S (Children)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Wilson |
| Judgment Date | 11 March 2010 |
| Neutral Citation | [2010] EWCA Civ 323 |
| Date | 11 March 2010 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: B4/2009/2773 and B4/2010/0232 |
[2010] EWCA Civ 323
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE LIVERPOOL COUNTY COURT
(His Honour Judge Dodds)
Before: Lord Justice Wilson
Case No: B4/2009/2773 and B4/2010/0232
(LOWER COURT No: LV09C01827)
The Applicant father and one of the mothers (Mrs Nicoleta S) appeared in person.
The Respondents did not appear and were not represented.
Lord Justice Wilson:
Before the court are two applications for permission to appeal against orders made by His Honour Judge Dodds in the Liverpool County Court. The applications are in a state of considerable confusion and I have decided to adjourn one of them to be considered by myself and a colleague at a further hearing on notice to Sefton Borough Council (“the local authority”) and to the Children's Guardian, so that, in the respect which I will identify, they may help us to see the situation with greater clarity before determining that application for permission. Were we to grant permission, we might proceed forthwith to hear the appeal.
Judge Dodds is in the course of managing care proceedings of the greatest complexity. They relate to five children: namely a boy, D, who was born on 28 January 2001 and is thus now aged nine; a girl, N, who was born on 9 July 2003 and is thus now aged six; a girl, V, who was born on 24 December 2004 and is thus now aged five; a girl, B, who was born on 16 March 2005 and is thus now aged five; and a boy, J, who was born on 24 July 2009 and is thus now aged nine months.
The proposed appellant in proceedings B4/2009/2773 is Mr Robert S, the father of all five children. The proposed appellant in proceedings B4/2010/0232 is Mrs Nicoleta S (whom, without disrespect, I intend to describe as Nicoleta). She is the mother of the two youngest children. The mother of the three oldest children is Mrs Andreia S (whom, without disrespect, I intend to describe as Andreia).
All five children are subject to interim care orders made by the judge. The three older children were, at first, following the making of the first set of interim care orders, allowed to continue to reside with their mother, Andreia; but, so the father tells me today, they have been in short-term foster care since early in November 2009. From that time onwards, notwithstanding that the two youngest children also remained subject to interim care orders, they continued, until a date to which I will refer, to live with their mother, Nicoleta. It appears, however, that there came a time, namely on 23 December 2009, when the local authority put before the judge an amended care plan for the removal also of the two youngest children into short-term foster care and that on that date he approved their plan, with the result that on that date the two youngest children were removed from the care of Nicoleta and were placed in short-term foster care, where they now remain. Nicoleta, so I am told, has contact with them on two days each week.
The father is a British citizen. In 1969 he was married in England and there are three living children of that marriage, all now adult. For the purposes of today I need refer only to the oldest of the three children, a girl, D, who was born in 1972.
In about 1990, shortly after his release from prison (relevant only because he had been convicted of offences of dishonesty), the father began to make visits to Romania. His work was connected with the Evangelical church and the provision of aid to the citizens of Romania. In 1999, in Romania, he met Andreia, a citizen of that country. In 2000 they developed a sexual relationship: she was then aged 15 and he was then aged 48; and his case has always been, and may be unchallenged, that under the law of Romania it is not unlawful for an adult to have sexual relations with a girl aged 15. D, the eldest child of that relationship, was born in January 2001. Within days of the birth the father's English marriage was dissolved in England and he and Andreia, who by then was aged 16, became married in Romania.
For the next eight years the father and Andreia lived partly in England and partly in Romania: they appear almost to have commuted between the two countries, together with D and, following their births in 2003 and 2004, with N and V. But late in 2003, in Romania, the father formed a relationship with Nicoleta, who was then aged 17 and, again, a citizen of that country. The extraordinary family arrangements then began to encompass Nicoleta; at times she remained living in Romania and at other times she accompanied the father and Andreia back to England, where at times they all lived under the same roof. For much of the time the father was having a sexual relationship with both of these young women. In 2004, for example, both of them were pregnant by him and, as will have been noted, V was born to Andreia only three months before B was born to Nicoleta. Much later J was also born to Nicoleta by the father. In 2006 the father and Andreia were divorced (perhaps in England) and he married Nicoleta (in Romania). But the divorce did not put an end to the mainly tripartite adult living arrangements, including the children, to which I have referred.
In the course of thirteen working days in November 2009, Judge Dodds conducted an elaborate fact-finding hearing into allegations of the most profound seriousness which were directed principally against the father but also against the two mothers. This hearing culminated in a judgment delivered orally by the judge on 27 November 2009, which has been transcribed. It makes astonishing reading. The judge had, prior to the start of the hearing, ruled that he intended not only to investigate in detail the bizarre family arrangements to which the five children had been made subject by the three adults but also an allegation of the most serious sexual abuse made against the father by his adult daughter, D. Her allegation was that, from 1979 to 1985, when she had been aged between 7 and 13, he had frequently raped and indecently assaulted her.
At the hearing before the judge counsel appeared for the father and for each of the mothers, as well, of course, as for the local authority and for the five children by their Children's Guardian.
In his judgment, replete with coruscating criticisms of the father, the judge explained at length why he was persuaded by...
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