Was Ella really “prevented” from attending court?

One of the many complaints Ella has made in the numerous video interviews she’s given lately is that she was “prevented” from attending court when Mrs Pauffley was making her fact-finding judgement in February and March 2015. Her gullible dupes interviewers generally nod knowingly, clearly believing it’s standard practise for the powers-that-be to prevent poor innocent mothers from attending court. While we’d be the last people to argue that the system is always fair and equitable, there’s considerable evidence in this case to demonstrate that, far from being excluded or prevented from attending court, Ella decided not to attend…and then whined when her interests weren’t represented to her own satisfaction.

While Mrs Justice Pauffley’s fact-finding judgement makes reference to Ella’s absence, noting that she was as certain as she could be that Ella and Abe’s absence was deliberate, another document explores Ella’s claims in more detail. Ella’s appeal of Pauffley J’s March 2015 judgement, heard by Lord Justice Ryder and Lord Justice Bean in late July through early August 2015, makes for fascinating reading.

Incidentally, Ella did not appear at the appeal hearing either, but instead sent Mr Aseem Taj, who our readers will no doubt remember from last summer’s witness intimidation trial of Sabine McNeill and Neelu Berry, where he made quite an impression.

The appeal judgement lays out Ella’s grounds for appeal, summarised as follows:

Grounds 1 and 2 are repetitive and stripped of some meaningless phraseology, they represent a submission that the police investigation (note, not the court proceedings) were procedurally irregular because there was (A) a lack of prompt investigation, (B) a lack of effective investigation and (C) a breach of Police and Criminal Evidence Act codes which separately or together represented a breach of the children’s Article 3 ECHR rights.

It is to be noted that the independent legal team representing the children do not support the mother’s position in this regard.

If the submission is to have any effect, it has to be read as asserting that the judge was wrong in law to place reliance on any of the materials that originated from the police investigation, including the ABE interviews of the children, and/or that the judge’s factual conclusions were plainly wrong because of the flawed material upon which the same were based, i.e. no weight should have been placed on those materials.

Ground 3 is a submission that the mother was “prevented from participating” in the fact finding hearing in breach of her Article 6 ECHR right to a fair trial.

Ground 4 is that the judge’s consideration of the expert evidence of a consultant community paediatrician, Dr Hodes, was wrong, i.e. the judge should have placed much greater weight on that evidence.

Pointing out the “high hurdle that an Appellant must surmount to satisfy an appeal court that a finding of fact is perverse”, Ryder J noted that Ella had failed to satisfy that test, based on the material she had provided to the court.

The appeal judgement states that Ella didn’t appear in court on the first day of the hearing, 17 February 2015; nor did she send a legal representative in her stead. She did email Mrs Justice Pauffley’s clerk, not to explain her absence but only to ask whether Belinda McKenzie could represent her interests (and curiously, her parents’ interests, though they were not parties to the proceedings).

The judge investigated why the mother was absent given that she had known of the hearing date for over a month. Ms McKenzie, who had been involved since the mother had dispensed with the services of her first legal team, told the court that the mother was at an unknown location somewhere overseas and that she had gone there fearing that she might be arrested.

Ms McKenzie said that the mother felt harassed by a third party. The third party was not named in court, but Ms McKenzie described the mother’s flight overseas to be the consequence of the actions of the police relating to the removal of what Ms McKenzie described as “offending material from the internet”.

One can safely deduce from this that the mother feared that someone would take steps to arrest her and she had decided to leave the country to avoid that event. Although Mr Taj does not know of her whereabouts and, for example, whether that is overseas or not, in submissions he confirmed the mother’s rationale for not being present in court at the fact finding hearing.

Of course, we know that on 12 February, the police visited Ella with a view to discussing possible offences committed under Section 4 of the Harassment Act 1997. The police spoke through the letter slot to a person who identified himself as Ella’s lawyer, who managed to put them off while Ella and Abe made their escape through a first-floor window, ran along the roof line of three or four houses, and climbed down onto some nearby garages, where they disappeared from sight. Abe and Ella have since made much of the myth that the police involved were carrying “medical kits” with which to sedate Ella, but no evidence has ever been provided to show this.

However, it’s clear that Ella believed she would be arrested, and also believed there was a strong likelihood the charges of Harassment 4 would stick, which is why she bolted for Spain, where she and Abe have been since that time.

As for Ella’s claim that she was prevented from attending the fact-finding hearing,

In support of the permission to appeal application there is no material which suggests that the mother was prevented from participating in the fact finding hearing. … There is no witness statement from the mother and no application to adduce additional evidence from her relating to her participation. That is a remarkable omission given the strength with which the mother’s present lawyers assert that her Article 6 right to a fair trial has been violated.

But wait, there’s more!

It should be recollected that the mother had previously chosen to divest herself of her lawyers for reasons which she is entitled to keep to herself. The judge invited her to participate and she chose not to do so.
The mother could have attended the court as a litigant in person with or without her McKenzie friend, and insofar as it was proper, she would have been assisted by the court to put her case. She could have requested a telephone or video link. She could have requested an adjournment.

She did none of these things because she chose not to participate. There is a finding of fact from the judge to that effect. In my judgment, the judge had ample material upon which to base her conclusion. Accordingly, it is wrong to say that the mother was “prevented from participating” in the hearing.

In other words, the court would have accommodated Ella’s participation in whatever way she wished—as a litigant in person, by telephone or video link, or even by an adjournment until such time as she was able to attend. She availed herself of none of these, but instead now goes about whining that she was “prevented” from attending.

It’s just another of Abe and Ella’s many, many distortions of reality, which sadly, her followers appear to believe. More fool them.