Mother Flees Britain To Stop The State Snatching Her Baby

31st January 2008

Image of a forlon heavily pregnant Fran Lyon

Fran Lyon will be a mother by now. All alone, in a hiding place somewhere in Europe, the 22-year-old student will be cradling her newborn daughter Molly and hoping that one day she will be able to return home to Hexham in Northumberland, and share the joy of the birth with her family and friends.

Last November, at seven-and-a-half months' pregnant, Fran fled the country after social workers warned her that her baby would be taken away ten minutes after the birth and placed with foster parents.

Horrified, she moved to Birmingham. But as the due date neared, she decided even that was too risky and boarded a flight to Europe, where she remains in hiding. Today, one can only imagine her reaction as she learns that this week a young mother had her baby illegally snatched by social workers.

In this dramatic new case, officials claimed the 18-year-old was unfit to care for her child because of mental health problems. But hours later a High Court judge ordered the infant to be returned immediately, ruling the social workers had acted beyond their powers.

The case has chilling echoes of Fran Lyon's experience. Despite medical evidence to the contrary, social workers believed that because she had suffered from eating disorders and had self-harmed as a teenager, she posed a threat to her unborn baby. In the last telephone interview she gave before she fled, Fran said: "I wouldn't have done it unless I absolutely had to. "Every time there was a twinge, I was petrified. I just kept thinking: 'Please don't go into labour, not yet.' "Now, for the first time, this will be just me and Molly. I want to enjoy it."

Fran, who was studying for a degree in neuroscience at Edinburgh University, became unexpectedly pregnant last April. "I was shocked because I'd had the contraceptive injection," she said. "I didn't have a clue how I was going to make it work with university and my job (for two mental health charities) but I was determined that I was having her." She fell out with the father of the baby, who then became the subject of a police investigation. He then alerted social services to Fran's medical history. When they investigated, Fran was open about her past.

The catalyst for her problems, she told them, came at 14 when she was raped by an acquaintance. She became clinically depressed and spent the next three years, on and off, in residential psychiatric hospitals. But she had fully recovered by the time she was 18 and the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder was removed. Fran received a letter informing her that a "child protection case conference" would be held on August 16 last year. She instructed a solicitor and contacted her former psychiatrist, Dr Stella Newrith, who offered her full support.

Fran claimed that social services thought she was in danger of suffering Munchausen's by proxy, a controversial and unproven condition in which a parent invents an illness in her child to draw attention to herself. Fran was also told she could not be trusted to breast-feed her child. By November, the plan to remove Molly was confirmed and Fran was distraught.

A spokeswoman for Northumberland County Council said: "We are unable to comment on individual cases, and we do not believe that it's in the best interests of any mother or child to discuss personal details through the media." For Fran, however, the publicity was her last chance to stay with her little girl. "All I am asking for is a chance to prove I will be a good mother to Molly," she said.

Taken from the Daily Mail 31st January 2008

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Child Snatchng By The State

Fran Lyon - BBC News