[2025] EWHC 1525 (Fam)

Judges in the Family Court are given the power to authorise the removal of children from their parents’ care. The exercise of that power is a heavy responsibility. Such decisions have lifelong consequences for the children, whose welfare is the Court’s paramount consideration, and they have a profound impact on the parents. Parents respond in different ways to the removal of their children and some become very angry with those whom they consider responsible for a wrong caused to them. A few journey to a fringe territory of extreme beliefs and conspiracy theories. Every action by a social worker or Court decision entrenches their conviction that they are victims of a corrupt system. For these parents and their supporters, the fact that Family Court hearings are conducted in private adds to their belief in a widespread cover up.

The Applicants are parents of F and G who are now three years old. They are twins conceived through IVF and born very prematurely at about 25 weeks. At four months they were made the subject of interim care orders. On 2 May 2024, after an eight day hearing, DJ Hussain sitting in the Family Court at West London handed down a detailed 101 page judgment – [2024] EWFC 453 (B) - and made final care and placement orders in respect of each child, meaning that steps would be taken to find an adoptive family for the children. Adoption orders have not yet been sought and so the children still await adoption. The Applicants have now applied to the High Court to lift all reporting restrictions in relation to the proceedings concerning their children in the Family Court. They have alleged that the Local Authority, social workers, judges and lawyers, financially benefit from the abduction, sale, and abuse of children including their own. They want to be able to publish what went on in the Family Court proceedings because they believe it will expose widespread corruption and abuse. Restrictions on their ability to do so will be regarded by them as further evidence of a criminal conspiracy . However, as is the norm, the Family Court proceedings were heard in private. Statutory provisions protect children who are the subject of such proceedings from being identified and, unless the Court orders otherwise, no person may publish information relating to the proceedings and anyone who does so risks being found to be in contempt of court. The issue for the Court to decide is whether and to what extent restrictions on disclosing and publishing information relating to the proceedings involving F and G should be lifted.

Parliament has decided what can and cannot be disclosed and published in relation to what I shall call for shorthand ‘children proceedings’ heard in private. Statutory provisions include the Children Act 1989 (“CA 1989”), s97 and the Administration of Justice Act 1960 (“AJA 1960”), s12. One means available to the Court to relax some of those restrictions is the making of a Transparency Order. As from 27 January 2025, the Family Court, except for Lay Justices, may make a Transparency Order in public law cases (mostly applications for care or supervision orders) and from 1 May 2025 that will apply to private law cases. From 29 September 2025, the new rules will also apply to Family Court proceedings before Lay Justices. Prior to this national roll out, the Family Court at various locations has been encouraged to make Transparency Orders within a Transparency Reporting Pilot. As it happens, the Family Court in West London was within that Pilot when on 9 February 2024, during the course of the public law proceedings concerning F and G, DDJ Elliott made a Transparency Order upon the attendance of a reporter at the hearing before him that day. Later, after the final orders had been made, HHJ Downey gave judgments on 24 July 2024, refusing permission to appeal, and on 30 July 2024 refusing the parents’ application to revoke the placement orders – [2024] EWFC 452 (B). A different reporter attended that latter hearing. HHJ Downey was concerned that the revocation application was within Part 14 proceedings and therefore outwith the Reporting Pilot such that the Transparency Order would not apply. She allowed the reporter to observe the hearing but directed that she could not report on it unless or until a High Court Judge ordered otherwise.

On 5 December 2024, the Applicants came before me as the urgent applications judge in a busy list with various applications for orders, including injunctions, to require the immediate return of their children to them. They had already exhausted the appeal process and I dismissed their applications as totally without merit. However, the Applicants also applied to “lift reporting restrictions” in the Family Court proceedings. That application was without notice and I gave directions seeking to clarify the nature of the application, for notice to be given to the Local Authority and the Children’s Guardian, and for the AP media alert system to be triggered. For various reasons which I need not record, the hearing of the application did not take place until 8 April 2025. In January 2025, the hearing of the application listed before me had been vacated but regrettably the Applicants had not been so informed. They arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice with a large group of supporters. During the hearing before me on 8 April 2025, Y suggested that the Applicants were supported by a group of military veterans and a large number of members of a particular religious Community (which I have redacted to avoid identification of the parents or children). She implied that there was little point in the Court trying to protect the identities of various individuals because the Applicants’ supporters would find out who they were and where they lived. I have not enquired into whether these supporters have already been given information relating to the proceedings. No evidence was put before me that they have.

The Applicants have challenged virtually every decision made in the Family Court. The Court of Appeal has refused them permission to appeal against the interim care orders, interim contact orders, case management orders (four different applications for permission to appeal), and the decisions of HHJ Downey on both 24 and 30 July 2024. Four of their applications for permission to appeal were certified as totally without merit and I so certified their applications in December 2024 to reverse the care and placement orders by way of injunctions. On 17 December 2024, after the application to lift reporting restrictions had been issued, Peter Jackson LJ made an Extended Civil Restraint Order (“ECRO”) in respect of both Applicants restraining them from issuing claims or making applications in any court concerning any matter involving or in relation to or touching upon or leading to the proceedings in which the order was made, namely proceedings which concern their children, without first obtaining permission from the nominated judge.

In advance of the hearing on 8 April 2025, the Applicants purported to make a number of further applications seeking the immediate return of their children but they had not first obtained permission from the nominated judge and, in accordance with the ECRO, those applications are automatically dismissed.

ECROs are made only very rarely. All current ECROs are listed on the government website. By my count there are currently 156 ECRO’s in force in the jurisdiction of England and Wales which is very few considering the tens of thousands of people involved in civil and family litigation. In the case of the Applicants, Peter Jackson LJ recorded on the face of the ECRO that their “submissions show that they reject the decisions of the court concerning the children and that they reject the system within which the decisions have been taken. The submissions contain no coherent legal argument and there is every reason to believe that [they] will directly prejudice the planning for the children by continuing to issue unmeritorious applications unless an order is made. An ECRO for two years is a proportionate response.”

As noted, the ECRO was made after the Applicants had issued their application to lift reporting restrictions and after I had given directions for that application to be heard. At the hearing on 8 April 2025, the Applicants appeared in person but with McKenzie Friends. The Second Applicant Mother, Y, began by asking for screens to be used in court to separate her from Counsel but she then decided not to pursue that application. She applied for a police office to be present in court in case she was to be arrested but I reassured her that there were no contempt of court proceedings before me, and no warrant for her arrest. Y spoke for both Applicants and made submissions for over two hours. I allowed X’s McKenzie Friend to speak briefly on his behalf because he did not appear able physically to speak for himself. I have read the judgments in the Family Court and although there is evidence regarding X’s cognitive functioning, there was no evidence that he lacked capacity to conduct the proceedings. There was no issue about his capacity in these proceedings – indeed I was assured of that when the issue was raised by Y at the hearing – but he needed assistance to add his own submissions. In their written material and in the Second Applicant mother’s oral submissions, it was made clear that the Applicants reject the authority of the court. The Family Court was referred to as a mere office, DJ Hussain as “Arbitrator Hussain”, her judgment as “an article”, and the Guardian as a “Guild Guardian” whatever that is. It was submitted that the “common law of the land” overrides any statutory provisions. I was told that there is no “Parent Act”, and that I should have regard to the “Jurisdiction of Commonwealth Nations”. When I referred to the Administration of Justice Act 1960, I was told that the court should not be concerned with matters of administration.

Y was fluent and passionate in her oral submissions but with respect to her, she has chosen not to grapple with the law that governed the proceedings under Part IV of CA 1989 which was applied when DJ Hussain made the care and placement orders in respect of her children. DJ Hussain explained in her judgment why she had found the threshold for making Care Orders to be met, why Care Orders were to be made, and why Placement Orders were in the lifelong best interests of each child. The history involved information given to authorities by Y about X and observed failures by the parents in meeting the children’s needs. Y’s personality traits and history of mental illness, her threats to individuals and hostility to engagement with professional help, and X’s inability to care for the children alone, were major factors in the Judge’s decisions. Y was indignant that I would not consider whether the care and placement orders were justified. I had repeatedly to remind her that I was not conducting an appeal and that all avenues of legal challenge to the orders had been exhausted.

The application that was before me was to lift reporting restrictions. It took some time to clarify what restrictions the Applicants wanted to be removed. Initially, it was said that the Court should lift all restrictions on reporting of every hearing in which they have been involved. However, by the close of the hearing I understood that the Applicants accepted that restrictions preventing the naming of the children should remain. Although it was not consistently clear during submissions, I understand that the Applicants not only want reporters to be permitted to report on the proceedings without restriction (other than a prohibition on naming the children), but also for the Applicants themselves and possibly other non-reporters also to be able to do so. However, when I invited agreement to the publication of an anonymised version of DJ Hussain’s and HHJ Downey’s judgments, Y did not agree. It was not that she disagreed with anonymisation, but that she opposed the publication of any judgment in the proceedings because in her view they were all full of errors.