The High Court has ordered the return of a young child to England and Wales after finding that her parents wrongfully removed her to Ireland while an English interim care order was in force.
In a judgment delivered on 21 September 2018, Ms Justice Ni Raifeartaigh ruled that Lincolnshire County Council had custody rights under the Hague Convention and that the child was habitually resident in England and Wales when she was taken. The proceedings concerned return and jurisdiction, not a decision about where the child should live in the long term or the merits of the underlying care dispute.
The child, identified in the judgment as E, was born in England in November 2017. An English court made an interim care order in January 2018 after concerns were raised about reports of medical symptoms that, according to the judgment, medical authorities said were not confirmed by investigation. The child was placed with her paternal grandmother, with supervised contact for the parents three times a week. The English order expressly prohibited removing her from the jurisdiction.
The judgment recounts that the parents took E from the grandmother’s home during the night before an English court hearing on 20 April 2018. They travelled to Ireland, where they presented themselves at Garda stations two days later. An Irish District Court then placed the child in the care of the Child and Family Agency. The Council began the present High Court proceedings in July 2018.
The parents disputed the English authorities’ concerns and complained about the handling of the care proceedings. They argued, among other things, that the father’s parental responsibility entitled them to leave England with the child, that the English process had been unfair, and that returning E could cause emotional harm and separate her from them. The mother also described E as settled in Ireland. The judge treated these as the parents’ submissions and did not re-examine the English court’s interim decisions or decide the disputed medical allegations.
The court found that the Council’s rights under the English care orders meant the removal was wrongful under Article 3 of the Hague Convention. Because the Irish proceedings began within a year of the removal, the Convention’s settled-child exception did not apply. The judge rejected the arguments that the English courts were unable or unwilling to protect the family, that return would create the grave risk required by Article 13(b), or that Article 20’s fundamental-rights exception applied.
The judgment says the return decision does not settle the child’s future care. The English courts remain responsible for deciding those matters. The High Court concluded that no Convention exception opened the way to refuse return and ordered that E be returned to England and Wales.