Girl wins ‘exceptional’ ruling overturning adoption order
A 14-year-old girl has won a “highly exceptional” legal ruling revoking an adoption order made more than ten years ago.
The teenager was also given the go-ahead by a High Court judge in London to change her last name to that of her natural mother.
In a written ruling on the case which has now been made public, Mrs Justice Pauffley said an adoption order was made when the girl was almost four years old.
But no professional involved with her at that time could have envisaged, she said, that within two years she would be “cast out” from the home of the couple who adopted her and sent to live with extended family members in Ghana.
Nor could there have been any indication that while in Ghana she would be “abused by the adults with whom she had been sent to live”.
Mr Justice Pauffley added: “Her experience of adoption, particularly the arrangements made for her after the age of six, would seem to have been extremely abusive. She is desperate to draw a line under that part of her life.”
On any view her childhood “has been troubled and disrupted”.
Last year she returned to England and was reunited with her biological mother and maternal grandmother, who were “thrilled to have her restored within their family”.
The girl, who cannot be identified, became a ward of court as the result of her own application and orders were made granting her mother interim and then full care and control.
The judge said of her family: “They are committed to providing for her long-term future and fully support her applications.”
The teenager had “extremely strong feelings about her legal status” – wanting to “revert to having legal status as a member of her biological family”.
Following a hearing earlier this year, the family court judge said she had made an order which was “highly exceptional and particular on its facts”.
It “revoked an adoption order made more than ten years ago and provided for the applicant, a 14-year-old young woman, to change her last name to that of her biological mother”.
The judge said all the signs were that the couple who adopted the child in 2004 had “relinquished responsibility” for her.
They had failed to respond to all attempts by the girl’s solicitors to elicit a response to the applications for the adoption order to be revoked and for her last name to changed.
Mrs Justice Pauffley said: “Whilst I altogether accept that public policy considerations ordinarily militate against revoking properly made adoption orders and rightly so, instances can and do arise where it is appropriate so to do.
“This case, it seems to me, falls well within the range of ‘highly exceptional and very particular’ such that I can exercise my discretion to make the revocation order sought”.
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2015, All Rights Reserved.
