- At last, we go behind the closed doors of family courts
- By The Legendary Camilla Cavendish
- The Times
- 29/04/2009 Make a Comment
- Contributed by: Daveyone ( 29 articles in 2009 )
At last, we go behind the closed doors of family courtsCamilla Cavendish: Commentary
Yesterday morning I finally walked through a door that used to be marked “keep out”. It was an eerie feeling. The guards and clerks at Ipswich County Court were polite, but nervous. One admitted he was a bit shocked by the arrival of two Times journalists. I felt a bit shocked, too — by the banality of the set-up, in contrast to the bitter heartaches it contains.
The case I went to hear was one I had written briefly about in a column last year, having changed the names. I had been urged to attend by both the parents and their local MP, who has become increasingly concerned about this case and his inability to get answers from the local authority.
Being able to sit in court, hear the arguments and watch the reaction of the parties is an entirely different experience to talking to aggrieved people on the phone. Without access to the court you are always conscious that you are only getting one side of the story. In court there are more shades of grey. You learn things the parties did not want to tell you.
This does not mean that I will necessarily change my mind, in this particular case, that something has gone badly wrong. But I will feel much more confident of being able to reflect accurately the decision in all its sad complexity.
This is what our campaign for openness was all about: to tell the public what is being done in their name. To track the social workers, judges and the expert witnesses — who can make crucial recommendations on the basis of limited information — and make them accountable. And to question decisions which seem unjust.
Until now, almost the only miscarriages of justice that have been exposed in family cases are those where an individual appeal judge has chosen to make his judgment public. Even appeal judges who have made scathing indictments of local authorities, and found them to have needlessly ruined lives, have not named any of the people responsible or told us who that local authority is.
The family courts no longer operate in the dark, as of yesterday. But they are still in the dark ages compared with criminal courts. It should be perfectly possible to keep children’s and parents’ names out of the press while reporting the evidence in full: the media does this routinely in rape cases. But in the family division, reporting restrictions are enshrined in ten statutes, some of which can only be changed by Parliament.
What journalists can actually publish in the next few months, and whether they can see any of the documents produced in court, will depend heavily on the nature of the case and the courage of the individual judge.
Jack Straw has promised to legislate to improve the situation. Until he does, there is a real danger that journalists will be put off by the uncertainty over what they can report. That is bad news. The door is open, but we desperately need more journalists to pick up a torch and walk through it.
Camilla Cavendish won Best Campaign of the Year at the British Press Awards last month
Yesterday morning I finally walked through a door that used to be marked “keep out”. It was an eerie feeling. The guards and clerks at Ipswich County Court were polite, but nervous. One admitted he was a bit shocked by the arrival of two Times journalists. I felt a bit shocked, too — by the banality of the set-up, in contrast to the bitter heartaches it contains.
The case I went to hear was one I had written briefly about in a column last year, having changed the names. I had been urged to attend by both the parents and their local MP, who has become increasingly concerned about this case and his inability to get answers from the local authority.
Being able to sit in court, hear the arguments and watch the reaction of the parties is an entirely different experience to talking to aggrieved people on the phone. Without access to the court you are always conscious that you are only getting one side of the story. In court there are more shades of grey. You learn things the parties did not want to tell you.
This does not mean that I will necessarily change my mind, in this particular case, that something has gone badly wrong. But I will feel much more confident of being able to reflect accurately the decision in all its sad complexity.
This is what our campaign for openness was all about: to tell the public what is being done in their name. To track the social workers, judges and the expert witnesses — who can make crucial recommendations on the basis of limited information — and make them accountable. And to question decisions which seem unjust.
Until now, almost the only miscarriages of justice that have been exposed in family cases are those where an individual appeal judge has chosen to make his judgment public. Even appeal judges who have made scathing indictments of local authorities, and found them to have needlessly ruined lives, have not named any of the people responsible or told us who that local authority is.
The family courts no longer operate in the dark, as of yesterday. But they are still in the dark ages compared with criminal courts. It should be perfectly possible to keep children’s and parents’ names out of the press while reporting the evidence in full: the media does this routinely in rape cases. But in the family division, reporting restrictions are enshrined in ten statutes, some of which can only be changed by Parliament.
What journalists can actually publish in the next few months, and whether they can see any of the documents produced in court, will depend heavily on the nature of the case and the courage of the individual judge.
Jack Straw has promised to legislate to improve the situation. Until he does, there is a real danger that journalists will be put off by the uncertainty over what they can report. That is bad news. The door is open, but we desperately need more journalists to pick up a torch and walk through it.
Camilla Cavendish won Best Campaign of the Year at the British Press Awards last month
Source: https://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6182299.ece
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