HEMMING LEADS FAMILIES JUSTICE CAMPAIGN

28-03-2007

Birmingham MP John Hemming is helping to launch the Angela Cannings Foundation in parliament today - with the aim of getting fair treatment for families who've been on the wrong end of rough justice.

Angela Cannings was found guilty in 2002 of murdering her two baby sons, but was released from prison the following year when the conviction was declared unsafe. It was one of a number of high profile verdicts that relied on evidence from Professor Sir Roy Meadows which were later over-turned.

In a similar case, Ian And Angela Gay from Halesowen recently had their conviction quashed after they were jailed for killing their foster son Christian Blewitt.

Hemming, who is chair of the Families For Justice campaign group, recently highlighted another, less well-publicised case, in which a woman was wrongly accused of shaking her baby so violently that it caused brain damage.

The allegation proved to be untrue, but because the family courts believed it at the time and refused the mother's requestto consider a second opinion, she had her child removed from her.

When shebecame pregnant again, she had an abortion, because she couldn't bear the thought of being separated from her new born baby.

The woman has now been re-united with her first child, and a court accepted last week that she could not have been responsible for his injury.

Hemming commented: “Blaming parents for injuries to their children and the unwillingness of some judges in the family division to accept that the doctors cannot always be relied on as to read the runes of what has been happening causes a mass of misery.

"Luckily this case has ended well for the parents and their son although of course the mother went through an unnecessary abortion caused entirely by the medical profession and the family courts.

“The family courts have to stop acting like witchfinders and start having some intellectual rigour in their operation. Relying on biased opinion from Childrens Services is no substitute for a rational process based in intellectual rigour."