‘How could they give my two-year-old son to my “deceitful” ex-murder suspect neighbour?’: Mother reveals her despair at social workers and courts who let ‘manipulative’ IT programmer take control of her toddler with bogus foster deal they failed to check
- In the disturbing case, police turned up at the mother’s home and took her son after the courts rubber-stamped a foster agreement with her forged signature
- The bogus agreement gave custody of her child to Colin English, who had faced a murder charge in 1991 but was acquitted on a judge’s instructions
- The ‘deceitful and manipulative’ computer programmer and his wife Yvonne were allowed to keep the boy for more than four months
A former murder suspect won custody of a neighbour’s toddler by duping social workers, it can be revealed today.
In the disturbing case, police turned up at the mother’s home and took her son after the courts rubber-stamped a foster agreement with her forged signature.
The bogus agreement gave custody of her child to Colin English, who had faced a murder charge in 1991 but was acquitted on a judge’s instructions. The ‘deceitful and manipulative’ computer programmer and his wife Yvonne were allowed to keep the boy for more than four months.
He exploited his access to the mother’s flat to mount a campaign to convince social workers that she had agreed to hand over her son. He took official letters, the child’s passport and his birth certificate to help prove his case.
He also reported ‘groundless allegations’ about her mistreating her children to a council’s social services department.
Incredibly, despite a health worker’s concerns that Mr English was ‘grooming’ the woman, officials failed to speak to the mother or get her version of events before he gained custody.
The mother, who still has nightmares about her ordeal, said: ‘At points I was suicidal and if I did not find the strength to carry on for my kids, I would be gone.’
The bogus agreement gave custody of her child to Colin English, who had faced a murder charge in 1991 but was acquitted on a judge’s instructions
The extraordinary story can be revealed today after the Daily Mail fought a legal battle to force the publication of a damning family court judgment from 2016. The judgment said the hardworking parents of the child had initially trusted Mr English ‘completely’. But as they became ‘increasingly suspicious’ about his behaviour they started to investigate him.
The mother discovered that years earlier, he had been charged with murdering a young woman whose body has never been found. Mr English, 62, was said not to have taken the murder charge seriously and spent his time while locked up awaiting trial doing sketches and writing a riddle about where the body might be.
The mother found examples of Mr English’s handwriting in press reports of these ‘riddles’, which she recognised as the writing on post taken from her flat.
After their child was placed in the care of the Englishes, the boy’s parents were forced to sell their house to pay lawyers to battle to get him back. They finally succeeded after the Englishes withdrew their bid to retain custody – just before a court hearing.
Judge Janet Waddicor said that she had ‘deep concerns’ about the case in a damning verdict about Mr English’s behaviour and the council’s failings. Mr English was ‘duplicitous and deceitful and manipulative’ and some of his evidence was ‘fanciful, preposterous’ and ‘ludicrous’ and ‘insulting to the intelligence of everybody’ in the court, she ruled.
Family courts have historically been conducted in secret but have allowed a measure of public scrutiny over the past decade following a series of scandals.
Colin English, pictured with his mother Jean, outside Liverpool Crown Court in November 1991
But secrecy rules intended to protect children from being publicly identified have been tightened. When family court judgments are published, social workers, medical witnesses and even the names of councils are suppressed.
The mother, who says she suffers from anxiety because of the battle to win back her son, broke down in relief after learning of the Mail’s legal victory.
She had waged a six-year battle to try to warn others about the disturbing blunders in ‘public safety, public accountability and transparency’. This included unsuccessful complaints to East Sussex County Council, police and the regulatory agency for social workers, she said.
A 2019 review by Sussex Police sent to the mother after she reported her concerns about the ‘welfare and the safety of her family’ to the chief constable noted that ‘all criminal matters that had been reported to police had been recorded’. But it concluded that no further action would be taken, and advised the mother to take further inquiries to the county council.
She said: ‘Over the years I have continued my pursuit for justice. However, nothing has happened and I have been ignored. No one wants to deal with it or cares enough to even look. I had almost given up, until the Daily Mail took up the case.
The extraordinary story can be revealed today after the Daily Mail fought a legal battle to force the publication of a damning family court judgment from 2016. Pictured: Therese Clare Terry, whose body was never found
‘I hope my story being told will finally help to expose all the conduct of the local authority and of Colin English, and they will be held accountable. I am grateful to the judge for allowing the restrictions to be lifted.’
The mother also called for more transparency in the family courts.
She added: ‘Although the social workers were taking my child away, because this was a private matter, behind closed doors, in a secret family court, we had no legal aid and no voice. People need to know what goes on in family law courts because they will be shocked.’
Sussex Police said it had ‘not investigated any criminal matters in relation to this case and the force has not received any formal complaint’. The council said it had ‘conducted thorough reviews of the procedures applied in this case’ and ‘we are satisfied that our procedures were applied’.
It added: ‘It is clear now that both the parent and ESCC were misled deliberately by a party in the case, whom the court criticised as manipulative. The decision of the parent to minimise their engagement with us contributed to the challenges within this case.’
The Englishes denied any wrongdoing, calling the judge’s findings ‘incorrect’ and ‘without foundation’.
‘The police turned up at night with my neighbour and his wife. I was pushed into a room and my son was taken from me… screaming’: Mother’s horror when officers raided her home and took her toddler to put him in the hands of ex-murder suspect neighbour
By Tom Kelly and Adam Luck
For the young parents, it was a Kafkaesque moment that will haunt them for ever. On a midwinter evening, police descended on their property, pushed the mother into a room and took their screaming two-year-old son away to hand him into the care of a ‘manipulative and deceitful’ former neighbour and his wife.
The shocking scene followed a court hearing hours earlier – which the parents had not been warned about or attended – that rubber-stamped a private foster ‘agreement’ containing their forged signatures supposedly granting custody of their toddler to Colin and Yvonne English.
Computer programmer Mr English, a judge later ruled, had spent the previous two years making groundless anonymous complaints about the mother to social services and removing her letters and documents from her flat to help dupe officials into believing the plan.
The council, meanwhile, had not bothered to check with the parents whether they agreed with, or were even aware of, the so-called new child care arrangement.
Only now, after a major legal victory in a case brought by The Daily Mail, can we tell the mother’s horrifying account of how she lost her youngest child for months following a sinister campaign along with a catalogue of alleged social services blunders.
The disturbing saga began over a decade ago when the mother – who cannot be named for legal reasons – moved into the same block of flats as Mr English, 62, and his 63-year-old wife, who works with children.
The computer programmer had been charged with killing his former lover Therese Clare Terry (pictured), who vanished during a trip to Ireland in January 1990
It was a ‘vulnerable’ time in her life as she had recently split from her partner and was a working single mother with little support.
It meant she was initially grateful when the Englishes, who were older with grown-up children, offered to babysit.
Over the years they became ‘de facto surrogate grandparents’ to her children. When she met her new partner and future husband, he also treated Mr English as a mentor and confided personal problems to him.
The young couple, who had two more children together, gave Mr English a key to their flat, where he would often babysit their younger son while they worked. But the mother became concerned when ‘strange things’ started to happen, including her post going missing or being delivered late. She became so concerned that she reported it to the police and her MP, and told Mr English.
She also discovered that East Sussex County Council (ESCC) social services were getting ‘malicious’ referrals about her parenting and the safety of her children. Only later, in a court judgment, was it to emerge that Mr English was behind these complaints after a court heard he had been ‘snooping’ to obtain ‘information that he wanted’.
Ruling that he had taken the letters, Judge Janet Waddicor said: ‘I judge it to be significant that at around the time the mail was going missing Mr English was making a number of allegations to children’s services about the mother’s care of her various children.
How Mail exposed the injustice
The shocking story of how Colin English was granted custody was made public only after a legal battle by the Daily Mail.
The original court rulings surrounding the case were private, with family court rules preventing any publication.
After six years trying to get action taken over her ordeal the child’s mother asked the Mail try to bring the details to light to improve ‘public safety, public accountability and transparency’.
Our crack legal team brought a case, arguing there was a vital public interest in making the original judgment public and allowing the mother’s story to be heard. Their arguments held sway, and today we can finally bring to light the disturbing details of the case.
‘So the more assistance he could have by way of names the easier it would be for him to pursue what were ultimately found to be groundless allegations.’ The parents were then ‘investigated extensively’ by the local authority, which caused them ‘stress and misery’, the judge added. The mother also discovered her son’s birth certificate and passport were missing – and again it was found to be the same culprit. Mr English later claimed the boy’s mother gave him the documents so he could enrol the toddler at a nursery and plan an agreed trip with him to Florida.
But the judge ruled the mother had no idea about the nursery plan and there was no evidence of any trip to the US.
She ruled that Mr English took the documents ‘without the knowledge or consent’ of either parent.
He wanted to ‘shore up his case that he and his wife were caring for [the child]’ to help him put in place a private foster care arrangement, the judge said.
The mother, who at the time knew none of this, became more anxious and began to rely even more on Mr English and his wife. But that changed in February 2016 when she learnt that her neighbour had been charged with murder in the 1990s and had spent 18 months in custody awaiting trial before being acquitted.
The computer programmer had been charged with killing his former lover Therese Clare Terry, who vanished during a trip to Ireland in January 1990.
The case was dubbed the ‘Riddler’ or ‘Chess Board Mystery’ because of a number of apparent puzzles Mr English wrote in custody for police. From the online newspaper reports, the mother realised the handwriting on the riddle was the same as that on some of her missing letters that had eventually been returned to her. Believing Mr English had been tampering with her post, she took her children to stay at another address miles from their home.
But while they were away, at a hearing at Brighton Family Court, Mr English produced a private fostering arrangement with the parents’ forged signatures on it.
The neighbour, the judge later ruled, had created the document months earlier, making it appear the real parents had signed away care of their son. The mother said: ‘No-one in social services bothered to check out the stories told by Colin English with me.
‘As far as I was aware social services believed I had parental responsibility for my son. I feel deeply let down by social services.
‘On the night of the hearing Colin and Yvonne English turned up… with two police officers and a court official. I was pushed into a room and my son was taken off me. He was screaming.’ The couple did not recover their young child until July 2016, when they scraped enough cash together to bring a new hearing at the family court.
The council, meanwhile, had not bothered to check with the parents whether they agreed with, or were even aware of, the so-called new child care arrangement. Pictured: East Sussex County Council
In her ruling Judge Waddicor described her ‘deep concern’, describing Mr English as ‘duplicitous and deceitful and manipulative’.
She branded some of his evidence ‘fanciful, preposterous’ and ‘ludicrous’, and ‘insulting to the intelligence of everybody’ in the court.
And she described Mrs English, who did not give evidence, as a ‘rather shadowy figure’ in the arrangements. The judge ordered the couple to pay £3,000 costs plus VAT to the parents because of the ‘unequivocal’ evidence of their unreasonable behaviour.
The judge was also scathing in her criticism of East Sussex County Council. At no stage did anyone from the council meet with the toddler’s parents to get their version of events, she said.
The judge added: ‘This is particularly worrying given… the health visitor raised concerns that the mother might have been being groomed by Mr English.’
The court heard how officials had a series of meetings in which Mr English said the mother was uncooperative – so he would ‘take charge’. ‘Why on Earth did [the social worker] or her supervisor or anybody else not go and check any of this out with the mother?’ said the judge. The judge ordered a copy of her judgment should be sent the council’s director of children’s services to address questions over private fostering arrangements.
But even after the couple had their son returned, a dreadful legacy from the ordeal remains.
Their legal fees left the couple financially unstable, and they had to sell their home and move to a smaller property. The mother said: ‘I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I have constant nightmares and anxiety.
‘At times the mental trauma is so overwhelming it impacts my family and my everyday life.’ And she says the council, police and social services have done nothing to address issues of ‘public safety, public accountability and transparency’ despite repeated complaints.
She said: ‘I feel that I have been ignored. I hope my story being told will finally help to expose all the conduct of the local authority and of Colin English.’ The Englishes denied any wrongdoing.
ESCC said it undertook ‘appropriate assessments’ and ‘legally required background checks’.
After ‘thorough reviews’ it was satisfied that ‘procedures were applied’. ‘The decision of the parent to minimise their engagement with us contributed to the challenges within this case,’ the council said. Sussex Police said it has not investigated any criminal matters in relation to the case.
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