This is a follow-up to my earlier post discussing the Samantha Baldwin case from the perspective of parental alienation and emotional child abuse. An excellent background of the case can be found on the transparency project website here.

I wanted to revisit this after a couple of weeks to see how the media have reacted after she and the boys were found and to see if this has generated any positive debate for an obvious long-overdue discussion of the family law in the UK regarding conflicted parents.

I was shocked.

As far as I can tell the media have come up with two – yes in words – TWO serious stories about the case:

• A piece from the well regarded parental alienation counsellor Karen Woodall in the Huffington Post here, and
• A strange uninformed piece in the Sunday Telegraph written by somebody who appeared not the read the judge’s ruling. It was so off-the-mark that the transparency group actually commented on the piece within 24 hours, it can be found here. Sunday Telegraph article is not available online.

In addition, there have been a couple of good blog posts:

• One from hoxstead research addressing the alleged type of abuse that took place. This piece can be found here.
• An interesting and well-written piece from a supporter of Ms Baldwin. Where we actually share something in common – As soon as we mention family law etc. in the pub our friends’ eyes glaze over! Can be found here.

Then we come to the problem: A self-feeding frenzy between the tin-foil hat brigade and the active supporters of Ms Baldwin on #Justice4s. Let’s analyse these a little bit in detail.

There is a so-called ‘investigative journalist’ called Richard Carvath who is tweeting away making wild allegations of a wider abuse ring. Check him out yourself on @richardcarvath. Either he is tweeting, or someone called ‘OBO’ (probably stands for ‘On Behalf Of’ to increase the theatrics. He also has a wordpress site where he states:

much of Richard’s public online content (since about 2008) has related to pro bono journalistic assignments – typically featuring a Christian subject unlikely to be of interest to mainstream media and news agencies.  Taken as a whole, Richard’s online content has always been, and remains, very much the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of his operations.

Now my father was a photographer for a local paper, and I knew local journalists. They would kill and serve their grandmother up for breakfast for a good story and its byline because that was their way to Fleet Street – recognition. Real investigative journalists do not avoid bylines.

Now if that wasn’t enough, he has started to prance about in a forest somewhere making videos (as if he is ‘undercover’, or ‘hiding from the establishment’ or something).  Check them out here.

In public, he provides NO evidence solid or otherwise to back up his exceptionally wild claims.

Finishing off, he also stood for parliament as the independent candidate for Salford and Eccles where his true nature was displayed for all to see: islamophobe and homophobe, as can be seen here. So this chap is genuinely not to be believed in my assessment. The veracity of his facts cannot be checked because he doesn’t provide any!

So why am I spending so much time on this man? Because he is one of the main sources quoted on the #justice4s site. Another source that I can briefly mention is a twitlonger text by a user called @BankerDidIt, whose tweets are protected, but his ‘about text’ quotes ‘#wwii Greatest Secret – must NEVER BE REVEALED. Churchill’, and the logo is decidedly anti-semitic – tin foil anyone?

This brings us on nicely to the facebook page, set up by friends of Ms Baldwin. The aim of this site is to bring ‘justice 4 sam’. Well as I see it justice has been served. Ms Baldwin has been found to have invoked the so-called nuclear option – allegations of child abuse without any basis in fact. The judge has even said that she drugged her own children to support these claims. Incredibly the supporters on the facebook page are just ignoring this and not only carrying on in their support (their call, and legitimate) but also repeating the allegations against the father, his family and friends (Not legitimate, libellous and abusive).

To reiterate, Ms Baldwin through her actions has caused the children to be alienated from their father in such a way as they (the children) actually believe the allegations. This is emotional abuse. She has done irreparable damage to her own children. What is happening now – her friends, with her sanction are continuing to publish libellous claims, ignoring completely what the Judge has found. These claims will also affect the children.

Ms Baldwin’s friends and supporters are continuing to post their allegations, even though they have been dismissed by the police and the courts. Ms Baldwin is obviously condoning this – this is continuing her emotional abuse of the children. Before Ms Baldwin absconded with her children these allegations were not nationwide, perhaps just with a circle of local friends. In any case they will not have been accessible by the children, people in the street were not pointing to the children and muttering stuff about their parents. Their friends at school probably knew nothing about this – they do now. With these allegations, the children can probably never have a normal life in the place they call home. Did you people think of that as you were posting these allegations? That it is tantamount to emotional abuse? Probably not. If anything the father has shown himself to be a better person than all of you for not dragging his children into this now very public fight and issuing only one statement. Ms Baldwin and her friends and supporters have weaponised the children and made it incredibly hard for the professionals to help them.

In Europe and the UK, we live in a democracy, where we entrust the law to professionals. If you don’t like the judgment, you apply for leave to appeal to a higher court – not ignore it and take it all into the public arena. Where would we be if everybody did this? A shoplifter stands up in front of the Judge and says “I do not agree with your verdict M’Lud” tweets his friends, and then simply leaves without any sanction.

This “I don’t agree with the judgement, therefore I will try to circumvent it” attitude is typical of parents (male and female) that abuse the law to keep the children away from non-residential parents. It is also how children become alienated because this gives the residential parent time to persuade the children to reject their other parent.  This is one of many areas where family law should be reformed. If there are no sanctions, then abusive parents will ignore the law, where is the incentive to obey?

If Ms Baldwin had any decency she would ask her supporters to remove the allegations, and just support her, and the laudable aim of reforming family law cases in the UK. The declared aims of the #justice4s march at the weekend are in the main for a reform of ‘Family Court Law’, and should be supported by anyone who has suffered at the hands of this opaque and antiquated system. But not as a vehicle to hold a public retrial of the Baldwin/Madge case and ‘overturn’ a legitimate judges’ ruling by proxy.

My hope that there would have been an informed debate leading perhaps to the conclusion that family law is in need of reform has so far not been realised. Just more despair for the poor children in this case.