Fresh hope for "abuse' case couple

By LAURA COLLINS

Last updated at 21:50 24 February 2007


A judge has questioned the speed with which a family court disposed of proceedings that resulted in the forcible adoption of three children and may lead to a fourth child being taken into care.

Speaking at an interim hearing into Mark and Nicky Webster's fight to keep eight-month-old baby Brandon last week, Mr Justice Holman expressed bemusement that the case could have been heard in just one day.

He said: 'I can't understand myself how a case of this seriousness was capable of being disposed of in a day if it was properly researched and presented on behalf of the parents.'

The Mail on Sunday first highlighted the case last year.

In October 2003 the Websters, from Cromer, Norfolk, were branded child abusers by Norfolk County Council when an unexplained fracture in their second son's leg sparked a rapid process of social care intervention.

Despite discrepancies in diagnoses and expert testimony passing unchallenged, the process ended with the enforced adoption of all three children.

But at the interim hearing at the Royal Court of Justice, Mr Justice Holman concluded that 'fresh medical evidence' from an American paediatrician and a consultant radiologist had 'blown the case wide open'.

Key to the new lines of inquiry is the suggestion the boy's fractures could have been the result of scurvy (caused by Vitamin C deficiency) and anaemia.

Although Justice Holman dismissed the Websters' application to have their original case reopened, explaining: 'I'm not saying that Judge Barham's conclusions were not correctly and probably irresistibly reached on the evidence,' he added: 'There is new material to be weighed in the balance and the findings of Judge Barham just disappear to nowhere in relation to Brandon.

Addressing counsel for Norfolk County Council, he said: 'Unless you can rubbish this material, which I don't think you can, there has got to be a full inquiry into all this evidence.'

The judge went on to acknowledge that, whatever the conclusion in Brandon's case, the adoption of his three siblings was irreversible.

Last November this newspaper won a landmark legal case lifting a gagging order that prevented Press coverage of the couple's fight to keep Brandon.

His fate will be decided in June.

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