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Prove That Child's Yours!
Mother detained as police show 'lack of tact'.
When Julie Maynard went to France for the day with her husband and young mixed-race son Joshua, she had no idea it would be such a drama. Julie was stopped and questioned at the Channel crossing about her relationship with her son.
When she insisted that he was her child, she was questioned for several hours and told: "It is obvious he has nothing to do with you".
Julie, a legal advocate from Ware in Hertfordshire, was taken to a separate detention room - leaving her son, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy and autism in distress - before eventually being released.
She described the episode as an "unpleasant and frightening experience" and has now received compensation and an apology from Kent Police for their "lack of tact".
'More and more people are being stopped under the Terrorism Act,' said Julie. 'There's absolutely nothing in the act to stop individual officers abusing their powers'.
'They have a difficult job to do in a difficult climate, but their approach needs to be reasonable and not presumptive that every person is somehow guilty of a possible terrorism or criminal offence,' she added.
Inspector Helen Shaw, from Kent Police's Frontier Operations, said: 'The officer's manner (was) insensitive, lacking in tact and her conduct overall lacked the professionalism I expect.'
Kent Police denied that they had separated Miss Maynard from her sun and husband or that they had detained her under the Terrorism Act.
A spokesman said: 'Miss Maynard was asked to go to an office voluntarily with the officer to reassure her about why the checks were being done, before spending some time with her registering her complaint, along with a uniformed police sergeant.'
'At no point were the couple or the boy detained under the Terrorism Act.'
The spokesman said the police officer involved had moved to other duties but not because of this incident.
'Our border officers have a duty to make rigorous checks at our ports. Police routinely stop vehicles and often have to make a quick assessment of the circumstances.'
Source:telegraph.co.uk
