It is painful to talk about what happened to me and my daughter but I can’t avoid what happened because my memories won’t let me forget. I keep thinking about all of the other families who are experiencing the same thing and I know in my heart I must speak out. I have to help other people who are facing this same extreme injustice and whose families were needlessly torn apart. I’m sad while writing this because it’s been over a year since CPS took my daughter. Last week they told me they were going to send her home but after telling them I was not going to return to California they suddenly changed their mind. Apparantly they had plans of keeping my daughter in the system until she was 21 years old but they could not do this if I were out of state. So now they are going to give custody to the father so they can illegally obtain a federal block grant that they do not qualify for.

The letter below was written to a member of the media. I don’t know whether they will respond or ignore me like so many others do. It makes me wonder just how powerful the Child Protection Racket is and how corrupt our Government really is. I am horrified to discover this is actually occuring right here in America—the land of the free. We no longer are the same great America we once were for this socialist democracy is filled with facist bereaucrats that have destoyed this great nation. Now during a time of recession where many families are struggling to keep their homes the Child Protective Service “business” is flourishing and is stronger than ever. They are hiring more employees; even going to collages to recruit more social workers. The turn over rate of social workers is 33% and many leave within 2 years because they thought they were going to “help” children - not kidnap them. Now that the Federal funding through the Adoption Safe Families Act has doubled even more kids will suffer. How can Congress ignore this problem? How can they pour more money into a failing system when so many children are dying in foster care? Why do they continue to ignore the complaints and why is there no oversight of this agency? Main stream media doesn’t hear us, but the question is WHY?

Dear Media:

Please take a look at my facebook account and other websites. I encourage you to do your own research so you can verify for yourself the information I am about to tell you.

Me and other biological mothers of foster children have a message that needs to be heard:

Dear Media,

I would like the opportunity to speak with your Media director to share with you what I have discovered about Child Protection Services during my year long investigation into this ageny.

Child fact is Protection Services is CORRUPT. They have been for at least 12 years. They have gotten very bad these past 8 years due to the Federal Funds they are being given through ASFA - the Adoption Safe Families Act. The evils of this organization are beyond anything I could possibly describe to you in this one email. I truly believe that CPS/DSS/CWS or whatever they are calling themselves these days is beyond repair. This agency is a BUSINESS that is registered in Delaware. A business who lost their non profit status for non payment of taxes and who is now profitting off innocent children and families by selling them on the New York stock exchange (GEO(NYSE: GGI).

I know that my statements will be backed by many. Most parents have similiar stories just like mine. We have PROOF that this agency is corrupt yet our cries for reform go unheard. Many of us have tape recordings,emails, and other proof of the Racketeering that is occuring by profiteers, yet continuiously this problem is consistantly ignored by the media; perhaps under the guise of CPS/DSS strict confidenality laws. The truth is far more sinister. The reason the courts have been kept “secret” for all this time is because no one has ever bothered to open the courts by changing the laws. When Walter Mondale placed this organization into effect in 1974 he had good intentions, but something has gone horribly wrong. It’s time to open up the Secret courts just as the United Kingdom recently has so the truth can finally be heard.

I have reviewed many “non profit” organizations associated with Child Protection services and it is increasingly clear that children are being abducted for financial gain. Many of these children are being drugged, experimented on and sold. Children are being taken away at birth for no reason and CPS conspires with many who falsify reports, commit fraud and break many laws. The children have no rightts or a voice for they are usually keep them off court record. Since the courts are so “secret” parents are given Gag Orders so they are not allowed to exercise their first amendment rights. Those who fight back are thrown into jail; some are even institutionized.

Their are many players in this racketeering scheme. The Judges, Doctors, Lawyers, Therapits, Police, and even some schools are part of this mass corruption. The Judicial level is completely corrupt and now so is the legislative level. People need to know this and about the bills they are voting on because they think they are voting to help foster children when in fact they are helping some politicians get into office and are encouraging CPS to take more children for profit. Many Politicians have children charities which have associated non profits. Since there is no audit on Non profits under 2 million dollars in the State of California they are able to continue money laundering. Child Protective Services and elected officials are granted immunity from prosecution so the corruption continues.

Many children are dying in foster care and CPS doesn’t care where they place children, as long as they can make their block grants. I am a former foster mother and now with my daughter being in the system I have seen the works of this agency from both sides. I have personally witnessed the evil and sadistic people who work for this organization which is filled with pedofiles and others with mental illnesses. I have seen how they treat children and what they put them through. Their facad is nothing like what they truly are.

Child Protection Services took my daughter Jenny. They abused her emotionally. What they did was far worse than anything I have ever done. She was removed because CPS said I “failed to protect” after she cut herself in school with a paper clip. This cut which was approximately 1” long on the top of her arm was self inflicted. In fact a video of her telling her story was placed on You Tube only to be shut down by CPS. My daughter made this cut because she was distressed over a recent break up with a boyfriend. It didn’t help that a social worker was visiting my daughter and saying things to upset her. This is what contributed to this situation, and even though I was the one who called the therapist with my concerns I ended up being the one who was accused, even though none of the mandated reporters at school had reason to have any concern.

BACKTRACK: Although it was the paperclip cut CPS initially first come into our lives 43 days prior over a “door” incident. Jenny and I had been having teenager difficulties during a 4 month period. My daughter was being a typical teenager. She was 16 1/2 and madly in love with a boy I did’t approve of. He was a juvenile deliquent and she was ditching school to be with him. I had forbid her to see this boy after he broke into a coffee shop and after I discovered he was using drugs. I asked the school to seperate them yet they didn’t cooperative; telling me that Jenny needed to get over it. I mentioned that I might homeschool, not knowing that this was a hot topic as a bill was being reviewed regarding homeschooling. When a parent home schools the schools loose federal funding, but at the time I was clueless.

On day we had the catfight it was over Jenny sneaking out to be with the boy. She had done this for 3 weekends in a row and all I wanted to do was spend some quality time with my daughter taking her Christmas shopping. The door got damaged after Jenny refused to open it. She had kicked me in the chest eariler that day and I had an asthma attack. I knew she was going to sneak out to be with the boy again but on this day I was insistant that she follow my rules. As any concerned parent would be I wanted to protect my daughter from a boy who I felt mistreated her. I had been down that road before with my daughter’s father before leaving him when Jenny was just 6 months old. I have raised my daughter for her entire life as a single mother with very little help from the father. The tiny holes that I made to that door hardly constituted child abuse, and certaintly it was not a valid reason for CPS to violate us in such a manner in which they have. In fact CPS returned my daughter after this incident knowing she wasn’t in any danger. After all there was no history of child abuse or neglect. This was simply a squabble that many parents have with their kids and CPS went overboard. My daughter had made a Police officer angry the month before when she snuck out to be with the boyfriend and I called the police. She hung up on him when he called his cell phone and this made him angry. After he found her he lectured her for an excessive two hours. He took her outside and said “I will make your life a complete hell if you don’t straighten it up”. That same officer had killed someone the year before. I now realize I made a bad mistake by calling the Police. I was reading a parenting book at the time which gave me poor advice on dealing with a hormonal teenager. I was dealing with a bad case of anemia and perhaps I wouldn’t have involved them if I wasn’t so fatigued at the time.

After they returned Jenny I thought that was the end of it. We agreed to do everything they asked of us and we followed through as required. We obtained “therapy”, which I later found out is primarily used to take children away using fabrication and blatent lies. I became suspicious after seeing emails between my ex-husband and the social worker so I began to secretly tape record our sessions. The documents the the therapist provided are not true as evididenced through these audio tapes.

When my daughter was taken there was NEVER an investigation. There was no home visit. No nothing. I even offered to meet with the social worker at my home and was told “that’s not necessary”. There was never any warrant yet CPS claims the removal was legal because of the original removal by police over the “door”. To this day there still is no warrant which is required by law.

Once my daughter was taken the social worker placed her in 5-6 different foster homes. There she was subjected to drugs and was alienated from me. She became very depressed and began snorting pain killers to stop her pain. She became suicidal and suddenly began having “false memories” during the time she was seeing County therapists. I noticed that CPS was using alienation-reward techniques; similiar to those which were used in Germany during Hitlers rein. CPS workers and my daughter’s own GAL attorney broke her down mentally by subjecting her to continual “negative therapy”. They told her lies and horrible things about me that weren’t true. They told her I as crazy and other lies. They made my daughter very emotionally unstable and eventually she began cutting on herself. During some visits I witnessed my daughter sitting and staring; coloring like a 5 year old. My daughterwho was once a very happy normal child was turned into an emotional wreck. Even the GAL said to me “your daughter is a hard nut to crack”.

Once they got Jenny in the system illegally they used coercion, threats, bribery, scare tactics and other techniques in order to keep her. She was literally their prisoner. CPS placed my daughter with chaperones 24 hours a day to ensure she didn’t run home. They slandered me, violated HIIPA Laws and ruined my entire medical file. I am now branded with some fake mental condition and am probably listed in a child abuse registry as so many other parents are.

The Guardian Ad Litem and the Judge did nothing but obstruct justice while my daughter begged to go home. She was heard in Judges quarters so they could keep her testimony off the stand. All of these people were all getting kickbacks from the County so they did everything they could to obstruct justice. When I met with the Director of CPS he told me he would turn me into a “maryter” if I spoke out. He said he didn’t care about the laws and that the judge was his “friend”. There is no fair hearing in CPS “secret courts”. The judges simply agree with CPS attorneys who rig the whole court case. They even select the attorney’s for the parents who the County pays. When a parent tries to file a motion they stamp the back of the document and refuse to give pro se parents their own case files. They even altered our case file to cover their tracks and the original mysteriously disappeared from my home.

After my daughter started cutting because they wouldn’t let her go home they shipped her out of state in the middle of the night - against her will. When she arrived she was kept hostage and her cell phone was taken away. She was forced to work at a daycare that CPS arranged so they could obtain more federal funds and to keep her from testifying at her own hearing. CPS obstructed justice over and over; even when I subpeoned my daughter they would not produce her. CPS and others used and abused my daughter who remains their hostage till this day. I am unable to find an attorney to help us for many are either corrupt or afraid of CPS. Many are losing their licenses in the State of California if they help parents and others don’t want to deal with CPS because the whole system isn’t fair.

I have been forced into hiding so that I can expose this corruption. The police are trying to find me to throw me in jail because they know I have been documenting the corruption. After I fled I was embezzled by over 30,000 and a man moved into my house and stold my car. The police do nothing to help me and it’s as though they want me to loose everything we have. The Director of CPS is into flipping real estate and has lied on his elected official form. His workers were taking pictures of my home which is now in foreclosure. I have called thousands of numbers over these past 12 months only to find nothing but dead ends. All of the polticians in California close their eyes; I assume because they are getting donations from the pharmacuticals, mental health and others and probably have children charities. It was after I began contacting Politicians that things got more complicated and the police began to harass me. I believe it was them who broke into my house and took my evidence of corruption. I never knew this kind of corruption existed. I was simply a mother who was determined to get to the bottom of why they took my child and I wanted to know why none of the Politicians seemed to care about children. This is when I discovered that the issue of child protection was a closely guarded secret within our government. I can tell you more about this subject once I leave this country because I have heard some terrible things from others.

My daughter is 17 but will be 18 this September. By the time she gets out she will be fully alienated from me for it will be going on two years. I do hope that oneday I can see her again and that she will speak out publically and share her ordeal so other children can be helped. We were NOT what CPS makes us out to be. I was NOT a derelict lowlife. I was a business owner who had 4 homes. We had a nice life and my daughter had everything a child could ever want. My ex-husband contributed to this situation for he lost 2 custody battles and used CPS to get our daughter so he could get out of paying child support.

CPS takes any child that will make them money. They make alot of money from the Federal government through committing fraud. They prey upon people and look for opportunities to obtain more children. This agency is destroying families all across America. It is my hope that national exposure will compell congress to OPEN UP THE COURTS. The United Kingdon just opened up their “secret” courts so if they can do it so can we. If we could get fair trials 70% of the children would be going home.

My blogs are:

www. fu4crf. blogspot. com
www. cpscorruption. blogspot. com
www. myspace. com/osoluckyme
www. facebook. com (under kathleen dearinger or families unite 4 childrens rights)

Email:fu4crf@gmail.com
Phone: 805-703-3108

I am also on You Tube, Multiply, LinkedIn, and other sites.

If we could get this syndicated nationwide I might be able to get a US Senator and other members of congress to come on the show to reveal what is happening within Child “Protective” Services . I appreciate any contacts you might have. I will never stop fighting until this agency is reformed. I need your help and as many contacts as possible so this message can be heard by Politicians and lawmakers throughout the United States. We will NOT let them hurt anymore children.

Thank you,

Kathleen Dearinger
Families Unite 4 Children’s Rights Foundation

Published Date: 05 December 2008
By Alison Roberts

On Monday, the trial, over Briscoe’s descriptions in Ugly of terrible child abuse, ended with victory for Constance.
“I’m feeling very, very relieved,” she says, speaking from her chambers in Bell Yard near London’s Royal Courts of Justice. “I didn’t know whether I’d be packing my bags today or preparing my next case. Over the weekend, while we waited for the jury to return its verdict, I actually got terribly depressed. I couldn’t get out of bed, and when I did, I hit the bottle.” She laughs wryly. “Suddenly I realised just what it’s like to be a defendant in that situation…”

It’s no hyperbole to say that, over the past few weeks, 51-year-old Briscoe’s high-flying career as a lawyer and judge, indeed, her very reputation, has been hanging perilously in the balance. “If I’d lost, I’d have had to leave the Bar – maybe not immediately, but in the end. My partner and I had a plan to go to France. I was thinking of becoming a gardener.” She is not totally joking, I think.

The legal fees alone would have crippled her. She estimates the total bill of both sides’ costs at more than £1 million. Her mother, a pensioner originally from Jamaica, who, it seems, has never had a paid job, had a “no win, no fee” arrangement with her own legal team, but must still pay her daughter’s costs.

“She will certainly have to think about how she can pay it,” says Briscoe, briskly. But I’ve made it clear that whatever happens, she should never be thrown out of her home. Maybe they can put a charge on the property, but I don’t want her on the streets.” There’s an irony to this, of course, since Briscoe-Mitchell apparently thought nothing of abandoning several of her children, including Constance, and letting them fend for themselves without adult care, money or food.

The trial was a landmark case, centring not on individual details of cruelty contained in Ugly but on its fundamental premise: that Constance was abused as a child at the hands, primarily, of her mother. This was a trial questioning Briscoe’s basic truthfulness. The abuse she describes in Ugly was sickening and frequent. Constance, called Clare by her mother (as well as “Ugly”, “Black Bitch” and “Miss Pissabed"), was beaten with a piece of wood, cut on the arm and face, and humiliated verbally and physically. She was made to sleep in urine-soaked bed sheets and locked in a cellar. Briscoe-Mitchell twisted her nipples so hard that Constance had to have the resulting lumps removed from her breasts.

In the end, her mother simply left her 13-year-old daughter and two older sisters to look after themselves (Briscoe-Mitchell has 11 children in all), a move that the disoriented Briscoe greeted with joy, as if her life were starting again.

Her father, George, also from Jamaica, seems to have come and gone as he pleased; a stepfather called Garfield Eastman was also a cruel, violent man, who once put out a cigarette on her hand. Published in 2006, Ugly quickly became a UK bestseller, shifting more than 400,000 copies. It’s widely regarded as the best British contribution to what’s often called the “misery memoir” genre. Yet her mother called it a “piece of fiction” and Constance a “fantasist”. What if it wasn’t true? For the past month, the publishing industry has been holding its breath, too. Briscoe’s vindication comes at a poignant moment, as child abuse dominates news agendas. “I got a pile of e-mails from children during the trial, telling me how I could get rid of my horrible mother,” she says. Over the past two years, she says, she has received hundreds of letters and e-mails from victims of abuse and felt passionately that she “could not let them down”.

“If I’d made this up, all those people would have felt horribly deceived by me. That’s why I was never going to settle with my mother, why I was never going to write this book anonymously and why I had to identify people in it.”

Throughout the trial, a group of 12 women sat in the gallery watching, she says. “At the end of the first week, they came up to me and said, ‘We’re here because you speak for us. You are our voice. We’ve been through your trauma and we’ll come and support you every day.’ One of the ladies showed me the scars on her legs where she’d been whipped as a child.”

It’s clear that the trial has completely demolished whatever affection Briscoe felt towards a number of her siblings, some of whom lined up with her mother to deny that abuse took place. She has never felt love for her mother, she says. Briscoe talks as eloquently and clearly as you’d expect from a senior barrister, yet a note of bitter outrage at her family’s behaviour is never far from her voice.

Did she ever look at her mother in court and see not an abuser but a vulnerable old lady? Is forgiveness remotely possible? “Vulnerable?” she exclaims. “Hah! I looked at her in court and thought she was wicked. She had come to tell a pack of lies about me, and she had set up my brothers and sisters against me when I had no issue with them at all. That is unforgivable. I am sure she did it to destroy me and my career.”

But I wonder whether the legal process, the questioning and cross-questioning, helped her gain an understanding of the reasons for her mother’s cruelty all those years ago.

“In an odd sort of way I was looking forward to the trial,” says Briscoe, “because, yes, I thought I might get answers.

“But in the end that didn’t happen… I quite expected my mother to come to court and lie, that’s what she’s always done. I’m not surprised by that. But what I could not imagine was that sister after sister after sister after sister – and my brother – would also say in court that I was a fantasist. That was what made this really quite extraordinary for me.”

This united front might have caused the case to go against Briscoe. Yet three days before proceedings began, she and her team were issued with archived social services files dealing with past incidents of abuse directed at other siblings by her mother – clearly disproving Briscoe-Mitchell’s happy family claims.

“When I got those records, I thought, ‘Oh my God! It wasn’t just me,’” Briscoe says forcefully. It was a moment of clearly painful revelation. That she recovered from her childhood is testament to her strength of character. That she became so successful seems extraordinary. As a young teenager, she took several jobs alongside school to buy food and clothes, and to pay her (absent) mother rent.

On a school trip to Knightsbridge Crown Court, she buttonholed Michael Mansfield, the left-leaning QC, who, perhaps impressed by her chutzpah, told her to come back to him when she was ready to become a barrister.

Despite her mother’s utter lack of sympathy ("only clever people go to university"), she secured a place studying law at Newcastle and was called to the Bar in 1983. Thirteen years later she became a part-time judge in the crown court, the eighth black judge to be appointed. She lives in London with the QC Anthony Arlidge, and has two children from a first marriage.

It’s the memoir, though, that has made her famous. When Briscoe reads from Ugly, particularly at London events, it often seems to unleash a wave of emotion from the audience.

“At one reading a woman stood up and took her shoe off. She showed us where she’d had three toes amputated. This woman’s mother twisted her toes until the circulation stopped and she had to have them amputated. Can you imagine?

“I still think I’m very blessed. I have a good job, a good partner, my children. I’ve got so much to be proud of.”

Her voice hardens: “And I look at my mother and think, ‘You are the sole cause of all the hurt and harm in our family. And you came to court and lied about it.’”

But does she ever think that the independence and perhaps the simple will to survive, forced upon her by her mother’s cruelty, played a part in her later ambition? She pauses, thinking carefully. “If I’m honest? Probably it has. I’m the most successful of my siblings and, had I not had my past, I’d not have had my future. So yes, perhaps I do owe something to my mother.” She laughs again.

But if Briscoe gains consolation from anything, I feel, it is from the revenge she has taken, both in print and in court. “It is so important to believe the victim,” she says, “and then do something about it.”

BACKGROUND: MISERY MEMOIRS

A Child Called It (1995)

THE first in a trilogy of harrowing memoirs by American author Dave Pelzer, who wrote of being starved, bullied and violently beaten by his alcoholic mother. One of Pelzer’s four brothers also wrote a book supporting his story. Dave Pelzer now writes self-help books for teenagers and adults.

Don’t Ever Tell (2005)

DUBLINER Kathy O’Beirne’s story described how she was beaten by her father, raped by two of her brothers and then, pregnant at 13, was sent to the notorious Magdalene laundries. Five of her eight siblings accused her of lying. One brother stood by her claims, however, as did her publisher.

A Million Little Pieces (2003)

JAMES FREY incurred the wrath of Oprah Winfrey when it transpired in 2006, via the investigative website The Smoking Gun, that the bleak tale of his rehab for alcohol and drug addictions was much exaggerated. Winfrey had included the book in her influential Book Club and – such is her power – confronted Frey in person on her TV show.

The council at the centre of the Baby P scandal snatched another child from a loving foster parent and put him into the care of a couple now at the centre of an investigation into abuse.

Baby C was taken after social workers acting on the orders of disgraced children’s director Sharon Shoesmith launched a court battle to take the baby boy from his foster mother, who had applied to become his guardian.

The highly experienced foster mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has now disclosed the full, shocking story to the Evening Standard. It includes her version of how the child, now five and known as Child C, was seized by one of Ms Shoesmith’s staff as he played outside his home.

As the social worker ran with the child to a car, the boy screamed for his foster mother, who was physically restrained by a Haringey social services manager.

The council then fast-tracked adoption procedures to place Child C with the couple now being questioned by police over allegations of abuse.

Ms Shoesmith has gone into hiding after she was sacked because of her role in the death of Baby P. She was dismissed from her £100,000-a-year post without a pay-off last night after being suspended last week by Children’s Secretary Ed Balls when a damning report found systemic failures in her department.

Ms Shoesmith will still receive a “gold-plated” pension worth up to £1.5 million, and she could legally challenge the decision to deny her a pay-off as she was expected to be entitled to a six-figure severance package.
She failed to return to her Bloomsbury flat last night and her family refused to say where she was. She would not be back until next month, they said.

She caused a furore when she failed to apologise over the death of 17-month-old Baby P, who died after a sustained period of abuse at the hands of his mother, her partner and a lodger.

Ms Shoesmith, 55, played a key role in the handling of Child C. Her department wanted to place the child, who is of African descent, with black adoptive parents and rejected appeals from his foster mother, who is of north African origin but is not black.

The foster mother was one of the borough’s approved foster parents and had previously successfully looked after a baby taken from its mother at birth.

Now the Metropolitan Police Child Abuse Investigation Command has been called in to investigate allegations that after he was adopted Child C suffered abuse.
He has been treated twice in hospital, once for a head injury.

The inquiry team has been told the boy’s adoptive mother rejected him and complained he was ruining her marriage.

Health professionals familiar with the case were disturbed that Haringey social services department was not acting.

One, consultant child psychiatrist Hamish Cameron, who had compiled a report on Child C, decided to call in the police.

June Matthews - Shannon’s Grandmother - says: “I never thought I would say this but the kidnap plot is the best thing that could have happened to Shannon.

“Those three weeks have saved her from a lifetime of misery. We know she will live with her ordeal forever, but anything is better than the awful future she faced with Karen.”

Heartbroken June delivered her damning verdict in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Mirror, as daughter Karen, 33, faces a lengthy jail term over the evil Shannon kidnap plot.

Matthews and oddball Michael Donovan, 40 - her lover’s uncle - kept her drugged and tethered in Donovan’s flat for 24 days as part of a plot to pocket reward money.

And June today tells how she watched in desperation as Karen reduced her children’s lives to ruins while social workers did nothing to help.

June, 65, shockingly revealed Karen forced Shannon to eat bread off the floor, while she and her friends feasted on steak and kidney pie and chips.

And she revealed how she knew when social workers were due to visit Karen - because her daughter always asked to borrow money for food.

She said: “Once, I’d called round to see the kiddies, as I often did. When I walked in Karen and her mates were sat around on the sofas laughing and joking.

“They all had huge plates of steak and kidney pie, chips and peas.

“Poor Shannon was sat on the floor. She was dirty faced and was eating dry bread straight off the carpet. It was despicable.

“She looked awful - it was as if they didn’t even know she was there.

“I confronted Karen and asked why Shannon wasn’t having the same as them. She just looked at me and said, ‘She likes what she’s got.’

It was one of many horrific incidents witnessed by June as her daughter’s behaviour deteriorated over the years. Karen’s behaviour got so bad that worried aunties and uncles of Shannon repeatedly reported her to social services.
They would often visit Karen - and her children were even put on the “at risk” list - but she was allowed to continue looking after them.

June continued: “I always knew when social services were due because Karen would ask to borrow money. When I asked what it was for, she would say: ‘I have to buy food to fill the cupboards - the social worker is coming.’
“It was the only time she filled the cupboards with proper food.”

Most of Karen’s money went of booze and cigarettes for her and whichever man she was living with at the time. Karen has seven children by six different fathers.

June said: “She would spend her money on fags then borrow money for gas and electricity. She came round on the day Shannon was missing and borrowed money for gas. She never put the kids first.”

One of the most horrific sights June encountered was another of her young grandchildren wrapped in a dirty curtain on the stairs of Karen’s house.

June said: “I once walked into the house and found one of the little ones wrapped up in a dirty curtain on the stairs, looking like a mummy and crying and wailing.

“Karen had just left the poor thing there as if it was a normal thing to do.”

She added: “I also found Shannon as a baby, covered in sick and with a dirty nappy in the corner of the room. She smelt awful and was really wailing. I screamed at Karen to change and bathe her, but I ended up doing it myself.”

June has had several of Karen’s seven children live with her throughout their lives. She and husband Gordon brought Shannon up for the first two months after she was born because Karen could not cope.

June said: “Shannon was brought from the hospital by a nurse to stay in my care.

“Karen came from the hospital to stay here too for about two months then she took the children home with her.

“I brought Shannon up for first two months.”

June - who has five sons and two daughters - added: “I did everything I could for Karen. She’s had more help, love and support than any of my other kids but she just didn’t appreciate it.

“What she did is horrific but at least now Shannon and the others are away from her evil.”

June believes Shannon will never forgive her mother and will struggle to come to terms with what happened to her.

She said: “She’s Karen’s baby and when all’s said and done Shannon will be thinking in her little mind, ‘Why did my mummy do that to me?’.

“That will be in that childıs mind forever - she’ll never forget what they did to her.

“They tied her up and treated her worse than a dog.

“If Karen gets five years in prison, Shannon will be 15 when she gets out. She will never speak to her mother again.”

June told how she and her husband Gordon were distraught at what their daughter had done - but the worst thing was hearing how their grandaughter was tethered so she could not escape from Donovan’s dingy flat.

The court heard how Donovan - the uncle of Karen’s live in lover Craig Meehan, 22 - tied up Shannon and left post-it notes around his flat telling her the strict house rules.
June said: “To hear that Donovan had gone to such terrible lengths as using a noose to keep Shannon in his flat was horryfying. “The first time we knew of that - and of her being drugged - was when we heard about it during the trial.
“I wept for hours. No one should ever have to endure that in their lifetime.”

June and Gordon have endured months of hell - first believing their granddaughter was dead, then coming to the realisation that their own daughter was responsible for the whole nightmare.
Astonishingly, Karen even accused her own dad of taking Shannon - sparking a harrowing police search of their home. June said: “We were forced out of the house for four days - Thursday to Sunday night. My sister had to put us up.”
Shannon’s grandparents told how the police ransacked their house and even accused them of hiding Shannon’s body. Gordon, 67, said: “We were treated like suspects, her own grandparents. It was disgusting.
“I had a blanket in a dustbin in the cellar, I keep it there to cover the carpets when we decorate. They opened it and asked me if she was in the dustbin.

“I said, ‘You’re pathetic’. “I would never hurt her - I adored Shannon. I was taken to the police station and held in a cell.
“I can’t forgive Karen for putting us through that. She knew all along where Shannon was and she tried to blame me. She’s dead to me. I never want to see her again.” June said: “I haven’t slept for five weeks. Part of me was hoping there had been some mistake. I was praying that she hadn’t done it. But I knew I was kidding myself.

“We’ve both been ill. I’ve been in and out of hospital since Shannon went, with the stress. Gordon has to take medication because he has lost so much weight. Karen has ruined our lives and our health.
“What she did is horrific. To give Shannon Tamazepam - one of the strongest things you can give to a child. She drugged her.

“Shannon might not have woken up and then we’d have a death at our doorstep. That would have hurt Karen more - you can’t go back from that.” June and Gordon’s thoughts are now with their grandchildren. They have not been allowed to see Shannon - now 10 - was found on March 14.

Breaking into sobs June said: “Itıs breaking my heart. I just want my grandkids with me. I just want them here. “They don’t know what’s happening, God love them. They’ll have God knows what going through their little minds.
“I go to bed and I can’t think of anything but those kids. My other children still bring their kids to visit, but it’s not the same.

“When I see Shannon again, I’ll break down. I just want to give her a massive cuddle and tell her it’s all okay. It’s not her fault. She needs to know she is loved. We love her to bits.
“I’ve bought them all lots of presents for Christmas and they each have their own Santa sack.

“I’m keeping them upstairs and just hoping I’ll be allowed to take them to the kids. We’ve been promised a visit soon - I just want to cuddle them.” June and Karen had a good relationship before Shannon went missing, and saw each other daily.

June said: “It’s so hard. I loved Karen. She ıs my daughter. I loved that kid. “I saw her every day. She would bring Shannon for breakfast every morning.
“They have all lived with me at some point. Even Karen has lived here with the kids, in between men. “

She added: “Karen won’t cope in prison, I think she’ll try to commit suicide. Gordon and me have washed our hands with her. You forgive and forget when it comes to family, but this is too much. She is still our daughter, but some things are unforgivable.

“Shannon was a good kid. People say she was shy and timid, but she was full of affection. She’d come round here for her tea and give me a massive hug.

“If Karen loved her she wouldn’t have done what she did. She did it for attention and money. She was in a lot of debt. She knew from day one where our Shannon was. Why couldn’t she just have told the truth instead of pointing the finger, wasting millions of pounds and worrying us all to death?

“I won’t see Karen again. I would crack up if I saw her. It is too much for any mother to take. “I want to ask her why she did it. I want answers as much as anyone else but I cant face her.

“People say we haven’t been to visit her but we tried. We rang the prison but she refused to see us. Now we know for sure she’s guilty we don’t want to see her. It would kill Gordon; it is so hard for him.
“I’m her mother, and hearing stories about her trying to kill herself was heartbreaking. I was ready to forgive her everything, but not now.”

SOCIAL services at the council accused of failing to protect Shannon Matthews missed the chance to prevent the murder of a four-year-old boy by his violent father.

Complaints were made by one of Christopher Hawkins’s young teenage daughters that he was violent, but nobody from Kirklees council’s specialist safeguarding team spoke to her or her siblings because it was felt they could protect themselves.

Hawkins went on to kill his son Ryan, 4, and stabbed his 14-year-old daughter Donna more than a dozen times at his home near Huddersfield.

The disclosure, contained in an executive summary of a report issued by Kirklees Safeguarding Children Board, comes as the council faces an inquiry by the board into its conduct in the Matthews case.

Some of Matthews’s siblings had been placed on a child protection register but were taken off despite concerns about violence in the family and the fact that their mother Karen seemed unable to put their interests ahead of her own.

Kirklees council has said it will cooperate with the review, but it has now emerged that the authority and other agencies also exhibited failures in the run-up to Ryan’s murder in September last year.

Hawkins, a 48-year-old sheet-metal worker who had been allowed to have the children with him despite being on bail for a serious sexual assault at knifepoint, was convicted of murder and attempted murder in March this year.

Accusations that Hawkins was physically abusive had been made on two occasions by Donna or her sister Natalie, who was 15 at the time of the attack. But Kirklees council’s safeguarding and specialist provision service failed even to talk to any of the children.

The safeguarding board’s serious case review panel said this failure was “probably because both the older children were in their teens and were thought to be able to effect some self-protection”.

The report, which stressed nobody except Hawkins was to blame for Ryan’s death, added: “It was significant that domestic violence did not seem to have been considered as a risk factor.

“At no point did any agency consider the significant dangers of unsupervised contact between the children and the father.

“At the time of the incident the parents had separated and there were serious charges against the father of rape, false imprisonment and use of a weapon.”

- The Conservatives last night turned up the pressure on the Baby P scandal as Michael Gove, the shadow children’s secretary, issued a declaration of no confidence in Lord Laming, the former chief inspector of social services who is conducting an independent review. 

POLICE are investigating allegations that a second child was abused while in the care of Haringey council.

The fresh inquiry comes as the council’s leader resigned and its head of children’s services was removed from her post last week following the local authority’s mishandling of the case of Baby P, who died from horrific abuse despite being on the council’s at-risk register. A government report last week identified “devastating” systemic failures in the council’s care of children at risk.

The latest concerns relate to a five-year-old boy, known as Child C, who was taken into care and then adopted under the supervision of the council’s social workers.

Allegations have now surfaced that he has since been admitted to hospital with head injuries on two occasions.

Child C was also said to have been “emotionally and behaviourally disturbed” when observed at his nursery and is said to scream at night in his room, while his adoptive mother wants nothing to do with him.

An inquiry was launched after the allegations were presented to Haringey council last month in a letter written by Hamish Cameron, a consultant in child psychiatry who is aware of Child C’s history.

In a reply sent on November 24, Sharon Shoesmith, who was last week removed as head of Haringey children’s services for her department’s failures over Baby P, agreed Cameron’s concerns should be investigated.

“In the light of the concerns raised in your letter, I agree that we should now thoroughly investigate the issues that have been raised,” she wrote.

The council has now asked detectives from the Metropolitan police and investigators from the NSPCC to launch an inquiry.

Child C’s short life has already been very traumatic. He has twice been snatched by Haringey social workers, once even from one of their own foster carers who was considered to have the wrong racial background.

He was first taken into care when he was just a few weeks old after it was apparent that the infertile couple purporting to be his parents were not actually related to him. It transpired that prior to being brought to the UK he had been born in Kenya and presented to the “mother” as a supposedly “miracle baby” by controversial evangelical pastor Gilbert Deya.

Deya, who is based in Peckham, south London, is now facing extradition to Kenya where he is wanted on child trafficking charges. His wife Mary was convicted there of child theft in 2007 and sentenced to two years in prison.

Since its first intervention in November 2003, when Child C was snatched from his “parents” by a team of nine police officers, Haringey council has faced allegations that it has acted in both a heavy-handed manner and also allowed the child to suffer emotionally and physically.

Child C was placed in five short-term foster placements before finding stability. His sixth, and final, foster carer, who looked after him for 15 months, forged a strong bond with the child, but partly because her north African ethnic background was different to that of the boy, Haringey council opposed her application to adopt him.

Instead, social workers fast-tracked his adoption by a black couple of Caribbean origin instead.

A judge ordered a gradual handover of Child C, but instead he was snatched screaming from outside the foster carer’s home by social workers without being allowed to even say goodbye.

A complaint about the manner of the removal made by the foster carer was partially upheld. An report into the complaint acknowledged that the removal was “sudden and very quick but not brutal”.

Cameron said, however: “There has been a miscarriage of justice and the child will be severely traumatised.”

Since being placed with the adoptive parents allegations have surfaced that Child C was admitted to intensive care in a coma in 2006, something Haringey has denied, as well as also being taken to hospital earlier this year with a head injury.

The adoptive mother is said to have demanded money from the council which she said she was owed and tried to leave Child C with social workers, complaining the boy was “wrecking my marriage”.

Cameron said: “We need an investigation which is independent of Haringey into the welfare of this child.

“The question is, once the local authority is in charge of the welfare of a child who monitors the local authority? The answer is no one.

“There’s no way of alerting anyone to the welfare of such a child until they are dead.”

A spokesman for Haringey council said: “We can confirm that we have asked the police and the NSPCC to investigate an allegation of abuse.

“Because of that investigation we cannot comment further.”

In spite of clear evidence that he had been subjected to violent abuse in his mother’s and stepfather’s care, social workers in Haringey decided that it was safe to let Baby P stay with them. Social workers in Kirklees in West Yorkshire decided it was safe to let Shannon Matthews stay with her mother Karen - who then organised Shannon’s kidnap and imprisonment.

How could the officials involved make such abysmal misjudgments? One answer has already been offered: because they were following Government guidance that children should, if possible, be kept with their families. Shahid Malik, the Justice Minister, has said that we need a “debate” about the validity of that guidance. Others have insisted that the lesson of the Baby P case is that more children need to be taken into care.

It is not a view shared by the many thousands of parents who feel their children have been wrongly taken from them by social workers. No one knows how many of the more than 35,000 children taken into care in Britain last year were wrongly removed: by law, the details of each case are secret.

Very occasionally, however, examples of patently unjustified action are uncovered in the Court of Appeal. Earlier this year, the court ruled that the conduct of officials from East Sussex Council in forcibly putting a child up for adoption was “disgraceful… [their behaviour] was an abuse of power, and wholly unacceptable”. While no one knows how many children are wrongly taken from their parents, we do know that the consequences of being taken into care are almost universally dire. The vast majority of children emerge without any formal educational qualifications. Many end up homeless, as drug addicts, criminals or prostitutes.

So what are the circumstances that justify taking a child into care? The Government rightly insists that decisions should be taken “in the best interests of the child”. The threshold for removal is that the child will be at risk of “significant harm” if allowed to remain at home.

What counts as “significant harm”? Astonishingly, in the hundreds of pages of advice the Government has issued on this question, there is nothing which gives a meaningful and precise definition of that phrase. The result is that “significant harm” has as many different definitions as there are social workers. The Government advice states, for example, that “significant harm” includes “emotional abuse”, which is defined as “the persistent emotional ill-treatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent effects on the child’s emotional development.” What kinds of treatment will have such “severe and persistent effects” is left unclear.

Result? The gaping definitional hole is filled by social workers’ own judgments and decisions on the matter. Those have ranged so widely that “emotional abuse” has been taken to include both being too indulgent with your children and not being indulgent enough. Moving your body in the “wrong” way in front of your children has been called “emotional abuse”, as has feeding them too many grapes - which may sound too ludicrous to be true, but each of those examples is taken from a report by a social worker alleging “emotional abuse”. And last year, more children were place on the “at risk” register for suspected “emotional abuse” than for any other harm except “neglect”.

The lack of clarity about the nature of “significant harm” has two malign effects. One is that social workers spend an enormous amount of time investigating families where there is actually no threat to children at all. Social workers often complain that their case load is too high, but the main reason is the amount of time devoted to children who do not come near any reasonable definition of “significant harm”. Because they investigate so many children unnecessarily, social workers miss those who really are at risk. If the vulnerable are to be protected, resources have to be targeted at cases where there is serious, clear and present danger. While the definition of “significant harm” remains so nebulous, that cannot happen.

The second effect is more insidious: it becomes impossible for the authorities to identify whether social workers are doing their job properly. If the Government cannot define clearly or precisely what it means for a child to be in danger of “significant harm”, how can inspectors distinguish between appropriate investigations and those that are an unjustified intrusion into family life?

The short answer is that they cannot - until after a disaster happens. When Baby P is beaten to death, it is suddenly obvious that something has gone dreadfully wrong. But, up until that point, thanks to the elasticity of the notion of “significant harm”, everything that social workers do can be seen as falling under the legitimate investigation of threats.

Ofsted, the organisation responsible for inspecting social services, gave Haringey’s department a “three-star rating” in its inspection before the circumstances of Baby P’s death were apparent. After those circumstances had been made public, Ofsted decided that Haringey social services were “very seriously” defective. Why? Because inspectors have no criteria for assessing the validity of the judgments that social workers make. Inspectors can only assess their compliance with procedural requirements - and in Haringey, that seemed to be good.

It is nearly six years since the same council’s social services department was excoriated for its “unacceptable” performance in the case of Victoria Climbié, the eight-year-old girl who was being tortured to death as social workers closed her file because they thought she was not “at risk”. Baby P died for precisely the same reason that Victoria Climbié did: social workers judged that neither faced “significant harm”. Not one of Haringey’s inspections helped social workers to recognise “significant harm” before it was too late.

The same pattern is replicated in a less drastic form in social services departments across Britain. It explains why the inspectorates seem incapable of improving their performance. In the interview he gives to this newspaper today, Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, pledges to embark on a major reform of social services. If he is serious, he will have to address the issue of what constitutes “significant harm”. Until that notion receives a clear and effective definition, the same mistakes will be repeated. Child deaths will continue to take place under the noses of social workers. Children will continue to be wrongfully removed from parents who love and care for them - and social workers will increase rather than diminish human misery.

including leadership, training and recruitment

They plan controversial root-and-branch changes which will see future head teachers having to spend part of their career as social workers while future social work chiefs will have to work in schools.

Training schemes will be radically altered with far more emphasis on “on-the-job” learning and less reliance on academic, course-based work. Better-performing social workers, will be paid more.

The shake-up, revealed by Mr Balls in an interview with this newspaper, comes as Ofsted, the inspection watchdog, has admitted that its procedures failed in Haringey, the London borough where 17-month-old Baby P died at the hands of his mother and her violent partner.

Christine Gilbert, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said it had given Haringey Council a good rating just weeks after the child’s death because council officials had provided the watchdog with false data.

Ofsted is now abandoning its system of relying on paperwork submitted by authorities in favour of a more rigorous, on-the-ground approach. Ms Gilbert will be questioned by MPs this week on Oftsed’s failure to identify problems in Haringey.

Critics are likely to claim that the shake-up of social work to be announced by the government this week will do little or nothing to prevent a repeat of the Baby P case. A series of changes were announced by the government in the wake of the death of Victoria Climbie, also in Haringey, in 2000.

However, Mr Balls told The Sunday Telegraph: “This is not going to be straightforward. It’s going to be controversial. It will mean a change in the way we teach social work and train social workers.”

He said management skills and professional judgments were “woefully lacking” in the case of Baby P. Last week he intervened to order Haringey to remove three key child services officials from their post, including Sharon Shoesmith, the director of children’s services.

The new government task force, to be headed by Moira Gibb, chief executive of Camden Council and a former social worker, will report to ministers by next summer after concentrating on four main areas: leadership, improving quality, training and recruitment.

Training will include a new “qualifying year” with social workers getting on-the-ground experience before they qualify fully, the role of inspectors will be strengthened, and better-performing social workers will be paid more to work in “tough front line areas.

There will be a new recruitment drive to cope with vacancy figures for social workers currently running nationally at nearly 10 per cent with university students targeted.

Mr Balls said the overall aim was to boost the status, standing and public support for social workers so that the profession reached the same level as teachers. He said the new moves, part of the government’s programme of proposals a year after it launched its Children’s Plan, had been called for by an expert panel of advisers his department set up last year, many of whose findings predated the Baby P case.

Mr Balls said: “Social workers know that when things go wrong there’s got to be change.”

He added: “I’m determined to do everything I can, I will act in any way I can so that when there’s a child protection plan, the child is protected. You don’t have signs missed or not acted upon, appointments not kept, officials not turning up, meetings not being held, the litany of mistakes and the failure of senior management to supervise, scrutinise, ask difficult questions and challenge. That is not right, and I will do everything I can to make sure that when professionals are tasked with keeping a child safe, they do that properly.”

A government source said: “Across the whole social work system we want a new leadership system to develop skills, to break down old organisational systems, to bang heads together and inspire change.”

Ofsted’s record in the Baby P case is to come under close scrutiny in parliament this week after Ms Gilbert admitted: “We now know that the data provided by Haringey was inaccurate and could not be relied upon.”

Barry Sheerman, Labour chairman of the all-party Children’s select committee, said: “If the assessments are paper-based then it’s no surprise the results are misleading. We will be asking some very hard questions.”

The number of paper-based assessments carried out by Ofsted has increased in each of the last three years. The watchdog did 102 in 2006, 137 last year and 150 this year.

However, the misleading data at Hackney raises the prospect that other local authorities could have also “fiddled the books” and could be covering up serious problems with their children’s services.

Ms Gilbert admitted that Ofsted could not get an accurate picture of a children’s service “by just looking at statistics” and acknowledged that inspections should “look at practice on the ground, talk to key people, look at case files and examine the evidence”.

On Monday the watchdog published a list of 28 councils where internal inquiries into serious injuries or child deaths caused by abuse were judged “inadequate” to avoid a repetition of abuse. 

The Sunday Telegraph reported that Children’s Secretary Ed Balls and Health Secretary Alan Johnson will this week announce the formation of a new task force to look at every aspect of social work, including leadership,

In an interview with the paper, Mr Balls acknowledged that the changes would be “controversial” but said that he was determined to ensure that the professionals entrusted with child safety carried out their task properly.

Writing separately in the News of the World, the Children’s Secretary said that he wanted to transform the standing of social workers in order to attract “the brightest and the best” into the profession.

Officials have confirmed that ministers wanted to see future chiefs of local authority children’s services gain experience in both schools and social work before they are appointed.

Training schemes will be changed, with more emphasis on “on-the-job” learning and the introduction of a new “qualifying year” in which new staff will get hands-on experience before they qualify fully.

The Sunday Telegraph said that better-performing social workers would also be paid more to work in “tough frontline areas”. “This is not going to be straightforward. It’s going to be controversial. It will mean a change in the way we teach social work and train social workers,” Mr Balls told the paper.

It comes after Haringey social services in north London were severely criticised in a damning report into the death of the 17-month-old Baby P after suffering appalling abuse at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and her lodger.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) confirmed that the new Government taskforce would be headed by Moira Gibb, the chief executive of Camden Council and a former social worker, and would report to ministers by next summer.

A DCSF spokeswoman said that it would be a “nuts and bolts review” of social work practice. “We know that we have not done enough to support excellence in social work,” she said. “We have been working for a while on a workforce strategy.”

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, died in in August last year, after suffering more than 50 injuries at the hands of his mother, 27, her boyfriend, 32, and their lodger, Jason Owen, 36, despite 60 contacts with the authorities.

Ms Gilbert said she was “concerned” there may be other local authorities that similarly supplied incorrect data to the watchdog to demonstrate their child protection services were adequate.

This week’s review of Haringey Council showed managers claimed children were assessed promptly when their files showed their assessments were incomplete, according to reports.

Files also revealed that assessments were often carried out in the presence of a parent or guardian, when they could be the person harming the child.

Ms Gilbert said: “I think if the grades that we gave last December gave a false assurance we have to take some responsibility for that. That’s one of the reasons that I’m saying we’re looking again at our proposal (to reform inspection). We need to do all we can from our position so I’m not washing my hands of it.”