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England and Wales High Court (Family Division) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Family Division) Decisions >> L (A Child) (fact finding) [2015] EWHC 3191 (Fam) (09 October 2015) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/3191.html Cite as: [2015] EWHC 3191 (Fam) |
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Sitting at THE ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE
IN THE MATTER OF THE CHILDREN ACT 1989 section 31
IN THE MATTER OF L (A Child) (Born 18th May 2006)
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
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Hertfordshire County Council and |
Applicant |
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LC (deceased) and |
1st Respondent |
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AC and |
2nd Respondent |
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RV & EV and |
3rd & 4th Respondents |
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L (A Child) |
5th Respondent |
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Alison Brooks (instructed by Jane Kaim Caudle Solicitors) for the 2nd Respondent
RV and EV the 3rd and 4th Respondents appeared in person
George Lafazanides (solicitor from Fahri Jacob) for the 5th Respondent (by her children's guardian)
Hearing dates: 5th October to 9th October 2015
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Crown Copyright ©
The Honourable Ms Justice Russell DBE:
Introduction
These proceedings
The background to the care proceedings
The background to this case
L's background and her complaints
"...to spontaneously describe him sexually assaulting her. Even though it was clearly stressful and her narrative broke down (her sentences became less coherent) she still tried to smile to please me and not display her distress.
She gave me unique details about her physical interactions with C which I found concerning. She described him making her wash his feet and his back. She also described an episode where her sisters were trying to pull her arm to get her away from him. She described trying to hide by saying she wanted to go to the toilet, but he still found her.
She was able to describe him physically assaulting her. She described to me the lines on her skin after an alleged beating, how he would pull down her pants to hit her. She was able to demonstrate how she would be sobbing and checked I knew the right sound and word to describe it. She often became distress and more aroused physiologically talking about her father. Her sentences were less coherent, she often repeated words and at times she struggled to maintain her smile.
She is clearly traumatised by the idea of him turning up and taking her. He did try and snatch her in July 2014. Mr and Mrs V say that anyone who looks like her father, an elderly man with a moustache, makes her incredibly anxious. She seeks safety either from them or the time she was in a museum on a school trip when she sought safety from a teacher…
…In my opinion all of this is indicative of ongoing traumatic symptomology, relating to her experience of C. She remains hyper-aroused when speaking about him, she is constantly monitoring to see if he is going to turn up and she is having nightmares about him. Although she didn't describe flash backs I think that it is likely that at times that memories of the alleged abuse overwhelm her."
Evidence
Law
"If a legal rule requires facts to be proved, a judge must decide whether or not it happened. There is no room for a finding that it might have happened. The law operates a binary system in which the only values are nought and one."
"Evidence cannot be evaluated and assessed in separate compartments. A judge in these difficult cases must have regard to the relevance of each piece of evidence to the other evidence and to exercise an overview of the totality of the evidence in order to come to the conclusion of whether the case put forward by the Local Authority has been made out to the appropriate standard of proof."
Conclusions
Mr and Mrs V
Romanian authorities