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Social services became involved in my family when the mother of my son became mentally ill & sought custody when she left me. She actually agreed to me having custody & informed the court which granted interim custody to me.
Subsequently social services told the police to get lost when the mother 'abducted' the child & refused to return it it to my (father's) custody as per interim court order.
Social services then 'championed' & led clearly mad mother's attempt to keep child despite protests from family court judge. At no stage did social services or anyone suggest that I (father) was anything but an excellent & competent father.
Eventual conclusion was family court returned child to me (but social services had put child in foster care & threatened me with adoption - without even the nicety of accusing me of bad parenting) after it had to be removed from mother who was extremely ill and dangerously mad. End of story. Case concluded 9 yrs ago. Child now 12 yrs old.
My question is:-
- Can I now publicise all details of case (shocking incompetence of social services etc) without being in contempt of court ? If I can’t pubclicise details, when can I ? Meanwhile if I change names only, can I tell details of actual story ? Or will pedantic people say this may still lead to identification ?
If a case is concluded, then does that then allow publication of details ?
- Can I sue social services for a gigantic amount of lasting harm they have caused me, my son, his mother and her two kids.
Ok, a few points here, and I stress I am not qualified, so worth getting a qualified legal opinion if you wish to persue this.
You may be able to report SS behaviour to press, changing names, but you can't publish any of the court proceedings, even under a different name - that is contempt of court and the punishment can be quite severe.
With regards to suing the SS, I think there may be a time limit, and I suspect 9 years is past the limit, so I would suspect that you don't have that option now. Your best bet may be to have a word with a solicitor who does work on a contingency basis (ie, no win, no fee) - if they think there is a case, then they may take it, if they don't, then they won't.
However, with all that said, the question is why you actually want to publicise this - it will only bring back matters that are either best laid to rest, or are dealt with outside the public's gaze. I also doubt that any media organisation would be interested in a case that's 9 years old which, although painful at the time, ultimately had a 'satisfactory' outcome as far as the law and procedures were concerned, plus so much has happened in the last 9 years in social services, that they could easily turn around and say that safeguards are now in place.
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