Christopher Booker highlights this case:
Mother in court over a birthday card
Next Wednesday, Maureen Spalek, a spirited and loving mother, will be in Runcorn magistrates’ court to face a criminal charge of having sent a birthday card to her eight-year-old son – having already been arrested and held in a prison cell for 24 hours for the same offence.
Mrs Spalek is charged with breaking a court order forbidding her to have any contact with her three children, even though she has an order from another judge explicitly permitting her to send them birthday and Christmas cards. Yet a few days after she sent her younger son the card, on April 15, she was visited by two police officers who threatened to beat down her door unless she gave them entry. She was then taken to one of Runcorn’s 30 police cells where she was held in very unpleasant conditions for 24 hours.
Mrs Spalek, the former wife of a naval officer, lost her children some years ago after one of her sons was taken to hospital with a broken leg from a bicycle accident. When she complained about the attitude of a doctor who was treating her son, social workers were called in. When she then, in turn, complained about the “hostile” attitude they had shown to her, the affair escalated to the point where her three children were taken away, on the grounds that she had “problems working with professionals” – even though it was agreed in court that she was an “excellent mother”, that the children were well-behaved and well-looked-after and that they had suffered no physical or emotional abuse. Two were adopted, one lives with their father.
One of the many serious issues not raised in the recent election campaign, because all three parties have agreed not to discuss it, is the growing scandal of the abduction by social workers of children from responsible and loving parents. In too many instances, this gives the impression of a tightly closed system, in which the social workers, who have in the recent past been set “adoption targets” by central government, are aided and abetted by the police, by certain family court judges and even by those lawyers supposedly acting on behalf of the parents. I shall return to this very disturbing issue after Mrs Spalek’s case this week.
A video made in support of Mrs Spalek:
What kind of Kafkaesque hell have we brought upon ourselves in this country?
AJ
Al Jahom's Final Word 
Scary Indeed. As an estranged father, (wife left me for another man, taking kids with her, against my wishes) a Cooked up plot between her best freind and her parents accusing me of abuse, and supported by the GP who had known me for years, nearly resulted in me losing access completely to my kids completely. Fortunately, the Judge in family court was able to see through the bullshit, and a few month later the Cafcass report vindicated me completely and I now have great access, So family courts aren’t always as bad as in this case.
BUT just as worrying was that my EX was contacted by the SS (after the GP contacted them – neither of which bothered to contact me, and investigate any truth to these completely fabricated accustations) and told if she didn’t take the action, the kids would be taken into care. What ever happened to innocent until being proved guilty? when did it shift to guilty until being proved innocent.
As I said back on the Homework post, “I’d just roll my eyes, blame Labour and think ‘another reason to be glad I don’t have kids’. Under Labour, children have become the state’s conduit to unprecedented intrusion in home and family life.”
MM, but the family courts do have a duty to act on the information given to them, and, in my case, sift through the madness. How , though, can this happen to an innocent, while in other parts of the country cases like baby P happen or Victoria Climbie happen? WHy the hell are some people victimised while real perpetarors of abuse are left to carry on regardless – what is wrong with the SS as a whole that is allowing this sort of thing to happen? This needs a serious look at, and the whole shambles brought to book and reformed.