Just today in a report by The Straits Times, a Singaporean woman and her husband were forced to give up custody of their children — a 7-year-old boy and a 5-year-old boy — to be placed for adoption in the UK early this month.
The issue lies in the fact that the authorities found out the couple used their children to demand welfare benefits from the state.
The woman, believed to be of South Indian origins, gave birth to her third child in Singapore in December 2015. She currently resides here. According to the UK High Court, she returned to Singapore when she was 38-weeks pregnant — just one month after British authorities began the process to take away the couple’s third child at birth to place in foster care.
UK High Court Justice Michael Keehan stated that this decision came with the history of the family’s circumstances in mind:
- Some time in 2004, the Singaporean moved over — and overstayed her allotted visa period — to the UK, presumably got married there and had two children in Birmingham.
- The husband lost his job in 2013, during which the court heard there weren’t any records of legitimate immigration entry. Thus, they were ineligible for state benefits.
- The family became destitute by April 2014, and the entire family was referred to the local authorities.
“Jump off a bridge”
It was clear to Justice Keehan that the couple had no intention of caring for their children. Despite the council providing cash for the family, the couple displayed a textbook example of “give an inch and he’ll take a yard” attitude as they demanded increasingly outrageous benefits, with the husband threatening to take his children and “jump off a bridge” if the family wasn’t provided with a new house and additional financial assistance.
Making things worse for the emotional development of the children, the couple would keep them from school and hide them in cupboards to prevent any contact with social workers. During one notable incident in 2015, the father taught his daughter to falsely accuse social workers of sexual abuse, launching a full police probe into the matter.
While deliberating the decision to keep the children in long-term foster care or put them up for adoption, Judge Keehan concluded that, based on evaluations of the couple since the first hearing in 2015, they had not changed their overall stance at all.
Last year, the father tried to get his children back to Singapore with documents claiming that the couple had the financial means to do so. With substantial evidence of emotional abuse, the judge denied his request.
“Adoption would bring to the children a degree of stability, security and permanence that long-term foster care cannot achieve,” concluded Justice Keehan.
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