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Child Protection: Shaken Baby Syndrome

My Lords, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, reminded the House, many of these problems apply to family courts in exactly the same way as they apply to criminal cases, and sometimes to an even more complicated degree. For example, a tribunal judge will not be dealing with a case where a death has occurred and where there is therefore no post-mortem evidence to assist the court in its findings. As a family judge for some 15 years, I never ceased to be horrified by how relatively little shaking was necessary to cause the most dreadful injuries in a child. While it does not arise from the question, I should like to see a massive public investment in disseminating information to parents, particularly young mothers. Many of the cases that I saw involved a 16 or 17 year-old mother with her first child who, with little support and after months of sleeplessness, had shaken a child for just a few seconds and caused that child to be nothing but a vegetable for the rest of its life. I should like to see millions of pounds of public money invested in bringing that truth to people who very often do not have the slightest intention of injuring a child. In criminal law, the standard of proof is very clear: proof beyond reasonable doubt. In civil law, which is relevant in the family courts, the bar is not always at the same level. In a splendid judgment of this House about eight or nine years ago—I think it was re N—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls, said this:"““The more serious the allegation, the more cogent must the evidence be””." I am not sure that I have his exact words, but I certainly have the content and force of them. If you are dealing with a case of the most deliberate wickedness, where an angry boyfriend is jealous of the child and has deliberately set out to do the maximum injury to it, it is perfectly clear what the level of evidence must be. But when the case involves the loving mother of 16 to whom I referred, it is at a different level. I appreciate that a court dealing with a care order must have in mind considerations of possible danger, but there must first of all be a specific finding of fact; that is, whether the child has been deliberately harmed. I hope the House will forgive me for pointing out those matters. I am sure that full publicity will be given in the field of child care, where so many of these problems replicate those which exist in the criminal law.