Judge damns UK adoption couple

The Kilshaws are the subject of a critical court report

LONDON, England -- A British couple who tried to adopt U.S. twins over the Internet were "likely to cause harm" to the baby girls, according to the judge who heard their adoption plea.

Alan and Judith Kilshaw bought the twins for £8,000 ($11,500) from a California-based Internet adoption agency but lost them when they were taken into care by British social services.

Extracts from Mr Justice Kirkwood's decision in the London High Court hearing reveal the Kilshaws were already known to their local social services department for "concerns about parenting."

REFERENCE Internet adoptions   •  Offers abound on Web   •  Web adoption pitfalls   •  Q&A: UK court ruling   •  Quick vote

The judge criticised Mrs Kilshaw's "volatile and angry behaviour" and noted the couple's "overriding preoccupation with the media."

He concluded: "I am fully satisfied of the likelihood of future harm to the twins in terms of impairment of their intellectual, emotional, social and behavioural development."

Documents containing details of the evidence about the Kilshaws' worthiness as parents and the judge's ruling -- all of which were heard behind closed doors -- were released on Tuesday.

They reveal how a social worker told the hearing that the Kilshaws had demonstrated "no affection towards, or interactions with" the twins.

On one occasion there was "heavy handling" of one of the babies by 47-year-old Mrs Kilshaw.

Another social worker from Flintshire County Council told the court: "Mrs Kilshaw shouts and says most bizarre things and does not seem to know what she is doing.

"She is childlike, as if she can say anything and do anything without consequences and then walk away from it at the end."

When social workers took the infants away from the Kilshaws, "they showed no signs of distress at all, still less did they cry", the judge observed, adding that Mrs Kilshaw had "strident and often abrasive views and perceived herself, on her own selective recall of what has occurred, to be the victim of injustice".

He added: "I was struck by their lack of insight into the impact on the twins of the very unsettling events in their lives.

"The focus of Mr and Mrs K was on absolving themselves from any responsibility for harm."

The judge's ruling continued: "That the twins have suffered significant harm is, in the circumstances, I find, more or less inevitable when the changes and turmoil in their lives are recalled."

Mr Justice Kirkwood added: "Arrangements for the twins had been ill conceived, ill thought through, and poorly implemented.

"A very clear impression was given that the welfare of the twins was subordinated to Mr and Mrs Kilshaw's involvement with the media."

Mr Justice Kirkwood was also critical of a report commissioned by the Kilshaws from an unqualified social worker and presented to the U.S. court to support their adoption application.

It was "dangerous, misleading, superficial and shallow", said the judge, and warned foreign courts to treat similar documents with "extreme caution."

The Kilshaws, from Buckley, north Wales, bought Belinda and Kimberley from a Californian adoption agency on the Internet.

But American couple Richard and Vickie Allen claimed they had already "bought" the youngsters two months earlier and were duped into returning them to their natural mother, 28-year-old Tranda Wecker.

Wecker then re-sold them through baby broker Tina Johnson to the Kilshaws -- an adoption later ruled invalid.