Is a child, harmed by the mother’s drinking during pregnancy, entitled to compensation, and what are the implications for harmed family members more generally?
The following is taken, slightly adapted, from the BBC News website 5th March 2014.
A council – which cannot be named for legal reasons but is located somewhere in the north-west of England – is set to argue that a child who was born with serious health defects as a result of her mother's drinking habits should be given a compensation payout for being the victim of a crime. The child, who also cannot be named, was diagnosed with foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) at birth. She is now six years old and living with foster parents.
Her mother has never been convicted of any offence, but during an earlier tribunal hearing she was alleged to have "maliciously administered poison so as to endanger life or inflict grievous bodily harm" - a crime under section 23 of the Offences Against the Person Act. An earlier tribunal hearing found she had "consumed grossly excessive quantities of alcohol" and had been "using drugs". The case has been going on for four years and the solicitor representing the unnamed council, says if the judge finds in its favour it could set a precedent. "This is an unusual and horrific case," he said. "It centres around whether by drinking while pregnant, and knowing it would affect the baby, a crime has taken place."
In 2011, a hearing ruled that the mother's drinking was "directly attributable to a crime of violence" and so the child was eligible for a payout. However, this decision was overturned on appeal after the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority challenged the judgement. On Tuesday the case was given permission to be heard in the Court of Appeal. No date has yet been set for the hearing.
A question for AFINet
I don’t know what you think, but my view is that criminalising drinking in pregnancy is inappropriate, unjust and vindictive, amounting to ‘blaming the victim’. But I do think it raises a wider issue about which there might be more debate. The issue I think is this: To what extent is it fair to say that family members harmed by the excessive drinking (or drug use or gambling) of others – the unborn foetus is a special case of family harm you might say – have been abused by the other’s drinking (by their drinking not by them personally is an important distinction I would want to make) and are entitled to some compensation?
We have just discovered that the AFINet Membership application form has not been working for the l... Read more
AFINet is a free-to-join Network, providing a platform which: brings together researchers, poli... Read more
Notice of Annual General Meeting (AGM) Preceded by a Webinar about Family Members Affecte... Read more
Family Drug Support in New Zealand are using the 5-Step Method remotely, holding videoconferencing... Read more
A new report (“Medications for Opioid Use Disorder”) has been put onto the website under Country Rep... Read more
The next AFINet Newsletter is due to come out at the end of June, and there is a call to all members... Read more
Welcome to the 10th issue of the AFINet newsletter! As you may recall, we have adjusted the format o... Read more
AFINet Trustee Richard Velleman has added a list of AFINet-related scientific papers published from ... Read more
Conference Programme and Pack AFINET CONFERENCE PROGRAMME AFINET ABSTRACTS A... Read more
AFINet member Urvita Bhatia presents Poster and gives Twitter interview at the Wellcome Trust / Depa... Read more
AFINet members Anil Rane, Urvita Bhatia, Jim Orford, Richard Velleman and Abhijit Nadkarni recently ... Read more
Matua Raki (the national addiction workforce development centre in New Zealand) has been working clo... Read more
As part of the ‘Checkmate’ programme (reported elsewhere in this newsletter) , Gill and Richard Vell... Read more
Great to see an article in support of our 5-Step intervention for family members in the Feb '17 issu... Read more
Save the Date! On 1st & 2nd November 2016, Richard and Gill Velleman will be running a 2-day tr... Read more
I have just read two articles which come from countries which, as far as I know, have not produced ... Read more
Another paper from this recently completed 3 year study in the UK, which focuses on a subset of in... Read more
A paper outlining the main findings from a recently completed UK study in to bereavement through... Read more
AFINet 1st AGM Birmingham Wednesday July 15th 2015 Winterbourne Gardens, Edgbaston Park Road, B... Read more
In June 2015 AFINet members, Lorna Templeton and Richard Velleman, attended the final event of a m... Read more
Following the delivery by Richard Velleman and Gracemary Leung of a 2-day 5-Step Method training i... Read more
The following papers may be of interest to AFINet members. They report findings from a two year lo... Read more
Brazilian AFINet colleagues, Helen Sakiyama et al. have had a paper describing their research in Sao... Read more
Iran’s first research about family members affected by addiction has been published! In fact we thin... Read more
“How do I tell my children about what my mum's like?” Conflict and dilemma in experiences of adult... Read more
This multi-site randomised controlled trial aims to test the feasibility of implementing and evalua... Read more
The short questionnaire for family members (affected by addiction) – the SQFM(AA) – is starting to ... Read more
This is the first AFINet Newsletter so a big welcome to all AFINet members and to others of you wh... Read more
A team at the Centre for Child and Youth Research at Brunel University, London, led by Professor Jud... Read more
Although this interesting qualitative study by Maria Fotopoulou, of the School of Social and Politic... Read more
Is a child, harmed by the mother’s drinking during pregnancy, entitled to compensation, and what are... Read more
The first phase of this UK 3 year study (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council) has bee... Read more
A major 4 year project is underway in Northern Ireland. Building on previous work (further informati... Read more
Richard Velleman, a founder AFINet member, is travelling to Hong Kong in April to co-run (with Grace... Read more
Jan Ligon, PhD, LCSW Georgia State University The abuse of alcohol and other drugs in the older adu... Read more
During November 2013 Alex Copello was invited to give one of the keynote addresses at the Australa... Read more
This work builds on the first phase of UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) family research, with a... Read more
Jim Orford recently made two presentations about gambling and family members at the Third Internat... Read more
"1 in 3 people report having heavy drinkers in their lives" and "1 in 2 people report being harmed... Read more
Two projects have been completed in Northern Ireland with our AFINet partners to develop and evaluat... Read more
We have just discovered that the AFINet Membership application form has not been working for the last 6 months, due to a technical error. While it has been fixed now, all applications since May have been lost (we had assumed that the lack of applications was due to Covid!).
We are very sorry for this. If you have applied for membership and have not received a response, we would kindly ask you to re-complete and re-submit the form (to be found here: www.afinetwork.info/members/apply-for-membership). If you know of any colleagues or friends who have tried to join AFINet over this period, it would be very helpful if you could forward this information to them, and encourage them to re-apply.
The AFINet Trustees