Genocide Court

Inside the Court of Protection

This is a story about a woman I have known for some time. Her name is Lioubov Georgevna – she is Russian. Many of us in our community of families impacted by the sinister quasi-judicial bodies called the “court of protection” and the “family courts” know her as Luba.

Luba is a mother. A mother who has the simple, primal aim of any mother: to do her best for her child.

She is a mother who has had her daughter removed from her care. The reason? Because her daughter has complex healthcare needs. She was put into supported living. Luba complained about errors in medication which made her daughter ill. The result was her daughter was sectioned, a diagnosis her mother considers utterly wrong. A diagnosis that is a life sentence for this young woman.

Following tensions with Sunderland local authority health and social care services, Luba’s daughter was removed from her care. And because mother and daughter spoke out in agony wishing to be reunited, they were prevented from seeing each other. The daughter’s phone was taken away – her lifeline to her mother.

I was able to attend this hearing as a member of the public because it was a committal hearing. The word “committal” means “committal to prison”. Luba faced imprisonment for contempt of court. This is a fate faced by many parents in 21^st century Britain, to Luba’s astonishment.

This was a trial without a jury.

Under UK law anyone accused of a criminal offence has the right to a trial by jury. But these parents have not been accused of any crime. I am no expert in the law around contempt of court, but as far as I can tell this is civil contempt.

This hearing took part in the north east of Britain where there are a great many reports of the unlawful removal of children from their mothers and families, of child abuse and paedophilia rings.

Online hearing

Luba immediately informed the judge why she did not attend the hearing in person: she had fled abroad for her own safety. She had suffered an attempted abduction on false mental health grounds.

This might sound fanciful but I am also a mother who has been slandered with fraudulent “mental health” labels, and so are many mothers I am in direct contact with. Sometimes by completely unqualified, unregulated individuals. In my case, and in many others, by registered medical health professionals who are bound by the Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm”.

Making false diagnoses with absolutely no evidence causes enormous damage to lives: children are illegally ripped away from their mothers, people lose their jobs, their right to make decisions in their own lives or those of their loved ones. Even their freedom.

The judge asked Luba why she had no legal representation as she had the right to legal aid. She assured him she had made strenuous efforts to secure a barrister. She had been in proceedings for years, so was no stranger to the process. But she had been unable to find a barrister to take her case despite being prepared to pay for it.

I wonder if the judge is aware that the north east of England is a legal desert. But regardless of where you live, lawyers that want to take on complicated family cases are vanishingly rare.

Luba was admittedly frustrated and at some points tried the patience of the judge. But imagine being the mother of a seriously ill child (though Luba’s daughter is now an adult, our children remain always our children). Imagine being completely powerless to care for your child in the way you know best. To get the treatment you know she needs. To make the decisions that are yours to make as her parent and caregiver. And seeing her suffering, her health destroyed, in utter distress.

I know a couple who were in this position – thankfully resolved. It almost destroyed them.

I have heard it said: if you want to see somebody act crazy, separate them from their child.

Despite not being a native speaker of English, Luba spoke eloquently and clearly about the breaches of her rights. Of her right to freedom of speech.

Of the failure of the health and social care services to support her child. And her belief that her child has been failed by the Court of Protection.

There had been years of conflict between Luba and the local authority services which caused her to speak out in the public domain, and caused the local authority to use the courts to take out a blanket ban on her using social media to make posts or publish video recordings relating to her daughter from any date during her life.

Imagine not being allowed to make the choice for yourself about what to say, or not say, about your own child, in whichever forum you wish.

Imagine exhausting all complaints mechanisms, seeing your child suffer, and being gagged from speaking out.

This is what is happening to all of us.

As I understand it, and I have been following Luba’s story for some time, her daughter has been distressed at separation from her mother. She also does not consider that she has been well looked after. She is desperate to come home.

She was given what Luba says is a false diagnosis of a serious mental health disorder and medication which is harming her.

Unbelievable?

Well, it didn’t quite happen to me, but it could have if I hadn’t, like Luba, fled Croatia, where I was tortured and persecuted by the State, along with my children. I know many people who have been falsely diagnosed, some forcibly medicated. I know a child this has happened to. Adults and children have been sectioned when they have become inconvenient by insisting their rights are respected.

This mother and daughter were prohibited from speaking with each other in their native language. This also happened to me: not prohibition, but blame. Why would a mother not speak to her own child in her own language?

This is one reason why this post is titled Genocide Court. Here is another one.

“Useless eaters”

At the Family Court Crisis Unconference on 20 and 21 January 2024, there was much discussion of genocide in the family courts, primarily on the grounds of illness or disability. There is a great deal of alarm that the State is removing sick and disabled adults and children from their families and placing them in for-profit care facilities, sometimes secure units. There, behind closed doors, sometimes far from their families, they are, not infrequently, quietly killed through medical malpractice, neglect or abuse.

The rate of preventable deaths among people with autism and learning disabilities is disturbingly high.

We are concerned about propaganda encouraging the public to support “assisted dying” because we have seen the flagrant disregard of the health, social care and court systems for evidence, the truth, the law, and the lives of our most vulnerable citizens.

There was reference made to the Nazi ideology of “useless eaters” – people with serious medical problems or disabilities who required help from society and gave nothing back. It is very hard not to conclude that this is the attitude being taken by our governments if they are treating individuals and families like this, discriminating against us on almost every single ground imaginable.

Nazi atrocities against people with disabilities are happening again. Source: http://www.worldofinclusion.com/res/qca/Lest_We_Forget.pdf

We are concluding that this IS a Nazi system, finding ourselves in the quagmire between conspiracy theory and reality, but learning that what we thought were wild conjectures are proving to be fact.

For someone who has not set foot inside these courts this reality is difficult to fathom. But at the Unconference, more than 300 people signed up and testified to exactly this happening, and we know there are thousands more like us. It is like entering a parallel universe – a dark subterranean world where judges freely admit human rights are not relevant.

The private children’s social care sector makes abnormal profits.

Hard-hitting media reports trouble me due to their focus on the lack of places in secure units for young people. Well, perhaps there wouldn’t be a shortage if they would stop locking up people who do not need it, for profit, or maybe to punish a whistleblower. (Yes, this is happening too).

It’s not the first time I have seen this pattern. In Croatia there was a sudden flurry of reports of unlawful removals of children from their families, followed by pleas from children’s homes full to bursting and the rapid establishment of fostering and adoption agencies. Coincidence? Knowing the adoption lobby, definitely not.

So do we have a kids for cash scandal in the UK?

Our medical and care systems are being turned into a parallel prison system for the innocent and vulnerable by powerful people with hidden agendas and an insatiable thirst for money.

Three days ago, four men were convicted of abusing patients at Whorton Hall secure hospital in County Durham, north east England. They were given suspended sentences.

Waste of public funds

At one point after listening to the judge and a hatchet-faced paralegal droning on about Luba’s social media infractions, I realised we had been in court for more than an hour. I wondered what the cost to the public was of torturing this mother.

Surely it would be cheaper for Luba to care for her daughter at home rather than be in a social care setting?

Clearly this local authority had been monitoring Luba’s social media activity right up until the time of the trial. That’s how I found out about it.

How is this not stalking? This is surveillance. Do families want to tolerate living like that?

Do local authorities have nothing better to do? The picture that is emerging is that social services are harassing perfectly good parents and not dealing with the urgent child protection cases.

Luba had published the names of care staff and clinicians involved in what she alleges is the abuse of her child. But I have been in her position, and I know many others who have.

She says she would have had no need to if the problems had been corrected.

If the authorities are deaf and blind to the reality of your child’s distress and your complaints get nowhere, you have no option.

If a tradesman comes to fix your house and rips you off, you are very likely to warn people on social media. So it is natural that you are likely to do so over the mistreatment of your child.

I have worked as a carer, and so did my mother. The people we cared for were grateful for every moment of care and attention we gave them, because we treated them gently and with respect.

We heard recently of the horrific tragedy of Bronson Battersby, a toddler who starved to death while in the care of his father. This in the same year as the murder of ten-year-old Sara Sharif, after her mother lost custody of her. Authorities urge us that “speculation is unhelpful” and not to engage in witch hunts. I hear this again and again. But if you don’t want to be called a witch, don’t be a witch.

We know perfectly well what they are hiding.

What would be wrong with a little organisational candour? It really would be so much better for everybody.

Trauma and terror

A unrepresented, distressed parent comes across badly in court. Luba says she has not been listened to for six years. She has been forced to leave the country and seek asylum because she will not stop doing what is right for her daughter.

She persists and speaks emphatically about her Article 6 and Article 10 human rights, the right to a fair trial and to freedom from torture.

Does the judge really see her behaviour as intransigence? Or is he perfectly well aware of the torture this mother and daughter are enduring, and coldly administering it?

Although at times he became exercised by Luba’s insistence on being heard and her refusal to stick to his process, possibly due to language barriers, his demeanour was smarmy and his tone even.

“We are not rerunning the Court of Protection procedures,” he says.

But what if Luba is right and those procedures were, as she states emphatically, corrupt?

Mine were. I have piles of documentation that prove it.

So do many people I know.

But the courts are not interested in evidence.

I realised that neither the defendant nor the witnesses had been sworn it.

It struck me a long time ago that nobody is sworn in in family proceedings.

It comes as a shock to parents to learn that perjury is not only tolerated, it is expected in family court. It is a criminal offence, but it is not prosecuted. It is rewarded. Court of Protection really is its twin.

I also realised that we were on a Microsoft Teams video call.

There has been a lot of talk recently about court transcripts and recordings. Transcripts in the UK cost litigants thousands of pounds, unless they are entitled to financial aid. But when they receive them they are stunned to find they are not a faithful reproduction of what has been said. This is widely known.

Teams has audio and video recording and transcription built in. The transcripts are not perfect but a good administrator can clean them up quite quickly. One can compare them against the recording.

I don’t see what the problem is with using this freely available, inexpensive technology.

Probably exactly that. It’s cheap.

“Without merit”

The judge tells Luba he cannot help her because she has appealed and her appeals were mostly found to be “without merit”.

This elicited a hollow laugh from me.

Our family court community all know that appeals are rarely allowed and even more rarely upheld, although anyone with a grain of common sense can see they are entirely deserving.

These are hard infractions of the law we are talking about.

There IS no effective appeals process. It is a joke, and the “justice system” is becoming a laughing stock in our eyes.

This is dangerous.

Brave

Luba tells the judge openly that his court is harbouring criminal activity.

I believe her. There are legions of parents, perfectly reasonable people, who will put their hand in the fire and say the same for the courts that heard their cases.

Luba says a social worker diagnosed her daughter with a serious psychiatric disorder.

Please read that again:

She says a social worker diagnosed her daughter with a serious psychiatric disorder.

This. Is. What. Is. Happening.

A woman I knew, a criminal barrister, was also “diagnosed” by a JUNIOR social worker.

These are people fast tracked into social work on the Frontline training programme, which is proving to be a disaster.

These are catastrophic systemic failures which are destroying lives, decimating families and devastating societies.

This is why we call social services the SS.

How can judges go along with this?

Luba speaks of falsified medical records.

“This is how bad it is”, she says.

Yes. It really is.

She reads from what I believe was a newspaper article, calling such cases “morally reprehensible”, “abhorrent”, “a present day scandal of enormous consequence.”

Yes. It is.

Standing up for all of us

I know Luba. I heard her speak at length on the Dark World Podcast. She is sweet and reasonable. I feel genuine warmth towards her. I contact her sometimes to let her know she is not alone in this. It’s not just that it breaks my heart, but I cannot process that these things are happening. I often have to pinch myself to see if it is a bad dream.

I am grateful for Luba’s courage in continuing to speak the truth.

It’s a Maya Angelou moment: without knowing it, she has stood up for all children and families.

Someone needs to stop this madness and let Luba come home. Let her care for her daughter.

Or rather, let her daughter leave the country, as Luba suggests. Let her go to a country where there are medical services that will help her.

Stop incarcerating out loved ones.

Stop turning families into fugitives.

Stop enslaving the British public to private financial interests.

How safe are vulnerable adults and children in care?

The judgment

It is absolutely clear that the judge is reading from a judgment that was already prepared.

So what have we just witnessed? A show trial?

He accuses Luba of “a high level of premeditation and deliberateness”.

Well. I have had similar things said about me. I ignore it. I consider the judgments void. One day, they will be proven to be so. They are meaningless to me. Except they have damaged my sons.

The judge accuses the daughter of being delusional.

But maybe she simply wants to go home to her mum.

He calls Luba “entrenched”.

Family court mums know all about this word.

She is not “entrenched”. She is simply telling the truth. 

Unlike the judge, she has integrity.

He hasn’t bothered to look at the evidence in her case. Nor did the judges in my cases.

He is not bound to believe public institutions over a private individual. He is supposed to be unbiased. He is supposed to look at the damned evidence.

He is supposed to apply the law.

I have been told explicitly that judges do not believe that human rights are relevant to family cases. That was proven to be correct. But they are wrong. And it seems it applies to Court of Protection as well, exactly as I thought.

The judge said that there are no grounds to conclude that the Court of Protection is corrupt.

That’s what they said about the “family court” in my case too. But it was wrong.

He claims the court is acting to protect the daughter. He calls Luba manipulative and blames her for her daughter’s distress.

That makes my blood boil. They do this to mothers all the time.

He finds her in contempt.

We come to the sentencing.

It becomes clear that, had she had any assets, they would have grabbed them. This is what it is all about. Abducting our loved ones and seizing our assets.

It’s racketeering and trafficking.

This is not a court. It’s a crime scene.

The judge offers Luba “help”, offering her the chance to take the social media posts down. Coercion.

She refuses. I rejoice.

She offers, as a compromise, to remove the names of the individuals involved. A graceful gesture.

Not good enough.

He sentences her to three months imprisonment.

A plea for humanity

Before the sentence is read out, Luba makes a plea for humanity.

She begs the judge to read her skeleton argument.

She says:

“I plead to you on a human level… my daughter is the sunshine of my life. We had no Christmas for six years. By this court order we cannot speak our own language. I cannot read her poems.”

She asks:

“How can this happen in 21^st century Britain?”

She is now in tears.

The judge asks her not to interrupt while he reads the sentence.

Hold still while I vivisect you.

He justifies the sentence, even though the daughter does not want her mother to go to prison, as “ensuring future compliance”.

Well, good luck with that.

We are at the point where parents are prepared to accept prison sentences rather than cover up the truth and give up on what’s right for their children.

This judge is calm and even. He will probably go home an enjoy an evening meal. I am sorry about that.

These people evidently do not have a sense of shame or compassion.

They are often good at performative compassion. The judge in my case is VERY active in human rights, which is extraordinary and perfectly hilarious.

He hopes that the sentence will “sober her thoughts” and make her see “the error of her ways”.

That’s exactly what my ex husband’s female lawyer asked the court when I tried to protect my sons.

Not a chance in hell.

It’s the same words and same scripts, case to case, court to court, country to country.

The predictability is already getting boring.

He accuses Luba of acting to the detriment of her daughter.

He accuses her of provoking the court to draw attention. Well, maybe she has to.

The law, he says, applies equally to all. Except, it would seem, judges, local authorities, care home staff…

Good for you Luba. You did a good job.

You have the right to appeal.

Don’t bother. Don’t give these muppets the benefit of your attention.

Will you stay abroad or will you come home and serve the prison sentence?

Whichever way you choose, you know you are not alone.