The family of Ellie Yarrow-Sanders, a mother going through the family courts with her three-year old son, has asked her to come home after she went missing following the start of family court proceedings. Ellie’s mother and sister have asked the judge and the police not to prosecute Ellie and to guarantee that she won’t lose custody of her son, if she comes home. 

The request, which was made in the hope of reassuring Ellie that she could return home without repercussions for what the court will view as kidnapping, has so far not been met with any response from Ellie, who has been missing with her son for over six months.

In an official statement issued by the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary on 1st February, the judge overseeing the case did not promise to let Ellie keep custody of Olly should she return home, saying only that he promised to deal with her case fairly. Mr Justice Williams also said that a senior social worker had been appointed to the case, to “seek to promote Olly’s welfare”, and that this did not mean there was any chance of Olly being placed in foster care. However the wording of the statement leaves room for a change in contact.

In cases where a parent flees with a child, family courts will often take the view that the parent on the run can no longer be trusted, leaving the door open for a contact order in favour of the remaining parent. Unless the fleeing parent can show that their actions were motivated by a desire to protect a child from risk of harm and provide evidence of that harm, the family court will almost always take the kidnapping into consideration when making an order for contact.

A letter written by Ellie to her family shortly before she disappeared alleges that Olly’s father was abusive, and that his portrayal of her in court had convinced the judge that she was causing Olly emotional harm. Ellie felt she had no choice but to go on the run.

In what’s believed to be a first for a family court judge, Mr Justice Williams also posted a tweet on the Judiciary’s official account asking Ellie to come home. The tweet includes the hash tag #ComeHomeOlly rather than #ComeHomeEllie, a choice which could be seen as manipulative and in bad taste.

The tweet prompted an intense conversation on Twitter, with some tweeters taking the view that assurances from the family courts were empty gestures, while others felt that Ellie should come back and face the court. Further hashtags were also added by tweeters in response to the Judiciary’s own, including #keeprunningellie  and #iamellieyarrowsaunders.

One tweeter wrote:

“She will not be given a voice, there are thousands of us getting abused in family court, acting like you don’t know and care, I’ve had 4 yrs of trying to protect my child so if I was her I’d #keeprunningellie keep that boy safe.”

Another tweeter felt that the public had no right to judge the case without all the facts:

“None of you making such sweeping statements against this man or woman have the full facts before you . The main concern is the child. The truth is that no one comes to work looking to take children off their families. She needs to get back into court and fight her corner.”

One tweeter also questioned whether Mr Justice Williams had the right to promise not to place Olly in foster care:

“I don’t get how a judge can say about not going in2 care. OF COURSE I hope it don’t come 2 that but how can it be promised?? Or did i get that wrong?”

The original Facebook post published on 2nd February by Ellie’s mother Donna and sister Maddie, calling for her and Olly’s safe return home has already received over 125 comments, with some posters telling the family that it was safer for Ellie to remain on the run. Other posters have offered their support and sympathy over Ellie and Olly’s disappearance.

Maddie’s post says the following:

“This is an official statement regarding Ellie and Olly.

This is NOT us siding with Patrick Sheridan. This is us independently and with the judge regarding her next step. As her mother and sister, we support her coming home but only under certain conditions regarding her safety. Without going into specifics I urge you to read her story so you can understand why she had to make the hardest decision of her life and go on the run with her son.

We would love for Ellie and Olly to return home to us, her family who will do everything in our power to protect them from going through anything like that again. We support her with coming home, as the media are stating, but only on certain conditions, such as safety from being prosecuted and that she will not lose custody that come with proven assurance by the media and the judge.

Please believe that we are doing this with the best interest of them both, as a life on the run is very lonely.

We miss you more everyday.”

Posters on Facebook seemed to be overwhelmingly in support of Ellie remaining on the run.

One comment under the post read:

“It maybe lonely but it’s safer. Until they publicly say they will not take Olly from her and start to investigate Patrick then Ellie is safer where she is. I hope to God one day she can come back home.”

Another poster said:

“Please never trust the courts , they are so corrupt the minute she steps foot back in sight Olly with be snatched from her and she will never see him again! Go and be with them where no one will know who they are and start a new life as a family so she won’t be alone then ☹️ #keeprunningellie”

A further post urged the police to investigate the allegations in Ellie’s letter:

“I would just like to see Essex police investigate the crimes she’s listed in her letter. She’s been really specific with easily corroborated evidence. I feel if her letter was substantiated then her actions would be viewed very differently by SS and court, but while they remain in the ‘allegation’ category it’s a double-edged sword.”

One poster felt cases like this would continue as long as domestic violence laws remained piecemeal:

“Until this country does something to seriously change the laws around domestic abuse, control and coercion Ellie needs to keep running. She’s running not just for herself & Ollie now, but for every single one of us who’s ever been put through this kind of abuse.”

New guidelines issued by the President of the Family Division to better protect children from identification during child welfare proceedings confirms that identification of children in care causes life-long damage to children and their families, and amounts to a breach of the child and their family’s human rights.

The Times picked up on McFarlane’s suggestion to give social workers the chance to address criticisms of their assessments during the court process this week, which has sparked concern among families going through child protection proceedings who have yet to be given the chance to address personal criticisms of them, which are often unfounded. The guidance also recommends passing on social work criticisms about council misconduct and illegal activities to Ofsted as well as the council in question’s Monitoring Officer to ensure that any breaches are dealt with in law.

Of equal interest to this site are McFarlane’s recommendations for keeping children’s details private to avoid their identification online and in the real world, and it is his reasons for keeping those details private which unwittingly make the strongest case possible for banning councils and agencies from posting intimate details about children waiting to be fostered or adopted online or in the public domain.

The guidelines issued last Friday make specific references to the impact of children in care being identified, which clearly apply at every stage of a child’s life. One of McFarlane’s key observations on identification and how it can not only traumatise families for life but also affect their futures is found on page 4, and is added in his thoughts about identification through ethnic detail:

“Identifying a child/parent by ethnic group can be a key identifier -and with ‘beyond border’ implications where families have links with communities elsewhere. Information about abuse can have lifelong economic, social and psychological consequences for family members; it can result in serious social stigma, rejection and trauma, impacting on marriage prospects and life chances.”

McFarlane offers more reasons on why identifying children in care is dangerous, this time in relation to their personal safety. At page 6 of the guidelines he says:

“The need for a public body to be identified when acting in respect of citizens is recognised to be important. Nevertheless we now know that naming the local authority in a public document may set clear geographical boundaries to the location of some children; their location may be further narrowed down by other information in a judgment.”

The ability to find and locate children is re-activated once proceedings are over and a child is placed with a fostering or adoption agency. Councils and agencies are then free to publicly advertise a child’s name and details, often with photographs of the child, all fully available online and for the world to see, including offending paedophiles, child traffickers and criminal gangs. There is no sound logic to this.

McFarlane uses risk of identification to defend the practice of not naming councils in family law judgments (and in other parts of the report social workers), however there is clearly a much bigger issue here. It’s all well and good protecting children during proceedings, but their rights to personal safety and a life free of abuse and trauma do not end once these proceedings are over.

If you feel as strongly as we do that a child’s human right to privacy is an inalienable legal right as set out in the Human Rights Act 1990 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child – both of which the UK is fully signed up to – then please consider signing our petition to end the advertising of children online for adoption and fostering purposes. 

President of the Family Division, Andrew McFarlane has suggested that the law should be changed so that judges can make care orders while a child is still in the womb. The President’s recommendation fails to understand how the policy could cause mothers heightened stress during pregnancy, leading to a sharp rise in miscarriages.

The recommendation comes at a time when newborns being taken into care are at an all time high, and prominent social care professionals are calling for the system to divert families away from the courts.

It is not just this site that is appalled by the President’s thinking on child welfare. The recommendation has shocked families in the UK, who took to social media this week to voice their concerns.

One mother told her friends on Facebook, “Oh Andrew McFarlane, says it all….. never mind the fact that a child isn’t even recognised in law until it’s born, but an order is being made 🤔…interesting…..”.

Another mother who had been through care proceedings said, “It is inhumane. It’s unthinkable.”

Other parents thought that the idea suggested the President was a misogynist, while some posters took the view that the policy could lead to increased suicide rates and backstreet abortions. An issue which also concerned commentators was the possibility of the policy being abused to feed the adoption and fostering sectors by effectively securing babies for these markets. One poster wrote, “Not a problem if they take kids from lunatics but we know it’s another legal instrument [the family court] will abuse.”

A father on Facebook pointed out the confusion in law over parental rights and the rights of the court, “Fkn disgusting a father has no rights to a child before it’s born, but social services should have. Has this fkn world gone mad?”

Some posters thought the policy was more suited to a story line in sci-fi series The X-Files.

McFarlane made his recommendation during a speech he gave at a conference for the Association of Lawyers for Children in Bristol. He told attendees:

“Irrespective of any practical difficulties that may arise in terms of listing and then conducting a court hearing during the first few days of a child’s life, there are, I believe, important principles of fairness and, frankly, humanity which may indicate that, in some cases, it would be in the interests of all concerned if some form of pre-birth court process could be undertaken…

Given the number of such cases which are now coming before the Family Court, and in the light of the real difficulties which some of these cases can generate, I wonder whether the time has come to consider some amendment to the statutory scheme to allow for the exercise of a prospective pre-birth jurisdiction in appropriate cases.”

While the President believes the idea of pre-birth court hearings is a humane alternative to what is currently on offer, this is not correct. Family court proceedings are deeply invasive and often cause families severe anxiety which can go on to create mental health disorders, like PTSD. The added emotional trauma and physical stress of having to undergo assessments and hearings during pregnancy will most certainly lead to women having miscarriages, or increasingly choosing to end their own lives.

What the President proposes will leave him with a great deal of blood on his hands.

Very many thanks to Michele Simmons for sharing this development with us.