A Dublin District Court judge granted an emergency application by the Child and Family Agency (CFA) to guarantee a 17-year-old-girl “privacy in the therapeutic process”, and directed that neither parent would be entitled to see her counselling notes. As parents of a child over the age of 16, they could only have access to such information with the consent of the child. At 17, the court confirmed “she is entitled to privacy”.
She had been in the care of the State for eighteen months and the matter was now before the court for a full care order hearing. Due to the complexity of the case, it was estimated it would take five days to hear the full care order application. The girl’s parents were also appealing the initial interim care order in the Circuit Court. (In child care proceedings, if a matter is appealed, the child care order, such as an interim care order, remains in place while the appeal progresses in parallel.) In this case, the appeal had not yet been heard.
When the girl first came into care, she had made disclosures, mostly regarding her father. Her father was from the UK and her mother from an Asian country. The court heard how there were many cameras within the family home, with one pointed at the girl’s bed. It had been alleged that her father had a bad back and she was required to help him put on his underwear.
The girl’s social worker gave sworn evidence. She spoke of her concerns about “attempts to thwart the therapeutic process”. With a presentation at CAMHS as recently as the day before court, the social worker described the girl as having “fragile mental health”. She said that the girl should feel free to engage with therapy, which was why the CFA was seeking an order to minimise the information to be shared with her parents, “at the discretion of the CFA”.
At the initial interim care order hearing, the court had heard that the father had previously said to the girl “they are going to try to take you to a psych ward”. The court had made a finding of coercive control against the girl’s father.
The court heard how a pen containing a recording device had been given by the girl’s mother to her brother, who in turn gave it to the girl. The social worker told the court that the girl knew details of the court proceedings, “as if she had been listening along”.
Access between the parents and the girl had been suspended. While the CFA was open to resuming access between the girl and her mother, the court heard how the mother had refused to attend a meeting with the social worker, which would be a requirement before the social worker could agree to access. The meeting had not happened, because the parents were insisting on seeing a Principal Social Worker, and not the standard social worker who had been allocated to their daughter.
The court also heard that the girl could not go on a school trip, due to her father withholding her passport for over a year.
In his decision, the judge commented on “extraordinary coincidences” in this case and the girl’s knowledge of the previous day’s proceedings. “That is most shocking”, said the judge, referring to the strict in camera rules surrounding such proceedings.
He extended the interim care order and granted the emergency reliefs sought under s.37 of the Child Care Act 1991, until the conclusion of the full care order hearing on another final date to be set.