ECHR Articles 8 & 10

August 9th, 2017 by James Goudie KC

In Southend Borough Council v CO (2017) EWHC 1949 (Fam) the Court held that the parents of children of children who had been removed into care were not obliged to delete an online Petition to Parliament protesting against the Court Orders. Given that there was no sufficient evidence that the Petition risked adversely impacting the children’s placements or causing them emotional harm, the children’s limited Article 8 rights were outweighed by the parents’ Article 10 rights. Parents have an important right to speak out against public authority intervention in their family where they consider that the intervention is unjust irrespective of the merits of the parents’ views.

 

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