Samantha Bangham’s Week in Cases 3 May 2013

Another crazy week in the world of family law has passed with one particularly extraordinary judgment. Just when you thought you had heard everything a case such as A Council v M and Others (No 1: Fact Finding) [2012] EWHC 4241 (Fam) [2013] FLR forthcoming comes along!

The judgment of Peter Jackson J from March 2012 has only just been released upon conclusion of the criminal proceedings involving the mother’s conviction for child cruelty and has been widely reported in the international media. The facts were that the mother forced her 13-year-old daughter to embark on a programme of artificial insemination resulting in a pregnancy when she was 16. Peter Jackson J commented that he had ‘an abiding sense of disbelief that a parent could behave in such a wicked and selfish way towards a vulnerable child’. The now 18-year-old daughter was currently residing in a mother and baby foster placement while her younger sibling...

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