Couple falsely accused of child abuse win first round in bid to get their family back

NICK PRYER

The couple who won a landmark legal battle to keep their baby son, after their first three children were forcibly adopted because of false allegations of child abuse, have won the first stage of their fight to get his siblings back.

Mark and Nicky Webster have been granted legal aid for their attempt to appeal against the May 2004 care order that resulted in them losing the children, who can be identified only as A, B and C.

The decision to grant the order, made after a one-day hearing behind closed doors in the Family Court, relied almost totally on now-discredited medical evidence that distinctive bone fractures to Child B could have been caused only by violent shaking and twisting.

That theory was discounted when some of Britain's most eminent experts were asked to look again at B's medical records during the Websters' successful fight to retain custody of their fourth child, Brandon, earlier this year.

They agreed that Child B's injuries were instead classic symptoms of scurvy ? an illness caused by vitamin deficiency that was a result of the family GP recommending that Child B be fed soya milk, which has virtually no vitamin C, because the youngster could not stomach cow's milk.

Last night Nicky Webster said she was delighted at the decision. She added: 'I'm confident we will win the appeal. And once that has been overturned, there is no legal justification for the adoption of our eldest three children.

"Throughout our fight for justice, we have been told that it is impossible in British law to overturn an adoption. But we now know that there is no law that would prevent us from winning an appeal.

"We know little about what has happened to the children since the care order was made. At the very least, we should be given access to our children, who, like us, have been the innocent victims of a terrible miscarriage of justice."

News of the legal-aid decision emerged as the Websters, from Norfolk, were packing last week for a holiday in Wexford, Ireland, where Brandon was born in May last year after Nicky fled the UK in an attempt to stop Norfolk Social Services from taking him into care the moment he was born.