By ELIZABETH SANDERSON

Last updated at 07:53 26 November 2007

She is, on first impressions, just like

any other first-time mother. The cot

and the pram are on order, she has

bought more cuddly toys than she will

ever need and she has even given her

little girl a name – Molly.

With less than six weeks to go before

the birth, the baby is kicking and it

brings Fran Lyon an undeniable thrill

of pleasure. At least, it does now she finally feels

safe to enjoy it.

For all the innocent joys of impending motherhood

have been denied Fran since social workers

warned her four months ago that Molly would

be taken away ten minutes after birth and placed

with foster parents.

Fran, a third-year student doing a neuro-science

degree at Edinburgh University, is, to everyone

who knows her, a sociable, kind and intelligent

woman. But to her local authority she is a danger

to herself and her baby.

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Seven years ago Fran had an eating and selfharming

disorder and spent 13 months in a

psychiatric hospital followed by nine successful

months of counselling.

Now 22, and with her emotional troubles behind

her, Fran is outraged that she should be judged a

risk to herself and her child despite a fistful of

medical reports that dispute this.

Last week, fearing

the worst, Fran moved from her home in

Hexham in Northumberland to Birmingham,

where she hoped a different authority would treat

her more sympathetically.

But with the birth so close, she felt she couldn't

take any risks with bureaucracy and on Wednesday,

Fran took an even more drastic step. She got

on a flight bound for Europe – and went into hiding.

Wary of revealing her whereabouts, Fran

agreed to talk about her nightmare in a lengthy

telephone call to The Mail on Sunday.

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She will also

be seen in an exclusive report tomorrow evening

on Tonight With Trevor McDonald.

She said: "I wouldn't have done it unless I

absolutely had to. Every time there was a twinge,

I was absolutely petrified. I just kept thinking,

'Please don't go into labour, please, not yet.' It

was terrifying.

"It's a lot better now that I'm away. Lots of

people suggested I should leave but I always

thought it was too extreme. Then when I went to

Birmingham things weren't going to happen

quicklyenough. Northumberland's plan stood until

Birmingham made their own and I didn't have

vast amounts of time.

Now it's such a relief not to

be constantly looking over my shoulder. It has

been so fraught with other people's interventions.

For the first time this will be just us: me

and Molly. I just want to enjoy it. I could never do

that before.

"For months I've been reading a book

called Molly The Hungry Caterpillar

and feeling her kicking about. It's

lovely, but all the time the fear has been

in the back of my mind that these might

be the closest moments I will ever have

with her."

Fran is in good health apart from suffering

a rare condition, angiodoema. It

is possible her throat might swell and

she has been given tracheotomy equipment

in case of an incident.

For such a young woman, Fran seems

practical and level headed. In just a few

days, she has organised a lease on an

apartment, had an appointment with a

midwife, booked a place at the local hospital

and made contact with Englishspeaking

mother-and-baby groups.

It is a considerable testimony to her

ability to cope – given what social services

had thrown at her. So why did

Hexham Children's Services feel it

necessary to take such draconian –

some might say menacing – steps

against a young woman who has battled

to put her life in order?

As with almost all cases involving

county council children's services,

it is extremely difficult to discover

why or how a decision has been

reached. As a result, it is nigh on impossible

for people to challenge what they

see as a dubious outcome.

Fran's story began last April

when she became pregnant.

Although the baby was unexpected,

she was delighted. She

says: "I was shocked because I'd

had the contraceptive injection.

But I remember waking up the

first morning after I knew and

feeling secretly thrilled.

"I didn't have a clue how I was going to

make it work with university and my

job [for two mental health charities] but

I was determined that I was having her."

The first problem began when she and

Molly's father fell out. She had become

unhappy about something he was doing

and reported him to the police. She

ended the relationship immediately and

he is now the subject of an investigation

by police – who alerted social services.

She told them her story – that she was

brought up in Northampton in a middleclass

household where her parents were

teachers, and how at 14 she was raped

by an acquaintance.

Traumatised, she became clinically

depressed and spent the next three

years, on and off, in residential psychiatric

hospitals after being diagnosed

with a borderline personality disorder

characterised by self-harming instability

and suicidal tendencies.

For the final 13 months, Fran had

individual psychotherapy sessions and

group analysis before being discharged

into outpatient care. By the age of 18

she had fully recovered and the diagnosis

of borderline personality disorder

was removed. Despite it all, Fran earned

nine A-grade GCSEs, four A-grade

A-levels and her place at university.

When she became pregnant, Fran

accepted that social services might take

an interest in her and went out of her

way to cooperate. "I was very up-front

with the mental health staff," she said.

"I told them my history

and gave them the

names of my

doctors as I

assumed

they would want to pursue it further. I

thought I might need to see the health visitor

a bit more often."

Instead, Fran received a letter informing

her that a "child protection case conference"

would be held on August 16.

Social services contacted a number of

experts. One of them, Dr Stella Newith,

the psychiatrist who treated Fran as a

teenager, had no doubts when called on

to give her opinion about her former

patient.

In a letter to Northumberland

County Council, Dr Newith said: "I consider

the risk of harm to a child to be so

unlikely as to be negligible.

"There has never been any clinical evidence

to suggest that Fran would put

herself or others at risk, and certainly

no evidence to suggest that she would

put a child at risk."

It was a view backed up by Dr Rex

Haigh, a psychiatrist who worked with

Fran in the charity sector and acted as a

character witness. He advised: "I have

no doubt that her diligence and capacity,

particularly in dealing with complex

emotional situations, will stand her in

good stead for the rigours of parenthood. Your efforts to protect children

would be better directed elsewhere."

Yet the social workers decided,

instead, to give more weight to the

views of consultant paediatrician Dr

Martin Ward Platt – even though he

made it clear he had never met Fran.

In a letter, Dr Ward Platt said: "If

the professionals were concerned

from the evidence available that

[this woman] probably does fabricate

or induce illness, there would

be no option but to put the baby

into foster care at birth pending a

post-natal forensic psychological

assessment."

Fran says she was told by social

services that she was in danger of

suffering from Munchausen's by

Proxy, a controversial and unproven

condition in which a parent – usually

the mother – invents an illness in her

child to draw attention to herself.

Apart from Dr Ward Platt's letter,

there has been no other evidence

presented to Fran suggesting that

she was at such risk. The syndrome

was first identified by Sir Roy

Meadow, the now-discredited doctor

responsible for evidence that led to

the wrongful convictions of Angela

Canning and Sally Clark for murdering

their children.

Dr Ward Platt also recommended

that Fran be

assessed by professionals.

Social services drew

up their "birth plan" without

doing any of these

assessments.

In October, Fran was told

the plan would mean

that Molly would be immediately

removed into care, minutes after she

was born. Fran was also told she

could not be trusted to breast-feed

her, for fear that she might try to

take strychnine as a way of poisoning

her own child.

Fran says: "I was just horrified. It

was horrific to sit in this room with

these people and realise that they

could not only conceive of such a

bizarre, terrible thing, but think that

I was actually capable

of it.

"In some ways I

think the whole thing

was compounded by a

lack of understanding. There is no

evidence that Munchausen's by

Proxy exists. I was being asked to

prove that I wouldn't do something.

But how can I do that? They were

asking me to do the impossible."

Fran engaged the help of Bill

Bache, the lawyer who overturned

Angela Canning's conviction, and

John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat

MP and chairman of the pressure

group Justice For Families.

And yet all the time, she tried to

find a compromise with the social

workers.

She says: "I asked to go to a mother

and baby unit so we would be under

24-hour supervision. I thought it

would show I was willing to cooperate

and there could be no argument

about Molly's safety, but there was a

lot of resistance to the idea."

In one last attempt to find a middleway

through the nightmare, Fran

agreed to yet another assessment.

The assessor was to be appointed

by the social workers but would be

officially independent. They chose

Professor Douglas Turkington, a

psychiatrist based at the Royal

Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.

In his report, he said that Fran

should not be separated from Molly

but should instead be "supervised

during the immediate postnatal

period in her bonding with Molly and

be allowed to breast feed".

It is the breakthrough Fran has

been hoping for – but she says she

can't risk waiting to see if social services

view it in the same light.

On November 9, the birth plan

from Northumberland Social Services

arrived in the post. Fran was

expecting it but nothing could have

prepared her for its conclusions.

"I just fell apart," she says. "It's only

when you see it in writing that it

becomes real. It said I would get ten

minutes with Molly until the umbilical

cord had been cut."

Fran and her baby would then be

parted and the baby would be taken

to another room in the hospital.

Fran feared that the conditions of

the birth plan would mean that even

her mother, who she said she was

very close to, would not be able to

see the child.

She added: "They said if I didn't

consent they would get a police protection

order as soon as she was

born. This effectively meant that

there would be a policeman stood

outside the delivery suite.

"She would be only a few minutes

old and by herself. That was the one

thing that tore me up inside . . . the

thought of Molly lying in some

horrible hospital baby cot with no

one that loves her.

"I'm not an impulsive or dramatic

person. I want to sit down and work

things out. But this was agonising. I

knew I had to do something."

She didn't know, then, that something

would mean fleeing abroad.

Despite the drastic upset, Fran is

not bitter. "I suppose I feel very disappointed.

It didn't seem possible for

anyone to backtrack just a little bit,

to say there was another way. That's

what I found so hard. That and the

fact there was no compassion. They

said it was about Molly but it certainly

never felt like that."

But perhaps most worrying

of all is the fact that

Fran's case, while undoubtedly

extreme, is also

indicative of a disturbing

trend. Two thousand

babies less than a year old

were taken from their

parents last year by social

services – three times the number of

ten years ago.

Fran's story already has echoes of

Nicky and Mark Webster, formerly

known as the Hardinghams, whose

case was highlighted in this newspaper.

They, too, fled the country in

order to stop social services taking

away their newborn baby, a boy

called Brandon, after their first

three children were adopted over

abuse allegations.

The Websters

have since returned to England and

have won a landmark case to keep

their fourth child.

And what does the future hold for

Fran Lyon, a young mother who was

dealt a rough hand as a teenager and

fought to get a normal life and

now just wants to do what's best for

her daughter?

Perhaps social workers know

something Fran is not revealing.

Last night a spokeswoman for

Northumberland County Council

said: "We are unable to comment on

individual cases, and we do not

believe that it is in the best interests

of any mother or child to discuss

personal details through the media,

but unfortunately it does mean only

one side is being heard.

"Safeguarding arrangements in

Northumberland were rated as good

in a recent rigorous Government

inspection. Ms Lyon and her legal

adviser have attended all of her case

conferences and have been fully

informed of the concerns of the professionals

involved in her case.

"Where a child or unborn baby is

subject to a child-protection plan

and they move to reside in another

authority or country, responsibility

would normally pass to the new

authority or relevant authority in

another country. Northumberland

County Council would make sure the

new authority has all the relevant

information it needs to make

informed decisions."

Mr Hemming said: "I think it's

appalling and very disturbing and,

sadly, Fran's case is not unique.

"Of course there are situations

where you've got to intervene

but the system all too often fails

to intervene where it should and

then intervenes where it shouldn't.

It's a steamroller of a system and it

steamrollers mothers and children."

Only one thing remains certain. If

Fran proves herself to be a good and

loving mother, Northumberland's

carefully worked-out "birth plan" can

only ever be seen as an act of almost

unimaginable cruelty by the State.

Fran's story is told on Tonight

With Trevor McDonald, tomorrow

at 8pm on ITV1.