Early this year I wrote about the Judge who agreed with the 15 year old girl who did not want to have a DNA test requested by her father. In that case the Judge held the child understood and knew the issues and accepted her view that it would not be in her interests to have the DNA test.
There has recently been another case involving a child’s right to decide what is in their interests, but in this case the child was only 10 years old. In C (A Child) Re [2012] EW Misc 15 (CC) the Judge ordered that the child be permitted to be baptised into a Christian Church against the wishes of her mother. The child’s parents had separated when she was eight years old and care of the child was shared on alternate weeks. The parents and all grandparents were Jewish although the family were not practicing Jews. After separation the father converted to Christianity and with mother’s consent took the child and her brother to a Christian Church.
After attending a New Wine Festival with the child the child returned to her mother saying she wanted to be baptised into the church. The mother was very concerned and applied for a Prohibited Steps Order to prevent the father from baptising the child into the Christian faith. The Court appointed a CAFCASS officer who filed a report stating that whilst the child wanted to be baptised the matter should be reviewed in two years time when she may then have acquired the maturity and information to enable her to make a fully informed decision.
Despite the recommendations in the CAFCASS report the Judge held he was satisfied that the child’s welfare interests are best served by allowing her to be baptised in the Christian faith and that it could proceed without the mother’s consent
This decision seems deeply flawed. The child is only 10 years old and yet has now been told by a Judge that he agrees with her decision to be baptised. At such a tender age what a child wants or doesn’t want changes all the time. What message does it send out to her (and her family) that she can get what she wants if she shouts loud enough. I have no doubt the impact of this decision on the child, the parents and the wider family will be immense.