[Note: Friends of Justice is a personal blog. I speak only for myself.]
The crucial question posed in the series “Global Child Rights and Wrongs” in the Sunday Guardian is how—and why—child protection laws should, over the past few decades, have led to the wrongful conviction of thousands of innocent parents and care givers world-wide, with devastating consequences for all concerned. The scale of these wrongful convictions would imply, if self-evidently, some unique malfunctioning of the legal system —a failure to fulfil its prime purpose of distinguishing guilt from innocence. To be sure, justice can miscarry—hence the opportunity provided by the appeal system to strike down judgements that, in the light of subsequent evidence, prove to be erroneous. But the situation here is quite different—a systematic (or systemic) miscarriage of justice entrenched within the legal system over many years.
Read the article by Dr. James Le Fanu in The Sunday Guardian.
