I don’t know that this one needs a lot of introduction – it was national, if not international, news in December (although the facts were rather different to the media reports).
This is the judgment from the adoption hearing, which was the last stage left. It was allocated to the President of the Family Division, a judge who has not been afraid to grant leave to oppose (indeed his lead judgment in Re B-S on that very point was the decision that led to such changes)
Re P (A child) 2014
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2014/1146.html
You may remember from all of the press reports at the time that mother now had solicitors and was going to fight for her child back. That has not materialised. As the President says :-
- As of 1 April 2014 the position remained as it had been on 17 December 2013. Despite what had been said in the correspondence from Brendan Fleming and Dawson Cornwell in December 2013, no application of any kind had been made on behalf of either the mother or the Italian authorities, whether to the Court of Protection, the Chelmsford County Court or the Family Division, nor had any application been made to the Court of Appeal. In particular, it is to be noted, neither the mother, nor for that matter the father, had made any application in accordance with section 47(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 for leave to oppose the making of an adoption order.
To be fair to them, getting public funding for a leave to oppose adoption application isn’t easy (though I have seen determined solicitors get it on a much less contentious case than this one, and of course if one is deeply committed to the cause there is always pro bono option – for example, the mother in the Re B-S case didn’t have legal aid and her lawyers did the work for free)
The Judge sets out quite a lot of the email and correspondence between the Local Authority and the mother about this hearing and the chance to express her views
- The email notifying the mother of the hearing was sent to her on 7 March 2014. A follow up email was sent on 12 March 2014. The mother responded by email later the same day:
“Dear Lynne thank you for your email I don’t have an advocate and unfortunately I will not able to attend Court, I received all the paperwork that you mailed to the adresse. Thank you very much”
Essex County Council replied by email on 13 March 2014:
“Many thanks Allesandra.
Would you wish to express your view via an email which we can present to the Court on your behalf?
Lynne”
There was no response, so Essex County Council emailed again on 27 March 2014:
“Alessandra – I just wish to remind you that the hearing in respect of [P] will be on Tuesday 1st April.
I know that you are unable to attend the hearing, but as previously stated, if there is anything that you wish the Court to know about your views on the proposed adoption then please email me by Monday 3 p.m. so I can ensure your views are available to the Court.””
The final email from the mother arrived on 28 March 2014:
“Dear Lynne
I wish for my daughter the best. Me personally I am trying to forget this bad experience I had in England. I love my daughter with all my heart and I pray to see her one day again.”
With that in mind, it is not a surprise that the President went on to make the adoption order, as there was no challenge to it. Obviously this is a sad case, as all adoptions are. Perhaps the mother had given up hope, perhaps she thought that she would have no chance of success, perhaps she just wasn’t in a place where a fight was something she could manage. I feel for her. Less for some of the journalists who high-jacked her tragedy to make cheap and inaccurate points.
I suspect that this judgment won’t get the publicity that the shrill allegations got back in December.
suesspiciousminds 
The points about this matter as mentioned several times in Judgment that the representation for the mother had not applied through any court any application, that, including any appeal, Pres. Munby obviously made that clear back in December, one could deduce from that the mother had no applications in situe so the courts continued to the Adoption of P
I do not see in Judgment that the courts could be satisfied that the Mothers true feelings could be deduced from a few emails, no matter how heartfelt they are you can see that the mother was struggling to attend court, that surely should not mean the adoption should go ahead, a short adjournment could have been allowed to see if the mother could attend at a later stage, it would not be too detrimental to P nor would it have taken a long time if the arrangements were made through the Italian Embassy,
This case will always sit uneasy for me, not because of the way it was reported in the Press but the bells and whistles that went along with it, in this Judgment twice did President Munby say the UK courts had no applications from mother, even back in September of last year there was always an opportunity to Appeal Placement orders or other, I feel the legal team(s) have failed this mother and P.
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This poor pregnant Italian woman passed a test to be a hostess for Ryanair,but was snatched in London the day befoe she was due to return to Italy by anonymous white coat kidnappers,sectioned;drugged,kept prisoner for about 4 months until it was safe for the house butchers to drug her into oblivion, ,cut her open,confiscate the baby ,give it to strangers and then let her go back to Italy alone…..Requests for legal aid in a foreign country that had already treated her with barbarity were brusquely refused leaving this lady no option but to give up in despair and try to make a new life for herself far from thjose who had butchered her and defiled her.That is the true story ;the plain unvarnished truth !
Brendan Fleming did whatever he could on this case, as he does with every single case that comes to him. I can assure you, from my personal experiences, that Brendan would have followed his clients wishes.
In my opinion, the Judge should have ordered that the baby should have gone to the Italian authorities.
I pray for Ms Pacchieri’s strength in picking up the pieces of her life and hope she does not hold resentment towards all us British, as many British families also face the wrath of having UK Social Services persecute and destroy their families too. When her daughter grows up and finds out the truth she too may turn her back on the British who tore her away from living with her extended true family. Time will tell.
I think it is clear Ms. Pacchieri has been abandoned by her own country and her own lawyers. As an Italian I don’t fail to see why, it is pretty obvious.
The case in Italy was shut down and the Italians general opinion changed when her parents declared they didn’t want the baby. None of baby P’s parents had the money to care for the baby and satisfy the requirements to get the baby back.
What really angered me about this case it was that a bunch of British journalists, lawyers and politicians had a lot of publicity thanks to her case but they never, not even for a split second, thought to get the funding to help her case.
Furthermore, from my point of view… I was really upset to see that there was a general ignorance about Italy and how terrible the general situation is there and a total lack of empathy towards ‘any’ of us, a lack of respect towards our customs and laws. I guess Alessandra felt like that too and decided she didn’t want to step on British soil again. At some degree, I perfectly understand her.
Yes she never wants to visit uk again after her recent experiences there.Yes there was publicity that quite likely will at least prevent future foreign visitors who are pregnant being imprisoned,drugged,cut open by force and robbed of their babies!
Such was the scandal of the “forced Caesarian” that I doubt that it will happen again in a hurry ,if ever !Publicity is the ONLY sure way to get social change(apart from modern inventions!) as the Victorians found after Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist and his other novels exposing how the children of the poor were treated in those days in the UK ;
@forcedadoption
There was not my point…… *puzzled*
I think it is a great shame for both Ms Pacchieri and her child that she apparently simply became another vehicle for some to push their agenda, regardless of the facts of any particular case.
Exactly!
Do I speak a bad English? Because the other two commenters are replying to me but I fail to understand their point!
@ Merlin – There is extra money for forced adoption proceedings, residential care and so on, but there is no basic money to support families to raise their children. This has become a phenomena throughout Europe, and one glance at the financial business models of the child social care industry explains why. “Child Protection” NGOs receive money from Brussels for children in their residential care programs, but money is never given to the parents. Why? There is much work on research overdue on how all this functions in detail. It is a cruel and barbaric development and entirely a result of the neo-liberal spirit.
Click to access Ivanova_Zhenya_2.pdf
That forced adoption is cruel and that the UK authorities ar remarkably “blase” about the legalized abuse they have forced this poor woman and her child through, is nothing new. It is also entirely understandable – beyond the failure of the UK to give this woman some Legal Aid – that the woman was not wlling to meet her torturers ever again and expose herself to yet more trauma and to engage with the justifications of her torturers why they found it necessary to treat her and her baby so cruely. Legal trickery is way beyond the emotional capacity of most people, which says absolutely nothing negative about them as people, but everything about the Legal System of the UK. How cruel is a country to allow such things to take place when it is so obvious, such things should not be legal.. but alas.. they are. With a little sly manouvering through the system all is made possible.
Law and Justice are two entirely different things in Britain and it is remarkably easy to declare a person unfit and insane through psychiatric means. The humane thing would have been to treat this woman when she suffered confusion and send her home. But who wants to heal people when so much profit can be made from creating desperation and illness? Sadly, this woman’s story describes in detail what profit making from social care actually means and it is for the true investigators amongst us to make that effort, to find out more about “that system”. I wish her and her children to recover from these horrors and to find a brighter future, beyond these experiences, and I wish for the UK that one day soon they can no longer evade the truth, and that the parents’ movement finally succeeds in putting this system to shame and out of business.
How was any profit made out of this very sad situation?
This is often the accusation bandied about, that LA are only doing this ‘for the money’, apparently ignoring the costs of foster care, legal proceedings etc.
I would be very interested to know exactly who you assert is profiting, how, and by how much.
Otherwise this debate is tediously sterile, when the same assertions are repeated over and over again, but never with any supporting evidence.
PERHAPS THE ADVERT BELOW FOR “BOUNTY HUNTERS” MAKES THE POINT !
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Sigh. Please explain how a Local Authority makes a profit from making an application for a care order and then organising and paying for lawyers, foster placements etc.
You have shown me how social workers may be employed and paid. That is something entirely different.
Sarah ,of course the local authority don’t make a profit but when did the civil servants ever care about that? No it is those who make a good living out of the system who make the money ! The judges,the barristers,the solicitors,the so called experts (doctors,psychiatrists,psychologists and others( described by Professor Jane Ireland in her report for the government as hired guns),the foster carers, and of course the “agencies”(who recruit fosterers and adoptive families) like the N.F.A founded a few years ago by two social workers and sold for £130million+ ! Even that is chickenfeed beside the profits made by private children’s homes and care homes that charge exhorbitant fees for “looking after” children and old people respectively,and out of which they pay generous commissions for referrals…..Oh what a joyful money go round for all concerned!!.Is there a conspiracy, ? No need at all! Birds of a feather flock together ! Or put another way ;those who live off the system defend the system.WHOOPEE !!
@Roya
You’re replying to me but I fail to see how your answer fits in what I posted above…
I was not speaking about forced adoption theories, I was more concerned about the lack of ‘stamina’ of the Italian authorities in this case as well as in others that involve Italian citizens abroad (like the case of the two Italian soldiers kept in India against their will).
Many British commenters were rambling about ‘something’ (forced adoption?!?!?) that in my opinion had nothing to do with this case and it was shocking that many also ventured to give absurd explanations about a country and a system they knew nothing about. In my opinion, that was a lack of respect towards my country and its citizens.
Point made, this time?
You may also want to visit the work of photographer Heinz Tesarek on a young Greek woman who had to give up her child into residential care (NGO’s name: SOS KInderdorf) due to poverty. The situation will not be very different in Italy.
http://www.heinztesarek.com/portfolios/how-could-you-leave-i/
Greece and Italy are two different countries and always had different customs and laws for two millenniae, so please don’t post links if you are not sure about what you are talking about.
Might I also remind you that there are different customs and there is even a different Law system for Scotland and England and you..are actually in the same country!
How I see a relation between “austerity” in Greece and Italy and what the fallout is on children, their families and who profits from their misery… The woman depicted in the link had to give up her child into residential care because she has no money.
http://www.heinztesarek.com/portfolios/how-could-you-leave-i/
The residential care provider (SOS Kinderdorf) is a German NGO. They get around 300 Euro every day for the child. Why does the mother not get that money? It is my understanding that very similar things also go in Italy. There is no money for people, but there is money for businesses. This is how neo-liberalism works.
Mr Brendan Fleming offered to represent Ms. Pacchieri pro bono. Knowing Brendan, he would have explained all options to her, including opposing placement.
“It has come to our attention that there has been incorrect information circulated regarding the case of Alessandra Pacchieri. We can confirm that Ms. Pacchieri decided to take no further action which was against our advice. We were wholly prepared to act for Ms. Pacchieri on a pro bono basis. Ultimately, it was Ms. Pacchieri who decided that she did not wish to take any further action in this matter.”
– Brendan Fleming Solicitors
When the baby grows up and knows the truth, she too may despise the British for stripping her away from the Italian language, culture, her extended family and siblings.
Fairly traditinal to tell people that you are no longer acting.
Also fairly traditional not to unilaterally waive your client’s legal privilege about the advice she received from you, but I’m just old-school I guess.
I see your point suesspiciousminds. 🙂
Bravo Brendan Fleming !
There was a lot of misinformation surrounding this case. However, until we know why the lady was detained (yes, I mean details) and what happened after the birth we cannot judge.
The main problem I have with this is a simple one. The child is not British therefore should not be in this country. Simple.
It is much easier to grab foreign children as their parents are less able to protect them;hence the “boom” in children from other lands being fed into the insatiable adoption industry