Matthew Brookes-Baker in Bristol City Council v B & Ors [2025] EWFC 121 (B)
16th Jun 2025 | Cases
Matthew Brookes-Baker was instructed by Daniel Woodman Solicitors for the child in Bristol City Council v B & Ors [2025] EWFC 121 (B); a fact-finding hearing in care proceedings where the local authority, inter alia, sought findings that the father presented a risk of serious sexual harm to his 9 month-old daughter (D).
An important aspect of the disputed factual matrix was the local authority’s position that father had sexually abused a child Z, his daughter from Y who was a child herself when impregnated by father, because the father had previously been acquitted of these allegations at the Crown Court.
Significant aspects of the local authority’s allegations were:
- The father’s history of grooming/forming inappropriate sexual relationships with vulnerable children.
- The father’s possession of indecent images of children on his mobile phone on more than one occasion
- The father’s inappropriate sexual relationship with Y, a child aged 13 at the time who was the mother of Z.
- The father’s alleged sexual and physical abuse of Z.
- The father’s use of coercive control/ exploitation of D’s mother who was a vulnerable person.
The court found that the father’s relationship with Y had been inappropriate and that there had been an element of grooming involved. The father admitted to having indecent images of children on his mobile phone. Although the father was acquitted of sexually abusing Z after a criminal trial, at this fact-finding it was found that there was some corroborating evidence which pointed towards Z having been sexually abused by her father. Notwithstanding this, the court was not satisfied that the local authority had discharged the burden of proving this allegation, but underlined that in accordance with the case law this did not mean that it formed the view that Z had lied. The court found that the threshold criteria, as set out in Section 31(2) of the Children Act 1989, had been met.
