[Home] [Databases] [World Law] [Multidatabase Search] [Help] [Feedback]
	England and Wales High Court (Family Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Family Division) Decisions >> V (Children), Re [2015] EWHC B28 (Fam) (15 December 2015) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/B28.html Cite as: [2015] EWHC B28 (Fam)

[New search] [Printable RTF version] [Help]

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE DISTRICT REGISTRY

IN THE MATTER OF THE CHILDREN ACT 1989
AND IN THE MATTER OF: V (CHILDREN)

		The Law Courts The Quayside Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 3LA
		15th December 2015

DRAFT JUDGMENT

HIS HONOUR JUDGE SIMON WOOD:

Introduction

1. At 17.16 hours on Friday, 14^th November 2014 officers of Northumbria Police were called to an address in North Shields along with ambulance services on a complaint of a serious domestic assault. M, who I will hereafter call the mother, reported that she had been assaulted by being head-butted twice and bitten on her upper arm as well as punched in the face by her partner, Z, who I will refer to as Z throughout. The assault was the more serious because it had been witnessed by the mother's four children. She was significantly bruised. It had been the children who had begged Z to call an ambulance, which he did.
2. The immediate cause of the violence, which he subsequently admitted and for which he was prosecuted, was an argument between the adults at a time when he was drunk. Without diminishing the seriousness of such domestic abuse, it was what the subsequent investigation uncovered that transformed this into a case in a different league of seriousness, hence the decision by North Tyneside Council, belatedly on 15^th April 2015, to issue proceedings seeking care orders in respect of each of the four children.
3. Whilst there is much that is agreed by way of overall background, there are very significant factual disputes. Whilst this might at first blush have looked like an exceptional case justifying a fact finding hearing, perhaps ambitiously, it was hoped at an early stage that a composite hearing could nevertheless take place. That was overtaken by events and so, from 30^th November onwards, I have conducted a fact finding hearing in an attempt to ascertain as reliable a narrative as possible prior to care planning being completed.
4. At the heart of what emerged were disclosures by the children of serious sexual abuse and, separately, the police initially considered that they were looking at a case of human trafficking, probably for sexual reasons. Separately, it appeared that the mother and her children might have been fleeing serious domestic abuse at the hands of the father of the younger three children. Very little of what is alleged in this regard is agreed and so I will say no more at this stage prior to introducing the key individuals.

Background

5. At the centre of the case are four children. They and their parents are all Lithuanian. M is the mother of all four. She was born in 1979 and is now 36. The eldest child is A, a boy, born on 6^th October 1998 and now 17. His father was F1 but he died in a road traffic accident in June 2005 when A was in his 7^th year. His mother went on to meet and marry F2 who, unless the sense dictates otherwise, I will hereafter call the father despite the fact that he is A's step-father. He was born in 1972 and so he is 43. Together, he and the mother had three children. Twins came first, a boy B junior and a girl C were born on 29^th May 2006 and so are 9½, followed by another girl, D, on 25^th February 2012 making her 3 years 10 months old.
6. As a family they lived in T, a modest sized city of about 22,000 in north west Lithuania until, it is agreed, on 21^st January 2014 the mother did what can only be described as a moonlight flit with the children travelling by minibus from their home to Newcastle arriving on 26^th January. Her husband, it is agreed, had no idea of her impending departure. He came home to an empty house. The mother says that she was fleeing significant, sustained, domestic abuse at his hands and was seeking a better life in England for herself and the children. The domestic abuse as alleged is denied and it is one of the issues for determination.
7. Although the father contacted the authorities in Lithuania, the mother was contacted by those authorities and exchanged some information, as well as permitting some limited Skype contact in the early days in mid-February 2014 between the father and the children. no concrete progress was made and, as at today, the father has still not seen the children since they left Lithuania 23 months ago.
8. Equally controversial, if not more so, are the circumstances that facilitated their move to England and what they found when they arrived. As neutrally as possible, it is common ground that via Facebook the mother made contact with another Lithuanian national, Y, who I will call Y throughout this judgment. She was already living in the Benwell area of Newcastle at an address known as [address stated] , a two bedroomed property. She offered to help the family move, to provide the funds necessary, in the region of £750, to enable them so to do and, indeed, to offer them accommodation until the family could get their own home.
9. She was, it is agreed, a complete stranger to the mother. They had never met face-to-face, their dealings prior to arrival were all via Facebook, the introduction having seemingly been made via the mother's brother who is currently in prison in Lithuania with whom Y, who herself had been in prison in Lithuania for a serious offence of violence, was also in touch. Y had lived in the United Kingdom since 2009 and also living with her at the time of the family arriving were a failed 37-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, X, and Y's adult son already mentioned, Z. He had been born in 1992 so he is 23 years old. There was, in addition, for at least some of the time a lodger, another Lithuanian national called L.
10. It was to the address in [address stated] that the mother and her children were taken, having been met off the minibus that had brought them to the United Kingdom via a channel port, X handing over the cash for the cost of the journey. There they all lived, up to nine of them, until a date never precisely ascertained but maybe three or so weeks later when the mother, by then romantically linked to Z, 13 years her junior, left with him and the children and moved to the address in North Shields where I began this story. It was not a particularly happy parting. There seems to have been an argument and there is more than a hint that the mother and the children had outstayed their welcome, the mother having found no job or the means to contribute to the household along with the awkward dynamics of the developing relationship between the mother and Z.

The involvement of the local authority

11. Although the family fleetingly came to the attention of the local authority in late May when the police made a referral following seeing C collecting cigarette stubs at a metro station, which in turn revealed that the older children were not enrolled in school, nor were they registered with a doctor, circumstances that the local authority remedied, the local authority then withdrew on the basis that they perceived no safeguarding role.
12. The health visitor also raised concerns regarding their cramped living conditions on 1^st August 2014 but it was not until the report of the assault by Z on the mother on 14^th November that a full appreciation of the concerns was noted. From the discussions that took place in the days following with a social worker and health visitor, it emerged that:

(1) there were grounds to suspect that the mother had been trafficked by Y and/or X for the purposes of prostitution;

(2) the children alleged that X had exposed himself to them and, with varying degrees of seriousness, sexually assaulted them. Indeed, the local authority was increasingly concerned that part of the motivation for helping the children at least to come to the United Kingdom was for the opportunity, if not the purpose, of sexual abuse that the children presented;

(3) in the household in Benwell the children were exposed to drink and drugs;

(4) that on leaving [address stated] and moving to North Shields there had been regular domestic abuse by Z.

13. The detail of these concerns is highly controversial, particularly the sexual abuse and, let it be said at the outset, denied absolutely by the adults who are at the sharp end of it, namely Y, who also gave evidence on behalf of X who denies the allegations notwithstanding the fact that he was subsequently arrested, interviewed and in March 2015 charged with sexual offences against the children. His trial has relatively recently been adjourned to the spring of 2016 so that remains to take place.
14. Following the disclosures the mother and the children were moved first to bed and breakfast accommodation in Whitley Bay and then to a refuge in Darlington. On 16^th December 2014 a restraining order was made against Z in order to protect the mother from him but on 15^th January 2015 when the police went to his house, the mother was found to be hiding under his bed there. As a consequence of that and the mother's expressed wish to reconcile with him, the local authority asked the mother to agree to the children being received into care. Although she complains about the circumstances, she appeared to agree and the children have been in care ever since; A and D in the same placement with W now for a year, the twins in one placement for a long period with V until that broke down in October 2015 when they moved to U.
15. With the passage of time further allegations have emerged, in particular that the mother and the children were all exposed to domestic abuse at the hands of the father in Lithuania. Indeed, the mother says, and to a significant extent the children support her, that the very reason for coming to the United Kingdom was to flee that very domestic abuse and that forms the basis of another set of allegations against both him and her.
16. Belatedly, the Lithuanian authorities took up the father's cause. The court having been alerted at the outset to the jurisdictional issue, namely whether this court or that in Lithuania should deal with the matter, the Lithuanian Central Authority did, indeed, seek a transfer of jurisdiction under Brussels IIA, Article 15. That issue was referred to Mr Justice Moylan who, following a fully argued hearing on 10^th July, gave judgment on 6^th August declining that request, concluding that it was not in the best interests of the children to transfer the case, hence the case remaining in this court.
17. The father has, to his credit, engaged in the litigation. He instructed solicitors, filed evidence, has undergone assessment by the social worker from North Tyneside Council in Lithuania and, indeed, attended at this hearing and gave evidence. Although he made some limited concessions, and whilst here made some further ones, there remain significant disputes between him and what the mother and the children say.
18. Of the children, I should say this. Each of the older three were interviewed in accordance with the achieving best evidence procedure by the police. Those interviews were video recorded and transcribed in full. The court has seen both. A separate hearing was convened in accordance with the Supreme Court decision in Re W (Children) [2010] 1 FLR 1485 to determine which, if any, of the children should give evidence. Following argument I ruled that A alone should give evidence in accordance with the principles laid down in that case and the Family Justice Council Guidelines. Furthermore, I met with A and his solicitor and social worker in accordance with his wishes in advance of the hearing. A did, indeed, give evidence at considerable length, albeit via the medium of a video link. A transcribed judgment in respect of the Brussels II issue is to hand. That in respect of the Re W issue can readily be obtained by any party who requires it.
19. The final preliminary matter to mention before coming to the substance is the fact that on 29^th September the local authority, supported by the guardian, asked the court to make a final care order in respect of A. He was then a week short of his 17^th birthday. The local authority was anxious to preserve the position for A, albeit the mother did not agree with the making of the order. In the event, with reasons postponed by consent, the court agreed to make a care order on the basis of the domestic abuse to which he had been exposed, including the assault on his mother on 14^th November, reserving issues of whether to continue the order and, if so, to the subsequent hearing. Although I indicated that I would give my reasons at this stage and I will make a passing observation about it at the end, it seems to me that in the light of the decision that has been made to have a separate welfare hearing, that is really the substantive time to deal with that issue.
20. There has been a vast amount of evidence, oral, recorded and written. I heard directly from 14 witnesses but the key witnesses have been those directly concerned in the events in question: the parents, Z, X and his partner Y and, of course, the children, albeit I only heard directly from A. I do not intend to recite the evidence as such but to focus on what I regard as the relevant aspects of it and, where it exists, the other evidence which is capable of supporting or contradicting what the key witnesses have said.

The Law

21. Having identified the key witnesses, it is convenient therefore to mention the law at this stage. It is not in dispute as between the parties. The burden of proof, of course, rests on the local authority which brings this application. The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities classically defined by Lord Nicholls in Re H and R [1996] 1 FLR 80 meaning that a court is satisfied an event occurred if the court considers that on the evidence the occurrence of the event was more likely than not. Having disapproved the formula that became familiar, "the more serious the allegation the more cogent the evidence needed to prove it", on the basis that whilst inherent probabilities are something to be taken into account there is no logical connection between seriousness and probability, the House of Lords in Re B [2008] UKHL 80 confirmed Lord Nicholls' test and by reference to the binary test explained by Lord Hoffmann indicated that the law requires a finding that the fact either happened or it did not.
22. One of the consequences of the type of allegations that arise in this case is that the court must particularly guard against the insidious reversal of the burden of proof as described by HH Judge Bellamy in Re C and D (Photographs of Injuries) [2011] 1 FLR 990 at [203]. He said this:

"There is in my judgment an obvious disadvantage to parents in an approach which requires that they provide an explanation for even the smallest bruise failing which there will be an automatic presumption that that bruise must have been an inflicted injury. Such an approach subtly changes the burden of proof and puts the onus on the parents to provide a credible explanation. As a matter of law, it is not for the parents to disprove the suggestion that the general bruising is non-accidental but for the local authority to prove that it is."

This is not a non-accidental injury case but the principle that is there outlined applies exactly to the allegations that are made here.

23. It is the law that the court must have regard to all the evidence before it when coming to conclusions on matters of fact: Re U (Serious Injury: Standard of Proof) [2004] 2 FLR 263. I am reminded of the warning given by Lady Justice Macur in Re M (Children) EWCA Civ 1147 about considering, in particular, the evidence of those who are parents or, indeed, are accused of wrongdoing in cases such as this, reminding myself that appraising witnesses in what is an emotionally charged atmosphere of a contested family dispute requires the judge to warn him or herself to guard against an assessment solely by virtue of their behaviour in the witness box and expressly indicate that they have done so.
24. No case is more appropriate than this case for such a warning and I heed it because the allegations are very serious, all of the key witnesses are foreign, either Lithuanian or Afghan, this is a strange environment for them, the litigation has been conducted in a language that is foreign to them, albeit they have been assisted by highly expert interpreters but it must nevertheless be a wholly alien experience for them. It goes without saying that the stakes could not be higher for the family. The mother and/or the father want the children back, the children would like to go home to their mother and, as I have indicated, X awaits prosecution for the same matters in due course.
25. This is a case where the court has been asked to rely to a significant degree on disclosure evidence and, in particular, that which the children have disclosed. I was reminded by Mr Stonor QC of the observations of Lord Justice Hughes in Re B (Allegations of Sexual Abuse: Child's Evidence) [2006] EWCA Civ 773, but it is not suggested that this is a case where there has been a failure to comply with the ABE guidelines. Nevertheless, in the context of poor practice, the court warned that the purpose of such guidelines is not disciplinary but to present the court and the parents with the most reliable evidence that can be obtained and he went on to say this:

"In every case the judge cannot avoid the task of weighing up the evidence, warts and all, and deciding whether or not it has any value or none. Everything will depend on the facts of the case. The exercise has perhaps something in common with the one which judges are used to carrying out when confronted with hearsay evidence, often in a family case third or fourth-hand hearsay."

I have reminded myself of all of these matters.

The nature of the allegations

26. Without setting out the findings as such at this stage, they fall into three broad categories. The first are those against the mother and father: domestic abuse, alcohol misuse, neglectful parenting. The second are those against the mother alone: sexual abuse occurring on the children whilst in her care and related issues such as failing to protect them, the exposure of the children to the domestic abuse alleged against Z as well as neglectful parenting. The third area is those allegations against X, namely the sexual abuse which is particularised in the threshold document in respect of each of the four children. Although the second and third obviously overlap, there is also overlap between the first and second and, in any event, the court is obliged, as I indicated, to have regard to all the evidence in making findings of fact so, in the circumstances, I will consider each area separately and then reach conclusions in respect of all.
27. The universally high quality of the advocacy in this case has not just ensured the very best of representation for each party but it has assisted the court to a very considerable degree. The advocates have been consistent throughout from beginning to end in the form of Mr Stonor QC for the local authority, Mr Brown for the mother, Mr Spain for the father, Mrs Walker for the intervener and Mr Gray for the children's guardian, Julia Lloyd-Parkinson. I record here my thanks to them for making my task the easier by the clarity of their presentation both in questioning and in the written submissions that each filed.

The key witnesses

28. Each of the key adult witnesses gave evidence for significant periods of time lasting, in the main, hours in each case. Each was fairly but robustly cross-examined. I was afforded an excellent opportunity to watch, listen to and assess each and despite the exclusive use of interpreters notwithstanding all, save for the father, having at least a working knowledge of English born of the length of time that they have been here, I felt that I was thereby able to reach a fair and accurate view of each.
29. One of the difficulties that the case has presented, however, is the fact that in significant and varying ways in each case, as I will explain, I found that none of the key adults were reliable or intent on telling the court the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I therefore need to consider in each disputed case what other evidence exists. That is not to say that I reject all that each says but it has made it necessary to consider their evidence with very particular care and to consider why, where I doubt that I am being told the truth, or all of it, why that might be so.
30. I have had cause to remind myself of the warning in the criminal case of R v. Lucas [1981] QB 720 that the mere fact that someone lies does not by itself prove that which is in issue. People lie for all sorts of reasons and some of those reasons: embarrassment, the feeling that there is a need to bolster an honest case that may sound a bit thin, to cover for some other scandalous matter which is not in issue, only if the court is satisfied that there is no such other reason should it rely on a lie as evidence of guilt.
31. The task is made the harder still by the fact that each had some axe to grind against the others. All had conflicting interests to a varying degree. So, for example, the mother had a clear animus against the father but she was in a state of conflict with Z with whom she had separated only with difficulty despite the violence that he had inflicted on her. Her attitude to X, as I will come to, was surprisingly ambivalent given what she says that she believes he did.
32. Z was at pains to point out that he did not have a normal son relationship with his mother, Y, having only lived with her for 18 months of his 23 years but he was protective of X as, as I have indicated, was the mother to a surprising degree.
33. Likewise, Y was protective of X and extremely angry and upset with the mother whom she regards as the architect of their and particularly X's misfortunes, making a personal plea to her from the witness box at the end of her evidence, "Not to do this to people who help you". Her relationship with her son appears to be fractured at present and she lays that at the mother's door.
34. The father made significant challenge to the mother's account of life in Lithuania and, in challenging what the children have said, blames the mother for causing them to become wholly aligned to her, challenging A's account of a poor relationship between him and his step-father.
35. X naturally challenged what the children said in increasingly strident terms, ultimately dismissing it as "bullshit" in one of his relatively few excursions into English.
36. So there are complex, conflicting and challenging positions and cross allegations here but ultimately, as all advocates accepted when they attended to present their submissions, the questions that the court has to determine are jury questions and so the stuff of the family court day in and day out. That applies equally to the evidence of the children as well. The court has benefited from very high quality and lengthy achieving best evidence interviews viewed and partially re-viewed in which none of the problems that can bedevil such interviews exist. There are clear, open questions, there is no leading, there are no tag questions and each child was well able to give their own account and so ultimately, although submissions are made as to timing, consistency and so on, this is not a case where the criticisms that were made in the case I have mentioned of Re B in 2006 could be made.

The Factual Enquiry

The relationship between the mother and Z

37. So where to begin? It was, in fact, the last event that could be said to be the least controversial and it is therefore a good place to begin. As I said at the start of this judgment, it was to a complaint of domestic abuse that the police were called on 14^th November. The children were independently observed to be visibly upset and to have "begged" Z to call an ambulance. He was noted to be drunk. He was arrested and was later charged. It is said that he head-butted the mother twice to the face and then bit her on the left upper arm.
38. The mother said in her witness statement in June 2015 that there had been an argument and he had pushed her against the wall. She denied that the children had seen it but they must have been frightened and upset when they saw her injuries. She said that prior to that incident they had got on well, although there had been a pushing incident in October after Z had been drinking. In her threshold response she said that there had been other occasions, although the majority of the time he was appropriate. She said much the same in her evidence, saying that this was the first serious incident preceded on occasions by her being pushed and, "Not saying nice things". Once their benefits had started, that had been the cue for Z to start drinking and that had led to arguments, "Although normally it would end up easily", by which I took it she was saying without violence.
39. The court called Z. The local authority did not regard him as a witness of truth and no one else wanted to call him, albeit all agreed he was a highly relevant witness. He denied he was a violent man but he agreed that he had been violent to the mother on that occasion which resulted in his prosecution. Asked how many times he had been violent, he said he did not know. Pressed about that by Mrs Walker, he said:

"What else do you want? I don't know if it was a lot. We had a few disagreements but who doesn't? I don't know how many times I was violent."

It was hardly a reassuring response.

40. When the duty social worker, Rachel Carnaby, and the health visitor, Joanne Pearson, went out on 18^th November and noted the mother to be covered in bruises, the conversation quickly became dominated by the disclosures of sexual abuse but the recordings show a complaint by the mother of regular physical assault, often when she had been drinking, whereas in the parenting assessment of the mother by the key social worker, Paula Seivewright, she insisted that he had only been violent to her once.
41. By contrast, the children offer a different picture. Despite generally liking Z at other times, and even wanting to be reunited with him on the mother's account after the final incident, C told her foster carer of an incident when he had tried to kill the mother on the stairs with a knife and both twins talked of their fear of him, telling their second foster carer of his abuse towards their mother whom he would kick, hit and punch.
42. A, having described Z as, "Pretty good and was nice to me as well", at first, described a time coming when he did not like what he did. He said he used to get drunk:

"I saw him beat up my mum. There were some accidents [later clarified as meaning incidents] when they had discussions and it ended up okay but there was one really bad one when the police came."

He was less sure than the others as to whether there had been other occasions when he beat the mother up but he said:

"His behaviour was not acceptable on the whole, he was just a bit too violent, not often."

And later he said that this had happened towards the end of the time when they all lived together and that for quite a bit of the time things had been okay.

43. What also emerged, specifically from the children, were other forms of abuse directed at them, thus the report from the police in May 2014 about seeing C picking up cigarette butts at a metro station were reported by her to her first foster carer as, "Being forced to pick them off their floor, off the ground for their horrible dad that is not their real dad", along with her being called a dog, being made to bark, being tied to the bed once, all accompanied by upset. Then later to the second foster carer B reported that Z had picked up D's used potty and poured the urine in it over C's head, C all the time imitating the motion. Z said that calling C a dog had happened but that it was a joke and he could not understand why C might have been upset by it. He denied pouring urine over her or tying her to the bed.
44. By contrast, the mother said that Z had done all of these things, saying that the calling of C a dog had started as a joke but she said it had ended up as teasing and she confirmed that she had found C covered in urine. Despite that, her case was nevertheless that everything up until 14^th November had otherwise been nice and good and she said that maybe she had closed her eyes to the less acceptable things, not wanting to take responsibility for them in her wish to be happy and to forget her life in Lithuania. Of Z she said, "I think I loved him. Love is blind". Pressed about some of the things that he was said to have done, she confirmed to Mr Stonor that he had, in fact, been cruel to her children.

Life in Lithuania

45. If this is true, and the mother concedes that most of it was, it was an abusive relationship and the children were directly exposed to it. Since the mother says that this was what she was fleeing, it is convenient to turn next to the beginning, namely life in Lithuania, because although the accounts the parents each gave moved closer together during the course of the hearing, their accounts were not ultimately reconcilable. Whilst the mother and children described a neglectful father who was a drunk, was violent and frightening, the father began by describing a regular, hard-working husband who was providing for his family. Quite apart from what the children may have been exposed to, the importance of this history is whether and to what extent it provides an explanation for the flight to the United Kingdom.
46. The parents married in 2006 shortly before the twins were born. That all was not entirely well could be deduced from the involvement of the police and the local authority in T in August 2012 when, after both parents had been drinking, there was an argument in the presence of the girls in which the father dropped D, aged 6 months old, before himself striking a glass door in anger, breaking it and thereby injuring himself. That drink might have been a problem to the father was denied by him, despite the fact that he was arrested for being drunk in 2010 and again in May 2012.
47. Of course, this may all be a problem of definition because the father said that he did drink, he drank beer, as he put it "lots of it" but no spirits, but he denied that he drank too much, his argument being that if he had drunk as much as the mother and the children say, he would not have been able to provide for his family. Of course, they in turn say that is exactly what happened. In denying a problem with alcohol, "I would not say I became disorientated or something like that", said the father, hence my remark about perhaps the definition of problem drinking poses.
48. By contrast, the mother complained of his drinking from long before she came to the United Kingdom. In the extensive Facebook contact she had with Y and X before she left Lithuania, to which I will come, she talks repeatedly of it as a significant part of her justification for leaving. When the father contacted the Lithuanian authorities and they contacted her in March 2014, she described his drinking, shouting, threatening, kicking her out, demanding and stealing her money and the fact that her neighbours, her grandmother and others could attest to that as well as the authorities, including the police.
49. As soon as the investigation following Z's assault occurred, her complaints about the father were reported to the police and, as the local authority investigated, each of the older three children told the local authority how terrible life was in Lithuania. The twins said that their father was horrible to their mother, A saying he hated the father. More recently, the children made disclosures to their foster carer: how he was a supporter of Hitler and other comments suggesting exposure to what might be characterised as extreme right-wing prejudices as well as regular fights, albeit C's account of the mother giving as good as she got, saying that she was worried that she would fight with her husband so she would not marry to avoid fights and exposing her own children to such behaviour. Their more recent foster carer told of frequent references by the children to the father's drinking a great deal and all three children referred to his owning a gun which he had obtained as part of a deal on selling the family car, a gun that he used to fire in the home and which frightened them.
50. In her evidence the mother said that the father's behaviour was a problem for a good five years. The violence became more and more intense. She talked of her being hit with a pan and having things thrown at her like a chair. Cross-examined, she said that she was not herself an alcoholic but did drink more than on the special occasions that she had conceded in her threshold response and she went on to acknowledge that she did sometimes herself drink too much and that that had not been good for the children either.
51. Taken to what she had said to the Lithuanian police in August 2012, she accepted that in a drunken state she had handed her 6-month-old daughter to the father, himself drunk, all over an argument about him smoking in front of the baby. She did say that not drunk the father was a peaceful man but the children nevertheless witnessed heated arguments. She denied that C's assertion that she would goad the father, not letting arguments lie, was true. She thought C had exaggerated it and said that she was the person who was always stressed in this situation. Cross-examined on behalf of the father, she denied that leaving Lithuania was all about her and nothing to do with the children. When it was suggested to her that she had, in fact, "fled slowly" she said it was not possible to leave in one day and that it had to be planned.
52. So she confirmed that the father was peaceful if not drinking, albeit he was not a family man, spending much time each day with his mother. In repeating her denial that she goaded the father, she did concede that she had done some horrible things herself: injuring him on his arms and legs, albeit she said that she was protecting herself when she too had had a drink but she was insistent that she did not provoke him. She also insisted that the children had seen it all and had formed their own views about him and were justifiably scared of him. She did not deny that she had left Lithuania to wipe him entirely out of their lives, saying that he had never been a father to any of them, having turned down the opportunity so to be.
53. Mr Spain also cross-examined A quite extensively. On 23^rd November he had given a witness statement in respect of life in Lithuania. The father had come into his life at about the age of 7 when, A said, he was nice, obviously trying to impress his mother but three or four years on with heavy drinking the violence began and it became regular: too many, he said, to single them out and he identified a time when the father's work shift pattern changed to four days on and four days off, thus giving him longer periods of time to drink, which he did, consuming three or more two litre bottles of beer in a session. Arguments with the mother would ensue. The father's mother did not like A's mother and it led to violence in front of him and his siblings.
54. He recalled his mother having wounds to her wrists from broken glass, he recalled her being struck by a chair, he recalled pushing that had become punching and he even described the father standing on her head. He also described in considerable detail what he called an old fashioned revolver kept in a safe in the wall of the house but when drunk was brought out by the father and used to threaten the mother as well as being fired in the house, making holes in the internal walls. A, really quite calmly, insisted that all of this was true.
55. He said he had wanted his mother to go to hospital when her wrists were cut but she had refused, not wanting to make a statement to the police. Acknowledging that he was close to her and supportive of her, he denied he was exaggerating. He did not say that his mother was always innocent:

"My mum was sometimes a bit too unfriendly to him but he is the one who gets drunk and starts talking nonsenses and picking on my mum."

And he went on to insist that it was because of the father that they had come to England.

56. For the reasons already identified, the father came to this litigation late and only gained information about what had gone on since the children disappeared from his life gradually. His first direct account is to be found in his undated statement which was ordered by Mr Justice Moylan and predates his assessment by Paula Seivewright which was conducted over three days in October. Having described his shock at the mother's leaving, he said that there had been arguments but they were verbal and not physical. He complained of her laziness. The gun allegation had by then been made but he denied absolutely owning one, saying they were illegal. Her allegations of violence were flatly denied and he felt that the mother had turned the children against him. He denied that they had been frightened of him. He could not have worked if he had drunk as much as they said he did.
57. The parenting assessment noted the warmth of his emotion, his love for his children and his wish to have them home but the social worker also recorded an emerging, progressive openness and honesty, albeit right to the end she felt that he was withholding information. There was, therefore, a greater acceptance over time about the use of drink which he went on to accept had been as a coping mechanism in a frustrating relationship, which he also accepted was volatile such that on these occasions the children, he said, would go and hide to get away from the scene. She described his being insightful as to the impact of drink and domestic abuse on the children but he still felt that the mother had manipulated the situation by what she had fed the children.
58. He made a further statement when he came to the United Kingdom for the final hearing and the process of greater openness did continue. He accepted that there had been violence but said it was always by the mother on him. Having denied to the social worker the existence of the gun, he conceded that he had a ball-bearing toy gun and that would not have hurt anyone. He denied a drink problem, although he accepted drinking.
59. Having commenced this section of the judgment by reference to his oral evidence, it can be seen how that process of openness continued but nevertheless the parents, with or without the children, continued to give a very different perspective on the relationship, the father continuing to deny violence, accusing his own twins of lying and challenging the mother and A's description of their miserable life in Lithuania, "Sometimes we had happy days and not happy days", and he attributed his "disappointment" in the mother to her laziness, "I don't think she was escaping violence". In terms of the schedule of allegations, the only agreement that really can be ascertained from what the parents separately say is that the relationship was volatile.

The arrival in the UK

60. That the family came to the United Kingdom on 26^th January 2014 is accepted fact, as is the fact that X paid for the transfer and Y and he put the entire family up in their small house in Benwell. It is also common ground that the sleeping arrangements were unusual to say the least: the mother and the girls in the living room, the boys in the second bedroom by themselves would not be uncontroversial but it is also accepted that at some point X moved out of his partner, Y's, bedroom and into the boys' room. He says, albeit the local authority suggest not consistently, and Y confirms that it was due to her snoring and Z appears to have slept in the same room as the mother and the girls. Also at times, at least, the other Lithuanian I have mentioned, L, appears to have been there sharing a bed with Y.
61. Apart from some evidence that the mother and Z very quickly formed an attachment, which they deny was sexual until after they moved out, the fact that tensions arose because the mother was not able to contribute to a household that was heavy on consumption of services and food and ultimately, as they said, the mother, the children and Z were kicked out and moved to North Shields some time in February, there is no independent evidence at all as to what happened in [address stated]. The story did not begin to emerge until November after the mother complained of the assault by Z and it was confusing from the very start, the mother being the initial source to Rachel Carnaby and Joanne Pearson as well as a student nurse, Louisa Hayne, from whom I did not hear.
62. There was a good deal of criticism that this initial encounter was not with the benefit of an interpreter, about which Mr Brown reminds me in closing, not so much I think by way of criticism because it is clear that this was an apparently straightforward first appointment following a complaint of domestic abuse and no one anticipated what, in fact, emerged but as an explanation for confusion that obviously arises from the encounter.
63. I bear closely in mind that the scope for confusion is clear and obvious, not just on this occasion but on others and so do, I stress, proceed cautiously but it is from those initial conversations that all three professionals, including the student, recorded the mother as saying:

(i) that she had discovered that Y's plan had been for her to have sex with men for money and that she had been kicked out of their house for refusing to do this;

(ii) that X had exposed himself to the children. As to whether it was something the children had told her directly or she had overheard them saying it was not agreed as between the two witnesses from whom I heard and the student nurse from whom I did not;

(iii) that X had masturbated over the children as they lay in bed, something that she physically demonstrated as described by Joanne Pearson, the health visitor, and that X had got into bed with the mother as she lay with D on the first night and;

(iv) that there had been the regular use of grass by smoking and white powder by snorting at least once occurring in front of the children.

64. That was enough for the police to be called and all three of the initial witnesses agreed that the mother's manner, presentation and attitude changed to one of considerable less certainty when they arrived and so the allegation that she was being trafficked for sex was not repeated by her, to their obvious surprise, albeit they felt it was a police investigation and so did not confront her and she expressed uncertainty as to whether X when naked in the presence of the children had, in fact, done anything.
65. I will have to consider the effect of the events of 18^th November in due course but suffice it to say it was the trigger to, first of all, A being seen and making detailed disclosures that day, C also made a disclosure. A was then interviewed, as I have said, under the ABE guidelines on 19^th November followed by the twins on 2^nd December. All three children made detailed disclosures against X, in particular, and so he was arrested.
66. It is unfortunate that the officer who spoke to A and C, DC Wilmore-Smith, was on planned leave in New Zealand not to return before the end of the year and so has not been able to give evidence but his statement and the serious sexual assault investigation book completed by him were available and from it, it can be seen that A made a detailed report of:

(i) X sexually assaulting the twins by masturbating on them when asleep;

(ii) X taking B from the bed he shared with A and masturbating on him such that when B returned to the bed his clothing was wet;

(iii) A acted out the events, gesticulating and bending over as he described what X had done;

(iv) X had also, he said, lain on the bed with his mother and done something similar to her and;

(v) he had also masturbated in the bathroom towards the girls.

67. Having made these disclosures, the decision to proceed to ABE interview was rightly taken. They are lengthy interviews totalling over four and a quarter hours. As I have said, they contain detailed disclosures. In broad terms, the mother accepts them as truthful, albeit she went on to deny specific allegations. X summarised them as bullshit, to which the children had been put up by their mother and/or Z, both of whom it is said have a track record of dishonesty in which he is supported by Y and, interestingly, Z who said that X was a good man and that he:

"Did not believe any of this nonsense that the children have spoken. They cannot prove anything. Where is the proof?"

It was, Z said, "a big bubble" by which he meant that the children were making it all up.

68. I will come to some of the discrepancies, contradictions and other criticisms by which they were attacked but, for the record and in support of the threshold document, I need just briefly to summarise each. A said that almost every night X walked around the house naked, having undressed for bed. As he did so, he masturbated. Once, he took B to his bed whilst he, A, pretended to be asleep and it was only when B was returned to his bed that he found that he was wet with what he thought was sperm. Other times he masturbated with his pants still on with his zip down. These things had happened a few times after he had stopped sleeping in Y's bed and moved to their bedroom.
69. On one occasion X had touched A's arm when he was in bed, "Maybe it was his willy, I don't know". He drew a sketch showing X standing over their bed. He said he had seen X's willy a lot of times. He would try and stay awake and, "Try to do something like move myself", by way of discouragement to X because he felt that if he moved, X would stop. He thought that X was afraid of him in a way that he was not of the twins because of his greater age. He said it would tend to happen in the early hours of the morning when X came back from his work with a pizza company. He said he told his mother and Z about what was happening. His mother said that they would need to tell the police but she said that they could not so do because X and Y would then throw them out of the house, so nothing changed.
70. On the occasion when A later found B's clothes to be wet, he described in detail how he awoke to find X missing from his bed and how X was using a blanket to conceal B in his bed and so he explained that he had got up to go to the toilet, again a means of communicating to X that he was awake and knew what was going on, and when he came back he found B was back in his bed, the next day B confirming that he had been in X's bed. He said that he had only noticed that happen once. He said B told him that he had done something with his willy and had wanted to touch his bum and he told B that he would not let X do that again but would push him with a metal star on a necklace that he, A, had. He said he had also seen X showing the girls his willy when he had gone to the toilet during the day time and found them there, X masturbating and again he drew a sketch to demonstrate relative positions and described how his sister had been frightened.
71. B was next interviewed on 2^nd December. He was 8½. He and C were interviewed via the interpreter, Miss Vassileva, who interpreted throughout at court. He described how X would come to his bed and pull his boxer shorts down:

"He would do it very, very slowly and then I would open my eyes and then he would go back to his bed and then return to my bed later again."

He then described another occasion when X had taken him to his bed:

"Then I would fall asleep and I would get up in the morning and in my hand I would have some yellow stuff. It's very sticky, a lot. It was very sticky, a lot, everywhere. My sister saw it and said 'What is it?'"

And he said it was also on his back and he gestured as he described this. He said he had been taken to X's bed twice. He said, "Most of the time I'm asleep, I just feel the movement".

72. He described another occasion when there was sticky stuff on his socks and trousers. He said he had never seen the sticky stuff, "when I lived a normal life", which was presumed to be a reference to life before [address stated]. Asked where he had been touched, he said on his bottom. Asked how, he said, "I had my back turned and I couldn't understand but he made a sound, 'ooh'". Asked what he was touched by, he said it felt like a finger, "But I don't know".
73. Finally C was interviewed:

"Every night at one o'clock he would come to our rooms and he would start touching and it would happen during the day as well."

Whilst C pretended to be asleep he would pull down her knickers and she would turn round and find him lying beside her. She said, "I feel a bit ashamed talking about this". She said he was trying to touch, "my pussy and bottom", with his sausage and she said she felt very uncomfortable:

"He was trying to insert it [she said] very slowly. He succeeded at first but then I started feeling pain and I started screaming, so he stopped."

Her "dad", a reference to Z, woke up and X ran out and went to the tent in the yard and locked the doors like nothing had happened. She said he came maybe 20 times. He would take her to his bedroom and try and make her fall asleep. Y would come and do something to make her fall asleep.

74. In describing how he had come to her, she said he would have his hands on her belly and touch the inside of her bottom where your poo comes from. He also pulled out his sausage when C had been in the bathroom with D and tried to touch her. She had called, she said, her dad, Z, and he hid his sausage. She had not seen X doing anything to B but A had told him about what X had done but she had seen him trying to use D in the same way that he used her whilst playing in her brother's bedroom. She said, "He was trying to make love with my sister". She was in her bed and C had gone in to get her. He was trying to remove her from the bed and he would climb on her and was trying to kiss her and she also said that he once stood over her mother and masturbated over her.
75. The children have maintained their accounts. They have variously been referred to both to the foster carers and also to the psychologist who reported for the purpose of considering the issue of whether they should give evidence. As I have said, only A gave oral evidence and he maintained that what he said was true: "I remember it today and nobody has told me to say this".
76. Challenge to A aside, there is no independent evidence that would corroborate what the children have said which, if true, would make out the allegations of abuse made against X. There is, for example, no medical evidence that would directly support it. Each child was examined and no findings were made which, it is accepted, is an essentially neutral finding in terms of corroboration, albeit the examining paediatrician was extremely concerned by the disclosures each had made.
77. In large measure it is only X who can directly refute the allegations, and he did. In the interview with the police he said he had done none of the things alleged and he did not know why the children were saying what they had. To the court he said he had done none of the things alleged, he had never exposed himself. As for masturbation he said:

"I am a wise man and not mentally ill. I have never done so, never will and see no reason to do it."

He denied absolutely that he was a sexual predator or that he had any sexual interest in children, "Everyone knows that this is a story". It was told long after the event, it was definitely told by Z to the children to get them to say this because he had said he would make trouble for him by saying that he had sexually abused the children. He said:

"How can we believe it is true? You need to put proof on there. Who has told the children? You need to find this out."

78. Inevitably, therefore, there has been much concentration on the evidence surrounding the disclosures to include, particularly, the preliminaries to the family coming to the United Kingdom, including the intentions of the various adults, what else was going on in the house in [address stated], what, if anything, the mother and others knew of what X might be doing, the circumstances in which they left [address stated] and the circumstances in which the disclosures emerged, as well as the inconsistencies or improbabilities in the accounts themselves.
79. In planning her move to leave Lithuania, fleeing slowly as Mr Spain characterised it, there is a good deal of evidence as to what went on in the three or four months before they arrived apparent from the disclosure of voluminous Facebook records between the mother and Y, the mother and X and, to an extent, the mother and Z. Those records have been much scrutinised. The local authority says that it shows that not only was there unrestrained and inappropriate sexualised extensive conversation but there were grounds for the mother to be highly suspicious of what she was coming to with a concerning interest in young children on the part of X in particular. Mr Brown denies that there is any evidence that the mother had the slightest idea that she or the children were at risk of sexual harm but concedes that the mother was extremely naïve.
80. The mother characterised the messages from X as causing her to think him to be strange and weird before she even met him. Mrs Walker for X points out that the mother is disingenuous. However much in bad taste, the messages were between adults and should not be judged morally or as evidence to suggest sexual intent towards the children. The exchanges between the mother and Y are in Lithuanian and have been translated. Some of them are overtly sexual. So, for example, as between the mother and Y it begins with the suggestion by Y that the mother needs a "new dragon", a reference to a man, followed by open questions as to whether the mother wants sex because she, Y, does. The mother asks Y what she thinks of the idea of having a threesome. The mother asks Y if Z needs a boyfriend and Y suggests that the mother and Z might become a couple.
81. Those between the mother and X are in English, the language common to them and there are obviously limitations of expression. Nevertheless, the context is clear. There is X's frequent references to the loveliness of her children, the mother having sent him photographs of them at his request, and those exchanges are accompanied by remarks such as, "so, so lovely little girl", "Keep one special for me", and a reference to her baby daughter being, "a good gift", and when the mother asks what does that mean, "My baby will be my best gift". X refers to having a baby with the mother. "No", she replies. X says God will give her a little boy soon, from which he backs down when the mother threatens to report that to Y.
82. X goes on to ask the mother if she showers with her children, a fairly astonishing question of a complete stranger, and X sent a picture of a bed suggesting that he and the mother will sleep together on it, he is, "looking for sex life". He tells the mother, who is thanking him for the great kindness he is showing in assisting her move to the United Kingdom, that the only gift that she can bring him is her daughter. He describes himself as feeling, "hot and hot", looking at pictures of the mother who he says is beautiful. He offers to do a good injection to the mother and asks her to open her bottoms. He asks the mother if she loves him and the mother asked if he wants to be her lover who he would like to sleep with.
83. It can be seen that the mother challenged some of this with Y, describing X as a strange guy and the mother said that she had seen men like X selling girls in Spain, something that she told Mr Stonor, when she was challenged about that, was just showing off on her part but otherwise whilst X's messages were, "a bit strange", she said she had no doubts, no suspicions, because she wanted to run away. She did not see sexual things in the remarks, for example about a new dragon, and those that were overtly sexual she did not take seriously. She did not want a relationship, questions about such were out of curiosity and no more. It did not make her question what he might want in return for the help that he was offering.
84. X's response was that the Facebook text was meaningless because the parties are separated by distance, "You can even threaten to kill a person but that is just text". The reference to showering with children he said, "I don't think I said it that way". Of a baby as being a gift, he said, "That's very common in our culture, particularly by people who don't have children". So far as the reference to "hot and hot", was concerned, that was just talking, nothing else, as he put it, "conversation between man and woman which flows". He said none of it was inappropriate, it was just the way they talked.
85. Y agreed that the mother had said that she had been uncomfortable about some of X's messages but she thought that they had been joking, she could not see anything wrong with them, being in a committed relationship with X herself now for six years. The reference to a girl being a good gift was the fact that X loves children, "Our intention was to buy things to make her a little princess", but confronted with, "hot, hot", which she found highly amusing, she questioned whether X had a fever at the time, she could see no inappropriate connotation at all and only eventually accepted that there was a lack of appropriate sexual boundaries but then turned it on to the mother saying, "If you are a good mother, why do you start such conversations?"
86. They arrived in England. The mother told the police, one of the first things she said, that X had an unpleasant appearance to add to the weird and uncomfortable communications that she had now told us about. Very quickly, possibly as early as the first night after a drinking session with the vodka that she had brought, she and Z got together. The mother said that X tried to get into bed with her. She said despite immediately distrusting him, she had not taken that as a sexual advance, more an explicable mistake because she was sleeping in his bed and he, unusually for him, had had a drink. So although she pushed him away, that was all a mistake.
87. X denied he had done that. In fact, he laughed openly in court when the mother gave that evidence. None of the adults found anything odd about X leaving his partner's bed to sleep in a room with two young boys. It too was perfectly explicable by Y's snoring. A further approach to the mother by X in which he told her that she was very beautiful and asked her upstairs to show or tell her something, the mother suggested in evidence was an advance, that was denied by X as no more than having a quiet word to tell her to pull her weight around the house.
88. Then there is the allegation that drugs were used that comes from the children and the mother very clearly in her police statement. Each of Y and X flatly deny it. Highly controversial is what the mother knew about what X is alleged to have done when living in the house. Rachel Carnaby recorded that the children had told her, as did A in the ABE interview, but when she came to make the statement the mother said she had overheard it as the student nurse, it has to be said, had recorded but she had not taken it seriously, a position she maintained in her threshold response until she gave evidence and indicated that whilst she could not remember what A had said or when, she felt that she must have ignored him because in trying to create her new life she had not wanted to hear it, so she might have responded that if they had spoken up, that Y and X would have thrown them out but she could not confirm it, still less could she remember C or B telling her anything.
89. Whilst X, of course, denies being confronted, pointing out the delay in that happening, it does seem to be common ground that there was on at least an occasion a big argument. Y told the police that Z had complained to her of X harassing the mother and whilst she said that she had not believed it, she said that she also remembered that there had been a suggestion that he had touched the children's bottom such that she had shouted at X but he had explained it by saying that the duvet had fallen off the bed and he had only gone to cover the children up.
90. Z gave the police an account of two separate occasions, one regarding the mother, the other regarding the children, which followed him hearing A and B talking about X not letting them sleep and he confronted X and told him to leave the mother alone and to keep his distance from the children. X denied any such confrontation when interviewed by the police and he told me that although there had been an argument, it did not involve his behaviour towards the mother or the children, he said he had been asked by Y about an occasion but it was simply when he had gone to get a blanket which he had put on because it was a cold night.
91. So we are dependent largely on the mother and Z for the assertion that the children made no other disclosure before November, albeit A said that between leaving the house on 14^th November when living with Z and the disclosure to the authorities on 18^th November, there had been much talk about it. So is this a case of the children finally having permission to say what they need to say away from those who have either been responsible for or condoned abuse, or is it a wicked conspiracy arising from the final falling out with those who had played a part in this family coming to the United Kingdom as I infer X is suggesting?

Assessment of the witnesses

92. I have reviewed these issues with a view to considering the adults' evidence surrounding the circumstances of alleged sexual abuse as disclosed by the children. There is very little which is easily reconciled and, as I said, at an early stage I found none of the adults to be reliable and would not be inclined to accept anything that any of them said without some other supportive evidence. There is also, I acknowledge, a danger in attaching too much importance to single words or phrases given the language issue but to consider all matters in context as the Court of Appeal in Re U said. I accept and take into account the fact that each comes from a foreign country, from a different culture and does not speak English particularly well. All have been very well served during this case by extremely high quality interpreters and so the accuracy of what they have said in court at least is not in doubt, albeit something is always lost in translation.

The Mother

93. The mother ought to be central to an understanding of this case. I found her to be a very difficult witness indeed to read. Although she appropriately showed some tearful emotion when talking about her children and, just as they love her very much, I am sure she loves them too, she had at times demonstrated an extraordinary lack of empathy with them by acting so directly contrary to their interests. Beginning her evidence by purporting to accept that she had properly fled an abusive relationship with the father only to jump into another abusive situation to which she was blinded by her love for Z, she said, "I was in such euphoria, I was in love. It is difficult to explain. I was very egoistic".
94. On being probed, however, she gave some quite remarkable responses. She had closed her mind to what she learnt, however she learnt it, when living at Y's house:

"Either [she said] I didn't want to listen, didn't pay enough attention or was too relaxed. Maybe I was drunk and failed to take any precaution at all against the possibility that what I learnt was true."

She took the children to live with Z who was physically abusive to her and cruel, particularly to C. She accepted that her behaviour, particularly in drink, in Lithuania had been bad for the children. Despite claiming that she found X's message weird, strange and made her feel uncomfortable and that she had taken Y's and his offer of help at face value and without any form of cross check, enquiries of the authorities in the United Kingdom or the like, she had uprooted her settled children in the dead of night, they having been let into the plan maybe a month before and told to lie to conceal it until they left.

95. Challenged about her entering into the highly sexualised exchanges, whatever the motive of the parties to them, her claim that it was a simple communication with friends trying to break the ice, with the benefit of hindsight stretched credulity to breaking point. If she was mortified by them, she did not show it. Mistrusting X on meeting him, it did not stop her being ready to credit innocent explanations offered for very worrying behaviour, all the while neglecting the needs and safety of her young, vulnerable children in the most serious way. Her inability to see any risk in strangers offering her money to cover the cost of coming to the United Kingdom was complete, as was her dismissal of wholly inappropriate and persistent questions about her children, "I thought maybe he loves children because he doesn't have his own. I saw nothing bad".
96. I am quite satisfied that the children did report to her that X had been doing things to them, not just because they say so but because so does everyone: Y, Z and X, albeit I accept each puts a slightly different spin on it and the mother's initial disclosure to Rachel Carnaby and Joanne Pearson was exactly that, notwithstanding the student nurse recording that she had overheard it, given the graphic evidence of Mrs Pearson as to her demonstration of what A had told her really demonstrates. I am quite satisfied that Mrs Pearson and Miss Carnaby did not just take that history but were themselves shocked when she gave the police what was a wholly different account. The evidence of the health visitor, I remind myself, was that Louisa Hayne, the student, was in fact sitting with one of the children talking to her for most of the time which may, and I can put it no higher than that, explain why she has a slightly different version.
97. Despite now claiming to accept the truth of what her children said, she contradicted her acceptance of the local authority case in many ways. The drug taking that she had reported from the outset, she said she had never seen. Having told PC Thompson that X was often naked and asked about it, she said that was, "possibly so and I told them to ask the children as I didn't know much about it". She went on to say that she had nothing bad to say about X at all. He was good, friendly, both on arrival and when they lived in the same house and she went on to give many examples of things that she said C had said that were not true: she had not kicked X out, he had not slept in a tent, C had never screamed, amongst others and she invited me not to believe C because of her good imagination. Insofar as the children said that Y and X wanted "to use" her, that was something picked up from Z and not her, although if I accept the truth of what Miss Carnaby and Ms Johnson report, that is exactly what the mother was saying to them on 18^th November.
98. She has plainly given a selective account of what happened in Lithuania. Whether saying she had never been out of the country before was a frank lie when she knew and has consistently said she had been to Spain, or due to some confusion, Mr Spain on the father's behalf gave some powerful reasons for suggesting it was the former. The account of going there to work leaving the children with the father, as abusive as she says he was, is either a contradiction by directly exposing the children to the risk of harm or evidence that she has exaggerated. These various contradictions leave the father saying that the mother has been less than truthful about her intentions and motives, the intervener saying she is disingenuous in her report of X being strange and weird with behaviour being inconsistent with such beliefs and the local authority saying her apparent remorse is wholly unconvincing..
99. There is, I am afraid, truth in all points of view, hence the contradictions and inconsistencies and her complete lack of reliability as a witness. I agree with the local authority with its submission over the point I began this section with, that there is an astonishing lack of empathy. Her motives are difficult to ascertain, her indifferent neglect of her children such as the admitted matters that happened when living with Z, the cigarette butts, for example, C saying that she did it because she did not want to get hurt, the urine, is all deeply worrying and, what is more, neither seemed to provoke any sort of reaction from her in circumstances where the outraged need to protect should have been the foremost instinct.

The Father

100. So far as the father is concerned, although not obviously concerned with the sexual abuse, it is convenient to mention him next. I accept his experience of life away from his home is even more limited than that of the others. He could, of course, be simply a wronged man but there were features of his evidence that made the court very cautious about accepting the veracity of all that he said. I am sure that the process has been particularly hard for him but the social work assessment of him not disclosing was perceptive and accurate.
101. The stand alone example is the gun. By the time his evidence had finished, he not only had a gun but it appeared to be one that fired bullets and not just ball-bearings. There is no need to set out the evolution of this account. Both mother and A described the bullets and did so with some accuracy, the mother talking about 9mm bullets and A talking about bullet shapes with rounded tips, not circular, spherical rather, ball-bearings. Furthermore, he actually sought to deny that he had said to the social worker that he did not have a gun despite his statement saying exactly the same thing. A, it turns out, was right in describing there being holes in the wall as the father admitted in court. This gun had been taken as part payment for his car, something close to half its value, it was suggested. It may not have been a very valuable car but it was a very odd exchange to make for a family asset, leaving one to wonder why he was denying it.
102. He was in denial about drink being a problem. That may, I accept, be cultural to a degree but it undoubtedly had got him into trouble on several occasions with the authorities. Whilst he remained in denial about violence, he eventually conceded that the twins' reference to his fascination with Hitler had substance to it but he said it was a joke, only said when drunk and that it was something he would regret when sober because he acknowledged it would be frightening: in T that would be so after what history records the Nazis did to its Jewish population during the war. To the social worker in October he sought to associate the twins' reference to Hitler, however, to things that they had learnt in school. His grudging concessions followed lies and his description of life when the family were together minimised any shortcomings on his behalf. I accept it is all very painful for him. It may not prove that he is the person that the mother, or more particularly the children, say he is but it does not make him a reliable witness.

Z: Mother's partner

103. The court, as I said, called Z, another witness full of contradiction. There is plainly little love lost between him and his mother but he took up the mother and children's cause against X yet, as I have recounted, dismissed what the children said out of hand. He plainly minimised his own behaviour, retreating into, "I don't know", over and over again when pressed, always a worrying sign in a witness. He became aggressive about it, "What else do you want?" and he accused Mrs Walker of stressing him out, "I will probably need to see a psychiatrist as I will need some help", after giving evidence. In fact, so truculent did he become that I sat through his evidence at one o'clock when the court would normally have risen for the short adjournment because I feared that he was quite likely not to return.
104. Emphasising that he was not taking sides, he repeatedly said there was no proof that X had done anything. He denied that anything had been said to him by the mother despite knowing that X was walking around naked, despite telling Y to ask X to leave the children alone and keep his distance but dismissing anything sinister because, "The children's reaction would be different", by which I took him to mean that there would be some discernable reaction which would prove that what they were saying had been true. Although he admitted calling C a dog, he could not comprehend how that might make her upset.

Y: The Intervener's partner

105. His mother, called by X, was a quite extraordinary witness given to dramatic gestures who seemed to dismiss every concerning point of the evidence as some kind of joke. She appeared to attribute to the mother what has happened to Z but ended up pleading to her to call the children off X. Describing her motives in helping the mother as wholly pure, she said she has lost her son in this process because he was upset that they were kicked out and the mother has not repaid the money she was lent. Although she had confirmed to the police that there had been an allegation of X touching the children when they were still living in the house, at no time did she allege to the police that this was a conspiracy between the mother and her son.
106. There was nothing about their evidence, the manner it was given, Z's aggression and selective memory loss and Y's treating serious matters so lightly that gave any confidence that they were trying to help the court.

X: The Intervener

107. The final witness was X. He is under very considerable pressure. He alone speaks Farsi, albeit his English after eight years appeared more than adequate when he used it but he was hearing much of the evidence translated from Lithuanian into English into Farsi which brings with it its own inevitable limitations. There was, nevertheless, a haughty, dismissive arrogance in his demeanour in and out of the witness box, characterised by Mr Stonor as a confident swagger, that was difficult to reconcile with the seriousness of the allegations. Mrs Walker reminds me, rightly, that there was nothing for him to prove. It is, of course, always more difficult to show a negative even when there is no burden. She reminds me that the mother had nothing bad to say about X, had said he was a good man, even A said that he was all right and seemed nice despite what he had done and Z also said he was a good man.
108. So why did he leave the court with the impression that he was not a sympathetic or reliable witness? His manner aside, his answers were very worrying. He dismissed the Facebook exchanges as nothing, normal conversation between a man and a woman. Such may be commonplace between adults, strangers even, but if there was the slightest embarrassment about their content being poured over by the court, he did not reveal it. They were long distance messages, they were therefore meaningless. In some context between consenting adults that may be so but not in the context of the gravest allegations against him, they could not be so readily dismissed.
109. Then, as he was pressed, his answers became particularly evasive. The remarks were out of context, that was about the injections and bottoms which did not seem to the court so to be. He could not remember the reference to "bottoms". He said, "Maybe it was buttons", when it plainly was not and he did not know what he meant. If he did not, it was obviously worrying to others but he would not even accept that.
110. Then there was what might be said to be an attitudinal problem to abuse. He was arrested in 2010, aged 31 and questioned about an allegation of rape of a girl under the age of 16. It did not proceed as a charge. Regardless of whether he was by then in a committed relationship with Y, which on the timing it was suggested he was, the account that he gave of exchanging telephone numbers with a 15-year-old girl he had met at the metro, meeting up with her, taking her to a house, "You can make friends with anyone", was dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders that said, "So what?" Most right-thinking people would say quite a lot.
111. His attitude to this family was quite remarkable. A pizza delivery man making £200 a week with a partner subsisting on benefits, handing over about £750 to complete strangers was a strikingly unusual act of charity, particularly when they then went on to put up this family of five in an already overcrowded house. Such people may, of course, exist but when three young children go on to make serious allegations, whilst you might think, hope, it is bullshit, to dismiss it as such and to display such staggering indifference to seeing his accusers, as he said he had, on the ABE interviews simply responding with question after question, "What do you mean? Where do you get this from? Why take responsibility? For what? How can we believe it is true?" was a type of bravado performance that is, of course, one form of response to such allegations but was, in the court's judgment, a worrying one that avoided answering the questions as to why he thought the children might say what they did. His steadfast reluctance to concede that these children were vulnerable could have been a conscious attempt to avoid a concession or a striking lack of empathy, either way worrying.
112. Blaming Z or the mother and when he made his statement he said he was in no doubt it was Z, the reliability of his belief was immediately called into question by his telling Mr Stonor that Z had said he would make a problem for him but nothing more specific, only to have it pointed out that he had actually accused Z specifically of alleging that he would suggest sexual abuse and thereby open himself to the charge, that he could not even maintain the same story consistently as had occurred in his police interview over whether or not it was his or Y's snoring that had resulted in him moving out of her bedroom.

Discussion

113. I have therefore taken some time to explain why I would not accept at face value anything said by any of these witnesses unless supported elsewhere but that does not amount to an endorsement of the truth of what the children said. Both X and the father and, to an extent, despite her position of apparent acceptance, the mother challenged the veracity of what the children have said. Mrs Walker, in particular, has made lengthy submissions on behalf of X as to inconsistency, the likelihood of it being a put up job by the mother and Z, the improbability of the events alleged occurring in this cramped house, the inherent incredibility of much of what the mother says, the awareness of the children of adult matters, C's reported good imagination and reputation and the suggestion that she is an attention seeker, the timing of the allegations and the role of A as the oldest, the protector, who is so defensive of his mother.
114. I have borne these all in mind but before I consider the need to address all or any of them in detail, it seems to me that I can legitimately ask myself, based on their interviews and the evidence of A, the question: are these children who have been sexually abused or is it possible that through a combination of coaching, inappropriate exposure to adult matters in an environment where sexual boundaries appear to have been non-existent to the point that the children, it is said that they had seen X and Y having sexual relations, as well as imagination, has that combination resulted in them fabricating events that simply did not occur?
115. I do accept that there are issues that are not readily explicable. I accept there was no tent in the yard. Despite what C said, there is no direct evidence that she was taken to X's room, albeit the mother did give an account very early to the police in December 2014 of her putting the children to bed upstairs on the night of their arrival, so it is not wholly without some support. There is no evidence of a scream by C and certainly no physical evidence of penetration such as blood or other stains and the suggestion from A and B that this happened almost daily might be open to question but having viewed and re-viewed the videos and re-considered them in the context of A's evidence, I simply cannot agree that whatever difficulties may exist that these are rehearsed fabrications.
116. Aside the question as to why anyone would go to such enormous lengths to induce not one but three children to lie, a task of very considerable magnitude, the accounts given are of such a high quality in terms of the questioning as well as in terms of the answers which are calm, matter-of-fact, wholly lacking in hyperbole, if anything understated, as well as given in age-appropriate language with a complete absence of drama or seeking attention, these accounts were utterly compelling in a way that manufactured accounts so rarely can be, not least in a case where three children of different ages are giving them.
117. They are consistent with the solo booklet completed in respect of A and they contain features that are, in the court's judgment, quite simply beyond the ability of the most perverted deceiver to implant in the minds of children. I think particularly of B's graphic description of the yellow, sticky stuff and lots of it, C's description of her pussy and bottom being touched with his sausage, the attempt to insert very slowly, the hands on the stomach; in A's case, the one of whom the abuser was rightly wary, not going beyond touching his arm, feigning sleep when he knew that A was aware of what was going on, his graphic description of the wetness on B's back. These are frank, free flowing, descriptive, in age-appropriate language and childlike language where the twins are concerned, that are as far removed from a script as it is possible to imagine. In C's case there is a natural and appropriate embarrassment and shame at what she is describing.
118. Therefore, I am quite satisfied that these are not manufactured or fabricated accounts abusively planted in vulnerable children. A, of course, was 16-years-old when he gave it. He had a far greater age-appropriate awareness of what it was but as to why the mother, Z, or, indeed, anyone would want to induce a 16-year-old boy and 9-year-old twins to disclose as truth such reprehensible abusive conduct when it was false, I have really struggled to understand, whoever the perpetrator was. No remotely convincing explanation has been given. The height of it seems to be to avoid a debt, which was almost certainly unenforceable, and simply to cause trouble.
119. So having reached that conclusion, the only remaining issue is who is the perpetrator? Only one possible perpetrator is identified. No one else is suggested and the possibility of mistake is not argued. It is not suggested that any of the children had any particular animus against X. As Mrs Walker pointed out, A otherwise spoke reasonably well of him and neither of the others said otherwise. Another reason to consider it was X is what I found to be the undoubted fact that the mother gained an awareness of what was going on when still at [address stated], despite her claims of difficulties of interpretation, directly from the children. The reason to be so confident is not so much what she later said as the agreement by all that there was a conversation possibly, probably a confrontation, each told it differently but the gist was the same and there was undoubtedly some stand off. The differences matter less than the acceptance that it happened. I am satisfied that even Z, who thought that sexual abuse was impossible or improbable, told X to keep his distance from the children.
120. Whilst I am in no doubt that the mother felt compromised by the extreme vulnerability of her and her children's position, utterly alone in a strange country and dependent on these people for the very roof over their heads, I do not think that this fully explains her behaviour. In her complete abdication of responsibility for her children, and I am sure that she said exactly what A said she said, that they would be thrown out, she was also totally absorbed in her infatuation with Z. I am sure that his youth was flattering to her, an infatuation that continued up until the time that he assaulted her with sufficient severity that services had to be called. Even then her wish to be with him persisted despite the steps that the police and the local authority took to ensure her safety.
121. That infatuation not only permitted sexual abuse to continue wholly unchecked with not even the slightest rearrangement of the sleeping arrangements but, as the cash from social security benefits enabled Z to drink, exposed the children to a new degrading form of abuse. Although the mother makes expressions of remorse, analysis of the detail gives one no confidence that to this day she accepts the seriousness of her failure, a worrying prognostic indicator. It is difficult to exaggerate the scale and the type of abuse that each of these children has experienced.
122. But to revert to X, however, I am satisfied that he is, indeed, a predatory sexual offender. His leanings were revealed in that window in 2010. I reject his characterisation of the Facebook exchanges as normal adult conversation. It was not and, with hindsight, it was the most chilling harbinger of what was to come. Even without that hindsight, any protective parent would, or should, have seen the danger lurking therein, the prurient and suggestive enquiries and proposals which went beyond normal sexual activity even between adults who were on the lookout for it. His denial of its significance was wholly unconvincing in its bluster and outraged innocence. This is not a matter of morals at all; it is, in the court's judgment, clear evidence of where his interests lay and it leads to the gravest concern as to what the mother was thinking in taking up offers of help from such people, because whilst the children were not included, Y's messages were highly sexual too.
123. A single woman, however ill-advised, is, of course, free to do what she likes in having such exchanges with other adults. But a mother of four children, purporting to flee an abusive situation, is in a wholly different position. I am not asked to find what their intentions were. Even if the mother had not said to the social worker, Rachel Carnaby, and the health visitor that the plan had been for her to work as a prostitute, and I am satisfied that she did say that, it would not have been a surprising conclusion to draw given the circumstances. Although Y denied it, a suggestion that the woman, L, living with Y, was a prostitute would not have surprised Z despite Y saying that she was an 'old' woman of 50.
124. For the avoidance of doubt, I am satisfied that the mother had no intent to prostitute herself, although she rightly recognised that this was probably within the contemplation of her hosts but given the speed and frequency with which X reacted, I am quite satisfied that the great attraction for him was a house full of young children. None were safe, other than A who showed he could stand up to him and who in pushing him away with his necklace and by showing he was awake and seeing what was going on was, to an extent, able to check X and act as a limited protective factor, sadly not enough but more than his mother did.

Findings

125. I am therefore satisfied to the stringent standard of the balance of probabilities that to varying extents each of the children were sexually abused by X at [address stated] whilst in the care of their mother. They were to varying degrees exposed to the abuse of their siblings and it all happened in a house lacking sexual boundaries with drug and alcohol misuse by the adults and that the mother took no meaningful steps to prevent it. That abuse comprised frequent and regular exposure of X to the children, frequent and regular masturbation in front of and over the children, the touching of A's arm almost certainly with a penis but certainly in a sexual way, the touching of B's anus with his penis or finger and ejaculating on his back, the touching of C's vagina and anus with his penis and attempting at the least to penetrate C's vagina and anus with his penis as well as touching D inappropriately.
126. The discrepancies, such as they are, can be explained by the youth, the language issues, particularly with regard to the twins, as well as the significant passage of time but they do not undermine the fundamental truth of what was said, which I am quite satisfied only emerged when it did because for the first time these children were truly safe.
127. Is there any reason, therefore, not to believe what else the children say as to what else happened? They were clearly exposed to increasing domestic abuse from Z towards their mother. There were drunken arguments and there was increasing violence. The mother was complicit in causing or permitting C to pick up the cigarette butts at the metro stop for Z. C was exposed to degrading behaviour and treated as a dog. I do not accept that it was a joke. C was deliberately soaked in D's urine by Z. This abuse was all in the context of the mother's infatuation with Z who denied the children appropriate stability, boundaries and routines, for example not going to school or registering with the doctor until the cigarette butt incident came to the attention of the local authority in May.
128. So that brings me right back to the beginning. The mother's behaviour causes the gravest concern as to her true intentions and motives. Her account of life in Lithuania, whilst I am sure was unhappy, was a partial one. I have no doubt that the children are now totally aligned with their mother and so what they say has to be seen through that prism and treated with suitable caution.
129. As I have already said, I am not sure whether the Spanish trip not mentioned to the social worker in the parenting assessment was omitted because of the reasons suggested by Mr Spain. He may be right about that but what is clear is that she was prepared then, at the very least, and she said that it was when the twins were 3, so it was in about 2009, six years ago, to leave the children behind with their father, albeit with some help. For at least a time it appeared to be within her contemplation to come to the United Kingdom with just one of the children initially, raising the question of how the others would or could have followed. That is not to minimise the domestic abuse to which the children were exposed. As late as the Facebook exchanges there are examples, including a description of the father having calmed down and now being in a coma, presumably alcohol induced, shortly before Christmas 2013.
130. As I have said, I was unimpressed by the father as well. I am sure he drank to excess and his behaviour was frightening when he did. He only belatedly and reluctantly acknowledged that. I reject his denial of direct violence but accept that when roused the mother was capable of responding in kind. I think it was an unhappy marriage. He may well have had legitimate complaints about her laziness.
131. I consider that the complaints of his failure to discharge his paternal responsibilities as well as his frightening behaviour, including the gun which has produced such a marked reaction in the children, are correct but this was not just a flight from sustained violence, it was a desire to escape in the hope of a better life, investigated, such as it was, pursued and executed with the most appalling want of consideration for the consequences for her children; removing them from their home, family, school, friends, country, language and culture on what was literally a fantasy of what inexplicably the mother perceived as a better life, despite all the warnings that the process flagged up. It was in the circumstances abusive in itself and subservient to the mother's needs. It was social, economic and personal rather than pursued for the promotion of the welfare of her children.
132. It follows that I am satisfied that the local authority has made out its case as pleaded. It is concerning that the local authority involvement in May 2014 ended so benignly and I hope that Mr Justice Moylan's expectation that this be reviewed, mentioned in paragraph 17 of the jurisdiction judgment, has since been acted upon. The delay between the initial child protection conference on 23^rd December 2014 and issue in the middle of April 2015 is also concerning and one hopes that, if nothing else, the decision in Re N (Children) (Adoption: Jurisdiction) [2015] EWCA Civ 1112 will ensure that this will not happen again.
133. The process of assessment which was the cause of the late decision of the split hearing must now proceed at pace, informed by this judgment, transcribed urgently and made available to all the parties, those under assessment and Dr Helen Young. In an age-appropriate way the findings must, above all, be shared with the children. It is an essential part of their narrative and they need to be reassured as to the recognition of the validity of their complaints as they come to terms with the tumultuous changes in circumstances which they have had and will continue to have and to enable them to adjust.
134. Finally, I mentioned at the outset the question of the order in relation to A. Plainly now, further findings have been made which would go to support the making of an order. That said, welfare issues remain to be addressed and unless Mr Brown has any particular submissions to make as to what, if anything, more should be said at this stage, I do not propose to say anything further until the welfare hearing in the New Year.
[Discussion re order follows]