'I'VE GONE THROUGH HELL OF SECRECY IN FAMILY COURTS'
08 November 2006
Derbyshire Evening Telegraph
BY JILL GALLONE
Tammy is now campaigning for changes to save other children from the sort of
injustice she suffered.
Above all, she wants to see an end to the secrecy that surrounds family courts.
She began her emotive address to a London conference by saying: "In the best
interest of the child. That's what the professionals state. But even the
professionals and the family courts can be wrong, as they were in my case.
" Tammy's speech to the conference
She told an audience, including lawyers, judges and MP Harriet Harman, that
she was taken from her mother on the basis of a false allegation, placed with
foster parents for 13 months and freed for adoption by a judge who said that he
was making his ruling on the basis that social services had delayed her case for
two-and-a-half years.
"On reading his decision to my mum, he stated: 'Miss Coulter, if I return your
daughter to you, you will be a stranger to her.'
"And on that decision," said Tammy, "I was freed for adoption and my whole
future was completely changed.
"Finding out that you're adopted is one of the worst feelings in the world
because you feel that all of your identity, everything you've known about
yourself, is a lie."
Tammy told how she learned through a friend that her mother had begun searching
for her, using the website Gene Reunited. Within hours of e-mailing a message to
her mum's mobile phone, the pair had a conversation that would change both of
their lives.
Tammy told the conference: "I was a child who was wrongfully removed from the
care of my mother.
"I am publicly speaking today on behalf of children and parents who have also
been through the secrecy of family courts and the injustices that have taken
place, and do still take place, and the devastation of what one decision that
determines the future of a child can cause to a whole family.
"Since moving in with my birth family, I see the relationship between my mother,
brother and sister and cannot help feeling as though I've missed out, no matter
how much I fit in now.
"I know I'm not the only person to have gone through the hell of secrecy in
family courts. I hope to have expressed the way in which they will feel and are
feeling at my age."
Among the changes Tammy called for were:
Medical evidence used in the courts to be based on facts, not probabilities,
when determining a child's future.
Social services being prevented from "making medical diagnoses when not
qualified to do so".
Social services assessments to be based on facts, not opinions.
An independent body to be brought in when social services are assessing a
family.
A wider range of agencies to be involved in putting together support packages to
help families stay together.
The removal of a child from its family to be regarded as a last resort, and the
need to slowly integrate a child back into its natural family to be of paramount
importance.
Tammy said: "The most important factor of us all being here today is about the
secrecy surrounding the family courts and why they should be opened. I am of an
age where I can talk about the detrimental effects that the secrecy of the
courts has caused to me. Many of the children who have been taken and are still
being taken do not have a voice.
"The opening of the family courts would make it a fairer, non-judgmental and
more impartial system. It would help children who are left in the hands of
abusers and would also work by stopping children from being wrongfully removed
and injustices taking place.
"So please, when considering opening the family courts, take into account that
we're all human and we have feelings. The way in which the courts have been
working up to this day has been inhumane in many cases and human rights have
been exploited.
"The detrimental emotional effects that separation has on children torn apart
from their birth families lasts a lifetime."
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