When children are pawns: Vicky Haigh and Hampstead

Long before Hoaxtead was a knowing glint in Abraham Christie’s beady eye, there was Vicky Haigh.

Vicky had a problem. She had a little girl, whose father was her ex-husband, and she didn’t want the little girl’s father to have contact with her. The problem, you see, is that there was absolutely no legal reason for the father and daughter not to be in contact. And that pissed Vicky off, so she came up with a plan.

The plan was beautiful in its simplicity: she would claim that the father had sexually abused the little girl. Then the judge would be sure to order the father never to see his daughter again. Vicky would have her daughter all to herself. Problem solved!

She began coaching her little girl, telling her to say very bad things about her father. However, it wasn’t long before Vicky’s Brilliant Plan started to go pear-shaped.

The little girl was subjected to 4 medical examinations (none of which showed evidence of abuse), police interviews, and numerous contacts with professionals…all of whom agreed that the abuse was non-existent.

However, as the judge in Vicky’s court case, Rt. Hon. Sir Nicholas Wall, said in his August 2011 judgment, “As a result of inappropriate pressures and prompting, X came to make and believe the allegations. The mother used allegations of sexual abuse manipulatively as part of her irrational and longstanding hostility to contact which she sought to obstruct”.

(Is this starting to sound just a wee bit familiar?)

More from the judge: “…while professing her concern for X’s well-being, the mother consistently prioritise(d) her own needs over those of her daughter”. Unsurprisingly, the court found in favour of the father, and the the little girl was removed from Vicky’s care in 2010.

Despite the court’s findings, though, Vicky was unable to accept any of their judgments:

Ms Haigh, aided and abetted by one Elizabeth Watson, is not only unable to accept the judges’ findings but has put into the public domain the false allegations that she has not had justice and that X, contrary to both judges’ findings, has been sexually abused by her father. Those allegations have been posted on the worldwide web and are in the public domain. In addition, the mother has circulated the allegations to the parents of X’s school and to Mr. Tune’s fellow employees at his place of work. All this, of course, has been done illicitly and in breach of orders of the court.

(Wow. This is so close it’s almost scary! Is it possible that Elizabeth Watson and the Hoaxtead hawkers have read from the same play-book?)

One of the Haigh case’s outcomes should be of interest to those who’ve been avidly promoting Hoaxtead: Elizabeth Watson was found to have sent “aggressive, intimidating” emails to council staff involved in the case, which had found their way on to websites and “compromised the well-being” of a child.

Who could have guessed that the courts would frown upon this sort of thing?

According to a 24 August, 2011 article in The Star:

Sir Nicholas, sitting at a High Court hearing in London, said Watson had defaced copies of court orders with ‘childish scribblings’, ‘knew precisely what she was doing’ and ‘thought herself above the law’.

He jailed Watson – who gave her name as ‘Elizabeth of the Watson Family’ and described herself as an ‘investigator’ who was a ‘Montessori-trained teacher’ with a background in ‘child psychology’ – after revealing details of the custody battle over the child….

We wonder: has Sabine read this? Is she taking notes?

Watson, from Bournemouth, Dorset, told the court that she was ‘most sorry’ and suggested she had been ‘badly advised’ and ‘misguided’ after being asked to help with the custody case by the child’s mother, Victoria Haigh.

Sir Nicholas said Ms Haigh, with Watson’s ‘misguided assistance’, had then breached court orders by putting ‘unwarranted and scandalous’ allegations into the public domain via email and the internet.

Watson had sent emails which identified parties in the case and criticised social workers and police.

She had referred to ‘social disservices’ and ‘abductees’ who ‘snatched children’ and ‘tortured innocent parents’ and written about ‘nationwide child snatching reaching epidemic proportions’.

“You have seriously breached an order and seriously compromised the well-being of a child,” said the judge.

“There is no question of ‘misunderstood’. You knew exactly what you were doing – writing the most aggressive, intimidating emails calling everyone in sight ‘corrupt’. You wrote on the court orders you were sent. That is not someone who misunderstood.”

Indeed.

Obviously, the Haigh case is missing a few of Hoaxtead’s more dramatic elements: the whole ‘satanic baby-killing cannibal’ angle, for example; as far as we know, Elizabeth Watson didn’t do her damage from Parimaribo, Suriname; and Vicky Haigh didn’t bugger off to Spain when she realised the shit was about to hit the fan.

But still, we think the Haigh case is an interesting precedent, in legal terms—and if the clowns who currently shill for Hoaxtead had any brains whatsoever, they’d take it as a cautionary tale.

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This article was originally published on 31 October 2015.