The Secretary of State for the Home Department v R Weddle
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lady Justice King,Lord Justice Lindblom |
| Judgment Date | 20 April 2016 |
| Neutral Citation | [2016] EWCA Civ 38 |
| Docket Number | Case No: B4/2016/0338 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 20 April 2016 |
[2016] EWCA Civ 38
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
(MR JUSTICE KEEHAN)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WC2A 2LL
Lady Justice King
Lord Justice Lindblom
Case No: B4/2016/0338
The Appellant mother appeared in person
The Respondent father did not attend and was not represented
This is an appeal by the appellant against a sentence of twelve months' imprisonment suspended for twelve months imposed by Keehan J in committal proceedings on 15 December 2015. The appellant appealed by Notice of Appeal dated 28 January 2016. As committal proceedings go to the liberty of the subject, permission to appeal is not required and so the matter comes before this court without any sort of consideration of the merits of the application.
The grounds of appeal as drafted were based upon an acceptance that, whilst the appellant was in breach of an order which had been made by Keehan J on 3 May 2013, she was, by her actions, merely responding to a desire of her son, A, who was born on 13 March 2013, to have more extensive and less restrictive contact than that which was provided for in the judge's order of May 2013. As the grounds of appeal are drafted therefore, in strict legal terms the mother accepted that she was substantially in breach of the order as had been particularised by the father in the schedule and replicated in the judge's order, but within the grounds of appeal she then sought to mitigate those breaches by reference to what she alleges to have been an unreasonable refusal by the father to allow contact to progress (she would say) in accordance with A's wishes.
The case presented by the appellant today as a litigant in person before this court has been somewhat different in that she has sought to resile in some particulars from the concessions made before Keehan J, although she still accepts that she saw A outside school or near to school on a number of occasions in breach of the order. She says that the particulars as set out in the order are contradictory to the statement of the father.
It is necessary in considering the appeal to consider also a little of the background in this long-running and very tragic case. I take the background largely from the judgment of Keehan J (or Mr Michael Keehan QC as he then was) of 3 May, which judgment was given at the conclusion of an application made by the mother while she was in prison serving a sentence for perverting the course of justice, which sentence was imposed following her having forged a psychiatric report during the course of proceedings. The background taken from that judgment is as follows:
“The parents met on 8 December 2001. They married on 3 March 2002. [A] was born. The mother left the family home with [A] in September of 2004. Shortly thereafter the father issued a petition for divorce. In February 2005 he made an application for contact. There were then a series of orders made in April and May of 2005 by Coleridge J (as he then was) and Munby J which sought to compel the mother to disclose [A's] whereabouts and made orders preventing her from entering the former matrimonial home. The father's application for residence which he made on 10 May 2005 was heard by HHJ Farnsworth on 10 November 2005 when he decided that the residence of [A] should be transferred from the mother to the father. In May 2006 the father made [A] available for contact with the mother. The following day on 6 May she abducted [A] and took him to India. It took four months for them to be located. Finally on 6 September 2006 [A] was returned to this jurisdiction accompanied by his father. On 18 September 2006 Hogg J made an order which inter alia limited the mother's ability and capacity to exercise parental responsibility in respect of [A]. Having been informed in September 2007 by the police that she was not to be prosecuted in relation to the abduction of [A], the very next day the mother made a complaint to Lewisham Social Services Department resurrecting complaints of sexually inappropriate behaviour by the father. On 19 December 2007 Macur J dismissed the mother's application for residence.
There was then obtained a report from a consultant psychiatrist, Dr Levy. The matter came for hearing before Macur J on 29 September 2008 where she made fairly trenchant findings against the mother and made orders for her to have contact with [A] four times a year to be supervised at the ASFA Centre for two hours. She also made an order pursuant to section 91(14) of the Children Act 1989 which, as I have said, expired on 13 March last year. Contact took place in accordance with that order in 2009, but no contact sadly occurred in 2010. That in part resulted from the mother's failure to pay the ASFA Centre for her share of the supervised contact visits.
From the time of Macur J's order on 29 September 2008 the mother regularly made applications for leave to apply for orders under section 8 of the Children Act. In total between 2009 and January 2012 she made seven such applications. On four occasions she was not content with that refusal and sought permission to appeal from the Court of Appeal which on each occasion was refused.
The matter came for hearing in 2011 before Parker J, Macur J not being available. It is plain from the face of the order that the mother told the judge on that occasion that the ASFA Centre had been closed down and therefore no direct contact was taking place. In fact the centre had not closed down, as was subsequently discovered. It had moved location.
The mother, as I have said, made this application on 19 March. Thereafter directions were given by various judges in the division which resulted in the matter being listed before me [that is to say, Keehan J] for hearing … Not content with the section 91(14) orders being made against her, and being limited in the applications she could make before, the mother proceeded to raise a flurry of witness summonses in December of last year. There were some 14 in total. Twelve of those were discharged by Holman J at a hearing on 8 March of this year.”
Keehan J went on to discuss the psychological evidence before rejecting the mother's application for a shared care arrangement.
In October 2012, the mother was convicted by a jury of perverting the course of justice, which led in February of 2013 to her being sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. That offence related to one of her many applications for permission to apply to make an order in relation to the order made by Macur J in 2014. In support of her...
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