Intervening lodger

Intervening lodger

The Court of Appeal decision in Re H (a Child) 2014

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/232.html

This case was effectively an appeal of findings of fact made against A, a young man living in the grandmother’s home.  [He might not be a lodger, but the judgment doesn’t say that he is a relative or partner, and I have used a process of deduction]

Care Orders and Placement Orders were made in the case, and the only realistic options in the case were those orders or a plan of mother and the children living in grandmother’s home, where A would continue to live.

The issue about that was that there were allegations of A having sexually abused children, and the professional opinion was that the mother and children could live with grandmother IF those allegations proved to be false, but not if they were proved to be true.

The Court of Appeal say “There was no question that A could or should move out of that household”     – I’m not quite sure why not, but there it is.

The preliminary question was A’s ability to appeal the decision – the Court of Appeal don’t actually consider appeals against findings of fact, but rather ORDERS arising from those findings of fact   (that, as Shakespeare put it, is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance, but every once in a while the Court of Appeal remembers that)

There’s no simple answer to whether A could appeal against those conclusions, since he would not have standing to appeal the ORDER, but in the event this thorny problem was sidestepped as the grandmother was given public funding to run the appeal, and SHE of course could appeal the ORDER.

The order of course flows from those adverse findings.  

My reading of the case is that the lead Judge had some sympathy with the way that Leading Counsel representing the grandmother (and A) looked at the ABE interviews.

11.That theme which necessarily dominates this application was that the one option before the judge was for adoption of B with the maternal grandmother. There was no question that A could or should move out of that household. In attractive submissions, Mr Feehan took the Court through the transcripts of the DVD records of the ABE interviews of each of the three cousins and highlighted the flaws in those records which he submitted are sufficient to render the content unreliable. If he is right, then the judge was wrong to place reliance on any part of the same and the findings of fact would then be unsafe.

12To understand the context of that submission, one has to be conversant with the 2007 guidance “Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings”, which is the multi agency best practice guidance that makes strong recommendations to those presenting the evidence of children to courts, both family and criminal alike.

13There is then a series of decisions of this court that highlight how a failure to follow that guidance can lead to fatal contamination of the children’s evidence. Mr Feehan took this court in particular to TW v A City Council [2011] 1 FLR 1597 where the agreed failings in the interview process in that case so contaminated the children’s materials that no reliance could be placed on the same. Mr Feehan highlighted the significant similarities between this appeal and Re: TW and invited this court to come to the same conclusion.

14In addition, he highlighted a line of authority on the demeanour of witnesses which caution the Court in deciding credibility issues in its reliance on demeanour alone. The point is obvious. What is the circumstantial material and does it tend to suggest credibility and reliability, or not, as the case may be?

In passing, I will raise my concern about the quality of ABE interviews, and particularly something which troubles me greatly, the development recently of “Q and A” sessions as a prelude to doing an ABE interview, almost as a sifting process to see if the child is going to make allegations in ABE. That seems to me to entirely miss the point of an ABE interview, which is to ensure that one sees exactly what the child is asked and is able to see whether the allegations emerge naturally from the child or whether they might have emerged by way of careless or inadvertent suggestion by the questioner. I am not sure that the ABE guidance is followed properly throughout the country, and it can cause significant problems either way (either a child’s allegations being contaminated and over-stated leading to a person wrongly being determined to be an abuser, or a genuine account having been contaminated leading to a finding that it is not safe to rely on what the child says)

15In deconstructing each of the interviews of the three cousins, Mr Feehan has identified varying significant failures. I can summarise them in headline form, but it is important to understand that he took the Court to the detail in the interviews themselves to substantiate his submissions.

a) The boys had been questioned by their own mother and by an aunt in a period of a week during which no-one knows what happened.

b) There was no planning for the ABE interviews and, therefore, no knowledge on the part of the interviewer about the boys’ family circumstances, including the house in which it was said the abuse occurred.

c) The interviews themselves were seriously flawed containing as they did graphic examples of the following:

(i) no understanding of the difference between truth and lies and/or the effect of telling lies on the part of each of the cousins.

(ii) no rapport or ordinary conversation so as to allow the boys to settle and gain appropriate professional trust in the interviewers.

(iii)no free recall or an opportunity for spontaneous recall of what it is that the boys reflected upon.

(iv) seriously leading questions, both open leading questions and closed leading questions, in both cases tending to suggest either that an answer must be known to them or indeed, what the answer should be.

(v) a confusion between asking the boys to recall what has happened and what they had previously told their mother had happened.

(vi) inaccurate rehearsal or summarising of what the boys had said in interview.

16Mr. Feehan was also able to point to the fact that these boys had never repeated the allegations in any other environment or since interview, despite one of them being engaged in some significant therapeutic work. Finally in the context of the proceedings, A was described favourably by the judge, despite some of his evidence being found to be unreliable

That does appear to be a significantly flawed ABE interview – the issue for the Court is whether, taking careful account of the flaws the Judge was able to still have confidence in the core truth of the allegations, or whether the ABE was so flawed that no reliance could safely be placed on anything that was said within it.

17The failings in the ABE interview process are very troubling, but no doubt with the same clarity with which Mr Feehan has addressed this Court they were put to Peter Jackson J who analysed those failings with some care. The judge likewise considered the position of the pre-interview discussions with the relatives. It should be remembered in that regard that the judge heard all of the adults who were also made available for cross-examination.

18Given the failings which were apparent, the judge entered into the task of highlighting the most worrying elements of the allegations made by the boys in their interviews. He did so at paragraph 49 of his judgment. The passages relied on include the graphic use of language by one particular boy who was the youngest about his experience of what happened. The judge found that material to be cogent despite the serious failings of the interview process. In essence, the judge was able to be satisfied that there was a core of truth in what had been described in the interviews.

19 That is a position to which a judge is entitled to come unless the whole of the interview process is so flawed that there is nothing reliable that emerges at the end of the same. Having regard to the way the judge set out at paragraph 49 what he relied upon, his impression of that boy’s evidence is something that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for this court to undermine. Furthermore, there was nothing in the conduct of the adult relatives which led the judge to conclude that the boys had been coached or contaminated in their discussions with them

The remark at para 17 that shows that the trial judge had been very alive to the failings of the ABE interviews and had analysed it carefully was what sank this appeal. The Court of Appeal did not feel that the trial judge had got this wrong.

20 At paragraph 63 of the judgment, the judge carefully discusses the evidence from the family about their circumstances, the effect of the flawed interviews and that part of the interview process that led him to identify the cogent material upon which he relied. Finally, he considers the position of the boys and the adults and reminds himself that it was not for A to prove anything in the proceedings before him.

1. Insofar as there is a submission that a judge hearing evidence from a witness is entitled to disagree with the content of the same and might thereby come to a conclusion which is not otherwise proved by the local authority, I do not consider that to be a reversal of a burden of proof, as submitted by Mr Feehan. It is a part of binary fact finding in a quasi inquisitorial process where the judge has considered what findings he can or cannot come to. At paragraph 63, the judge puts his finding into context and describes and explains why it is he found the younger cousins to be reliable enough. At paragraph 64 of his judgment, he sets out the findings that he makes. In my judgment, the judge was not wrong in the exercise that he undertook.

The Court of Appeal were unhappy about one finding

1. If I take issue with anything at all, it is in respect of one part of one sentence at paragraph 64 of his judgment where the judge summarises what has gone before and says:

“He attempted to perform anal sex upon K, though it is not clear whether there was any significant penetration.”

1. The clause: “it is not clear whether there was any significant penetration” must, as a matter of law, read “I make no finding on the evidence that there was penetration” and accordingly there was no finding on that issue at all. That phrase should not have found its way into the schedule of findings that presently appears in the order, and to that extent the order should be corrected.