British press discovers the child 'protection' racket?
By Marianne Haslev Skånland
22 April 2012
Child abductions by the state reaching an incredible high
The activities of the social services in Britain are growing to feverish proportions. Nothing else has managed to make the press take an interest in the content of social work but this has.
Christopher Booker:
Children stolen by the state needlessly, causing utter misery in one of Britain's most disturbing scandals
Daily Mail, 12/14 April, 2012
This article from the Daily Mail is well worth reading from a Norwegian perspective. Those of us who know child 'protection' in Norway recognise everything, both what the article says and so much of the information in the comments.
The press are latecomers
The only thing I would immediately question, is whether journalist Christopher Booker is any better than most press people. They have failed persecuted families for decades.
Booker says he has never experienced any such scandal in Britain before. Oh? But the social services in Britain (sometimes apparently called the 'ss' by people who experience them) have been acting in the same way for at least all of the practically 20 years I have been interested in how 'child protection' is carried out in different countries. Concerned citizens (I knew some of them) were trying to stop the family slaughters and help families in Britain in the early 90s too, without success; they were treated very superciliously by the press and had to try and raise an interest all on their own. The English parliament had the terrible scandal of the false diagnosis 'Münchhausen's syndrome by proxy' to deal with some years back, with innocent mothers in jail for years and about 5000 children having been torn away from them and adopted away without any justification whatsoever. Nothing was done to return the children to their parents, not even to let them have contact, and it did not seem to change the general attitude to 'child professionals' in the least, certainly not in the press.
Booker today: "I would not believe all this and much more could happen in England if I had not heard remarkably similar stories again and again from dozens of parents and children — even though the parents are routinely threatened with prison if they discuss their case with anyone from outside the system." Why not have taken an interest before? I know that journalists are in reality not much good at investigating; they do not have or take the time to find out reliably. But still: there have been dozens of parents and children before also.
What Booker's article says is really nothing new, it is just the extent of it that has grown, perhaps exploded. It is the same as we always hear and have heard, year in year out, just the same in Britain as before and the same as in Norway now and before.
The attitude of journalists
What is there about journalists that makes them reject information when people want to give it to them, even want to go to considerable trouble to provide information and corroboration? Booker says: "Evidence is accumulating on all sides to show that far too many children are now being removed from their parents wholly unnecessarily, often for laughably inadequate, even absurd, reasons." Are now being removed ... ? But dear Mr Booker, it has been accumulating long before this.
The press and media shut their eyes to what takes place even when they are given plenty of information about what it is and where evidence is to be found. They pay no attention, and then they 'suddenly discover' the phenomenon themselves - do they suddenly feel like Sherlocks, having 'discovered' things for themselves? And sort of being the first to announce great news?
So, the meaningless abduction of children from their loving parents by social workers is old stuff, but it has expanded considerably. In Britain it has perhaps taken off since the quick-fix adoptions away of foster children have been legislated by hysterical politicians worried that far too many children were foster children for far too long and the clamouring queues of people wanting to adopt became too much for their comfort. - Ah, a quick cutting off of every bond to their parents and forcible adoption away, that is just what is going to be institutionalised in Norway too, according to the legislation that is brewing, after being prepared over some years. In practice this family slaughter has gone on for a long time, of course - we all know of cases. But a few lawyers defending the devastated families have told us of a marked hardening of attitude in the county social boards (fylkesnevndene) and courts over the last year or so. The judges there just don't bother to listen to the families at all, no matter how extremely damaging and unwarranted the actions of the child 'protectors' can be shown to have been.
So no doubt the number of family smashings will increase even more here in Norway too. The only remaining question is whether there will ever be anybody in our self-congratulatory press circles who wakes up even as late as Christopher Booker, who is at least writing something decent about this now, although perhaps not "in all my many decades as a journalist"?
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Also by Christopher Booker:
(Some updating done in November 2012)
Child protection system tears two more families apart
The Telegraph, 16 Jul, 2011
The facts about child snatching can be reported in Norway – but not here
The Telegraph, 28 Jan, 2012
You’ve suffered 'care’, so you lose your child
The Telegraph, 7 April, 2012
In family courts, 'experts' are paid to get it horribly wrong
The Telegraph, 21 April, 2012
A mother is charged with kidnapping after returning a runaway daughter to care
The Telegraph, 28 Jul, 2012
A teetotaller branded as 'alcoholic' loses her child
The Telegraph, 4 Aug, 2012
Vicky Haigh is freed - despite telling her story to the press
The Telegraph, 18 Aug, 2012
Don’t ask your grandson how his jaw got broken, say social workers
The Telegraph, 1 Sep, 2012
Slovaks protest at Britain's 'illegal child snatching’
The Telegraph, 22 Sep, 2012
The worst scandal I have seen in my 50-year career
The Telegraph, 13 Oct, 2012
Indians join Slovaks in protesting against UK child snatchers
The Telegraph, 27 Oct, 2012
Further updating (also referring to Christopher Booker):
UK Column Live - "Thousands of children stolen by the UK government ..."
Youtube, 28 March, 2013