#Jydge secret area trial#

‘All the parties crumbled under the judge’s caustically expressed views, and as a consequence were unable to explain to the judge that the situation was more complicated.’ The Appeal judges said that at the August case management hearing intended to plan future hearings, ‘within a matter of minutes the judge had made abundantly clear, in trenchant terms, his determination to conclude the case there and then by making final care orders. Three appeal judges said the mother was wrongly denied the hope of getting her son back by the behaviour of Judge Robert Dodds in the family court in Liverpool (pictured) Social workers had told the mother they would allow new drug tests to check her claims that she had turned her life around, and lawyers agreed the court should consider sending the boy back to her.

#Jydge secret area trial#

He was sent back to the father, who was later charged with assaulting the boy and was in prison awaiting trial at the time of the Appeal hearing last month. But in less than two years he had gone through 14 different placements with foster parents and his life was one of ‘continued instability, distress and fervent desire to go home.’Īt one stage social workers had sent him to live with his father, a drug dealer, where the boy complained of ill treatment. The Appeal judgement said that the boy was academically capable and ‘overachieving’ at school. Lawyers, social workers and grandparents had agreed that two of the children, aged 14 and 10, would go to live with their grandparents.īut the 11-year-old wanted desperately to live with his mother. The family that came before Judge Dodds in the brief hearing in Liverpool last August were the mother and her three children who had been taken into state care at the end of 2012. ‘A closed mind is incompatible with the administration of justice,’ Lord Justice Lewison said. Lord Justice Lewison added that justice could not be done ‘when a judge has apparently made up his mind before hearing argument or evidence. Lady Justice King said that Judge Dodds’ behaviour ‘was not only unfair to the mother but contrary to the interests of the children with whom he was concerned.’

He added that ‘such a ruthlessly truncated process as the judge adopted here was fundamentally unprincipled and unfair.’ Sir James said: ‘It is unhappily all too apparent that no dispassionate observer of the proceedings could think that justice was done, let alone that it was seen to be done. The Appeal ruling published today contained severe condemnation of Judge Dodds’ conduct of the case by three Appeal judges: Lady Justice King, Lord Justice Lewison and the most senior family judge, President of the Family Division Sir James Munby. He wished the boy ‘every good luck in the world but the Children Act and the court has nothing to do with it.’ Judge Dodds decided to break up the family ‘within a matter of minutes’, dismissing the 11-year-old’s hopes of living with his mother. Instead he decided to make a final judgement about the mother and son’s future on the spot, at a court hearing that was only supposed to plot the future conduct of the case, the Appeal judges found. He refused to listen to crucial facts of the case - dismissing them as ‘Victorian detail’.

Judge Dodds took the decision to break up the family forever on the basis of an out-of-date report by social workers. Three Appeal judges said the mother was wrongly denied the hope of getting her son back by the behaviour of Judge Robert Dodds in the family court in Liverpool. Judge Robert Dodds' (pictured) decision was severely criticised in today's appeal rulingĪ mother and her 11-year-old son were separated on the orders of a judge who refused to listen to their pleas to live together, an appeal ruling found today.