S (Placement Order Contact), Re

Sir Andrew McFarlane P:

The factual context

Care proceedings began in January 2023 after the younger boy, then only a few months old, was admitted to hospital with head injuries and a healing rib fracture.

In November 2023, following a contested hearing and a full judgment, HHJ Hayes made serious findings against both parents. He found, in particular, that the boy’s father had caused S’s injuries and had beaten R. The findings extended beyond the occasions when S had been injured, and included holding that the father had been impatient and forceful in his handling of both boys, and that he had regularly used very derogatory terms to describe them in text messages to the mother. The judge concluded that the boys’ mother had been aware of the father’s behaviour and had failed to protect her children. There was also a significant finding of failure to seek medical attention for S extending from mid-November 2022 to mid-January 2023. Photographs taken of S in early January had shown the baby as looking ‘very, very ill’, yet no medical attention was sought for him then. The judge expressly highlighted the level of dishonesty of both parents who had consistently attempted to present a false picture to social services and to the court.

Prior to that hearing R had been placed with his paternal grandparents, but, following the findings, he was moved to foster care. S had been with different foster carers throughout the court proceedings.

At the final hearing there was an issue around the degree to which the parents’ relationship had endured after the initial findings of fact had been made. The parents’ pleaded case was that they had separated and that there had been little contact between them, save for necessary communication over practical and financial arrangements. The mother had said that it had been ‘a very difficult decision’ to separate from the father. The judge then made orders for the parents’ phones to be taken for examination. Having heard oral evidence, and after a good deal of expert evidence, he concluded that there had in fact been extensive contact between them, which they had attempted to conceal by setting their phones back to ‘factory setting’ before they were examined, and by giving a wholly dishonest account of matters in their evidence.

Although the issue before this court relates to inter-sibling contact, I have given this account of the parents’ actions, and, as the judge found, their sustained dishonesty, because a factor in relatio