As I have already made clear there is not and there never has been any attack at all upon NT's ability to provide proper physical care and to give all proper love and affection to her son. If the child is to be removed from her care, it is only because of her adherence to The Family and because the practices of The Family are harmful to this child. The issues have changed form and substance since the inception of the proceedings. The initial complaints were of sexual improprieties and brain-washing. Happily I was able to contain the latter issue and eventually remove it altogether from the forensic arena, no doubt to the dismay to the anti-cult movement and perhaps to the plethora of experts who would have placed their great learning before me but left me not much the wiser for it.
As more information came to light the scope of the enquiry expanded into issues of education, medical neglect, isolation both from the outside world and from members of the natural family. Still later and indeed even as the evidence was unfolding, the spotlight turned to the methods of control, physical and emotional, deployed by The Family on the errant members, adult and child.
I refused an application by several members of the home in which NT lives to be joined as individual parties because they considered my decision might impinge upon their children. The Family as an entity of its own is not a party. I feel in no way precluded from making findings of fact about The Family, their creed and their practice for I am quite satisfied that NT and they have had every opportunity to lay before me whatever evidence they would have wished. The reality is that to all intents and purposes they have controlled the litigation. The recent literature is littered with examples of the keen involvement of Berg, Maria and World Services in all aspects of this litigation. SPM has sworn 11 affidavits and answered interrogatories on oath. I have over 250 pages of written testimony from him and the material exhibited to his affidavits runs to some 500 pages. His last affidavit placed before me a letter from Peter Amsterdam with numerous annexures and Peter Amsterdam writes that "Senior leadership, including Father David, have read, made additions to and agreed with all of this material." I made it abundantly plain that I would have derived great help from hearing Peter Amsterdam whose unsworn testimony does not carry great weight, being in the nature of hearsay evidence untested by cross-examination. He was offered every opportunity to come to give evidence and be cross-examined and I assured him every protection should he have done so. He declined. It was an unwise decision for he must have known the importance of a senior member of The Family attending to allay my fears and to set the record straight. He surely appreciated that he laid himself open to legitimate fair comment that he must have something to hide. It is equally noteworthy that the leaders on the EUCRO teamwork and childcare Heidi were conspicuous by their absence.
I have taken a long time to prepare this judgment and I am embarrassed and extremely sorry for the delay. I felt it necessary to read and re-read the evidence with an open mind uncontaminated by the lurid features of The Family's past. There are more than 10,000 pages of often closely typed written evidence, about 6000 pages of which were introduced in random order during the course of the hearing. I have looked back carefully over over 2000 pages of my own notes of the oral evidence. The written arguments submitted by all counsel were lengthy but invaluable. That all took time but it was an essential task. I confess I have not found the reading or the deciding easy. I knew the case would be difficult from the moment it started. I only reached a clear conclusion after completing this re-reading during the long vacation. I am very grateful to the President of the Family Division - and to the Clerk of the Rules - for giving me some time off but it was not enough for me to complete the task. Ordinary judicial duties in London, on circuit and in the Court of Appeal eat into spare time. Since hardly a page of this judgment is drawn from any one source, I have had to have constant access to 15 notebooks and 25 various ring-binders of evidence, submissions and notes. So it was hardly possible to dash off a sentence here and there!
The order in which I have approached my task is to remind myself of the basic theme of the law, to identify the issues in dispute, make findings of fact of matters past and present, assess future risks ,and, having directed myself more fully as to the law, to reach a conclusion.
