Mother’s pay-out for wrongful child abuse inquiry

A mother has won a 13-year battle against a council who wrongly accused her of abusing her baby son – when he suffered from brittle bone disease.

The woman, who wants only to be known as Anna, has been awarded a five-figure sum after Bury Council put her one-year-old into care for four months.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled the local authority had made a “number of fundamental errors”.

Bury Council said: “We will review our policies, procedures and practice.”

She told the BBC “she thought the world had gone mad” when the local authority took her son from her 13 years ago and placed him in care.

“If felt like it was not happening. I had to hand my baby over to strangers.

“Then I had to go home and sleep next to an empty cot. For any mother that is unimaginable.

“To not know where your child is, whether he needs you – I would not wish anyone to have to go through it.”

Social services at Bury Council decided her son was being physically abused after she took him to hospital with broken ribs in 1997.

The entire family were moved from their home in Whitefield and placed in an institution in Bristol for 12 weeks where they were assessed.

It was at this point, the ECHR ruled, that the council failed – it had ordered a parenting assessment instead of a risk assessment.

Instead of admitting it had ordered the wrong type of assessment and re-ordering a risk examination, the council put the child into foster care.

Anna and her partner then had four months fighting to get their child back. Finally, children’s charity the NSPCC got involved and conducted a risk assessment.

‘No apology’

The charity ruled the baby should be immediately returned to his parents. However, it took the council a further two months to allow the little boy back home.

The local authority finally accepted that the rib fractures were caused by a rare condition known as osteogenesis imperfecta by July 1998.

Anna added: “It has definitely affected him.

“He had trouble sleeping, he stopped speaking for a while and he still sees a psychiatrist.”

Anna kept up the long fight because she wanted to make Bury Council “recognise what they had done”.

“I have got the recognition that they were wrong, but still haven’t got the apology.

“No-one lost their job over it.”

The ECHR unanimously found that Bury Council’s social services department had violated Article 8 of the Human Rights Act by not respecting their right for family life.

A Bury Council spokesman added: “This case involves events that took place 13 years ago, and policy and practice has changed significantly since that time in respect of actions that are taken to safeguard children.”