Belinda tries to drum up the faithful

How can you tell Belinda’s got a potentially very expensive court case coming up?

She gets out there and tries to start drumming up the faithful, that’s how.

This tear-jerking missive was in our in-box this morning, via Sabine’s Voluntary Public Interest Advocacy blog:

Dear All

MCKENZIE FRIENDS ON THE LINE, LANDMARK CASE!

Just to let you know, in case any within orbit might be interested to come along, that Sabine and I/the Association of McKenzie Friends are up in front of Mrs Justice Simler in the ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE, ADMIN COURT, THURSDAY 25 FEBRUARY. 2 hours have been allocated to the hearing but we don’t as yet know the time (the usual ploy to minimise the number of supporters in the courtroom, no doubt).

Here’s where you can check after 1pm on Wednesday: https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/court-lists/list-rcj 

Thanks for the tip, Belinda. We’ll be sure to send along a few observers.

As for this being ‘the usual ploy to minimise the number of supporters in the courtroom’, we would suggest that as someone who claims to have extensive experience with legal matters, you might have noticed that this is in fact standard procedure, not some strange punitive ploy directed against Belinda and her ragtag band of loonies.

The issue basically is whether McKenzie Friends should be charged costs for assisting in litigants’ cases. The Treasury Solicitor is trying to get £2000 out of us for helping Melissa Laird, our US mum marooned in HMP Holloway alongside Gloria Musa in 2011-13, pursue a Judicial Review and avoid deportation back to the US while her then 5 year-old boy remained in the care of Barnet Council. (Yes, that Council and that judge yet again…).

She/we were unsuccessful and she was summarily put on a Virgin Atlantic flight on the morning of 12 September 2013 and dumped in Washington Dulles Airport in her wheelchair (she’d been roughed up in Holloway) without money or documents. The $200 I rushed over to Heathrow for her on the morning of her flight of course hardly went anywhere and had to be topped up several times over the following weeks. She was still living in the airport in by now freezing temperatures in December…

Terrible story, but Melissa is a great fighter (she sent the above image) and has long since rehabilitated herself; she got herself back onto her legs (by painful persistence), found a job as a long-distance truck-driver and now has a small house somewhere in the Virginia backwoods. She remains determined to return to the UK to retrieve her son and this is where we are now at – the final chapter in Melissa’s case has to be a happy one, reunion of mother and son, nothing less will do.

Interesting that Belinda leaves so much of this story untold. She conveniently leaves out Ms Laird’s bizarre behaviour, her adoption of multiple false identities, her neglect of her son’s special needs, her complete inability to tell the truth…all detailed in this judgement, which makes for some fascinating if disturbing reading.

Nor does Belinda bother getting into the pesky details of exactly how she and Sabine blundered their way into paying £2,000 in court costs…but that’s classic Belinda for you. If her lips are moving, you can be quite certain that she’s lying.

Hold onto your hats, here comes a whiny bit:

It would be massively unfair for us to be made to pay up, especially as we have always worked for free/as a public service and of course it would set a very dangerous precedent for all McKenzie Friends from henceforth. Therefore, we’ve engaged the best ‘costs’ barrister in London to fight for us on Thursday. He says it’s going to be a ‘fun day in court’ and could make legal history!

At the same time he has prudently warned us that in the worst-case scenario, that we lose, we/I could be stung for massive costs, enough to lose me my house… (Sabine is OK because she’s penniless). He well knows that there are many in high places who would like to clear us pesky McKenzies out of the court system altogether – we may not/cannot win cases but we can be witness to all the skulduggery going on and report that outwards to the world, which is exactly what we in the Association of McKenzie Friends have been doing, as ‘voluntary public interest advocates’, as we call ourselves.

Belinda’s proposed defence—that because she f*cks up other people’s lives for free, she shouldn’t be made to pay costs arising from her own incompetence—should prove fascinating.

Also her lawyer sounds like a most peculiar fellow: “Don’t worry, Belinda, we could be about to make history here, but if it all goes south, you’ll lose your house and your best friend will be out on the street! But it’ll be a fun day in court! Tally-ho the fox!” Please remind us never to hire him.

What goes on in ‘Gulag UK’ particularly involving families and children is now well-known in the EU and across the world, thanks to Sabine’s marvellous reporting and networking skills – see the pic of her latest mailing to various parties in Brussels & London:

• Letter to the Home Secretary
• Satanist Ritual Abuse of Children – a report for the Children’s Commissioner in 2012
• CSA Unsolved means Uninvestigated by Police, says High Court Judge
• How Alleged Abusers become Accusers of Whistleblowers.

If you’re thinking to join us on Thursday PLEASE REPLY TO THIS EMAIL and I’ll let you know the time & court as soon as we have it, or, please check the listings tomorrow.

We think it could be just a tiny exaggeration to state that the UK’s treatment of families and children (which is admittedly problematic, but that’s a post for another day) is now known worldwide due to Sabine. In fact, if you look at the stats on the left sidebars of her various blogs, you’ll see that her readership is minuscule.

HAMPSTEAD CASE

Another story beginning to come good? As hopefully everyone has heard by now, the 2 children have still not yet been handed to their father, as originally planned for August last summer then again for February this year; I firmly believe we the public can take some of the credit for helping avert this ultimate disaster. But, there is still a long way to go with the case as a whole; the chief suspect is still at large, over 60 children are still in care/at risk, there has been no proper investigation and what of all those other children and very likely babies also still in terrible danger??

Hang on just a tick…isn’t Belinda under an injunction not to discuss this case online?

And we do wonder where she’s getting her info’: even if it’s true that the children have not been handed back to their father (a fact that is not in evidence), the courts are not governed by public pressure. That would be called ‘mob rule’, and a quick skim back through history will confirm that it’s almost never been a good idea.

In the meantime proceedings designed to put Neelu and Sabine in prison over their prominent part in the affair grind on in the courts. The latest charges, ever-changing according to what will ‘stick’ in court, are now in both cases ‘Intimidation of Witnesses’, the witnesses being a group of 4 out of the original 6 from Christchurch Hampstead (the [person] named by the children as a key abuser failed to turn up to court in October and now resides in Spain…).

In Neelu’s case a trial date has tentatively been set, 11 & 12 July but on FRIDAY 26 FEBRUARY she goes back to BLACKFRIARS CROWN COURT on an application for DISMISSAL of the case, please check the listings for the time.

More lies. Neelu has been facing the charge of witness intimidation since early September; and Sabine was charged with the same offence in late December/early January. The charges are certainly not ‘ever-changing according to what will stick in court’, but are the result of an ongoing investigation into their activities online.

We have no doubt that Belinda is well aware of this, but prefers to attempt to stir up public outrage with her false statements.

Sabine having only just ‘graduated’ from the Magistrates Court at Highbury has her first Plea & Case Management hearing at BLACKFRIARS CROWN COURT on MONDAY 7 MARCH at 9.30am – but – if Neelu’s case is dismissed on Friday Sabine will also apply for a DISMISSAL on 7 March.

(Sabine’s bail conditions are that she must not communicate either with the witnesses or with Neelu – certain types are clearly worried!!)

We pointed out just the other day that in a case where two people are charged with colluding to commit the same crime, it’s hardly surprising that the courts would order them not to communicate with one another. Ah well…far be it from Belinda to know anything about the law.

The rest of Belinda’s post is taken up with reminders of public meetings, and this post has already gone on too long by half.

We should just add that while we won’t be able to attend Sabine and Belinda’s ‘history-making’ court date on Thursday, if any of our readers has time to spare, we’d be most interested to hear your impressions.

We fervently hope that Sabine and Belinda won’t just make history, their Association of McKenzie Friends will become history.