Anna & David Investigate
[ANNA]
Today we’re looking at a difficult question raised by Martin Newbold in his article, East Sussex Section 47 Offences.
At its heart, Martin is asking something quite straightforward: if he was caring for his daughter Emily at his mother’s home, what enquiries and assessment were actually carried out before authorities intervened and she was removed from his care?
[DAVID]
And that’s important because the article isn’t simply saying, “I disagree with what happened.”
It’s asking what the evidential process was before the decision was made.
Martin’s argument is that he was looking after Emily, getting her into school, and yet he says there was no proper assessment of him or of Emily’s circumstances in his care before the matter progressed.
[ANNA]
And that’s where Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 enters the discussion.
What does Section 47 actually require?
[DAVID]
Where the statutory threshold is engaged, Section 47 says that the local authority shall make, or cause to be made, the enquiries it considers necessary to decide what action should be taken to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare.
The word “shall” matters. There is a duty to make enquiries.
But there’s an important qualification.
Section 47 itself doesn’t literally say, “The authority must assess a parent at their home before removing a child.”
The wider safeguarding framework is relevant to how the child and family’s circumstances, including parenting or caring capacity, are assessed.
[ANNA]
So Martin’s question can be put more precisely.
If he was actually caring for Emily at that address, and no assessment of him or Emily in that placement took place, what enquiries did East Sussex actually undertake before deciding that intervention was necessary?
[DAVID]
Exactly.
And Martin adds another significant piece of evidence.
He says that, of his own volition, he went to another local authority and undertook a six-week Solihull assessment or course concerned with a person’s suitability to care for a child.
He says he passed it.
[ANNA]
Which doesn’t automatically decide every safeguarding question.
[DAVID]
No, it doesn’t.
But according to the article, that positive assessment was subsequently dismissed by the East Sussex social worker.
That creates a legitimate evidential question: what weight was given to it, why was it rejected, and what assessment evidence was being relied upon instead?
[ANNA]
The article then moves into much more serious territory: allegations concerning false information being put before the Family Court.
We need to be careful with the terminology here.
[DAVID]
Very careful.
A contradiction in evidence is not automatically perjury.
Under the Perjury Act 1911, broadly speaking, the issue involves a material statement in judicial proceedings, made by someone lawfully sworn, who knows that statement to be false or does not believe it to be true.
So you need more than simply showing that two documents contradict one another.
[ANNA]
You need to establish what was said, whether it was material, and what the person making the statement knew or believed at the time.
[DAVID]
Precisely.
The article identifies Christine Elizabeth Stirling and alleges that false evidence was given, that documentary material contradicted testimony, and that a fabricated genogram was used concerning the Northern Ireland placement.
Those are allegations requiring evidence.
The article does not establish that anybody has been convicted of perjury.
[ANNA]
And then we come to Judge Hollis.
Martin’s concern isn’t simply that a judge made an order based upon information that might subsequently prove to have been wrong.
[DAVID]
And that’s a crucial distinction.
A judge relying upon false evidence does not, simply by doing so, become criminally responsible for that false evidence.
The much more serious proposition would require evidence that the judge knew relevant evidence was false and then wilfully participated in wrongdoing.
[ANNA]
So there’s almost an evidential chain that needs to be constructed.
First: what was the allegedly false statement?
Second: what documentary evidence contradicts it?
Third: when did that contradictory evidence reach the court?
Fourth: is there evidence showing what the judge knew about that contradiction?
And fifth: what happened after that?
[DAVID]
Yes.
That chronology is considerably stronger than simply applying the word “perjury” to the whole proceeding.
It allows individual propositions to be tested against documents.
[ANNA]
Which brings us back to where this discussion started.
Before getting to judges, affidavits and criminal-law terminology, there’s a much more basic safeguarding question.
Emily was apparently in her father’s care.
What did the authority know about that placement?
[DAVID]
What enquiries were undertaken?
Who assessed Martin?
Who assessed Emily’s circumstances while she was with him?
What conclusions were recorded?
And what evidence supported those conclusions?
[ANNA]
And if those records exist, they potentially answer Martin’s allegation.
[DAVID]
Exactly.
Conversely, if an authority says that appropriate Section 47 enquiries occurred, there should be some identifiable evidential trail showing what those enquiries actually consisted of.
[ANNA]
That’s perhaps the most useful question raised by this article.
Not simply:
“Was the decision right or wrong?”
But:
“Show the process that produced the decision.”
[DAVID]
Because that lets the evidence do the work.
Who was interviewed?
What was observed?
What was assessed?
What was recorded?
What information was presented to the court?
And where information conflicted, how was that conflict resolved?
[ANNA]
And Martin’s six-week Solihull assessment becomes part of that evidential picture as well.
It doesn’t automatically settle the case.
But if it existed, was passed, was available to the social worker and was nevertheless dismissed, the obvious question is why.
[DAVID]
Which ultimately leaves East Sussex with a fairly concrete question arising from the article:
If Martin and Emily were not assessed together in the placement where he was actually caring for her, what Section 47 enquiries were carried out before action was taken to remove Emily from his care?
[ANNA]
And that’s where we’ll leave this discussion.
Not with a verdict, but with a question capable of being answered by records, assessments, chronology and evidence.
[ANNA]
There is a point in this investigation where individual documents stop being isolated pieces of paper and begin forming a chronology.
And that chronology raises a much more serious question.
Were the people presented to the Family Court as independent assessors of Martin Newbold actually carrying out independent assessments?
Because Martin has identified something in Christine Stirling’s own material submitted to the court.
Dates.
Not dates reconstructed years afterwards by Martin. Not dates somebody has inferred from memory.
Dates recorded in Stirling’s own material.
And Martin says those dates place Christine Stirling with the supposedly independent experts shortly before those experts assessed him.
[DAVID]
And “shortly before” is important here.
Martin’s account is that on the relevant occasions the chronology is approximately this:
Christine Stirling attends or meets the expert.
Then approximately an hour passes.
Martin arrives for his assessment with that expert.
Then subsequently there is an expert report for the court.
[SHOW: TIMELINE — STIRLING ATTENDANCE → APPROX. ONE HOUR → MARTIN’S EXPERT ASSESSMENT → EXPERT REPORT]
That sequence needs to be established separately for every relevant date against the original records.
But if the documents establish it, we are no longer asking an abstract question about whether a social worker might have influenced an expert.
We have a specific evidential question:
What was Christine Stirling doing with a supposedly independent assessor immediately before that assessor assessed Martin?
[ANNA]
And Martin says there were supposed to be three independent people assessing him.
That word — independent — matters.
An expert may legitimately receive case papers and instructions. An expert doesn’t operate in an evidential vacuum.
But that’s very different from one party effectively determining the assessment or its conclusions.
And Martin says something considerably more serious happened.
He says Christine Stirling met these people before his assessments.
And at Action for Children, he says the situation went considerably further.
[DAVID]
Martin says that he personally saw Christine Stirling entering the Action for Children building.
His mother was also involved in what followed.
According to Martin, an Action for Children worker told both Martin and his mother why Stirling was there.
Martin’s account of what they were told is extraordinary:
Christine Stirling was there to write the court report.
[SHOW: ACTION FOR CHILDREN — identify contemporary records, appointment records and report]
Now we need to be precise.
That is presently Martin’s eyewitness account and his recollection of what the Action for Children worker told him and his mother.
The next evidential step is to identify the worker, the contemporary records and the resulting report.
But the allegation isn’t merely:
“Stirling spoke to the assessor.”
It is:
the person whose work was supposed to provide an independent assessment wasn’t actually responsible for producing the supposedly independent report in the way the court would naturally have understood.
[ANNA]
And Martin goes further.
He says Stirling told the experts, in substance, that they would be paid and that she would write the report because she knew the situation better than they did.
That allegation has to be tested against the documents.
Who was commissioned?
What were their instructions?
Who was supposed to perform the assessment?
Who actually interviewed Martin?
Who drafted the report?
Who approved it?
Who signed it?
Who was paid for it?
And, critically:
whose words are actually in it?
[DAVID]
Because authorship can sometimes leave fingerprints.
Not literal fingerprints.
Language.
Unusual phrases.
The same factual errors.
The same chronology.
The same omissions.
Information that could only have originated from a particular source.
Even conclusions appearing in remarkably similar language.
So the comparison we need isn’t simply:
“Does Report A look like Report B?”
It is:
[SHOW: DOCUMENT COMPARISON]
Stirling’s material before the meeting
against
the expert’s report after the meeting.
And then ask:
What entered that report between those two points?
Where did each material assertion originate?
[ANNA]
And now those dates in Stirling’s own material become particularly important.
Because Martin says Stirling was subsequently questioned in court about three dates.
These weren’t dates somebody had unexpectedly thrown at her.
Martin says they were dates contained in her own submission to the court.
And when questioned about them, he says she couldn’t remember or account for where she had been.
[DAVID]
That does not, by itself, prove perjury.
But neither should the discrepancy simply disappear.
The proper evidential comparison is straightforward.
[SHOW: STIRLING’S WRITTEN MATERIAL — DATE HIGHLIGHTED]
First:
What did Stirling’s own submitted document say?
Then:
[SHOW: COURT EVIDENCE / TRANSCRIPT IF AVAILABLE]
What did she subsequently say when questioned about that same date?
Then compare the two.
And do that for all three dates.
Only after doing that can we properly analyse whether we’re looking at innocent failures of recollection, contradictions, knowingly false evidence, or something else.
[ANNA]
Martin’s position is unequivocal.
He says he raised this before the judge as perjury.
And his mother was present.
According to Martin’s recollection, the judge’s response was effectively that Stirling had made a mistake — that she was a busy woman and had made a mistake.
We should be careful here because until the transcript, judicial note or another contemporary record is located, that wording is Martin’s recollection rather than a documentary quotation.
But the distinction Martin was asking the court to confront is important.
Was it a mistake?
Or was information knowingly presented falsely?
Those are not interchangeable propositions.
[DAVID]
And perjury is a criminal offence when its statutory elements are established. The Perjury Act 1911 addresses knowingly false material evidence in judicial proceedings. Legislation.gov.uk
But our job here isn’t to pronounce somebody guilty from behind microphones.
Our job is to establish what happened.
And Martin says he specifically asked the judge to have the alleged perjury dealt with through the appropriate process.
He says the judge refused.
That raises another historical legal question which needs to be examined against the procedural law actually operating at the date of these proceedings, rather than simply applying today’s Family Procedure Rules backwards.
What power was available?
What procedure existed?
What was the judge asked to do?
What did the judge actually decide?
And was any referral, contempt process or other procedure available or required?
[ANNA]
But then something else happened.
Instead of the issue ending there, Martin says the judge authorised another expert assessment.
Martin remembers the cost as approximately £2,500.
We are deliberately saying approximately because the exact order, invoice or Legal Aid funding record needs to establish the figure.
But there is a money trail capable of being followed.
Who applied for the expert?
Who authorised the expenditure?
Who received the money?
What work was commissioned?
What work was actually undertaken?
And who actually produced the resulting report?
[DAVID]
Because if public or legally aided money was authorised for an independent expert assessment, independence isn’t a decorative word.
The evidential question becomes whether the service authorised and paid for corresponds to the service actually provided.
We’re not declaring fraud from the existence of a fee.
We’re saying:
Get the order. Get the instructions. Get the invoice. Get the attendance records. Get the report. Establish who did the work.
[ANNA]
And all of this sits inside a much larger question concerning Section 47 of the Children Act 1989.
Section 47 requires a local authority, where the statutory circumstances apply, to make or cause to be made the enquiries it considers necessary to decide whether action is required to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare. Legislation.gov.uk
Martin’s complaint is fundamental.
He says Emily was living with him at his mother’s home.
He says he was caring for her.
He had got her into school.
Yet he says there was no proper assessment of him caring for Emily in that actual situation before the intervention that followed.
[DAVID]
And there is another piece of evidence that cannot simply be ignored.
Solihull.
Martin says that, on his own initiative, he went outside East Sussex and undertook a six-week Solihull assessment or course under another authority.
He says he completed and passed it.
That matters because this wasn’t Martin refusing to engage with assessment.
On his account, he actively sought one out.
[SHOW: SOLIHULL RECORD / COMPLETION EVIDENCE]
So the question for East Sussex is not merely whether they agreed with Solihull.
They’re entitled to assess evidence and reach their own properly founded conclusions.
The question is:
What did they do with it?
Was it obtained?
Was it read?
Was it included in the assessment?
Was it rejected?
If it was rejected, what was the recorded professional reason?
And what contrary assessment evidence was considered more reliable?
[ANNA]
Because now look at the structure of the evidence Martin is asking us to examine.
On one side:
A six-week process Martin says he undertook voluntarily under another authority.
On the other:
Expert assessments Martin says were supposed to be independent, but which he says were preceded by meetings between those experts and Christine Stirling.
And, in the Action for Children instance, Martin and his mother say they were actually told that Stirling was there to write the report.
[DAVID]
That is why the chronology matters so much.
This investigation shouldn’t begin with conclusions about anybody’s criminal liability.
It should begin with clocks, calendars, documents and authorship.
For each expert:
When was Stirling there?
When did Martin arrive?
What happened during Martin’s assessment?
What records did the expert make independently?
When was the report drafted?
Who created or modified it?
What information within it originated with Stirling?
Who signed it?
And who was paid?
[ANNA]
And there’s another document in this archive that demonstrates why provenance matters.
The genogram.
[SHOW: GENOGRAM — ORIGINAL DOCUMENT]
We shouldn’t substitute somebody else’s description of this document for the document itself.
The original should be displayed.
Its named creator should be identified exactly as printed.
Its date should be shown.
Its relationships should then be compared with the underlying birth, marriage and death records and the other contemporary material.
Because Martin’s complaint is that information appearing in social-care records about his family wasn’t merely peripheral.
It became part of the factual architecture upon which subsequent decisions were made.
[DAVID]
And that is precisely why we mustn’t guess the name of the social worker who actually prepared that genogram.
We establish it from the original.
Then establish the supervisory chain Martin says led back to Christine Stirling.
And then compare what the genogram says with the underlying records.
[ANNA]
So this isn’t one allegation.
It’s a chain.
[SHOW: INVESTIGATIVE CHAIN]
Section 47 enquiries.
Martin caring for Emily.
The Solihull evidence.
Christine Stirling’s records.
Her attendance dates.
Meetings with supposedly independent assessors.
Martin’s assessments approximately an hour later.
Action for Children.
The allegation that Stirling was writing the report.
The resulting expert evidence.
Stirling being questioned about dates contained in her own material.
Martin raising alleged perjury.
The judge’s reported response.
A further paid expert assessment.
And ultimately the decisions affecting Emily.
[DAVID]
Each arrow in that chain needs a source.
Where there’s a document, show it.
Where there’s a witness, identify the evidence as witness evidence.
Where there’s an inference, call it an inference.
Where there’s a contradiction, put the two records next to each other.
And where a criminal offence is alleged, establish its elements rather than simply using its name.
That’s not watering the investigation down.
That’s how you make it considerably harder to dismiss.
[ANNA]
Because the central question remains remarkably simple.
Who actually assessed Martin Newbold?
Not whose name appeared on the report.
Not who was commissioned.
Not who was paid.
Who actually performed the independent professional assessment whose conclusions were then put before the Family Court?
[DAVID]
And if the documentary trail demonstrates that Christine Stirling was meeting assessors immediately beforehand — and if the Action for Children evidence establishes that she was actually participating in writing what was subsequently presented as somebody else’s independent report — then that requires an explanation based upon the records.
Not assumptions.
Not institutional reassurance.
The records.
[ANNA]
And the same applies to those three dates.
Put Stirling’s submitted document on the screen.
Put her subsequent evidence beside it.
Put the expert appointment immediately after it on the timeline.
Then let people see the sequence.
[DAVID]
Because ultimately this investigation is about more than whether somebody remembers what happened sixteen years later.
It is about what the contemporary records said at the time.
And whether the decisions made about a child were founded upon evidence that had actually been independently and properly obtained.
[ANNA]
That is where we go next.
Not away from the documents.
Back into them.
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