by Mary W Maxwell, LLB
GumshoeNews has given steady coverage, for a year, to the problem of what I call “judicial kidnap.” A Family Court judge makes an order to remove the child from a good parent, a parent who is not harming his/her kid and in fact is protecting it from harm.
We have made no progress at all in getting a cessation of judicial kidnap. I am sure part of the reason for that is that the public has been told that Social Services often work for the good of the child. Allow me in this article to tackle that issue, and specifically the narrower issues of newborn “uplift.”
Note, first, that it’s not Social Services that makes the decision to take the child. It is the judge. I think the judge is operating in a sinister way, as I have described in my book Reunion: Judging the Family Court. I believe the judge’s motive is not one that fits the mission statement of social services.
Still, as I said, the public is taken in by the rhetoric of Social Services. Many people have seen mainstream media’s news reports of the Child Protection Department going into a home to seize a kid who is being starved or beaten by an out-of-control patent. Would you want, instead, for that kid to be left to the parent’s devices? Probably not.
Grabbing a Kid at Birth
A protest was held a fortnight ago (July 30, 2019) at New Zealand’s Parliament House in Wellington, regarding “child-stealing.” In particular the complaint was that many Maori children (3 per week) are removed into state care, at a much higher rate than others. For my purposes here in addressing “uplift,” I have no concern about racial disproportion. A baby is a baby. A mother is a mother.
The protest reflected public outrage at what took place on approximately June 1 at Hawke’s Bay Hospital. The OT – it means Oranga Tamariki, basically the DCP – was trying to seize a baby from the maternity ward.
The baby was born by Caesarian. The woman’s whanau (extended family) was present as were two midwives.
I’ll quote just a bit of the drama, from Newsroom.co.nz which seems to be a Gumshoe-like entity. Melanie Reid is the journalist:
“A contingent of police officers spent Tuesday night at Hawkes Bay Hospital because of a standoff between midwives, lawyers and whānau and Oranga Tamariki over the uplift of a newborn baby.
“The midwives, Ripeka Ormsby and Jean Te Huia, of Māori Midwives Aotearoa, were trying to prevent authorities taking the baby boy from his mother. Her midwife Ormsby spent the night camped outside the hospital after the midwives’ swipe card access was [deactivated].
“The Family Court ordered the uplift on the grounds that the whānau’s wider family had a background of domestic violence and drug use – a claim the whanau disputes.
“Five days later on May 6, three OT workers arrived with a car seat and forms and told her they had come to take the baby. Her whānau and support people had no notice of the uplift.
“Unusually for such a situation, she had the support of Wellington lawyer Janet Mason. Mason put in an urgent application for an injunction at the Family Court, and spoke to Oranga Tamariki workers via speakerphone in the hospital room. Three further attempts by them to take the baby were stopped.
“Yesterday, family and support workers attended a hui with Oranga Tamariki (OT) and came away believing it would not act until the judge had considered the situation. For the first time in days, they left the hospital and went home to rest. Just before 9pm, Oranga Tamariki arrived back at the hospital with police to uplift the baby.
“The mother would not give the baby up, and Mason and Des Ratima, chairman of Takitimu District Māori Council, negotiated with police and case workers until 2am.”
“My” Legislation
I propose that we create a firm law “No baby may be taken from a woman who has just given birth.” As indicated above, there may be cases when – if we all knew all the facts – we would want the baby to be taken. But that is rare. Sometimes you have to put up with a bad situation. If, occasionally, a baby goes home with a mum who will do terrible things to it, I say So what? That’s life. Don’t invent a horrendous rule to accommodate it.
Because judges are misbehaving we need a different rule. The moment of the birth of a child is wondrous, it is, a miracle. It is also a physical shock for the mum and child. To burden the mum additionally with arguments, with fears, with the presence of police outside her door – and DCP bullies inside the room itself — and the lockout of her partner or midwife is just not tolerable.
It would not be too much to ask Parliament to take this “baby step” toward reducing the current hellish situation. So I say: no snatching of newborns. Please. Don’t forget we are a civilized society.
Ms Jacoby Poulain
I now change the topic from uplift to the issue of what can be done by people who are experiencing illegal behavior by government. Interestingly, a person – Ms Poulain of the Health Board, who is a legally trained — inserted herself into the story and was duly reprimanded by her boss. (I use the word “duly” in a gumshoian sense.)
I’ll now quote from Bonnie Sumner, a freelance journalist based in Hawkes Bay, in a newsroom.co.nz article “Health board member muzzled over uplift”:
“The chairman of the Hawkes Bay District Health Board has reprimanded elected board member Jacoby Poulain for speaking out about the attempted uplift of a baby from the Hawkes Bay maternity ward last month.
“Poulain published a column in which she described the HBDHB as having ‘failed significantly in its duty of care to provide safe and adequate care to mother and child in this situation’.
“Senior legal counsel Janet Mason stated: ‘This mother was treated in an incomprehensible manner. She was unnecessarily denied legal rights to be heard in a legal matter so crucial to her, she was denied healthcare which is a fundamental patient right and seemingly she was detained with police guarding her door. These are human rights violations.’
“Poulain received a letter from the board’s chairman Kevin Atkinson on DHB letterhead. In it, he writes he is ‘concerned about these comments and your approach to the media’ and that her comments were ‘inaccurate and put the DHB and board in an unfavourable light when this is not justified’.
“Atkinson goes on to say ‘Any freedom of communication with the media should comply with the board Code of Conduct and Ethics and the DHB’s Media Relations Policy’.
“Poulain said: ‘They’re wanting to silence me. The correspondence that we’ve had – the tone and spirit – I take as an attempt to suppress my political voice, which I believe is essential in order to do my job as an elected representative.
“Poulain, a trained lawyer, sent a written response to Atkinson. In it she says her legal obligations under the Public Health and Disability Act 2000, among other laws, override those of the board’s Code of Conduct and Ethics….” [Emphasis added]
I feel that the following words, by Ms Jacoby Poulain came right out of my own mouth:
“We are nowhere near solving the issue, far from it. Hence the critical need to have open, transparent public discussions about such matters. I’m struggling with the fact that we aren’t able to do that easily. A big part of this picture is I feel that society still doesn’t know that huge injustices are occurring in this space…. In other words, you’ve got one side of the community yelling out injustice and state abuse and you’ve got the other side saying ‘sit down be quiet’ and failing to see or hear the story of this side claiming these injustices. I don’t know why they don’t want to have this conversation, and that’s what’s so frustrating.”
In Language All Too Familiar
Let’s add a bit to show the similarity of DCP jargon in NZ with that of Australia, and which is also identical in some United States cases. Boy, is it tiresome! Again quoting Melanie Reid, from the article “Don’t Take my Baby”:
“In an affidavit supporting an application for a court order to uplift the child, a social worker said there were ongoing family violence issues between the baby’s mother and father.”
She also cited drug use, lack of parenting skills, and transient home environments as reasons to uplift.
“The affidavit said the baby’s father had admitted daily marijuana use and had not yet had a hair follicle test to establish whether he was using other drugs.
“The mother’s family dispute that evidence, saying it is based on assumptions and that both young parents have good whānau support. They accept they lack parenting skills but have expressed a willingness to learn.
“Des Ratima said he had read the affidavit.
“I’ve never seen so many assumptions in a report that determines the future of this family. She’s up for a bruising in court.” [Emphasis added]
Why Are We Putting Up with This?
In Australia, we have got nowhere with our letters to any official. In New Zealand, a Maori group has formed in reaction to the above baby-snatching. They may be looking for a vote of No Confidence in the Prime Minister. She, Jacinda Ardern, is a very young PM – age 39.
I call for No Confidence in every official in Australia that has taken part in these outrages. Every Minister of Child Protection, every Police Commissioner, and – why not – the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Governor General David Hurley (former defence force chief).
Let’s have a competition in the Antipodes to see which country can overcome this crazed racket soonest.
It is noteworthy that the indigenous people of NZ are the ones that have had the brains to unify. Recall that an aboriginal group of Strong Grandmothers has stepped up to the plate in Oz to do something about forced adoptions.
The majority still vote labor/liberal and green.Therefore they are not yet interested in change.
It’s never ok
Judicial Accountability: An Australian Perspective^
http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/QldJSchol/2016/20.pdf
The ICJ Guide views the nature of the judiciary’s accountability to the legislature and the executive in similar terms. Rather than judges being accountable to these other branches of government in the sense of being “responsible”or “subordinate”to them, the judiciary must instead “demonstrate that their decisions are based on legal rules and reasoning, and fact-finding based in evidence, in an independent and impartial way free from corruption and other improper influences.”6
Accountable to those wronged by misconduct Of course, as was noted by Michael Kirby, a former Justice of the High Court of Australia, accountability of judges must extend beyond“mere answerability to the law”.11“To say that a judge is answerable only to his or her conscience and the law may hide a multitude of sins…”12Indeed, the historic focus on traditional forms of accountability, such as appellate review and open justice, led John Basten, now a Justice of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, to observe ironically that “judges can be wrong but not bad”.13Thefocus of the ICJ Guide, then, is the development of avenues for judicial accountability that can go further than those that traditionally form part of a court’s ordinary functioning or hierarchical structure and can thus go further in providing redress for those who are victims of serious judicial misconduct. The Guide states that:14“Individuals who are affected by particular judicial misconduct should also be able to expect that the judge will be held accountable for the wrongdoing and that… any
5damage will be remedied. Such persons should have access to complaints procedures capable of resulting in disciplinary proceedings for judicial misconduct.”
The desirability of victims of serious judicial misconduct being able to seek remedy and reparation is a prominent theme in the second chapter of the ICJ Guide. The elements of adequate and effective reparation under international human rights law and standards are said to include, inter alia, restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.15Theseelements, it is argued, should be available either from theindividual judge or,if this would compromise judicial independence, from the State as a whole.16In Australia, the concernfor achieving adequate reparation, in these terms,is not one that has received extensive discussion. Partly, this may be due to the absence of instances of corruption or complicity in human rights violations to which this conceptualisation of reparation may be more readily applied. However, aspects of the various elements of reparationdiscussed in the ICJ guideexist already in current complaint structuresor have otherwise received judicial acknowledgment.
What happens if the judge cannot produce his or her Oath of Office by a Defendant request?
The Australia Act is sedition and of High treason which makes all of the previous governments illegal. The courts would be in the same position would they not as mere court administrators and not legal judges. Null and void
Oaths and Affirmations of Public Office
http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MonashULawRw/1999/6.pdf
What is promised by the taker of a promissory oath or affirmation often relates to the duties of a particular public office, for example that of a judge of a particular court. The person taking such an oath or affirmation may also be required to take an oath or affirmation of allegiance. In Australia this oath or affirmation is one by which a person pledges to be faithful to the Queen, her heirs and successors. Sometimes the law requires no more than the taking of an oath or affirmation of this kind. For example, in most Australian jurisdictions those elected as members of parliament are required to take only the oath or affirmation of allegiance.
Should Australian voters decide that they no longer want an hereditary monarch to be their head of state, the forms of the prescribed oaths and affirmations of alle- giance would obviously need to be revised. There could even be a question about whether there is any need to retain oaths and affirmations of this kind. After all, under Australian law persons can owe a duty of allegiance without ever having taken an oath or affirmation of allegian~e.~ Such an oath or affirmation is not even required of persons who seek to become Australian citizens by naturalization. Today all that is required to obtain that status is grant of a certificate of Australian citizenship and a pledge of commitment to Australia and its people.
When can Magistrates and Judges be fired?
https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/when-can-magistrates-and-judges-be-fired/
DISCIPLINE OF JUDICIAL OFFICERS IN AUSTRALIA Michael Kirby*
http://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/speeches/former-justices/kirbyj/kirbyj_judicialgroup.htm
There are no detailed provisions in the Australian Constitution for the discipline of judges.
In a hundred years, no federal judge has been removed from office in Australia.
There is no standing arrangement in Australia for the receipt, investigation and determination of complaints of corrupt or like conduct on the part of federal judicial officers. In the case of such office-holders, those disaffected may, and often do, write letters of complaint to the Federal Attorney-General, members of Parliament, chief judges and chief magistrates, the media, non-governmental organisations and the police. But there is no central repository or system for handling such complaints. Until now, this has been considered unnecessary. Until recently, the federal judiciary was comprised of relatively few judicial officers.
List of Australian judges whose security of tenure was challenged
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_judges_whose_security_of_tenure_was_challenged
Peter Liddy SA Magistrates Court 2001 Resigned Liddy was convicted of child sex offences but resigned without the need for an inquiry
Garry Neilson NSW District Court 24 September 2015 Inappropriate conduct not warranting removal Neilson was stood down for his directions to a jury in a trial of a man accused of raping his sister, which included that “a jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now ‘available’, not having [a] sexual partner”. The Judicial Commission found that the comments undermined confidence in the judiciary, and amounted to inappropriate judicial conduct. The Commission did not find there were grounds for his removal and recommended to Chief Judge Derek Price that Neilson not be allocated to sit on cases involving sexual offences.
A number of judges or magistrates are fund to be unfit
Peter Liddy has very recently applied for his parole after being serving his 18 year non-parole period. He also won his application to have some of his personal valuable relics returned to him rather than them being sold & his victims compensated. Whilst in Mt Gambier prison in his own personal cottage he had the time to write children’s books! According to other prisoners, he was often seen sitting outside his cottage in the sun reading the paper. I doubt he’s remorseful for his crimes against children! Well connected, well protected!
Judge removed from Alice Springs court over series of ‘gratuitous’ comments
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/08/judge-removed-from-alice-springs-court-over-insensitive-comments-to-boy
A Northern Territory judge has been removed from the Alice Springs youth court for a series of “gratuitous and unnecessary” comments that brought the judiciary into disrepute.
There are a number of judges that have brought the judicial system into disrepute!
So there are a number of precedents to get these bad judges or magistrates
Magistrate’s misconduct: Dominique Burns latest judicial officer referred to Parliament
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/magistrate-s-misconduct-dominique-burns-latest-judicial-officer-referred-to-parliament-20190111-p50qve.html
The complaint, which progressed to a public hearing last year, alleged Ms Burns misused her detention powers, denied procedural fairness, imposed sentences which exceeded the maximum penalty, and improperly encouraged police prosecutors to lay further charges.
I second the motion on the floor of “no confidence in every official in Australia”.
I believe a call of hands in our group meeting off site is the next requirement of Union.
.com makes us offsite right.
ok, not the time
Scotty has been beamed up. How could this possibly go wrong. No confidence.
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-21/scott-morrison-australia-to-join-us-uk-strait-of-hormuz/11434140?pfmredir=sm
Mary Maxwell has covered getting judges many times on this site. She has tapped away for many weeks on the subject
https://gumshoenews.com/2018/11/03/getting-a-judge-part-6-how-to-tip-an-aussie-judge-overboard/
https://gumshoenews.com/2016/02/23/judge-mcclellan-face-the-music-part-9-of-gumshoes-royal-commission-series/
https://gumshoenews.com/2016/02/13/getting-a-judge-part-5-the-paddy-wagon-awaits/
Very good, Dee. You’re coming along. And here is your reward:
.
And here’s one for you, Arlyn:
.
for mary
Not sure where you’re headed with that, Diane. But here’s my reply:
.
Thanks Mary 🙂
I used to own a green Eclectus parrot in NSW. Green is for males and red is for females. I taught him tricks and made a shower for him as he sat on his perch. He loved it! Lol I never clipped his wings as I had a large enclosed verandah for him to fly in
https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/birds/eclectus-parrot-eclectus-roratus/
“I think the judge is operating in a sinister way”
Which means that changing the law wouldn’t do anything more than scratch the surface of the problem
I also note that the baby in question was delivered by cesarean section, a procedure that greatly increases a women’s vulnerability re the birthing process but one that’s undeniably favoured by State controlled medicos re the convenience factor. If you’re going to challenge kidnapping that’s where you need to start.
Most couples don’t realise that maternity wards are, by their very nature, a primary source of personal disempowerment,that conditions such as post-natal depression are largely attributable to certain established practices, and that any perceived benefit is due to the input of conscientious lobby groups.
I believe this is where the separation of mother and child is being implemented at baby ground zero.
They pretty much take ownership as a “duty of care”, the c section proof of needed custodianship. They will claim that the baby is risk of breach because of position.Thing is the baby can pretty much spin like a olympic swimmer, that you will never be told. Pressure all sides, with safer experianced mid-wife home birth being demonised, even though the argument is unsustainable when statistics(bit hard to navigate but the coroners stats need more coverup) are applied.
Mother drugged out, baby surgically removed, only way, keep moving…
Berry
Many females have vitamin, mineral and enzyme deficiencies. A number of mothers have a poor life style and not eating the best. The hospital system is not conducive to a natural atmosphere so people have to make choices if they are going to have a natural home-birth or not. It is a massive output of energy and stress which also can effect the female when giving birth as some go into shock. It is essential to have lots of preparation in a number of areas for a health mother and healthy baby to arrive. My three children were all home birth children and I deliver my second child. We had two midwifes with all the preparation and none are vaccinated.
“My three children were all home birth children and I delivered my second child”
Ditto on both counts, although it was my husband who did the latter.
We knew two other couples who did the same and in all 3 cases the process was extremely quick and virtually painless. The midwife who delivered our two other children was a good friend; it’s not widely acknowledged that being surrounded by strangers in a strange environment is a huge subconscious impediment and as such, much more conducive to complications
Berry, many Americans are now up on their high horse about the separation of children from parents at the Mexican border.
These are folks who don’t get on their high horse about torture or the pollution of the ocean, etc. So it seems to me that making a basic issue out of this snatch-a-newborn thing might be worthwhile.
I agree with you that maternity wards are disempowering. In my day it was standard for the mom to have her pubic hair shaved off by a nurse before labor, supposedly needed for the baby’s hygeine. Makes you wonder how thousands of generations got born without that nicety.
In SA in the 1950s Dr Dylis Craven started the practice of newborn staying in the room with mother. Before that, babies were down the hall somewhere to be visited by Mom a couple of times a day. For my cohort in US (b 1947) breast feeding was unknown. Just unknown. Came back in in the 1960s.
JUST SAY NO.
If you mean “no” to unnecessary procedures & medications I’d sat “too right”. Problem is that sometimes the simplest things can be a huge ask.
These massive caravans are tactics to weaken the US and to keep them busy at the borders. Evil Soros and others are behind this tactic by funding them. Thousands of criminals are halted at the border with the infamous MS13 members as well.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-know-ms-13/
https://www.secretsofsurvival.com/survival/2008_nuclear_attack.html
In addition, MS-13 is reported by WorldNetDaily to have smuggled in a variety of nuclear weapons for Al-Qaeda, including suitcase nukes and even a few nuclear missile warheads, and Al-Qaeda’s arsenal may even be bigger than that.
If MS-13 assisting Islamic radicals sounds far fetched, you’re looking at the wrong end of the command hierarchy of MS-13.
Read more at https://www.secretsofsurvival.com/survival/2008_nuclear_attack.html#JGcP0QIsHKbWHPdp.99
The Mexicans are sick of the thousands at the border creating chaos in their normal day life.
It is not a legal immigration it is an invasion. Drugs and guns are also smuggled at the border. There is a severe shortage of judges to decide the fate of those claiming asylum and the whole bureaucracy to deal with such a massive amount of perpetual immigrants.
The short sentence “Just say no” has not worked on the war on drugs, on sex, the war on fat as 2/3rds of Australians are obese and overweight or any other issue.
Mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect
https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/mandatory-reporting-child-abuse-and-neglect
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/prstate.htm
They have this lopsided flawed philosophy of politics that the state is above the individual which is Fascism or Communism not democracy with the rule of law hence we are enemies of the state of a defacto government with Corporatism. Until people grasp this reality they will be walking in a fog of fiction
Australia Bans Autism Mom as an ‘ENEMY OF THE STATE!”
https://bolenreport.com/australia-bans-autism-mom-enemy-state/
https://anticorruptionsociety.com/2011/02/25/we-are-the-enemies-of-the-state/
https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2016/09/we-are-the-enemies-of-the-state-documented-evidence-and-how-to-change-the-status-quo/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/14/were-all-enemies-of-the-state/
http://www.internallydisplacedpeople.org/joomla30/index.php/2-uncategorised/400-we-are-the-enemies-of-the-state-since-march-9th-1933
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42622767-we-are-all-enemies-of-the-state
https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2018/07/us-citizens-were-classified-as-enemies-of-the-state-in-1933/