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Hi,
I am hoping that I can help a friend in her children's case. She has recently had a final hearing in which the judge awarded parental responsibility to her ex partner based on the social services section 7 report in which they committed a character assassination based on lies and omissions of facts. Clearly if she were to attempt to appeal it would be thrown out due to the damning nature (based on lies) of the report. I have suggested to her that as the social worker has lied in court that she should consider a private criminal prosecution of the author of the report, given that she has plenty of clear cut evidence of the lies told by the social worker in the reports. If the social worker is convicted of perjury then I would think she could then appeal to set aside the judgement (even if outside the given time limits) on the basis that the judgement was defective as it was based on perjury (the judge clearly stated in his judgement that he was basing his judgement on the SW evidence, he said that faced with believing my friend or the social worker, he would believe the social worker, as a result of this attitude (which was as a result of the terrible picture the SW had painted of her) the judge didn't even look at the evidence she had that the social worker lied, so never considered any evidence which would have proved that the SW lied. The SW was clearly biased against her from the start and fabricated evidence constantly to mould the "facts" to fit her lying story. I believe that proving the SW lied in court should be fairly easy, but on top of that she ONLY presented facts that supported her story and left out anything that contradicted it. So the question I need help with is whether a "lie by omission" would be regarded a perjury in a court of law. As well as telling lies, the SW also failed to include in the report very important facts which would have made a difference, not only to the tone of the report, but also to the outcome of the trial. One such fact that was omitted from the report was the fact that her ex partner had already accepted a police caution for "assault and sexual touching" against her personally. He then made false allegations against her, for which she went to court and was acquitted in 10 minutes by a jury. From the start of the report it featured the allegations against her as if she had been convicted and didn't even mention his actual conviction for the same crime! This is just one example of several very important omissions from the report. I would be very interested to hear anyone's opinions and advice. Thanks.
Colin
I am hoping that I can help a friend in her children's case. She has recently had a final hearing in which the judge awarded parental responsibility to her ex partner based on the social services section 7 report in which they committed a character assassination based on lies and omissions of facts. Clearly if she were to attempt to appeal it would be thrown out due to the damning nature (based on lies) of the report. I have suggested to her that as the social worker has lied in court that she should consider a private criminal prosecution of the author of the report, given that she has plenty of clear cut evidence of the lies told by the social worker in the reports. If the social worker is convicted of perjury then I would think she could then appeal to set aside the judgement (even if outside the given time limits) on the basis that the judgement was defective as it was based on perjury (the judge clearly stated in his judgement that he was basing his judgement on the SW evidence, he said that faced with believing my friend or the social worker, he would believe the social worker, as a result of this attitude (which was as a result of the terrible picture the SW had painted of her) the judge didn't even look at the evidence she had that the social worker lied, so never considered any evidence which would have proved that the SW lied. The SW was clearly biased against her from the start and fabricated evidence constantly to mould the "facts" to fit her lying story. I believe that proving the SW lied in court should be fairly easy, but on top of that she ONLY presented facts that supported her story and left out anything that contradicted it. So the question I need help with is whether a "lie by omission" would be regarded a perjury in a court of law. As well as telling lies, the SW also failed to include in the report very important facts which would have made a difference, not only to the tone of the report, but also to the outcome of the trial. One such fact that was omitted from the report was the fact that her ex partner had already accepted a police caution for "assault and sexual touching" against her personally. He then made false allegations against her, for which she went to court and was acquitted in 10 minutes by a jury. From the start of the report it featured the allegations against her as if she had been convicted and didn't even mention his actual conviction for the same crime! This is just one example of several very important omissions from the report. I would be very interested to hear anyone's opinions and advice. Thanks.
Colin
xx
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