Tonight | Episodes | Don't Take My Baby

Don't Take My Baby

Published: Monday, 26 November 2007, 12:22PM

A British woman who has been told by social services that her baby could be taken into care 15 minutes after it is born has fled the country.

Fran Lyon, 22, says that she now plans to live abroad permanently and to even apply for foreign citizenship in the hopes that she will be able to keep her daughter, whom she has already named Molly.

Tonight with Trevor McDonald exclusively followed her on the journey and will broadcast the interview on Monday at 8pm on ITV1.

Fran, whose baby is due the first week of January, says that what she describes as an “abusive” birth plan given to her by social services in Northumberland County Council drove her to leave the UK.

The plan document, which Tonight has seen, said that she would not be able to breastfeed the baby and would only be able to have contact through supervised visits. She says she was told that breastfeeding was not permitted because she might ingest poison in a bid to hurt the baby.

Social services became involved in the case in July after Fran called the police to help her deal with an incident with her ex-partner. Fran told them she had mental health problems as a teenager but had recovered. However, she says that social services fear she could develop Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy. The controversial condition is said to lead mothers to seek attention by harming their child or claiming it is ill.

The move overseas means that Fran will not have her network of friends and family regularly around to support her after the baby is born.

Fran, who was previously living in Hexham, Northumberland, has access to some family money to help pay the bills for her new home abroad and hopes to continue computer-related work from her overseas location. Before her pregnancy, she studied neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh.

Speaking to Tonight from her secret location, Fran said: “It’s not what I envisaged when I found out I was pregnant. But at least now I can make sure that I can do what’s right for Molly and that was the most important factor in any of this.

“I think now I just feel relieved. It’s taken that stress and that pressure away. Of course it’s going to be a massive challenge being out here and making it work but I can spend the last few weeks of my pregnancy focusing on getting ready for Molly and making sure everything’s as good as it can be for her.”

Describing her birth plan, she told Tonight: “It said that I’d be allowed to hold her until the cord was cut, then no more physical contact until the social worker was present. That within half an hour she’d have to be taken from the delivery suite to special care. It said that if I didn’t consent to the plan if I didn’t let them take her they’d bring the police in.”

Fran’s lawyer William Bache, who successfully defended Angela Cannings against an unsafe conviction for murdering her two baby sons, says he’s seen no evidence that Fran might harm her child. He describes social services’ decision as “draconian.”

Lyon says that the mental health problems she had as a teenager – she started self-harming at 15, had an eating disorder and has been treated at psychiatric hospitals for borderline personality disorder – are now behind her and she would never harm her baby.

“From about 15, 16, I struggled quite a lot with my mood and quite a lot of depression and self harm and with eating disorders and that was all following …quite a difficult time as a child. But by the time I reached sort of 18, I was back to being fit and well again.

“The harming myself was a way of dealing with how I was feeling... harming somebody else would have been an entirely different process and it just wasn’t one that occurred to me.”

Tonight can reveal that a recent assessment done by a psychiatrist, retained by social services, said that given the lack of evidence to show that her personality disorder would translate to Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy that Fran should be supervised in a mother and baby unit and allowed to bond with and breastfeed the baby. Fran has volunteered to do this, but has yet to be offered the option. Two other psychiatrists, including one that originally treated Fran as a teenager, have also said there is no actual evidence to suggest she would develop the condition.

Previous medical records indicated that Fran had appeared in hospital a number of times with mysterious symptoms and there was some concern they could have been faked illnesses. But Fran told Tonight that she was recently diagnosed with a rare condition called Angioedema that she says would now retrospectively explain many of those visits.

Social services are currently awaiting a further forensic psychologist report due later this month. But with only five weeks until her due date, Fran fears she could go into labour beforehand and be subjected to the current birth plan. A multi-agency child protection conference would have to apply for an emergency protection order and then the court would make a decision on whether the baby would continue to be kept from the mother.

A Northumberland County Council spokeswoman said: “Legally we are unable to comment on individual cases and we do not believe that it is in the best interests of any mother or child to disclose personal details in a public forum. Inevitably this does mean only one side is being reported. However in Northumberland safeguarding children is our top priority. Furthermore arrangements in Northumberland were rated as good in a recent rigorous government inspection. It was reported that 'good action was taken to enable parents to keep their children safe in the home and the community.”

“Ms Lyon and her legal advisor have attended all of the case conferences and have been fully informed of the concerns of the professionals involved in her case. Unfortunately we cannot comment on what is discussed at such meetings or disclose related documents”

Bill Bache, Fran’s lawyer, says that Northumberland County Council’s approach had wider implications for the rest of the country.

Bache explained: “If you have suffered mental health problems as a child, induced perhaps by the actions of others, and perhaps from the basis that you are fundamentally a perfectly healthy, normal person, you are able with appropriate assistance to overcome those difficulties and if you like return to your former state of health.

"Then you should be permitted to live a normal life, have your children and so on and so forth. Otherwise we as a country seem to be in danger of condemning anybody who has had difficulties in their past, we are condemning them to not to be able to look after their own children. This seems to me to be a very sinister trend.”