An innocent couple had their child taken away from them for 12 months after a court wrongly found they had deliberately harmed him.
In a written judgement, a High Court judge said the couple had borne “an almost intolerable burden of being unjustly accused” and their care of the child had always been “exemplary”.
The couple, from Oldham, had their child taken into care at the age of two and a half weeks after a neuroradiologist suggested a small brain haemorrhage was the result of non-accidental injury .
The case was later taken to the High Court, where further experts concluded that the boy had suffered a period of asphyxia in the womb and not an inflicted injury, a view now backed by the original neuroradiologist.
Taking the unusual step of publishing his judgment in a private hearing, Mr Justice Ryder said: “This is not a case of where there is ‘no smoke without fire’, this is a case where a family court and the expert who advised it got it wrong.”