In 1986 a ten day old baby was found in the toilets at Gatwick Airport. Nicknamed Gatwick Gary after the stuffed animal given to him by airport staff, the boy was later adopted by the Hydes family and given the name Steven. Now, thirty years on, he is appealing for information about his biological parents. As part of the effort to find the... Read More
Last year Carol was released to great critical acclaim. Set in America, it tells the story of Therese Belivet, a shop assistant and aspiring photographer, who begins an unlikely friendship and later a romantic relationship with the glamourous Carol Aird, a woman in the midst of a divorce. While Carol can predominantly be seen as a love story,... Read More
Following a failed attempt to retrieve her two children from their father’s care in Beirut, Australian mother Sally Faulkner was detained by Lebanese police and charged with kidnapping. What was allegedly intended to be the dramatic denouement for a soapy 60 Minutes documentary has the potential to corrode Lebanese-Australian relations.... Read More
A mother, Joana Niemeyer, was unable to put her partner’s name on their second child’s birth certificate because they were unmarried when he died, three weeks before the birth. Now she’s campaigning to change the law on birth registration, to prevent other unwed parents from being stigmatised. Ms Niemeyer and David McNamara... Read More
Colombia’s highest court voted six to three against the notion that marriage is only for heterosexual couples. The proposed ruling, now overturned, also advocated for the congress to decide rather than the court. Magistrate Alberto Rojas said, “All human beings … have the fundamental right to be married with no... Read More
Earlier this week The Archers concluded its two and a half year long story line exploring the insidious nature of emotional abuse within romantic relationships. Before Christmas I noted the long running BBC radio soap had picked up the topic of reproductive coercion, and what that would mean after new emotional abuse laws were introduced at the... Read More
The European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that a forced adoption process in Portugal was a breach of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that courts and child protection organisations have a positive obligation to keep families together. The case of Soares de Melo... Read More
Mrs Justice Theis has allowed an appeal from a committal order made on 18 January 2016 for a breach of a collection order made in 2004. In March 2004, a care and freeing order was made by Mr Justice Kirkwood regarding a 3-year-old girl (‘L’), who by December of that year had disappeared with her parents. A collection order was... Read More
In 2005 the government amended the 1989 Children Act to add in provisions for the families of children whose parents were no longer able to care for them. Unlike fostering or adoption, this allowed the children to remain resident with members of their biological family as relatives could apply for a special guardianship order and, after an... Read More
A gay couple from New Zealand have been struggling to bring home their ‘triplings’ from Mexico. Triplings are babies using the same sperm and egg donors, but born from different surrogates.
The couple, David and Nicky Beard, found themselves “stranded” in Mexico after one of the babies developed medical complications costing NZ$118,132... Read More