Please don't take my baby: Agony of mother whose baby girl was put up for adoption after secret court judge forced her to have a caesarean

Case of Italian woman condemned as extraordinary and totalitarian



Her child is now being adopted by a British couple, despite her pleas



Case raises questions on the power of Britain's secret courts

An MP called Essex children's services 'unaccountable and out of control'



The newborn was taken into state care on the orders of a judge in the notoriously secretive Court of Protection despite the mother's pleas to be allowed to raise her. File picture

A mother ordered to give up her baby after a forced caesarean begged a judge: Please don’t take my daughter away.

The newborn was taken into state care on the orders of a judge in the notoriously secretive Court of Protection – despite the mother’s pleas to be allowed to raise her.

The case provoked a wave of anger from MPs and patient pressure groups, with one MP describing social workers as ‘dictators who are unaccountable and out of control’.

The treatment of the 35-year-old Italian, who arrived in Britain last summer and then fell into an episode of serious mental ill health, was condemned as extraordinary and totalitarian.

It will raise questions of how secret justice in Britain could impose an invasive medical procedure on a foreign citizen and then seize her child, apparently without contacting the authorities in her own country.

The girl, born last August, is now close to being adopted by a British couple, despite a court hearing that her mother had recovered and was giving clear and articulate evidence as she pleaded to keep her.

The judge who heads the family courts, Sir James Munby, has said they must be open to the public, but no information concerning any element of the treatment of the Italian mother has been made public by the courts or by Essex County Council, the local authority responsible for the baby.

The case follows a series of scandals over the way justice for families is meted out behind closed doors.

The woman, who is a mother of three girls, is understood to have arrived in Britain while pregnant last July. One report said yesterday that she was to take a training course at Stansted Airport with Ryanair.

She was arrested and sectioned under the Mental Health Act following an episode at an airport hotel.

The woman has a bipolar condition and courts have been told that she is affected by ‘manic episodes’ and paranoid delusions if she fails to take medication.

On August 23 last year, while the mother was detained, Mr Justice Mostyn made an order in the Court of Protection ‘for the birth to be enforced by way of caesarean section’. The child was taken into care by Essex social workers the following day, and she has lived in state care ever since.

Tory MP Douglas Carswell (left) called Essex children's services 'unaccountable and out of control'. The judge who heads the family courts, Sir James Munby (right), has said they must be open to the public, but no information concerning any element of the treatment of the Italian mother has been made public



In February another judge, Judge Roderick Newton, began the adoption process at Chelmsford County Court. His ruling is understood to have said the mother had recovered her health and had given clear and articulate evidence.

Judge Newton said: ‘She has accommodation, she has a secure job and she does have the support of her family.

‘She told me that she felt well and that in a rather perverse and tragically sad way her daughter had saved her.

‘It had finally brought her to the realisation of accepting that she is bipolar.’

The woman’s other children, aged 11 and four, are being brought up by her parents in Italy. The court heard that she asked for the children to be returned to her in Italy, to stay in foster care until she could show that she would maintain stability in her life.

Judge Newton said: ‘She begged the court not to agree to the care and placement orders being made so that she lost her daughter forever.

‘She believed that by committing to take the medication she could return back to Italy with the child, that she should not go into adoption. She said that nobody is perfect, neither she nor any adoptive mother, and that, I am quite sure, is the case.’

The judge added that the mother before the court in February and the woman with the earlier mental episode were ‘almost like different people’.

Birmingham Yardley MP John Hemming is a long-standing campaigner against court secrecy, which he brands 'disgraceful'

However social workers told the court that they doubted whether the mother would continue to take medication and that she had lapsed in the past. They said the child should be adopted before the age of nine months.

Judge Newton said: ‘It is not a case where I can accede to the mother’s wishes even though I understand, not just the strength of feeling that she has, but it is rare to have it articulated in such a forceful and coherent form.’

The adoption is now likely to be challenged by lawyers.



It may also be raised in the Commons by Lib Dem MP John Hemming, a long-standing campaigner against court secrecy, who said: ‘It is hard to avoid the suspicion that adoption targets set for Essex may have come into play.

‘We do not know whether she was held in the UK as a favour for Essex social workers. We cannot know because of the disgraceful secrecy of the courts.’

Douglas Carswell, the Tory MP for Clacton, said: ‘As an Essex MP, I have serious concerns about Essex children’s services. They are unaccountable and out of control.

'These people are dictators who abuse their powers. They are arrogant bullies and people are frightened of them.

‘They operate in secret, they have great powers, and they are unaccountable.’

The SOS – NHS Patients in Danger pressure group said: ‘This is extremely troubling. We would ask why the caesarean order was not challenged by NHS doctors.’