In 2008 there was a scandal in England. A toddler had died after a period of sustained abuse at the hands of his mother and her boyfriend. It was a horrific case, but it became a scandal when it was learned that the State had visited the home sixty times leading up to the death yet failed to save the child. So how has the State responded in the intervening years? By using the case as a linchpin to ratchet up its enormous kidnapping operation.

[A]pplications to take children into care in England have soared to an all-time record, for the first time topping 10,000 in just 12 months.

Since 2008 alone, the figure has much more than doubled, to some 225 cases a week — bringing the total number of children in care in the UK as a whole to at least 90,000.

It’s a real boon for the psychobabblers:

Since 2008 the proportion of children removed because they are being physically or sexually abused has actually gone down.

Instead, the social workers cite vague reasons based on opinion rather than testable evidence — they use terms such as ‘emotional abuse’ the use of which has soared by 70 per cent.

In many cases the social workers don’t even need to produce evidence, only their personal view that a child might be ‘at risk of emotional harm’.

Once the social workers have made their decision, children and parents find themselves caught up in a shadowy system which seems rigged against them.

The social workers hire ‘experts’, such as psychologists, who earn thousands of pounds writing reports which appear to confirm the case planned for the courts. The reports can contain woolly allegations, such as that a mother might suffer from a ‘borderline personality disorder’. (Which of us could not have that charge levelled against them?)

Far too often the parents aren’t allowed to challenge the reports in court — even though the ‘experts’, rather than practising in clinics and seeing patients, may earn all their living from writing such reports, and endorsing what the social workers want them to say.

Judges are then presented with allegations made against the parents based on no more than the wildest hearsay. Such allegations elsewhere in our legal system would instantly be ruled inadmissible. But because of the secrecy of the family courts system, the parents are not permitted to even question these claims and the media is denied the opportunity to present them for scrutiny.

Meanwhile, countless children find themselves living with strangers in foster homes, where all the evidence shows — despite many shining exceptions — they may risk physical abuse or emotional harm far worse than anything their parents were accused of inflicting on them.