Lord JusticeWard in UK Summit Jewels Forsake school Maria's last call

As we know that judgment told us that Maria and Peter promised a few things to the court, years after the "Summit Jewels" denied their honesty as Maria's last call in recent letters to forsake school for Family teenagers, letters of her's written last year (to be seen later).

Let's see here what the judge saw and where he made some strong mistakes according to what we know now:



JUDGEMENT OF LORD JUSTICE WARD CONCERNING THE FAMILY : PT 24


THIS IS THE JUDGMENT OF LORD JUSTICE WARD IN THIS CASE WHICH
HE GAVE IN CHAMBERS ON THE 26TH MAY 1995 BUT WHICH IS BEING
HANDED DOWN IN OPEN COURT TODAY. IT CONSISTS OF 295 PAGES
AND HAS BEEN SIGNED AND DATED BY THE JUDGE.

THE JUDGE HEREBY DIRECTS THAT NO TRANSCRIPT OF THE JUDGMENT
NEED BE TAKEN AND THAT THE VERSION HANDED DOWN MAY BE
TREATED AS AUTHENTIC.

THE JUDGMENT IS BEING DISTRIBUTED ON THE STRICT
UNDERSTANDING THAT IN ANY REPORT OF IT NO PERSON (OTHER THAT
COUNSEL AND THEIR INSTRUCTING SOLICITORS AND THOSE PERSONS
IDENTIFIED BY NAME IN THE JUDGMENT ITSELF) MAY BE IDENTIFIED
BY NAME AND THAT IN PARTICULAR THE ANONYMITY OF THE CHILD, A
WARD OF COURT, AND THE MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY MUST BE
STRICTLY PRESERVED.

SIGNED:

THE RT. HON. LORD JUSTICE WARD DATED 19TH OCTOBER 1995


W 42 1992 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

FAMILY DIVISION

PRINCIPAL REGISTRY IN THE MATTER OF ST (A MINOR)

AND IN THE MATTER OF THE SUPREME COURT ACT 1991h

Lord Justice Ward



It will be seen from this review of these various provisions
that there has been a steady and insistent curbing of the
right of the parent and of those in loco parentis to
reasonable chastisement of a child.

The European Convention protecting Fundamental Human Rights
provides by Article 3 that:

"No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment."

In the case of Tyrer v United Kingdom [1979] 2 E.H.R.R.1,
the European Court considered a sentence by a Juvenile Court
on the Isle of Man to three strokes of the birch imposed for
an assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The punishment
was still available under Manx law but it had ceased to be a
permissible sentence in England, Wales and Scotland in 1968.
The Court held:

"The very nature of judicial corporal punishment is that it
involves one human being inflicting physical violence on
another human being. Furthermore, it is institutionalised
violence, that is in the present case violence permitted by
the law, ordered by the judicial authorities of the State
and carried out by the police authority of the State. Thus,
although the applicant did not suffer any severe or long
lasting physical effects, his punishment - whereby he was
treated as an object in the power of the authorities -
constituted an assault on precisely that which is one of the
main purposes of Article 3 to protect, namely a person's
dignity and physical integrity. Neither can it be excluded
that the punishment may have had adverse psychological
effects."

The punishments meted out in Macau and the horsewhipping at
Tewkesbury fall within that description if for the organs of
State one understands the analogous teamworks within The
Family.

In Costello - Roberts v United Kingdom [1994] 2 FCR 65, a
boy at a private school accumulated 5 demerit marks and,
having already received 3 warnings from the Headmaster, he
was given 3 spanks on his bottom through his shorts with a
rubber soled gym shoe. The European Court considered that
the punishment was not degrading in breach of Article 3
because the humiliation or debasement involved did not
attain the particular level of severity and exceed the usual
element of humiliation inherent in any such punishment. It
would follow from that case that the fundamental human
rights of the children in this Country had probably not been
invaded except in the case of S4 and MS. This observation
does not in any sense detract from the criticism I have
already levelled at The Family for the excessive beatings
they have administered to many other children in this
Country. I am in no doubt at all that most of those beatings
were unlawful.

6. On the Law Generally

I have attempted by this excursus of the law to plant the
signposts of public policy and to follow them, to identify
the rights of the mother in order to balance them against
the rights of the child and to look at this case through
both ends of the telescope - at one end a private dispute
between a grandmother and her daughter, but through the
other end, a dispute which raises important matters
affecting fundamental freedoms. I bear all of those matters
in mind. The fact that there may be nearly 200 other
children in the British Isles is not a material factor in
this private dispute between a grandmother and her daughter
over the grandchild but it is idle to pretend that others
will not be affected by this jugdment. That serves only to
confirm that this is a serious matter which demands my
earnest deliberation, and, I hope, justifies the length and
detail of the enquiry. My duty is to give paramount
consideration to S's welfare having regard to all the
circumstances of this case and in particular to the
check-list factors set out in Section 1(3) of the Children
Act 1989. First, a summary: