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PARENTS FLEE TO SPAIN TO PROTECT BABIES

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Staff Reporter / 2010-03-06 11:53:22

A mother’s instinct is to protect her child, and if there is any threat of that child being taken away, then the parents won’t just sit around waiting. 

Two families from Suffolk have fled the UK rather than face the risk of having their babies taken from them by the courts.  In a strange coincidence, both families are now living in Los Montesinos, and are next door neighbours.

Dale and Lorraine Coote's daughter Megan from Kesgrave near Ipswich has learning difficulties.  After an assessment by social services, the family have been told the child could be taken away.

Another  couple, Carissa and Jim, fled to Spain just before Christmas to prevent their unborn child being seized by social workers. Their daughter, who is now 18 months old, was removed from their care at 11 weeks and put up for adoption because they were declared unfit parents.

Both cases have been taken up by Conservative MP Tim Yeo, who said there was no justification for the intervention and accused Suffolk Social Services of being 'child kidnappers'.

Carissa, 32, gave birth to her 6lb 1oz son by caesarean section at Torrevieja Hospital on the Costa Blanca two weeks ago. Fighting back tears she said, 'I am so very happy because of my beautiful new son. He is wonderful and means the world to us.  But at the same time I am sad because his older sister should be here with us. It terrifies me to think they might never meet.  Her husband, a 41-year-old lorry driver, added: 'We are still fighting tooth and nail to get our daughter back and complete our family. We are very happy to be here in Spain, where it seems social services want to help us, rather than split us up.'

He described how social workers began monitoring Carissa and Jim after the birth of their daughter, referred to as Poppy, in August 2008. They waited until Jim was out at work one day, 11 weeks later, to swoop on the couple's home with police and 'snatch the baby from the arms of her mother'. 

In the ensuing legal battle, the council repeatedly changed its grounds for intervening, alternating between blaming one parent and then the other. Carissa was accused of having factitious disorder - a condition in which sufferers feign illness or exaggerate symptoms.  She was also alleged to have claimed her son suffered from various illnesses. She denied both claims.   Jim was assessed by a doctor to be a 'pathological liar', but later a consultant clinical psychologist 'would not endorse the expression'. 

The couple have had no contact with their daughter, who is with adoptive parents, for 15 weeks.  They hope to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights to get her back but unless it can act within the next few months the adoption will be finalised.   Jim said: 'We're never going back to the UK. All we want is to be able to raise our family. We are not bad parents, we love our children.'

On Friday the Times reported that Spanish authorities had made a dramatic intervention.  Spanish officials, acting on information from Suffolk social services, arrived at the hospital where Carissa was still breastfeeding two-week-old Jim Junior.  The baby is now in the care of Spanish foster parents. 

Tim Yeo demanded that Suffolk County Council provide the legal ground on which they passed “completely unfounded allegations” to the Spanish authorities.  “It is a very questionable form of intervention by British social services,” he said. “In what I view as a vindictive way they have chased this couple a thousand miles away to try to inflict yet more distress.”

The Spanish authorities’ decision to remove the baby from this couple is a stark warning to the increasing number of British parents seeking refuge overseas in an attempt to keep their families together.

Megan Coote, 21, and her mother Lorraine know well the uncertainty that now grips this other family. The fear that Suffolk social services would take Megan’s baby in the delivery room is what drove them, too, to leave their old life in Kesgrave and relocate to Spain.  Olivia Coote was born on February 15, two days before Jim junior.

Suffolk social services claimed yesterday that they were simply following standard procedure and denied any prior knowledge of the action taken by the Spanish authorities. But their words offered little comfort to Mr Smith, 41, and his 32-year old wife. 

Days earlier the Coote family had also answered the door to find Spanish social workers on the doorstep. They had come to check up on Megan and Olivia, but to the Cootes’ relief left after a few minutes with nothing more menacing than a smile and the offer of baby milk if needed.

Pale and young-looking for her years, Megan Coote, 21, had learning difficulties diagnosed as a child. When she became pregnant by her violent ex-boyfriend last year, Suffolk social services conducted a psychological assessment that highlighted concerns about her low IQ and inability to show emotion. It concluded that she was unable to look after herself or her baby.

Angry and frustrated at the lack of support their daughter has received from social services in the past, Megan’s parents insisted that she should be given a chance at proving herself and pushed for a place in the mother and baby unit in Peterborough.
When it became apparent that Megan would not be allowed to keep the child, the Cootes put themselves forward as potential foster parents.

They became concerned after a viability assessment criticised Mr Coote, a successful local businessman and father of three, for previously smacking his children to discipline them. They were also told that the 12-week assessment would not be able to start until Olivia’s birth, ensuring that she would have to spend time in foster care.

Worried that her grandchild would vanish into adoption, Mrs Coote felt that she had no choice but to leave her four-bedroom house, her three dogs and Dale, her husband of 25 years, and go with her daughter to Spain. “I was crying. I just kept thinking and thinking – if I go Megan’s going to have a chance. If I don’t go, Megan’s going to lose her baby,” she said. “Then I got up and I said to Dale, ‘We’re going’. My stomach was in knots but I knew that I was doing the right thing.”

John Hemming, MP and chairman of Justice for Families, knows of five refugee families in Spain. He believes the number of couples choosing to go abroad will increase as families lose faith in British procedure. “You can see why people want to get out. People recognise that you do not get a fair trial in the family courts. The system is stacked against parents,” he said. “Going abroad gives you a chance to have a family life.”

Jim remains optimistic that the Spanish system will reunite him with his son. “We’re complying in every way possible. The Spanish social services and the Spanish hospital have been fantastic. We’ve got nothing bad to say about them,” he said. Regardless of what happens, his family are staying put.

The Cootes, too, are thinking about moving the rest of the family out to Spain. “She’s the point of it all,” said Mrs Coote. “This allows her to grow up in the family. I’d tell other grandparents or parents to do it. It’s the only way you’re going to get to bring up your child.”

Suffolk County Council said it was 'not appropriate' to discuss individual cases with anyone other than those directly involved.