A London Local Authority v Marten & Ors (Fact-Finding Hearing)

This is my judgment following a fact-finding hearing in care proceedings brought by a London local authority in relation to three children. The children are A, born in 2017; B, born in 2019; and C, born in 2020. The respondents to the proceedings are the children's parents Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, both of whom have parental responsibility for the children, and the children themselves through their Guardian Christina Whittaker.

This is the second set of care proceedings involving these parents within the space of three years. The first set of proceedings were issued shortly after A's birth, and concluded with a six-month supervision order. The parents' youngest child, C, was born during the course of the current proceedings.

The findings sought by the local authority are set out in a schedule of allegations. In summary, the local authority alleges that the parents have failed to provide adequately for their children's medical needs; that there has been domestic abuse in the parents' relationship, including an incident when the mother was seriously injured; and that the parents have evaded local authority attempts to investigate and to safeguard the children.

The parents deny the allegations. Their case is that they have always provided appropriately for their children’s medical needs; that their relationship does not involve abuse and the mother’s injury was a result of a simple accident; and that they have fully cooperated with all reasonable enquiries made by the local authority.

The Guardian takes a neutral position at this fact-finding hearing.

This hearing took place remotely using Microsoft Teams, in accordance with the preference of the parties and my directions at the pre-trial review. The local authority has been represented by Ms Phil-Ebosie and the Guardian by Ms Khan. The parents have represented themselves. They have each been intermittently represented throughout the proceedings, and on a number of occasions hearings have been adjourned to allow one or both to secure legal representation.

The proceedings have been protracted and delayed. It took more than a year for this fact-finding hearing to be listed. I am satisfied, having reviewed the orders and the evidence filed, that the primary reason for the delay is the way in which the parents have conducted the litigation.

The case was managed by HHJ Atkinson from issue in January 2020, and the fact-finding hearing was originally due to take place before her.

Early in the proceedings HHJ Atkinson had determined that there should be a combined welfare and fact-finding hearing, and had accordingly made directions for expert assessments. The parents agreed at court to participate in the assessments, but then refused to agree the identity of the experts, and withdrew their agreement altogether in May 2020, after the matter had been restored to court. Since then they have declined to engage with any of the expert assessments on the basis, as I understand it, that they consider that the threshold criteria were not met and there are therefore no grounds for State intervention in their family life.

On 11 June 2020 the mother sought permission to appeal the directions for expert assessments. On 25 June 2020 both parents sought permission to appeal HHJ Atkinson’s refusal of a request that she recuse herself. Both applications were refused by the Court of Appeal on 8 July 2020.

At a hearing on 12 October 2020 HHJ Atkinson reconsidered her decision as to the scope of the trial, and listed a discrete fact-finding hearing to determine the disputed threshold issues.

Due to pressure on HHJ Atkinson's diary, the fact finding hearing was moved to my list, and the proceedings first came before me for pre-trial review on 8 January 2021. At that hearing the father was represented, but the mother was not. She told me that she intended to be represented at the fact finding hearing. At that pre-trial review I refused two late Part 25 applications made by the mother, and made some limited case management directions in preparation for the fact finding hearing.

Shortly after the pre-trial review the father dispensed with his legal representation. The parents then applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal my case management order. That application was refused on 28 January 2021 and certified as totally without merit.

The hearing commenced on 1 February 2021 with a time estimate of five days. It did not run smoothly, and as a consequence the court has had to find a further four days beyond the original listing in order to complete the hearing, vacating other cases in order to do so.

At the outset of this hearing both parents applied for an adjournment on the basis that they wished to be legally represented. I refused that application for the reasons I gave then, which were, in essence, that the parents had had plenty of time to secure representation if they wanted to do so, and that if the hearing were adjourned it would not be possible to re-list it for several months.

Throughout the remainder of the hearing the parents' attendance was intermittent. A pattern emerged in which they would absent themselves from the hearing at the intended start time, and then send through an explanation, or sometimes a document without an explanation, later during the course of the morning. In the first week the father said he had toothache and, despite his failure to produce satisfactory evidence of his condition, the hearing was adjourned to allow him to have the tooth extracted. In the second week the parents said that the mother had been involved in a car accident. On both occasions the parents gave vague and varying explanations in response to questions about their ability to attend the hearing, and the documents they sent through in support of what they said had happened were incomplete and / or inconsistent with their explanations. I have kept a note of the multiple adjournments which were requested during the course of the hearing, and the reasons given for them, which I will provide to the parties after today's hearing.

I acknowledge that proceedings of this nature can be both stressful and intimidating to all parents, and particularly those who are acting in person. The court will therefore allow a considerable amount of leeway to parents who find themselves in this position. Throughout this hearing, with the cooperation and agreement of the other parties, the court made every possible effort to accommodate the parents, and to encourage them to engage. It became clear over time, however, that the parents were deliberately evading putting themselves in a position where they would be required to challenge the local authority's evidence, and that they were also desperately anxious to avoid giving evidence themselves. In the end the mother did give evidence but refused to answer many of the questions put to her, including all questions relating to the more serious allegations made by the local authority. The father declined to give evidence at all.

In their closing submissions the parents argued that the conduct of the hearing had been unfair to them. I do not accept that submission. Despite the parents' lack of representation, they had every opportunity to engage fully in the hearing if they had chosen to do so. Their lack of engagement during this hearing mirrors their conduct throughout the proceedings. These parents are both intelligent and articulate people, and have been unrepresented throughout much of the proceedings and at this hearing through choice. I am satisfied that they fully understood what was required of them in terms of preparation for and engagement with the hearing. This was not a case involving complex cross-examination of expert witnesses. The most significant evidence was the social work evidence, the documentary evidence, and the evidence of the parents themselves. I am entirely satisfied that the hearing was fair, and that the parents have had every opportunity to present their case, and to challenge that of the local authority.

The father is aged forty-six. He is a British national, but moved to the United States in his early teens. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he was convicted in Florida of a number of offences, including rape. The circumstances of that offence were that he had broken into a woman's home, armed with a knife and hedge clippers, and held her there for several hours while raping her. He was sentenced to forty years' imprisonment, of which he served twenty-two. On his release in 2010 he was deported to the UK. He is subject to ongoing monitoring by the Prisons and Probation Service, formally the National Offender Management Service, as a registered sex offender.

The mother is aged thirty-three, and is also British. She has a large family from whom she is estranged. She has made serious allegations against both of her parents in respect of childhood abuse. Her parents have had contact with the local authority during the course of these proceedings, and have made it clear that they dispute those allegations and believe that the mother has, in their words, been "brainwashed" into making them.

The parents met and formed a relationship in 2016. They are not legally married but have undergone what they have described as a spiritual marriage. It is not clear exactly when the mother found out about the father's history but in 2017 she told a social worker that the father had only told her that he had a previous conviction for a sexual offence after she had become pregnant, and that she was not aware of the full circumstances of his offending until she was informed by the police.

The mother became pregnant with A in 2017. During the early stages of the pregnancy the parents were living in South America. They returned to the UK sometime in mid-2017. Late in the pregnancy the mother booked in at a hospital in the area where the parents were then living in Kensington and Chelsea. She however failed to attend any subsequent antenatal appointments, and the hospital became concerned as the mother had travelled to an area with the zika virus during her pregnancy, and there was a need for the pregnancy to be monitored. Medical staff were worried enough to attempt home visits, but they did not succeed in locating the family. The hospital put out a national alert to other maternity units.

The day before A’s birth, the mother presented at a hospital in Wales in early labour. She gave a false name, and said that she was from a travelling family. The hospital were concerned, and made a referral to the local authority and to the police. The parents were subsequently identified as the couple for whom the hospital in Kensington had put out an alert. It transpired that they had been living in a tent near Tesco's, and had made no plans for the baby's birth. In particular, they had nowhere to live on discharge from the hospital. The mother told the social workers that both had wanted new identities, and that they wanted their freedom.

I observe at this point that lack of resource is not the problem for this couple. The mother is from a very wealthy family, and is the beneficiary of a trust which owns substantial assets. It is a discretionary trust, but the evidence indicates that the trustees have regularly applied funds for the benefit of the mother and her siblings. Emails produced by the mother show that from late 2016 until early 2017 the trust was in the process of purchasing a property in London for the mother to live in. Just before contracts were due to be exchanged, the mother asked the trustees to withdraw from the purchase, saying that, "Due to a recent development in my career and progression, I can no longer live in London".

A was born on [date redacted]. That evening the police attended the hospital to speak to the family. The father attempted to run away, and then assaulted a police officer. He was arrested and later pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting a police officer, and breach of the notification requirements of his Sex Offender Registration. He was sentenced to forty weeks' imprisonment.

In the first few days after A’s birth the Welsh local authority, Carmarthenshire County Council, attempted to support the mother to find accommodation through its housing department. The mother failed to engage with offers of support or to take steps to secure housing for herself and the baby, and the local authority initiated proceedings. An interim care order was made by the Family Court in Swansea, and the mother and A were placed in a mother and baby foster placement.

During the course of the proceedings A remained with the mother, although they lived in five different foster placements due to repeated placement breakdowns. Attempts were made to assess the parents' ability to care for A, which included the father following his release from prison, but the parents' engagement was very limited. As a result the conclusions of the reports were expressed in cautious terms. The expert psychologist who carried out an assessment of the father said that she had been unable to complete a full assessment due to the lack of information provided by the father. He remained very guarded, and the expert found it difficult to engage him in the assessment. However, the local authority's evidence suggested that the mother's care of A was good, and the quality of the father's contact with the baby gave no grounds for concern.

Those proceedings concluded at a final hearing which took place over three days from 18 to 20 July 2018. There was a dispute at the final hearing as to the threshold criteria, and the district judge made findings that the threshold criteria were met. It appears from the judgment that the parents accepted the findings which were based on the father's historic conviction, and the fact that he continued to be subject to monitoring as a registered sex offender. The district judge made additional findings that the parents had deliberately sought to evade the authorities, and that they had put their new-born baby at risk of significant harm by failing to engage with antenatal care, and to plan for the birth, or to attempt to secure accommodation. The district judge commented that the court was used to seeing a lack of preparation by parents who have limited intelligence and lack resources, but that these parents did not fall into that category.

The outcome of the proceedings was largely agreed between the parties, in that there was no dispute that A should be cared for by the parents. The parents were living separately at the time of the hearing, and the father was undergoing therapy, as recommended by the expert instructed in the proceedings. The plan was that the mother and A should move into the community but that the father should not join them until his therapy was completed.

There was an issue between the local authority and the Guardian as to whether the case should conclude with no order, as the local authority proposed, or with a six-month supervision order, as proposed by the Guardian. The district judge decided that a supervision order was necessary. She referred to the parents' history of evasion, and their very limited engagement with any statutory agencies, both within and outside the care proceedings. She recorded also that there had been times during the local authority's involvement when the parents had prioritised their own relationship over A’s needs, and gave examples of them doing so.

At the time of the hearing the parents were refusing to give details of their future plans, and it was not known where the family would be living, other than in the very short term. The district judge commented that she would not have been prepared to make a child arrangements order in contested private law proceedings without being given that basic information. She concluded that although the ongoing risks did not justify the long-term separation of A from the parents' care, they did mean that a supervision order was both necessary and proportionate.

I set out the subsequent events only in outline at this stage as many of them form the basis of the threshold findings sought by the local authority at this hearing.

I have no information as to what, if any, monitoring Carmarthenshire County Council carried out under the supervision order while the family remained in Wales. In October 2018, three months into the supervision order, it appears that the parents moved to London. The parents make the point that in doing so, they were simply carrying out an intention which they had made clear throughout the care proceedings. I note that the supervision order support plan required the parents to notify the local authority of a change of address. I do not know whether the parents did inform Carmarthenshire of their address in London or even the borough where they intended to live. Certainly it seems that there was no contact between Carmarthenshire and any London local authority, or any attempt to re-designate the supervision order.

The local authority was made aware of the family in October 2018 as a result of a referral made by the father's Offender Manager, who had been notified by the father of the family's move into the local authority's area. It appears from the social work chronology that a Child And Family Assessment was considered, but did not in the end take place.

B was born at home in April 2019. I will return later in the judgment to the circumstances of B’s birth. One of the findings sought by the local authority is that the parents failed to make arrangements for the birth, or to seek appropriate antenatal or postnatal medical care, putting B at risk of harm.

The mother then became pregnant with C in mid-2019.

In the early hours of 21 November 2019, the mother sustained injuries at the family home following a fall out of a first floor window or from a ledge. Again, the circumstances in which this occurred form part of an allegation within these proceedings. The mother suffered a serious injury to her spleen and her liver, and underwent surgery. Fortunately the unborn baby was unharmed.

The mother remained in hospital for eight days, and during that period the local authority initiated a section 47 investigation. Two social workers attempted on a number of occasions to visit the family home, to see the children, but were unable to do so, save for one occasion on 22 November when the father brought the children to the doorstep. The social workers were not permitted into the home.

During the course of the section 47 investigation, on or around 10 December 2019, the mother and the children went to Ireland. The reasons for the mother's travel, and the circumstances in which she travelled, are in dispute. The local authority say that this was an attempt to avoid the investigation of the local authority into the family. The parents say that the mother went for the purposes of a holiday.

On 13 December 2019 the mother's father, Napier Marten, issued wardship proceedings in the High Court. The children were made wards of court on 17 December. I have not read Mr Marten's statement as it was removed from the bundle following a direction made by HHJ Atkinson earlier in the proceedings, and so I do not know whether he knew or believed that the children had left the country, or was simply seeking to find out where they were.

On 19 December 2019 the police visited the family home at the local authority's request to carry out a welfare check. They spoke to the father, who informed them that the mother and the children were in Ireland. The police were able to speak to the mother on the phone.

The wardship application came before Judd J the following day, 20 December 2019, at a hearing which the father attended. An order was made for the children to be returned to the UK. The local authority indicated at that hearing that it intended to issue care proceedings on the mother's return.

On the same day the mother presented herself with the children at a police station in Ireland. The children were removed from her care under the Irish equivalent of police protection powers. The authorities in Ireland issued an application for an Emergency Protection Order on 23 December 2019, but that application was refused, and the children were returned to the mother's care. A safety plan was put in place, involving frequent social work visits to the hotel where the mother and children were staying.

There was then a period of about two weeks during which the mother says that an order made in the proceedings in Ireland prevented her from complying with the order of the High Court, and returning the children to the UK. She did return, after a hearing in the Irish proceedings, on the evening of 9 January 2020. On her arrival the children were taken into police protection, and were placed in foster care. An interim care order was made the following day. A and B have remained in foster care since then.

C was born during the course of the proceedings, in May 2020. C’s birth took place in hospital. I will return later in this judgment to the circumstances of C’s birth, which again form the subject matter of one of the local authority's allegations in these proceedings.

An emergency protection order was made in respect of C on the day of the birth. The local authority's plan pre-birth had been that C should be placed with the mother in a residential assessment unit, with the father to join later, subject to a risk assessment. However the parents refused to agree to a residential assessment, even as a secondary position in the event that the court were to decline to permit C to be discharged to their care.

On 8 June 2020 HHJ Atkinson made an interim care order in respect of C, and endorsed C’s separation from the parents. It is recorded on the order that the judge urged the parents to reconsider their decision not to accept the offer of a residential placement, and also enquired about the possibility of a mother and baby foster placement. The order records that the local authority were concerned about the risk attached to such a plan, but that in any event the mother did not unequivocally agree to such a placement. As a result, C was placed in foster care, in a separate placement from their siblings.

Throughout the proceedings the parents have been having supervised contact with the children. The reports of contact are universally positive. It is therefore particularly tragic that C has been deprived of the opportunity to remain in the mother's care over the first crucial months of life. During the course of the mother's oral evidence I asked her to explain to me her decision not to take up the offer of a placement with C in a residential assessment unit. I considered that the explanation the mother gave, which was that she did not think that the various providers suggested were suitable, was not credible.

In November 2020 the parents made an allegation that A and B were suffering physical abuse perpetrated by their foster carer. The local authority carried out a section 47 investigation. The parents' allegations were not substantiated, and A and B have remained in their placement.

There is a live issue at this hearing as to whether or not the threshold criteria in section 31(2) of the Children Act are met, that is whether at the relevant date, which is 9 January 2020 in the case of A and B, and in 2020 in the case of C, the children were suffering or were likely to suffer significant harm attributable to the care being given to them, or likely to be given to them if the order were not made, not being that which it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give.

The burden of proving that the threshold criteria are met, and on what basis, lies with the local authority, and the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities. In order to establish whether or not the threshold criteria are met, the court must first make findings on the disputed facts. The approach to fact finding in the context of threshold allegations was summarised by the then President, Sir James Munby, in Re X (Children) (No 3) [2015] EWHC 3651 as follows: [20]:

The President added the following three points:

Having made findings as to what has happened in this case, the court must go on to consider whether the threshold criteria in CA 1989, section 31 are met. That is, whether at the relevant date the children were suffering or likely to suffer harm; whether that harm was significant; and whether it was attributable to the care being given to them by their parents.

I remind myself that I must take a careful and focused approach when considering whether the threshold criteria are met. The parents' case, as I understand it, is that the local authority has characterised some of their decisions as harmful or potentially harmful when they were in fact decisions which the parents, as sole holders of parental responsibility, were perfectly entitled to take. I bear in mind the need for the court to tolerate a wide spectrum of parenting approaches and standards when approaching the issue of whether the harm alleged is significant for the purposes of section 31.

I must also consider, in the context of feared harm that has not in fact occurred, whether or not that harm is likely. Where the harm identified is likely future harm, the court need not be satisfied that this harm is more likely than not to occur; the word "likely" in section 31(2) means likely “in the sense of a real possibility, a possibility that cannot sensibly be ignored, having regard to the nature and gravity of the feared harm in the particular case”: Re H [1996] AC 563.

The task of the court in establishing whether and, if so, on what basis the section 31(2) threshold criteria are met was set out by Baroness Hale in Re B [2013] UKSC 33 as follows: [193]:

There are a number of authorities containing a warning against over-reliance by the court on obstructive or uncooperative behaviour by a parent. Many parents are resistant to local authority involvement in their lives, and it is only when the conduct of the parents can be proved to have put the children at risk that it has any relevance to the court's determination of the threshold criteria. In Re D [2010] EWCA Civ 1000 Hughes LJ commented, albeit in the context of a welfare decision, that "it can be easy for social workers to think that an uncooperative parent is for that reason also an inadequate parent, but the one does not follow from the other".

Finally, the parents challenge the local authority's reliance, for the purposes of establishing the threshold criteria in these proceedings, on the threshold findings made within the previous proceedings, which concluded in July 2018. The importance of precision and particularity, especially in a case where the threshold falls to be considered within a second set of care proceedings following closely upon earlier proceedings in which threshold findings were made, was emphasised in Re S & Others (Children: Care Order) [2019] 1 FLR 363. Under the heading, "Lessons for the Future?", the President, Sir Andrew McFarlane, said:

In the present case the parents are correct, in my judgment, to say that the local authority should not be permitted to rely solely on the findings made by DJ Taylor within the 2018 proceedings in order to establish that the threshold criteria were met as at the relevant date for these proceedings, that is 9 January 2020. The outcome of the 2018 proceedings was that A returned to the parents' care, albeit under a supervision order. It would be unfair to parents if a local authority were permitted to resurrect old threshold findings at will in order to justify fresh State intervention where nothing of note has happened over the intervening period.

That is not the situation in this case, however, and it does not mean that the previous threshold findings are of no continued relevance at all. In my view such findings may potentially be relevant in three ways.

First, at least some of the findings are evidentially relevant. For example, the fact that the parents have previously been found to have lied in order to evade the legitimate enquiries of child protection authorities is a fact that may be taken into account, alongside the other evidence, when considering whether the mother travelled to Ireland in 2019 for that purpose or, as the parents say, for a holiday. Similarly, the fact that the father has been found to have a propensity to act violently in times of stress is a relevant factor, although not the only factor, in my consideration of the circumstances of the incident on 21 November 2019.

Secondly, if the parents are found in these proceedings to have acted in a manner that mirrors one or more of the findings made in the previous proceedings, that may well demonstrate entrenched patterns of behaviour which themselves increase the likelihood of harm.

Thirdly, I accept that the court's decision at the end of the previous proceedings, that it was safe for A to remain in the parents' care, indicates that the court had concluded that the risks had been reduced, and by implication that the threshold criteria were no longer met. However, in my judgment, the court in these proceedings cannot be bound by that conclusion if the subsequent evidence sheds doubt upon it.

I heard oral evidence from three social workers including the allocated social worker Mr E. The other two social workers, Ms F and Ms G, were involved at the outset of the proceedings, but have since left the local authority.

The evidence of Ms F and Ms G was largely undisputed. When the proceedings were issued, the local authority knew relatively little about the family, and so the majority of the evidence produced for the first hearing was obtained from third party sources, including health care, the London Ambulance Service, and the police. Ms F and Ms G gave evidence about their limited interactions with the family over the period of the section 47 investigation. Both were careful, professional witnesses, and I am satisfied that their evidence was reliable.

As DJ Taylor noted during the 2018 proceedings, these are unusual parents for social workers to deal with. The mother at least is highly educated, and articulate; they are both resistant, to what in my experience is quite an extreme degree, to providing any information about their family life to third parties, including social workers. In her judgment in the previous proceedings, DJ Taylor described the then social worker as "a little intimidated” by the parents, and noted that a possible reason for the numerous placement moves was the fact that a number of the foster carers had expressed fear of the mother.

In that context in particular, I found the current allocated social worker Mr E to be an impressive and fair witness. His written and oral evidence was careful and measured, and his conclusions were evidenced. He resisted the temptation to overstate the local authority's concerns, and highlighted for the court points where he considered there might be some possible alternative explanations for the parents' conduct.

The parents did not take up the opportunity to cross-examine Mr E, despite the fact that his evidence was adjourned on several occasions over the course of three days in order to give them the opportunity to do so. I am satisfied that the parents made this decision not because Mr E's evidence was accepted but because they did not want to give him the opportunity to answer their criticisms in his oral evidence. Instead, on the final day of the hearing, when the mother gave her own evidence, she alleged for the first time that Mr E had fabricated evidence, altered documents, and lied to the court. I unhesitatingly reject those allegations. There is no evidence to support them at all. Mr E was a credible witness, and I rely on his evidence.

The medical evidence falls into two parts: first, the evidence relating to the health care provision made by the parents for the children, and, secondly, the evidence relating to the mother's admission to hospital following the fall on 21 November 2019.

As long ago as 3 March 2020 a direction was made for the mother to file the records of the antenatal care with which she had been provided by the Queen's Hospital, which is an NHS hospital in Romford. It is not clear whether it was the mother's case, when that direction was made, that she had received care there during her pregnancy with B or with C. The direction was repeated on 21 May. Despite that direction, no records have been produced from any NHS maternity unit. Mr E told me in evidence that although C was born in hospital, the hospital had informed him that the mother had attended for the birth in the late stages of labour, and until that point the pregnancy was not registered with them.

The parents' case is that they have generally relied on private health care for themselves and the children. The mother has exhibited some documentation in relation to antenatal care during her pregnancy with C, although not during her pregnancy with B. I will refer to this evidence later in my judgment when I consider the local authority's allegations of inadequate healthcare provision. I observe at this stage that the evidence in the bundle also includes a full set of the mother's own medical records up to 2016, which I assume were produced during the course of the previous proceedings.

The remaining medical evidence relates to the incident on 21 November 2019. It consists of records provided by the London Ambulance Service in respect of the 999 emergency call, and their attendance at the parents' home; an audio recording of the 999 call, also produced by the Ambulance Service; and the mother's hospital records following her admission to the Royal London Hospital. I am not sure exactly when during these proceedings these documents were produced but I note that in the order of 12 October 2020, when the case was set down for a fact finding hearing, the only disclosure direction related to the audio record of the 999 call, so the rest of the medical disclosure must have been available at least by then.

The medical evidence is in the form of written records and notes, and is therefore hearsay evidence. For that reason I made directions at the pre-trial review on 8 January 2021 which were intended to ensure that the parents had a full opportunity to challenge any of the medical evidence which they did not accept. I made clear to them in particular that if there was a factual assertion recorded in the medical records which they did not accept was true, they must inform the local authority so that the local authority could consider whether live evidence needed to be called. A direction was made to that effect. The parents did not so inform the local authority.

The parents were also given a further and final opportunity, which they did not take, to file their own evidence in which they could have set out any issues with what is factually recorded in the medical notes.

Despite those opportunities, it was not until the last day of this hearing that the parents indicated that they took issue with much of what is recorded in the Ambulance Service records and the medical notes. At that point the mother told me that the hospital notes were not her complete records, and that they were inaccurate. I do not accept that. I am satisfied that the reason for the parents' failure to challenge this evidence at an earlier stage was that that they knew that the records were authentic, and that any challenge would simply confirm this.

I am satisfied that the records are authentic and have not, as the mother seemed to suggest at one point, been altered in any way. Inevitably the notes reflect a changing situation which developed over time as information was gathered by professionals. I take that into account when evaluating this evidence, which I accept as an accurate record of the information which was gathered by the Ambulance Service and the hospital.

I heard oral evidence from the two officers who attended the home on 21 November 2019, PC Hennessy and PC Fitch. The evidence of both was consistent with the written records which were completed shortly after the incident. At this distance neither could add much from their recollection to what they had recorded at the time. There is no reason to doubt the accounts they gave of their attendance, and indeed their evidence was not substantially challenged.

Both officers told me separately that they had concerns about the situation with which they were presented on the night of 21 November. PC Hennessy went so far as to put a direct question to the father, shortly after the police arrival at the home, as to whether he had pushed the mother out of the window. However, as is ultimately recorded in the police reports, there was no report made to the police of a crime having taken place, and no evidence on which they could conclude that this was an incident of domestic abuse.

I also heard from PC Matthews, the offender manager who has worked with the father from the family's move to London in October 2018 until very recently, when they moved again to a different local authority. PC Matthews gave, in my judgement, a balanced and fair account of the father's engagement with the offender management programme. He acknowledged that the father had on the whole been compliant with his notification order, although he had been sanctioned for breaches in 2013 and 2017. He was clear, however, that he found the father difficult to engage: in his words, "He was not the most forthcoming or approachable".

Of most relevance was PC Matthews's evidence that despite numerous attempts by the offender management service the father had failed to engage with the requirement to complete an annual risk assessment under the Active Risk Management System (“ARMS”). As a result, and by default, he remains classified as high risk. I note that it is recorded in the judgment of DJ Taylor that the probation officer with responsibility for the father's case while the family were living in Wales was also unable to complete the ARMS assessment: the judgment records that "although he is meeting with her, he is not engaging, and that has been the position for a number of months".

I accept the evidence of PC Matthews, which is, in summary, that the father is largely compliant with the minimum notification requirements under his Sexual Offences Prevention Order, but is strongly resistant to any meaningful engagement which would enable his offender manager to carry out an evaluation of the risk that he poses.

Both parents filed written evidence at the outset of these proceedings. The mother's witness statement is dated 6 February 2020, and the father's 7 February 2020. Both were prepared by the parents themselves during a period when both were acting as litigants in person. The father's statement appears to be missing some pages. When I enquired with the local authority whether these had been left out of the bundle accidentally, I was told that this was the form in which the statement had been received from the father. I told the father that if there were pages missing, he should provide these to the local authority, so they could be included in the bundle. The father did not do so.

Neither parent has filed any further written evidence since February 2020 despite directions having been made on several occasions, most recently on 8 January 2021. It follows that no evidence has been filed in relation to the circumstances of C’s birth, which is one of the allegations on which the local authority seeks findings. It is striking also that the father's written evidence is silent as to the events of 21 November 2019, the night when the mother sustained injuries in the fall at the home; and the mother's gives only the briefest account of what happened on that occasion.

At the pre-trial review I was concerned to make appropriate arrangements for the parents to give oral evidence. The local authority had raised the issue of potential coercive control in the parental relationship, and I was anxious therefore that despite the remote format of the hearing, arrangements should be put in place to ensure that while giving evidence the parents would be in separate rooms and on separate devices. In the event these efforts were futile. When the mother gave evidence the parents did go into separate rooms at my request, but this appeared to prevent both of them from accessing the hearing at the same time, and so the only option was to allow the mother to give evidence with the father sitting beside her. Had time allowed, I would have required the mother to attend court to give her evidence, but by that stage so much court time had been lost that it was too late to make those arrangements.

Although the mother did agree to give oral evidence, her evidence in the end was highly guarded and evasive. She refused to answer any questions about her fall, on the basis that, as she put it, the evidence had been “spoliated” (sic). When asked to explain what she meant, the mother was vague, but alleged that documents had been altered during the course of the proceedings. She said that she was not prepared to answer any questions herself until this was rectified.

The mother became increasingly combative during her evidence as questions were put to her. Her response to questioning was to make increasingly serious allegations against the local authority, of evidence tampering and perjury, which then extended to include similar allegations against the police and medical professionals. None of these allegations had been raised before, and I am satisfied that the mother was using them as a tactic to deflect the questioning away from issues that she did not wish to discuss.

Although he had refused to give evidence himself, and despite the fact that the parents' cases were identical, the father sought to ask questions of the mother. I permitted him to do so with some misgivings, but it became apparent immediately that his aim was simply to repeat and reinforce the evidence the mother had already given, and to argue the parents' joint case without exposing himself to cross-examination. This was clearly inappropriate, and I terminated his questioning after ten minutes.

The parents present a united front, and are highly protective of their privacy and that of their family. They have continued within these proceedings and throughout this hearing to be very reluctant to divulge information about themselves or their family life. I remind myself that parents are not to be subjected to State intervention simply because they are secretive or unwilling to cooperate with authorities. The parents' attitude inevitably raises professional suspicion, and makes it more difficult for the court to assess their credibility, but it does not of itself mean that they have anything to hide.

There is, however, a pattern in this case of the parents presenting false information in a plausible and confident manner which can easily mislead professionals. One example of this is that in the mother's witness statement filed in these proceedings, the mother quoted passages from a published judgment of Mostyn J (in an unrelated case) in which she said he had been critical of the social worker who had worked with the family in Wales in 2018, and that all of her cases, including this family's, had subsequently been reviewed. In fact, when one reads the judgment, which the mother did not exhibit but which is available on Bailii, it relates to a different social worker. The conduct of the parents' former social worker is of course of little or no significance in these proceedings; what matters is the fluency and confidence with which the mother presented this misleading evidence to the court.

A more significant example is that both parents put to PC Matthews during cross-examination that although the father had not undertaken the ARMS risk assessment since the return to London, there had been what the mother described as a “full ARMS assessment” undertaken in Wales, which had resulted in an assessment of the father as being of low to medium risk. Such was the mother's assurance in putting this question that although the Probation Service had no record of the assessment, PC Matthews accepted the possibility that it existed, and adjusted his evidence accordingly.

PC Matthews gave evidence on the first day of the hearing, and I was not at that stage sufficiently far through my reading of the papers to know whether what the parents were alleging was true or not. In fact, as the judgment of DJ Taylor makes clear, no such assessment was carried out in Wales, and the offender manager there had experienced exactly the same difficulties in engaging the father as PC Matthews had.

Again, I remind myself that people lie for many different reasons, and the fact that the parents have chosen to conduct the litigation in this manner does not mean that they are lying about the matters on which the local authority seeks findings. However, the deliberate untruths that they have told during the course of the proceedings mean that I must be cautious about relying on their uncorroborated evidence.

During the course of her evidence on the final day of the hearing, the mother referred to having further documents which she wanted to upload. These related, as I understand it, to the local authority's allegations in respect of medical care provided to the children. I refused the mother permission to do so. Despite the fact that the mother is a litigant in person, she was, I am satisfied, well aware of the need to produce evidence in good time for the hearing, and had deliberately withheld these documents, assuming that they existed, for several months in order to deprive the other parties of any meaningful opportunity to challenge them. I was satisfied in those circumstances, particularly in the light of my concerns about the parents' credibility, that to allow these documents to be produced on the final day of the hearing would be unfair.

It is necessary first to make findings on the disputed facts before turning to the separate question of whether and, if so, on what basis the threshold criteria in section 31 are met. The numbering in the local authority's schedule is a little confusing, and so I have taken the allegations out of order so that similar allegations can be dealt with together.

Allegation 1 in the local authority’s schedule summarises the findings made in the previous proceedings. Those findings stand and the issue is not whether or not the allegations are true but their continued relevance to the threshold criteria within these proceedings. I will therefore consider the findings summarised under the hearing of ‘allegation 1’ when I deal with the question of whether or not the threshold criteria are met.

These are allegations that the parents failed to make adequate preparation for the births of B and C, and failed to ensure that B was monitored by the health visiting services following their birth.

The local authority says that there is a pattern of these parents putting their children at risk, during the mother's pregnancies and afterwards, because they are highly resistant to accessing antenatal and perinatal health services. The parents say that they have always ensured their children have access to appropriate health care, although they do not trust the NHS so have arranged for private care when needed. The parents say that some of the decisions they have made, for example not to give consent to routine childhood immunisations, are decisions that they have the right to make as holders of parental responsibility, and are in accordance with their own personal beliefs. They say that those beliefs must be respected by the State, and should not expose the family to State intervention.

I make it clear at this stage that there can of course be no criticism of the parents if they choose to access health care for themselves or their children through the private health care sector rather than the NHS. What matters is whether the care which the parents provided was adequate when seen in the context of the health care provision which it would be reasonable to expect a parent living in London in the twenty-first century to provide during pregnancy and following the birth of a child. I set out the prenatal and perinatal history for each child in turn.

The local authority says that there is no record of the mother having any antenatal care, private or NHS-based, during her pregnancy with B until she was thirty-six weeks pregnant when the parents contacted a private midwife. The local authority says that even at that stage the parents put obstacles in the way of the midwife carrying out her role, and very little care could be provided. The local authority's case therefore is that the parents' preparation for the birth was inadequate, and B was put at risk.

The local authority contacted the midwife, Rebecca Urqhat, during the course of the proceedings, and an account of that conversation has been set out in the statement of Ms F. Ms Urqhat said that she had been engaged by the mother at thirty-six weeks, but the mother had cancelled a pre-booked visit on the day of B’s birth. Ms Urqhat was called when the mother was in labour, and she told the parents to call an ambulance. They did not do so, and the baby was born by the time Ms Urqhat arrived. The placenta was still in place, and the mother needed help to remove it.

Ms Urqhat expressed a number of concerns about the parents' behaviour. She said that they appeared very secretive; she was only allowed into one room and all other doors in the house were shut; and the father would not tell her his name, and became angry when she called the ambulance on learning that the parents had not done so.

Ms Urqhat's evidence of course is hearsay, but Ms F was not challenged on her account, and save that the father has denied he became angry, the written evidence filed by the parents does not substantially challenge the aspects of Miss Urqhat's account which I have set out above. In oral evidence the mother accepted that no ambulance had been called.

The mother's case, as set out in her written evidence, is as follows. She says that she contacted the King George Hospital, which is a hospital in Ilford, within days of finding out she was pregnant. She engaged with the NHS Midwifery Service from the start of her pregnancy with B. All scans and antenatal checks were completed save for screening for Down Syndrome, which the mother declined. She had consistent medical attention over the course of ten months. She engaged a private midwife because she wanted a home birth. She called the midwife when she went into labour, but the birth was quick, and B had been born by the time the midwife arrived.

The mother has produced no documentary evidence of any scans or other forms of antenatal care at any NHS or private health facility during her pregnancy with B. I have already referred to the directions made within the proceedings for disclosure of this evidence. It would, I am satisfied, have been well within the mother's power to produce this evidence if it existed.

As to postnatal care, the local authority's evidence is that the only contact with the health visiting services took place when B was about three weeks old, when she was taken to be weighed. The health visiting service had no previous record of the pregnancy or the birth of the baby. It was noted that B had lost weight since birth. Presumably the parents had informed the health visitor of the birth weight as the service had no other record of that.

The record of information provided by the health visiting team at a strategy meeting on 26 November 2019 reads as follows:

The mother has produced what appears to be a record of a new-born baby check undertaken at a hospital three days after B's birth. The mother says that she took B there on that occasion, and that she handed over the antenatal notes.

When B was about eight weeks old, the parents both took the baby to a private medical practice called Same Day Doctors on Queen Anne Street, W1. That was the first and only occasion when B was seen at that practice. The parents asked for a general check of the baby, which was carried out. The notes record that they were given advice in relation to making arrangements for the usual new-born health care, including vaccinations, growth checks, vitamin K, and the new-born hearing test. There is no indication that the parents acted on that advice.

In October 2019, when B was about six months, the baby was taken to a different private medical practice, Coyne Medical Centre on the New King's Road. The note of the consultation indicates that the mother asked for a general check-up, and raised a query about B's breathing during the night. The baby was examined, and the chest seemed clear. The mother was advised again about vaccination.

That is the extent of the evidence regarding the parents' contact with health services for B. There is no indication that B was ever provided with the child health record or red book. I note that at both private appointments the doctors asked for the red book, but it was not provided.

A finding was made in the previous proceedings that the parents had made no preparation at all for A's birth, putting the baby at risk. The parents' case during those proceedings was that they were naïve, and had not realised that they needed to make plans for the baby's birth. It is therefore not credible in my judgement that they were unaware of what needed to be done when the mother became pregnant with B, and indeed the parents do not suggest that this was the case. The account of the private midwife supports the local authority's case that the parents remained highly resistant to medical care, as they were around the period of A's birth.

I find that contrary to the mother's evidence, the mother did not access any health care during her pregnancy with B, save for engaging a private midwife at thirty-six weeks. The parents then did not take the advice of the private midwife or make use of her services, with the result that the care she was able to provide was very limited. Following birth, B had a basic new-born baby check, and a six-week check, but did not have the blood spot test, a hearing test, or any immunisations.

When the incident on 21 November 2019 took place, the mother was in the second trimester of her pregnancy. The mother has produced evidence of a viability scan carried out by a private ultrasound clinic, Ultrasound Scanning Services, on 16 October 2019. As I understand it, she does not suggest that she had accessed any other maternity care prior to her fall on 21 November.

Following the mother's admission to hospital after the fall, checks were of course conducted on the health of the pregnancy. On 29 November the Royal London Hospital carried out an anomalies scan; the records are marked as "first referral".

On 25 January 2020 the mother saw a private gynaecologist and obstetrician, complaining of stomach problems and ongoing tenderness following her injury. She has produced the letter written after that consultation in which the obstetrician refers in the final paragraph to the mother's pregnancy, and reassures her that there is no reason why she would not be able to have a home birth. A passage which has been blacked out, I assume by one of the parents, but is nonetheless legible, reads, "I have encouraged you to book with your local NHS hospital to ensure that you are registered should there be a need for you to transfer to the hospital during your labour".

On 27 January 2020 the mother went for an ultrasound scan at a private clinic called The Foetal Medicine Centre. From January 2020, when these proceedings commenced, the local authority consistently attempted to encourage the parents to book into a maternity unit, and to make plans for the baby's birth. Mr E’s evidence, which I accept, was that he repeatedly asked the parents where the mother was receiving medical care, and what plans had been made for the birth, but received no response. Some of these requests for information are recorded in the orders which were made over the course of the proceedings.

On 14 April 2020 Mr E made enquiries of all the London NHS Hospitals as to whether the mother was registered with any of the maternity units, and was informed that she was not. At a meeting on 30 April 2020 the parents agreed to provide their birth plan in writing to the local authority by the end of the day, but failed to do so.

The local authority's understanding from the parents was that the baby was due in May. By that time the parents were still refusing to provide any information. The local authority was concerned both about the health of the baby, and also, in the light of the mother's recent trip to Ireland, about the flight risk. They carried out frequent visits, but were not permitted into the home.

On 4 May 2020 the mother contacted the Queen's Hospital to register her pregnancy. However, a few days later, on 11 May, she telephoned the hospital to inform them that she was changing her plans to have what she described as a "private care birth". On 18 May the hospital contacted the mother to confirm the estimated delivery date, but she refused to give this information.

On [date] the social worker was contacted by the Queen's Hospital to inform that C had been born there that morning.

The mother's case is that she received the full range of antenatal care with C, albeit in the private sector rather than through the NHS. She says that she had wanted to give birth at home, but due to the pressure put on her by the local authority, she made the decision at the last minute to attend hospital for the birth.

I remind myself that the burden of proof is on the local authority and not on the parents. However, in circumstances where the local authority has made it clear to the mother throughout their involvement with her that they were concerned about the lack of antenatal care during the pregnancy, the mother's failure over that period to provide evidence in support of her assertion that she did in fact access stable and consistent antenatal care is a matter which the court must take into account.

I take into account also the parents' extreme reluctance to obtain antenatal care during the pregnancy with A, as found by DJ Taylor in the previous proceedings, and the lack of

I find that although the mother obtained two private ultrasound scans during her pregnancy with C, permitted the Royal London Hospital to carry out checks on the pregnancy following the fall, and consulted a private obstetrician on one occasion, she did not otherwise access any maternity care.

I turn to the question of whether the health care provision made by the parents for the birth of their children was adequate. In order to do so, it is necessary to contrast the health care which was accessed by the mother during the two pregnancies, and after B’s birth (C was not of course in the parents' care), with what is offered as standard by both the NHS and private maternity services.

During pregnancy the woman is offered a comprehensive programme of care, which includes a minimum of two ultrasound scans, a viability scan at around twelve weeks, and an anomaly scan at twenty weeks. She will be offered regular midwife appointments, at which she will undergo blood and urine testing and blood pressure checks, to check for common but potentially life-threatening pregnancy conditions including gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia. Examinations will be carried out by a midwife in the final weeks of the pregnancy to establish whether or not the baby is in a breech position, in which case a caesarean section may be necessary.

These are the minimum checks offered by the NHS in a low-risk pregnancy, and are separate from the screening tests for Downs Syndrome and other conditions to which the mother has said she has a principled objection. Private maternity units usually offer much more.

At birth the new-born baby is weighed and measured, and the Apgar score is given. In the days following the birth, a complete physical check is carried out, looking in particular for problems with the heart, eyes, hips and reflexes. A heel-prick or blood spot test is given to screen for a variety of rare but extremely serious conditions, including sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis and hyperthyroidism. A hearing test is carried out. The information which is provided by the NHS to new parents explains that the new-born baby checks are not compulsory but are recommended as they may save the baby's life.

Having compared the health care accessed by the parents during the mother's second and third pregnancies, and in the early months of B’s life, to the maternity and postnatal care which is offered as standard by the NHS in every pregnancy, I have no hesitation in concluding that the arrangements made by these parents fell well below what a reasonable parent would be expected to provide.

I make two observations in connection with this finding. First, I note that the mother's medical records, produced during the course of the previous proceedings, show a completely different attitude on the mother's part to health care. Up until 2016 the mother had been registered with the same, I believe private, GP for several years, and was fully engaged in what I would describe as an entirely conventional way with mainstream health care services. She clearly had a good relationship with her GP whom she consulted on a regular basis and for a range of complaints. She underwent testing when it was suggested, engaged with referrals as necessary, and was apparently fully compliant with treatment when it was prescribed. This is in stark contrast to the approach that the mother took during her pregnancies to her own and her children's health, and suggests a sudden and dramatic change in the mother's attitude to health care in 2016, which is of course when her relationship with the father commenced.

Secondly, I note that over the period of the mother's two pregnancies with B and C, and setting aside her treatment in the Royal London Hospital following the fall, the mother appears not to have attended the same medical facility twice. The documents that she has produced indicate that even when the mother needed medical treatment for herself, for migraines on one occasion and for stomach problems on another, she attended a different private surgery on each occasion. The medical records the mother has produced show seven appointments at seven different medical facilities. This is concerning because depriving a person of support services, such as medical services, is a recognised feature of coercive control in relationships that involve domestic abuse.

There are ten separate sub-allegations pleaded by the local authority in respect of the incident on 21 November 2019. There is considerable repetition and overlap and so I have distilled these allegations as follows:

It is not in dispute that the mother fell on 21 November. Although the mother sought to minimise the incident in her oral evidence, it cannot realistically be disputed that she sustained a serious injury. When she arrived at the hospital, scans showed that she had suffered the highest grade splenic injury, at grade 5, also known as a shattered spleen; and grade 3 lacerations to her left kidney. She was bleeding internally, and given a blood transfusion before undergoing embolization. She remained in hospital for eight days. It is fortunate that she made a full recovery.

The evidence includes a photograph of the house that the family were living in at the time. It is a typical London terraced house. There is a small ledge above the front door, just below the two first floor windows.

The evidence on which the local authority relies as to the circumstances of the fall comes primarily from the London Ambulance Service, the police and the hospital. I summarise that evidence as follows.

At 3.35 am on 21 November 2019 the London Ambulance Service received a 999 call from a neighbour. I have listened to the audio recording of that call. The caller said that he heard a lot of screaming, and this woke him up. He looked out of the window, and saw a person fall from the first floor window of a nearby house, hitting a car. The person who fell was a female. The caller could not see what had happened after the fall.

The ambulance arrived at 3.51 am. I have not heard directly from ambulance staff, and the notes do not give an entirely clear picture. The patient report form, completed by the Ambulance Service, indicates that although the ambulance was on the scene at 3.51 am, the paramedics did not gain access to the patient until 4.05 am. During the intervening period, the ambulance crew requested police assistance. The reason for that is not clear, but the ambulance crew's notes read: "Met by partner. Patient shouting, 'Help me' inside home. Partner talking over patient screaming. Police requested".

The police records read: "When the paramedics arrived on scene, the father Mark Gordon was evasive, and the mother could be heard saying, 'Help me, help me'. The paramedics then withdrew from the address due to the male's evasive behaviour, and they then called the police to attend.”

PC Hennessy and PC Fitch arrived at or just before 4.05 am. They went into the property with the ambulance staff. PC Hennessy spoke with the father in the hall, and PC Fitch went into the living room where the mother was lying on the floor. The father told PC Hennessy that both had fallen out of the window trying to fix an aerial. PC Hennessy said that he was suspicious of the circumstances, and put it to the father directly that he had pushed the mother. He saw a television with a blanket over it, and wondered whether damage had been caused, and had been covered up.

PC Fitch said the mother was lying on the floor, clearly in a lot of pain. She was groaning and making noises. She spoke to her, and the mother said she had been leaning out of the window to fix the aerial as the TV was not working. PC Fitch said the situation did not feel completely right, but spoke to the mother again in the ambulance to ask if there were any issues, and the mother categorically said no. Both officers observed that an aerial was hanging loose at the front of the house. PC Hennessy said there seemed to be a wire hanging down.

The ambulance notes record the mother's condition as follows: "Patient lying on floor, covered in mud. Patient distressed. Patient is very pale". The body map diagram completed by the paramedics indicates that the mother was suffering pain down the left side of her torso.

The mother was taken to hospital. The initial handover notes recorded by the staff in A&E read: "Fallen out of a first floor window, so around 18 feet. Question mark if husband pushed her. Apparently according to LAS they were playing with the aerial. Crawled into living room".

The father attended at A&E with the children, and was asked what happened. His response was, "I'm still in shock. Can you come back to me with more information, and we can talk then?" The A&E staff recorded a safeguarding concern due to what they describe as "unusual behaviour / interactions with husband".

Over the course of the mother's stay in hospital, medical staff made a number of attempts to discuss the circumstances of the fall with the father on the telephone number he had provided them, but he did not respond. At 1.20 pm on 21 November the hospital made a safeguarding referral to the local authority. The referral reads: "Concerned that there is element of coercion. Did not want to make any decisions about medical procedures without discussion with husband".

On the afternoon of 21 November, after undergoing surgery, the mother was admitted to the high dependency unit. The notes record a discussion with the mother. They read as follows:

On 24 November the hospital notes record the following:

On 25 November a mental health assessment was carried out. The mother gave a further account of the incident as follows:

On 27 November a further psychiatric review took place. The conversation was short, and the mother expressed frustration at being asked the same questions. She denied any domestic abuse, and also denied that the fall had been an attempt at suicide.

On the same day the mother spoke to a local authority social worker at the hospital. She said that in terms of what had happened with the window, she had held onto a grate, and a pin came out. She said that the father had slipped and fallen. He must have landed on his feet, but it was all a blur and a shock.

On 28 November the mother experienced vaginal spotting, but declined the offer of a hospital midwife, and said that she did not want maternity care. She agreed to undergo a scan. On the same day the hospital notes record the mother as being worried because she had not been able to contact her partner for a few days, and he had not contacted her. She had not seen the children, although she had now been out of the high dependency unit since 26 November, and so they would be allowed to visit the ward. The mother was discharged from hospital on 29 November.

In her written witness statement the mother gave the following account:

The father said simply: "Constance has already given a detailed statement about the incident with the window. She has spoken at length, and that should be sufficient for this matter to be closed".

Both parents have refused to answer questions about this incident in oral evidence. I remind myself that it is for the local authority to prove its case, and there is no obligation on the parents to prove an alternative explanation. The following features of the evidence are relevant in my judgment:

In my judgement the suggestion that the parents climbed out of a window to fix a TV aerial at 3.30 am, when the mother was in her second pregnancy trimester, is inherently improbable. I note in this context that the mother has said she did not have the easiest pregnancy. She complained in hospital of a history of frequent gastric pain prior to the fall, and consulted a private doctor two weeks previously for pregnancy-related migraines.

I give particular weight to the failure on the father's part to call for an ambulance, and his evasiveness when ambulance staff arrived, combined with his and the mother's anxiety that she should be discharged from hospital as soon as possible. The only explanation I can think of for these decisions, which put the mother's life and that of their unborn child at risk, is that the parents wished to conceal what had happened from the authorities.

I view the father's actions in failing to call an ambulance as particularly serious. He must have known from the mother's presentation that she was seriously injured. He also knew of course that she was pregnant. In those circumstances an innocent partner would, in my judgement, have done everything in his power to secure medical help immediately. There is no explanation for the father's failure to do so.

I find that the parents have deliberately concealed the truth of what happened on the night of 21 November 2019 from the authorities.

I find that the mother, with the father’s support, attempted to discharge herself from hospital at a point where doing so would have put her life and that of her unborn child at serious risk. The hospital had to persuade her to remain. The parents do not accept that if the mother had left hospital when she wished to do so she would have put herself and C at risk.

All of these allegations relate to the period immediately following the incident on 21 November 2019.

Allegation 3.14 is an allegation that the mother travelled to Ireland in December 2019 and that the trip was undertaken with the intention of evading safeguarding steps taken by the local authority at that time. The other allegations are allegations that both parents avoided the local authority's attempts to assess the situation and to evaluate any risk to the children.

Following the incident on 21 November a section 47 investigation was initiated, and a number of attempts were made to visit the family home, first to see the father and the children, and then, after her discharge, to see and speak to the mother. The local authority's case is that the parents avoided all such attempts, with the result that the local authority was unable to carry out any direct safeguarding enquiries.

The chronology of the local authority's attempts to engage the parents is as follows.

The local authority visited the home on the day of the mother's fall, but there was no answer. The following day, 22 November, the social worker Ms G visited again. The father answered the door but refused to allow the social worker to enter. According to Ms G, there was a strong smell of cannabis. The father asked to see a copy of the written referral which had led to the local authority's involvement. He brought A and B separately to the front door so they could be seen. He said they were going out, and the social worker asked for his telephone number. The father said that he did not have a phone. Ms G gave him her number and asked him to call. He did not do so.

Further attempted visits took place on 25 and 27 November. There was no answer at the home.

On 27 November in hospital Ms G asked the mother for a telephone number for herself or for the father. Initially the mother said that they had a problem with their phones as they could never find a charger. Then she said there was no telephone number for her, and she did not have one to give for the father. Ms G spoke to her about the smell of cannabis, and the mother said that that was herbal sage.

I have referred already to attempts by the hospital to speak to the father over this period, to obtain his account of the mother's fall. The hospital was unable to speak to him throughout the nine days that the mother was in hospital.

The local authority attempted another visit on 2 December, after the mother's discharge. There was no answer at the home. That evening, the mother sent the following email to Ms G:

On 4 December Ms G responded:

At 9.22 am the following morning, shortly before the visit was due to take place, the mother sent the following email to Ms G:

Ms G attempted the visit as planned, but there was no answer. She sent the following email:

The Wednesday referred to was Wednesday, 11 December. The social worker attempted a visit that day, but there was no response at the home.

It is important to record that during this period a strategy meeting took place, which was attended by PC Matthews, the father's offender manager. PC Matthews told the meeting that he had been allowed into the home at the end of November while the mother was still in hospital. He had seen the children in the home environment, and had no concerns. The home was warm and tidy.

I also record that the parents' refusal to allow any social worker into their home has continued throughout the whole of these proceedings, and that as yet, no social worker has ever been permitted inside the home.

On 13 December 2019 Mr Marten, the children's maternal grandfather, issued his application in wardship. As I have said, I do not know what communication he had with the local authority before doing so, or what he knew about the mother and the children's whereabouts.

On 18 December the social worker visited again, and left a letter informing the parents of the local authority's decision to hold an initial child protection conference.

On 19 December the police attended the home, following the local authority's request for a welfare check. The father answered the door, and informed the police that the mother and the children were in Ireland. The following day the return order was made by Judd J, and the mother brought the children to the police station in Dublin.

The father says nothing in his witness statement about the plans for the trip to Ireland. The mother says this:

The paragraph ends there, so the sense is not entirely clear. In a chronology which she prepared for these proceedings, the mother puts the date of 10 December as the date of her travel with the children to Ireland. The relevant entry from the mother's chronology reads:

The parents' case therefore is that the mother travelled with the children to Ireland on 10 December 2019, that is the day before the planned visit by Ms G. They say that the intention was that the mother would travel with the children, and the father would follow.

The mother has produced a printout from the Airbnb website for a holiday resort called Flagmount Wild Garden. The printout is dated 1 February 2020. The page has details of the accommodation available at the resort. There is no indication that the mother has had any communication with the resort, let alone that she had a booking there. In fact, during her time in Ireland, the mother stayed at a hotel, and then in a short-stay apartment in Dublin.

There is an issue as to whether the mother deliberately misinformed the local authority as to the arrangements for her return to the UK. A telephone call took place between Ms F and the mother on 8 January 2020. Ms F’s recollection was simply that the mother had said she was coming back by ferry. Ms G, who was present together with Ms F, says that the mother said she was returning to Liverpool.

The mother says that she told Ms F she did not yet know which ferry port she would be arriving back at because ferries from Ireland go both to Liverpool and Holyhead. In fact, when the mother returned the following day, she returned to Holyhead. It is not in dispute that the mother provided details on 9 January of the ferry on which she was returning, and so I do not make a finding that the mother sought to evade the local authority by giving misleading information about her return.

The parents have known for over a year that it is the local authority's case that in travelling to Ireland they were seeking to evade the local authority's section 47 investigation. They have had plenty of opportunity to produce evidence in support of their case that they were only planning a holiday, and that they had accommodation booked. Once again, I recognise that the burden is on the local authority to prove its case, but the parents' failure to produce this evidence, which, if their case were true, would be readily available, is a matter which the court is entitled to take into account.

I take into account also:

The finding I make in respect of this series of allegations is as follows.

I find that the parents were deliberately evading the local authority over the period from 21 November onwards when the local authority was attempting to carry out its section 47 investigation. They did not allow social workers to visit the home, gave a number of vague excuses for why they were not available, and failed to provide telephone numbers on which they could be contacted, despite several requests.

I find that the reason they did so was because the father in particular did not want to answer questions about the circumstances of the incident on 21 November. He has of course consistently avoided doing so since the incident happened, and throughout the proceedings. I find that the travel to Ireland was arranged in a final attempt to avoid the local authority's enquiries.

I do not know whether the parents intended to flee permanently or whether they just hoped that if the mother and children stayed away for long enough, the local authority would give up on its investigation. I accept that once the mother and children were located in Ireland she cooperated with the Irish authorities, and returned to the UK in accordance with Judd J's order.

This is an allegation that the mother refused to undertake hair strand testing for cannabis use during the course of these proceedings. This, in my view, is an example of a local authority failing to set out, as required by Sir James Munby the then President in Re A [2015] EWFC 11, what findings it is seeking and, crucially, the link between those findings and its case on threshold.

As pleaded, this allegation is undoubtedly true, but as pleaded it has no relevance to the section 31 threshold criteria. What I assume the local authority is inviting me to do is to draw an inference from the mother's refusal to undertake hair strand testing that she has used cannabis, and then to find that as a result the children were suffering or likely to suffer significant harm at the relevant date.

I have no difficulty resisting that invitation. The mother's case is that she refused because it was not accepted that the threshold criteria are met, so she should not undergo any testing at all. That approach may be misguided, but nevertheless, in my judgement, the court should not draw inferences from the mother’s refusal to undertake testing without at least some evidence to support the suggestion that the mother has used cannabis. Any such evidence is minimal. There is the smell of cannabis that Ms G noted, but on that occasion the father was present in the home, and the mother was not. The mother has said that what was smelled was in fact herbal sage. It is not clear to me why in those circumstances the local authority asked the mother to undergo testing but not the father. Finally and in any event, it is not appropriate in my judgment to draw an inference where the local authority has given no proper notice of an intention to do so.

This is an allegation that the father has consistently failed to engage with the Probation Service to enable them to complete a risk assessment. I have already set out the evidence in support of this allegation. Although the parents put it to PC Matthews that a risk assessment had been carried out by the Offender Management Service in Wales, the judgment of DJ Taylor confirms that this was not the case, and I am satisfied that both parents were deliberately attempting to mislead PC Matthews and the court when they suggested this to him. I rely on the evidence of PC Matthews, that he had asked the father to complete a risk assessment on many occasions, and the father's answer had always been that he had too much going on. The father did not dispute that he had said that to PC Matthews. I find this allegation proved.

This is an allegation that the mother was the victim of domestic abuse through the father exercising coercion and control over her. Although buried in the local authority's schedule as a sub-allegation under the heading, "Incident of 21 November 2019", this is in fact a serious and significant finding that requires separate consideration.

The local authority's case is that the mother is controlled by the father and, as a result, she is unable to prioritise the children's wellbeing and safety above his. The local authority relies on the following evidence:

In response the mother points to a psychological assessment of her in the previous proceedings by a Dr Redding. As summarised in the judgment of DJ Taylor, Dr Redding's conclusion was that the mother was confident enough to recognise risk. Dr Redding described her as “an individual who fights against feeling controlled, and this includes any authority, and in some respects this protects her from being in a situation where a partner can control her as she is likely to rebel against this.”

I have not found it easy to evaluate the dynamics of the parents' relationship, and this difficulty has been compounded by the father's refusal to give evidence, and the mother's refusal to answer questions. It is true that nothing I have seen during the course of my review of the evidence or over this hearing suggests that the mother has ever challenged or expressed disagreement with any of the father's actions. However, it is also true that the father has shown no sign of challenging or disagreeing with the mother. The parents have presented an absolutely united front.

Throughout the hearing I was struck by the fact that the parents invariably appeared together. Even over a period of two or three days when the father was apparently suffering toothache and seeking treatment, the mother never joined the hearing without the father present next to her. On the third day of the hearing both were out of their home for much of the day, and joined the hearing only intermittently. I could see no reason why the father needed the mother to accompany him to visit the dentist or to collect a prescription, if that is in fact what he was doing. It concerned me that the mother did not feel able to remain at home alone in order to participate in the hearing, and raised the possibility that the father had not permitted her to do so.

I need to bear in mind my other findings. I have found that the father has perpetrated a serious act of physical violence on the mother, and that he then sought to conceal this from the authorities to the extent of failing to seek medical attention for her when her life was at risk. It would therefore be natural for her to be fearful of him. On the other hand, given the father's history and his status as a registered sex offender, the mother's knowledge of what he has done, and the possibility that she may disclose it, may give her a significant hold over him.

If anything, my impression during this hearing has been that it is the mother and not the father who has been the dominant personality within this couple, and certainly it is she who has taken the leading role in presenting their joint case. Repeatedly during the hearing, when trying to hear from the father, I would have to ask the mother to refrain from whispering instructions to him. When prevented from whispering, she would mouth the words to him to repeat. On one striking occasion I happened to ask the father rather than the mother about a car accident the parents alleged they had just been involved in. The father looked towards the mother for help, but she was a few feet away. I could hear her whispering but could not hear what she was saying and nor, it appeared, could the father. He froze and appeared unable to speak at all. In the end he simply said, in answer to my questions, "I can't explain, I can't tell you".

I have concluded that I do not have sufficient evidence to make the findings sought by the local authority that the father has sought to control the mother. That does not mean, of course, that I do not have concerns about the parents' relationship. I have very serious concerns. At this stage, the only finding I make is that irrespective of the power balance between the parents, their relationship is such that both of them will put that relationship first before all other considerations. They see external agencies and third parties as posing a challenge to their relationship, and view all offers of support as hostile. The strong impression given by the parents is that of two people who are fiercely united in an unrelenting struggle against a non-existent opponent.

My hope is that following this hearing the parents will engage with these proceedings, and with the assessments that the court is likely to direct, so that the court can gather a clearer picture of their relationship and what, if anything, can be done to address the risks it poses to the children.

Having made findings of fact, I turn to the separate question of whether the threshold criteria are met and, if so, on what basis. I remind myself that I must identify clearly the causal relationship between the behaviour of the parents and the harm or likelihood of harm to the children. I remind myself that the threshold is not to be crossed simply because the parents put a high value on privacy, because they are difficult and evasive of professionals, or because they have delayed and frustrated the litigation process.

Having considered my findings in the context of section 31, I have no hesitation in concluding that the threshold criteria are met. At the relevant date for each child the children were suffering or likely to suffer significant harm attributable to the care being given to them by their parents not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give. My reasons for reaching that conclusion are as follows.

First, I have found that the health provision for B and C during the mother's pregnancies and afterwards was inadequate. I remind myself that "likely to suffer" in the statute does not mean more likely than not. It means a real possibility that cannot sensibly be ignored. Essentially, these parents have rolled the dice three times in refusing the vast majority of standard maternity and new-born healthcare and checks. They have been lucky each time, but plenty of pregnancies do involve complications which, if unchecked or untreated, can become life-threatening for the mother or the baby or both. It is easy to forget in a country where good maternity care is universal that there are still places where mortality rates in pregnancy and childbirth are high.

The seriousness of the parents' conduct in connection with these two pregnancies is, in my judgment, exacerbated by the finding made against them previously in respect of the mother's first pregnancy with A. The fact that they repeated the same behaviour despite knowing that they had put their first child at risk of significant harm indicates a pattern of entrenched behaviour, and a failure to change. I conclude that the parents have repeatedly prioritised their own need for privacy and secrecy above their children's health and, in the mother's case, also her own.

Secondly, I have found under allegation 3 that the father caused the mother to fall from the window, either by pushing her or during the course of an argument, and that the father then failed to seek the medical attention which the mother urgently needed. Given that finding, there can be no doubt that all three children born and unborn were likely to suffer both physical and emotional harm. Again, it is only through chance that the mother's injuries were not permanent, and that her pregnancy was unaffected. The emotional impact of exposure to domestic abuse on even very young children is now well understood.

Thirdly, I turn to my finding regarding the parents' deliberate evasion of authorities. This finding needs to be considered with care. It will not follow in every case where parents have sought to escape State intervention that they have put their children at risk of significant harm. In my judgment however this is a clear example of a case where the parents' actions in seeking to avoid the local authority's investigation did increase the risk of harm to the children. That is because the actions of the parents deprived the local authority of the opportunity to protect the children from a risk which I have already found to be significant. The mother took the children to Ireland shortly after the father had seriously injured her, and actively sought to prevent her receiving medical care. There was a clear risk to the children in those circumstances, and by preventing the local authority from assessing and responding to that risk, the parents' actions made it more likely that the children would suffer harm.

Finally I turn to allegation 1, which is the heading under which the local authority has summarised the threshold findings in the previous proceedings. As I have already indicated, I do not consider that the local authority is entitled to rely on the mere existence of these findings to establish that the threshold criteria were met as at the relevant dates in the current proceedings. The question is whether, despite the decision of the court in 2018 that it was safe to return A to the parents' care, any of the previous findings were still capable of giving rise to a likelihood of significant harm by the time that these proceedings were initiated.

In my judgment, the only findings that are relevant in this respect are those which relate to the father's history of violent behaviour, and the ongoing risk arising out of that.

I acknowledge that the father's history was considered in the previous proceedings, and that the court concluded, despite the seriousness of the father's offending behaviour, that the risk he posed by the end of the proceedings did not preclude him caring for A together with the mother. It seems to me however that I need to re-evaluate that conclusion in the light of the evidence before me in these proceedings.

The conclusion of DJ Taylor was based to a large extent, it seems, on the evidence of the psychologist who had assessed the father. That expert's conclusion was that although the assessment could not be completed due to the father's non-engagement, she considered the risk of harm to the mother and A to be low. I bear in mind also PC Matthews's evidence that the father on the whole has complied with his notification requirements, and also the fact that the historic offences, or at least the most serious ones, were committed over thirty years ago when the father was still a juvenile. I set against this the following evidence:

All of that evidence indicates that the father's past convictions continue to be relevant to the question of the threshold criteria at the relevant date in these proceedings, and that the risk that the father poses to the mother and the children as a violent sexual offender remains, and has not substantially reduced.

Those are my findings, and the threshold criteria are met on that basis. It will be necessary now for a directions hearing to be listed as soon as possible to timetable these long-delayed proceedings to a conclusion. I make it clear to the parents that now that the threshold for State intervention has been crossed, it is essential that they give their full cooperation to the assessments which are likely to be required. As directions have already been made during these proceedings for expert assessments, I hope that it will not take too long for the parties to reach agreement as to the timetable for the remainder of the proceedings.