Welcome to another week.
More than 1,200 parents in Minnesota, America, have launched a class action to shut down social services in the state, accusing it of gross negligence and law breaking. The parents are also calling on the US government to make lying, fabricating evidence and ignoring the law whilst carrying out social work, a punishable offence.
A local media outlet spoke with a mother who had joined the class action, and reported that:
“After taking her ten-month old son to the hospital for a cough, doctors said he was stable, though they recommended she should stay. She chose to go home because, as she told the outlet, “After waiting, I had asked to leave because I wanted to put my kids to bed and I had my three-year-old with me.”
“I asked if there was anything else that had to be done,” she said. “They said ‘No, there was no other testing or anything that needed to be done.’”
But two days later, police showed up at her home to take him back to the doctor, and there was already a foster family lined up to take him. “She checked him out, all his vitals were stable,” she said. “They already had a foster parent in the room, in the room to remove my son before they ever proved … before they ever proved there was an emergency situation.”
He has been in foster care for over a week. Weber was supposed to get [her son] back on Tuesday, but the judge postponed the case because no county attorney could make it to court.
“I need to share my story and if I need to share it a hundred times, a thousand times – I will,” she told KMSP.”
Our question this week then, is just this: should the UK government make lying and fabricating evidence whilst doing social work a crime?
Many thanks to Maggie Tuttle for sharing this news item with us.
Researching Reform 
Lying and fabricating evidence that is placed before the court is already a crime or even two crimes ! Perverting the caurse of justice and perjury (if the author swears to their truth in court);What is wrong is that judges in the family courts regularly ignore such crimes ! The only remedy as I see it is for judges to be charged with misconduct if they ignore such crimes when they are admitted or shown beyond reasonable doubt to have happened .
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Yes as Ian said above Lying in the Family courts is Perjury.MP John Hemming stated in parliament that this is a Criminal offence.
so yes Social workers are already breaking the Law in the UK so why are they never arrested or charged ? what have those Judges got to hide by covering for these Law breaking Social workers.
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Hi Ian, DM, the question was specifically about making the telling of lies whilst practicing social work a crime – slight distinction but an important one, which widens the current law.
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Dont really understand your point Natasha.
if the Lies are presented to court then thats a Crime as they are breaking the Law.its Perjury.
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Yes, that’s right. But we’re taking this a step back. We’re saying the act of creating the fabrication, not presenting it in court, is a crime. So we take out the court element from the start, as not all fabrications take place inside reports or with court officials involved. For example, where a social worker tells a parent that they have to agree to a S.20 agreement, and then never take that agreement into a court room. That shouldn’t happen, but it does.
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Collusion ?
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Ok i see,
well yes all stages of Fabrication and Lying in a public office should be made a Crime.
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Even if all these are made into additional crimes it will make no difference as the judges will continue to ignore them and the guilty will continue to get off scott free !
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Thats why it also needs to be made a Criminal offence for judges to turn a blind eye to such criminality.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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It seems the fabrication and invention of evidence is not restricted to any one society or country. There are always lies, damned lies and statistics. Why does society tolerate this when it comes to the justice system?
Perhaps we are all too civilised when it comes to doling out the justice that such base behaviour deserves. We are so busy observing all the ethics and niceties, we fail to concern ourselves with the gross injustice being done to the victims.
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The lies are a two tier effect.
first they lie in case files and lie to other professionals about the parents then later they completely deny what they have been accused of and their complaints dept back them up to the hilt.Fake News and Fake evidence seem to run hand in hand almost everywhere you turn.
something has got to give and when the first domino falls it will quickly become an avalanche.
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Just seen this on the Transparency project.
as always its in favor of the system and too quick to agree with So-called findings of the courts. Courts who need no evidence!.
“The Daily Mail reported yesterday that a ‘Nurse’s one-year-old son is taken from her care after she let him sit in a Bob The Builder toy car that was ‘inappropriate’ for his age’.
There are 1,200 comments on the article.
What the heck? Do the family courts really take away people’s babies because of bob the builder toy cars?
Nope. They do not. The Daily Mail article is misleading”.
http://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/bob-the-builder-mail-please-fix-it/#comment-24126
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Nurse’s one-year-old son is taken from her care after she let him sit in a Bob The Builder toy car that was ‘inappropriate’ for his age
•Qualified nurse has one-year-old boy taken from her care by social services
•Woman has ‘extremely low range of intellectual ability’, family court hears
•She left child in a Bob The Builder toy car that was ‘inappropriate’ for his age
•Concerns also raised over the feeding and nappy changing of the child
These headlnes seem fair enough to me and also I suspect to most other readers……….
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