Judge reverses social workers decision to remove child following mothers ‘sexual escapade’

A woman has won a family court fight for the return of her two-year-old son despite social workers’ concerns about the implications of a Christmas Day “drunken sexual escapade” with a stranger she picked up on Facebook.

Social services staff said the woman’s engagement in “risky” sex led them to the conclusion that the boy, who had been put into temporary foster care, would not be safe with her and should be placed for adoption.

But a family court judge has come to a different conclusion.

Judge Ross Duggan said social workers should plan for the youngster to be returned to his mother’s care.

The judge said adoption would be “safe and permanent” – but he said the little boy “loves his mother” and concluded that the Christmas Day “episode” did not create an “unacceptable risk of harm”.

Detail has emerged in a ruling by the judge following a private family court hearing in Preston, Lancashire.

He said no one involved could be identified.

But he indicated that the woman lived in Blackburn, Lancashire, and said social services staff involved worked for Blackburn with Darwen Council.

Judge Duggan said social workers had initially been concerned about the “turbulent and violent” relationship between the woman and the boy’s father.

They had felt it essential that she stayed away from the man and protected her son. And, the judge said, the youngster had been taken from the woman and placed into foster care late last year because social services staff said she had a “chronic inability” to break away from the man.

But Judge Duggan said in recent months the woman had achieved a “remarkable degree of success” in staying away from the boy’s father. He said social workers’ concerns had now switched to her Christmas engagement in “risky” sex.

He said the woman had given evidence and told him what happened on December 25.

“There was … a drunken sexual escapade in the mother’s home with a man that she did not know whom she had picked up on Facebook,” explained Judge Duggan in his ruling.

“It turned out that this was a man with a family and a criminal record. Mother explains that she was very low about Christmas time. She was spending Christmas, of course, without her child. The world was celebrating at a time when she was alone and she felt the need for company, any company.”

The judge added: “The mother insists that this behaviour would not have arisen if she had her child at home. She points out that she never had strange men at home when the child was in her care and I accept her evidence on this point. It is argued that December represents a part of a pattern of unthinking unsafe behaviour, but for me the correct approach is an analysis of the likelihood of harm to the child.”

And he went on: “If the mother was taking strange men home with a child present, that would be totally unacceptable behaviour. However, there was no child and more importantly and fundamentally, I accept that mother would not behave in this way if there was a child in her care … For me, the mother has achieved a remarkable change by breaking away from the insidious control of the father. For me, December does not fatally undermine that progress.”

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