F (A Child), Re
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE SULLIVAN
- LORD JUSTICE LEWISON
Areas of Law
- Family Law
- Civil Procedure
- Human Rights Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
In this appeal concerning the return of a child from England and Wales to Italy, the mother's request for an expert psychiatric assessment was denied, leading to an appeal. The court dismissed the appeal on all grounds, finding insufficient evidence to instruct an expert psychiatrist or to support the mother's case under Article 13(b) of the Hague Convention. Key legal principles include the necessity of expert evidence, the burden of proof in Article 13(b) cases, and the handling of domestic abuse allegations. The appeal was dismissed, and the original order for the child's return with protective measures in place was upheld.
Judgment
Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division :
This is an application for permission to appeal against an order made by Coleridge J as long ago as 14 March 2013.
The judge was hearing care proceedings in relation to a girl, F, who was born in August 2007. Her father was born in the United States of America and her mother in Zimbabwe, where F was born. F and her father seem to have arrived in this country on 14 November 2012. The proceedings started on 21 December 2012 when the local authority applied for and obtained an emergency protection order. The care proceedings proper began seven days later on 28 December 2012. Following a contested hearing before a District Judge, which led to the making of an interim care order, the case was transferred to the High Court on 7 January 2013.
It is a matter of very great concern to us that proceedings of a kind that Parliament has now declared are to be concluded within 26 weeks should still be on foot some 76 weeks after they were commenced and seemingly with no early end in sight. I recognise that the parents’ involvement with the proceedings has been fitful, that for some of the time the father has been abroad, that for most of the time the mother has been in South Africa and that the mother’s participation as directed by the court has been hindered by delays in the immigration process (as recorded by Eleanor King J in an order dated 22 January 2014) and then by the refusal of the immigration authorities to grant her the necessary visa. But although this may explain, it can scarcely justify the long delay. F, after all, has been in foster care ever since the emergency protection order was granted over 17 months ago.
What is even worse is that the court’s jurisdiction to deal with the proceedings has still not been settled, for what is challenged before us – and in the event successfully challenged – is Coleridge J’s decision in relation to F’s habitual residence. Even now that fundamental jurisdictional issue remains at large, for the outcome of this appeal is that the question of habitual residence must go back for a proper hearing. Well may the children’s guardian lament that although the court as long ago as 14 August 2013 had endorsed a plan for permanence for F, whereby she would be rehabilitated to the care of her mother (a plan, moreover, of which F has known since then), here we are more than nine months later and only the most preliminary steps in this process have been achieved.
When