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-- A Sheriff has condemned social workers who removed a newborn baby from her mother only minutes after the child's umbilical cord was cut.
Two social workers and two sheriff officers entered the birthing suite as Corellie Bonhomme went into the final stages of labour. Immediately after her daughter, Fifi, was born, they took her away after obtaining a sheriff's order giving them permission to take custody.
But after a five-month fight and a lengthy hearing, another sheriff has ruled the decision and the way it was enforced was wrong, and he ordered the child to be reunited with her mother.
Ms Bonhomme, 34, has also received an apology from NHS Dumfries and Galloway over the incident at Dumfries Royal Infirmary last December. The trust has promised to change its working practices.
Now reunited with Fifi, Ms Bonhomme, who lives in Dumfries, said only the baby's head had appeared when the door opened and social workers accompanied by sheriff officers came into the room at the hospital to serve a Child Protection Order to take the baby into care.
She said medical staff restrained her as she tried to clamber down from the delivery table to stop Fifi, now aged six months, being taken away.
"I had a needle in my arm and was on morphine and was having gas and air when I heard a midwife say, 'oh, there's social work involvement'.
"I was in the throes of labour, quite dilated and about to deliver. My back was bent backwards, the head was sticking out and I was just about to push the rest of the body out. I raised my head and saw two men and two women walk into the birthing room.
"I pushed Fi out and the doctor took her away. I never got to touch her. I tried to get up. I was trying to get hold of the baby. But the staff said 'get back on the bed, get back on the bed'. The doctor put his hand just above my chest and pushed me down, saying the placenta was still to come out. It was horrific. I was going 'where's my baby, I want my baby'.
"I spent Christmas alone, crying and crying and wondering how I could get Fifi back."
The original child protection order was issued by Sheriff Kenneth Barr on 15 December last year, the day baby Fifi was born.
But Ms Bonhomme, who has had two previous children removed by social services in the London borough of Camden, was determined to win back her daughter.
Last month, Sheriff Kenneth Ross overruled the legal order and granted her custody.
He said Ms Bonhomme's long-running dispute with social workers in Camden had led to the authorities in Scotland taking the baby into care unnecessarily. He also criticised the way Fifi was taken. --
