Dear Jude Glad to see you active in pursuit of Children’s Rights! My petition 1707/2013 about forced adoptions in the UK is still open and two amendments are waiting for a response. Hence I read the Opinion document that you produced as rapporteur for LIBE with great interest: http://bit.ly/2alPVse I would like to offer these comments regarding paragraph 8 about special attention to the rights of children: 1. “Cross border custody disputes”: There is currently a Government-initiated bill in the House of Lords on Children and Social Work: http://bit.ly/2aJfuYl a. It talks about seven principles of corporate parenting which I hope you will find as questionable and abhorrent as we do. b. During the debate LORD WARNER as former Director of Children’s Services quoted exactly what we are campaigning about: examples of paedophile abuse in homes and private foster care. c. Hence is it CRITICAL that MEPs learn to distinguish custody dispute i. between couples and ii. when local authorities remove children and thus are in dispute with biological parents iii. for a Police Whistleblower said in a recent interview that the Care System is a paedophiles’ playground; other profit making motives for local authorities snatching children are similarly sinister. d. In our experience local authorities use couple disputes as a pretext for removing children and then give them to the abusive parent with the aid of secret family courts who keep children in care with unequal visitation rights, instead of returning them to either of the parents. i. An excellent example are the Hampstead 2 who are in care of LB Barnet and the Enfield 6, where 4 of the 6 children were sent to foster carers in Cyprus. I seriously hope that Mairead McGuiness MEP’s office will help the mother retrieve her children! ii. We published "London Authorities Harming Children" to compare the two cases: http://bit.ly/2apSGtT e. At the rate of 10,000 children taken a year with trends consistently rising, ‘child snatching’ or ‘forced removal’ is the real issue underlying ‘custody disputes’ between parents and local authorities. i. They find the flimsiest of excuses for taking children with the aid of Police – generally without paper work – legitimised in secret family courts – by often unqualified experts. ii. The secret courts are NOT a level playing field for parents who have been punished without having committed a crime and who are generally betrayed by the legal profession – hence the need for our Association of McKenzie Friends. iii. To plan ‘corporate parenting’ as legitimisation is another layer of ‘too muchness’! 2. “Best interests of the child”: a. The words in all official and legal documents say the right things: removal is the last resort; in practice, it’s POLICY with TARGETS; i. The Swedish petitioners about child removal in the Northern countries suggest that maybe 10% of removal cases are justified; ii. Former MP John Hemming used to say “Social Services get involved when they shouldn’t and don’t get involved when they should”; b. It is a non-negotiable fact that adoptees are looking for their roots; similarly care leavers look for their parents who they will assume rejected them; i. The trauma of removal is also a non-negotiable fact, especially when children are not allowed to speak their native language and are separated from their siblings. c. All statistics point to ‘care’ NOT being in the ‘best interest’ of the child. d. In fact, the Joint Report by the APPGs on Missing Children and Care Leavers makes so many recommendations that it is shameful how they are being ignored: http://bit.ly/2aCPCKU 3. Re Article 51: http://bit.ly/2aH6OzO a. It would help the innocent reader if its significance was published in the Opinion and the final Resolution, especially as you ask the Commission to promote the Charter. b. Please note that foreigners have been targeted by UK authorities. See Non UK kids in care. c. Poland has had to set up a whole infrastructure in the UK to help Polish parents whose children were removed. d. Bulgaria was talking about warning parents to emigrate to the UK, as they risk losing their children. My current feeling is that all EU activities are GREAT, as they add an extra dimension to what we can do in London. Hence I was also pleased that my email to the President of the EU Parliament received petition number 0771/2016: http://bit.ly/2aWHgfV If you could add your weight to it being found admissible and scheduled, I would be most grateful: • MONITORING the implementation of EU Resolution 2016/2575 (RSP) to Safeguard the Best Interests of Children across the EU. Onwards and upwards, one initiative and petition at a time… With many thanks for your commitment to Children’s Rights and Citizens’ Petitions, Sabine PS. I Cc everybody who came to London for the Fact Finding Visit as well as other MEPs who are either top supporters of Children’s Rights in the spirit of the UN Resolution or are aware of the plights of parents in the UK. PPS. I WON my case against the Police who tried to bring me behind bars as whistleblower of the whistleblower kids! My solicitor said “You haven’t only won the Cup Final, you’ve won 5 nil!” For it’s apparently very unusual for the CPS case to collapse before conclusion: but my barrister asked the arresting officer for her investigation records relating to my midnight arrest on 11 January 2016. Her records stopped on 05 September 2015. So both Police and CPS came out looking rather bad…