Paedophiles To Lose Parental Rights
Newscast
BBC
4.4 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2024
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we look at how a BBC report could lead to a change in the law around paedophiles' access to their own children.
Adam is joined by Sanchia Berg, the BBC reporter who covered the story of a mother who paid £30,000 in legal fees to remove her ex-husband's parental rights to their daughter after he was convicted for child sexual abuse.
Labour MP Harriet Harman is also in the studio to talk about how it prompted her to introduce a law change after hearing Sanchia’s report in November last year.
And Lucy Reed KC, barrister and chair of The Transparency Project, shares her view from the family courts - as well as the difficulties for journalists to cover family justice proceedings.
You can join our Newscast online community here: https://tinyurl.com/newscastcommunityhere Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Chris Flynn with Sam McLaren. The technical producers were Michael Regaard and Dafydd Evans. The editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.8 | Hello, we're going to focus on one issue today. |
| 0:07.2 | It's the Family Courts. |
| 0:08.7 | Now we hear a lot about the Criminal Courts. |
| 0:10.8 | That's in the news all the time. |
| 0:12.1 | We hear a lot about the civil courts |
| 0:13.6 | things like libel trials that's in the news all the time. The family courts are in the |
| 0:18.4 | news a lot less. That's partly by design because their hearings are shrouded in privacy to protect the people at the center of sometimes very, very tricky difficult issues. |
| 0:29.0 | But one of the stories we did here was done by one of my colleagues and it was about a mom having to go to court to stop the convicted sex offender who is the father of her child still having some quite serious rights as a parent |
| 0:46.6 | over their child and it took her a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money. But listening to that report when it was broadcast was the |
| 0:56.0 | Labour MP Harriet Harmon who has now proposed an amendment to the law that the government is going |
| 1:00.9 | along with that means that will no longer be the case. |
| 1:04.7 | That is a change to how family law is going to operate as a result of a story that was on the |
| 1:10.4 | today program a few months ago. |
| 1:12.6 | So because there's so much we can say about all of this |
| 1:14.8 | and how it happened in the first place and the politics behind it |
| 1:17.9 | and what the implications are, |
| 1:19.4 | and actually just how the family courts operate, |
| 1:21.8 | because we see them very rarely |
| 1:23.7 | we thought we would focus on that for this episode |
| 1:26.5 | and because that's the subject you might hear some conversations that could be |
| 1:30.4 | upsetting. |
... |
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