Baby Brandon set to come home

A Norfolk couple who fled to Ireland in a last-ditch attempt to stop their baby being taken away are today expected to be told: "You can keep him."

Mark and Nicky Webster ran away for tiny Brandon's birth in May, amid fears that Norfolk County Council would have him adopted - as it did their three other children.

They came home within a few days, and have since been under 24-hour surveillance, with Brandon in a residential assessment unit.

Now, in a stunning victory for Mr and Mrs Webster, a judge in the family division of the High Court is expected to rule that they can finally take their five-month-old infant home to Cromer.

The county council is supporting the move, which would involve continued supervision until a final custody decision by a judge next year.

The likely ruling comes despite the couple's three older children - known only as child A, B and C - being forcibly adopted in 2004 amid abuse allegations.

One of the children was found to have a fracture, which childcare professionals said was caused by physical abuse.

Mr and Mrs Webster, aged 26 and 33, have consistently maintained the allegations were false, and said the fracture could have been the result of brittle bone disease - which is suffered by many members of Mrs Webster's family.

Last night Lisa Christensen, the county council's director of children's services, said: "Our view is that Brandon should be allowed home with Mr and Mrs Webster, with continued supervision and support from us and others, before a final decision is made about his future by a judge next year."

Mrs Christensen added that the council was hoping that the judge at today's hearing would release the judgements made previously when the three older children were adopted in order to vindicate the council's decisions at the time.

She said: "People will be able to see for themselves the extensive and detailed range of evidence that led the judge to make that decision."

Despite the continued allegations of abuse, she said the judgements would demonstrate there were "clear differences between the situation now with Mr and Mrs Webster and their son, and the situation relating to child A, child B and child C".

The EDP is able to name the couple and Brandon today because of an unprecedented move by Mr Justice Munby in the High Court yesterday.

An application was made to overturn a "very drastic" gagging order made by Judge Philip Curl at Norwich on June 10, in which he banned any further reporting of the case, and all media contact with any member of the Websters' family.

Up until then, the couple had to be referred to by Mrs Webster's maiden name, Hardingham, to avoid the risk of identifying the three children who had been adopted.

In a move never seen before in Britain, Mr Justice Munby also ruled that today's family court proceedings would be open to the media.

The judge continued orders banning the naming of the older children, but said he was relaxing the restrictions to allow the facts of the case to be opened up to public scrutiny.

He said: "In a case where the parents allege that they are the victims of a miscarriage of justice, it is more than usually important that the truth - the full truth - should out.

"If, as the parents allege, they have lost three children and stand at risk of losing a fourth due to deficiencies in the system, then there is a pressing need for the true facts to be exposed.

"If, on the other hand, the parents are wrong, and the system has performed conscientiously, competently and correctly, then it is equally highly desirable that this should be known and publicised."

His ruling comes at a time when the government is engaged in negotiations with the judiciary to open up family court proceedings to greater public scrutiny.

Norfolk County Council, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Trust and Norwich Primary Care Trust wrote to family justice minister Harriet Harman on May 26 to call for the media to be allowed to report family court proceedings "with appropriate legal safeguards".

They acted because they were concerned that they could not "respond in any meaningful way" to the allegations made by Mr and Mrs Webster in the case of the adoption of their three children.

At yesterday's hearing, Mr Justice Munby said all the care proceedings were based on allegations that the children had been physically abused by their parents.

He said: "They assert that the children were wrongly taken from them on the basis of flawed and incomplete medical and other evidence."

The judge added that Judge Curl had made orders imposing "very drastic reporting restrictions" on the case, even stopping the media reporting facts already in the public domain.

Lifting the restrictions on the current case, he said the media had a role to play when there were allegations of miscarriage of justice.

"Human justice is inevitably fallible. However hard we struggle to avoid them, and however rigorous the procedural and other safeguards we strive to erect against them, there will always be miscarriages of justice."

He said there was a public interest in promoting the administration of justice, maintaining the authority of the judiciary and confidence of the public in the courts.

"It is, therefore, important for public confidence in the system - public confidence in the court - that both the resolution of the issue, and the way in which it has been resolved, should be known."

He said it had also been argued that the local authority may also wish to speak out to correct what it considered were misleading accounts about the case.

"The fact that the parents may not be the martyrs they claim to be - something which I am in absolutely no position to assess and on which I express no views at all - the fact that it may turn out there was no miscarriage of justice, is not of itself any reason for denying the parents their voice."

Mr and Mrs Webster's story was initially made public on the BBC1 show Real Story, and was soon picked up by newspapers and TV stations across the country.

With his sister heavily pregnant with her fourth child and the county council expected to take it into care as soon as it was born, Wayne Hardingham, co-ordinated a Save our Baby campaign, which included a public meeting at Cromer Country Club, attended by more than 100 people.