Judge smoothes path for girl's adoption by dismissing guardian's Jewish objections

A High Court judge overruled yesterday the legal guardian of a two-year old girl who claimed that prospective adoptive parents found for her by a London council were "too Jewish".

Mr Justice Wilson dismissed the High Court claims of the guardian after what he branded a "lopsided" argument. He said the guardian had concentrated so much on the Jewish aspects of the lives of the prospective adopters that what they had to offer the little girl had not been mentioned.

Mr Justice Wilson said that on the basis of what he had read and heard of the Jewish couple, who were identified only as Mr and Mrs A, he considered they would be likely to make "devoted, wise, reliable and sensitive parents" for the little girl, identified only by the initial "C." Mr A is a 52-year-old businessman and Mrs A is a 35-year-old charity shop worker.

The judge said the guardian's approach, while not irrational, was "inflexible and doctrinaire". The girl's mother described herself as Church of England but that seemed a "rather empty label". The girl's father said he had no religion. The grandparents included Jews, Roman Catholics and a non-practising Turkish-Cypriot Muslim.

Mr Justice Wilson said: "Where a child's heritage is very mixed, it will rarely be possible for it all to be reflected in the identity of the adoptive home.

"The guardian's primary argument is that C should be placed in an essentially secular home, being a neutral environment from which she can gently be introduced in more or less equal measures to the Jewish, Irish Roman Catholic and Turkish-Cypriot Muslim elements of her identity, and that, in a nutshell, Mr and Mrs A's home is too Jewish," he said.

The guardian claimed that to match C for adoption with Mr and Mrs A would be both unlawful and irrational and that the Waltham Forest council's decision to match them should be quashed.

The judge said the mother and father had both been squatters and did not support or oppose the guardian's objection. Mr and Mrs A were Jewish and lived at a "significant, though not high, level of Jewish cultural observance".

The little girl had been taken into care after growing concern by the local authority about her well-being.

Dismissing the guardian's application for judicial review of the local authority recommendation of the suitability of C for adoption by Mr and Mrs A, he said opposition to the match had delayed C's adoption for over six months.