in June 2013. That is the only allegation of violence I shall consider during the present hearing. The only answer of relevance from T which resulted from questioning by the Guardian was that the mother would hit A and C on the back of the leg with a wooden spoon. Taking that into account, together with all the other evidence, I am wholly satisfied that the mother did not hit C with a rolling–pin.

Grooming

[478]Late in the day, too, Mr Geekie for the Local Authority, in the midst of cross-examination of the father, suddenly put to him that he had been grooming A. This was an extremely serious allegation to make. It was based solely on three comments made by A during contact visits. As for grooming A , the contact notes record three occasions in which the following comments were made: “12th December 2013: A commented that dad had told her before that she wouldn’t need a boyfriend as she had dad and her brothers to love her. Mum agrees with this. 5th June 2014: A says ‘Dad always used to say that, ‘You don’t need a boyfriend or anyone else, you have enough love in this family’’.[479]24th July 2014: A says, “Dad always said, ‘You don’t need a boyfriend you have me and your brothers’.” The note then says: “Dad makes eye contact with supervisor but makes no comment”.[480]The father did not know what the word grooming meant, and when this was explained, he looked distinctly shocked and denied it. He explained that he had just been warning A not to have boyfriends like T and L.[481]It must not be forgotten that this was a family where not only the father but some of the children had special needs.The court is satisfied that what A reported was merely the words of concerned parents trying - in a simple way - to warn the younger children about entering at too young an age unhappy relationships.[482]The parents’ failure to understand the need to protect the children from members of the family: To some degree this would appear to duplicate the finding of HHJ Davies that the mother took D to the grandfather's address. That allegation has been determined. In any event, the current allegation seems to the court worryingly vague. It is not alleged, for example, that the parents have put the children in potential danger by leaving them unattended with either uncle or grandfather. They do not seem to be criticised for doing any particular act at all, but rather for their state of mind. They are criticised because they do not, in reality, have open minds about these two individuals, because they point out that the allegations against them have yet to be proved, because they believe that one is innocent until proved guilty.[483]The problem is that the allegations are, and I repeat, so hopelessly imprecise. The court has no idea whether the allegations against the two other family members are true or entirely fanciful, whether they indeed pose a threat to children, or whether they do not. The court does not know whether the parents are justified in their doubts about the allegations against grandfather and uncle - no idea whatsoever. Certainly the parents will be entitled to have doubts about any allegations in whose making SW had a role. Equally, a wise, careful and prudent parent would not expose their children to any relation against whom allegations of sexual abuse were made. Had the parents done anything to expose their children to risk, then the court would have little difficulty in finding this particular allegation is proved. As it is, in the absence of any suggestion that the parents have failed to protect their children by any action or inaction, the court cannot make this finding.

Threats to kill

[484]I do not find proved the allegation made by C that her father threatened to hurt her or kill her. I am satisfied that, if this was said by her at all, then this is yet another of the allegations C made under pressure.

Concluding observations

[485]One can only pray that the adults, and children, may recover from their unimaginable ordeal, though I fear that they will carry the scars of their suffering for the rest of their lives. As for C, with her underlying problems, the damage may well be irreparable. So much now needs to be done to see what damage can be repaired and how family relationships can be restored.[486]This court has no jurisdiction over C beyond this fact-finding. But that cannot prevent my emphasising how urgent it is that her case be re-opened. The existing care order was made on the basis of incomplete evidence. The parents’ approach in not opposing the order was adopted in ignorance of the true facts. This injustice must be rectified.[487]The court cannot entrust the care of children to those who abuse or fail to protect them. That applies to local authorities as much as to family members. Parties must have faith in those who care for their children.[488]The local authority have already undertaken to commence forthwith a Serious Case Review, and rightly so. But it must go further.[489]This situation poses grave dangers for family justice. Valuable court time is taken up weighing such breaches against the evidence and of course, there is the risk that not only may false information be garnered in interview, but that genuine allegations may be so contaminated that they cannot be relied upon. Those who permit their employees to question children and vulnerable witness must therefore be certain that not only have they received the standard training but they understand what it means in practice.[490]This case has taken up an inordinate amount of the court’s time, but rightly so in the circumstances. Yet the cost to the public purse in one form or another will be immense. There has been a significant disruption of court lists, with other cases being delayed. Family justice cannot perform the vital task it does in protecting children without honesty, objectivity, transparency and fairness. I thus hope that no court ever again has to see and hear what this court has seen and heard during the past weeks.