Press Release

High profile barrister sentenced for attempting to pervert the course of justice

Embargoed until Wednesday 19th September 00.01am 

 

·                    Bruce Hyman, barrister and radio/TV producer, sentenced today

 

·                    Hyman brought to justice following his attempt to frame an innocent father and Families Need Fathers (FNF)

 

Bruce Hyman, barrister, well known script writer and producer of programs such as Radio 4’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Unreliable Evidence, will be sentenced today (Wednesday 19^th September) at Bristol Crown Court for attempting to pervert the course of justice in a child contact case involving separated father Simon Eades, whilst acting for Mr. Eades’ former wife. Hyman pleaded guilty to the charges in Taunton Crown Court on August 6th.

 

Shortly before a September 2006 hearing on his application for increased contact with his child, Mr Eades received an email appearing to be from Families Need Fathers. The email purported to notify him of a legal precedent favourable to his case. When Mr Eades presented the precedent to the court, Hyman exposed it as a forgery and claimed our member or someone acting on his behalf to be responsible for it.

           

Subsequently, the material was traced by Mr. Eades, with FNF’s help, to a London computer shop which had a CCTV record. It clearly showed Mr Hyman sending the forgery himself from his laptop.

 

FNF hopes that sharp practice of this order is exceptional. However, the English family courts are secret and in the normal course their proceedings are subject only to the limited scrutiny of the Court of Appeal. Much goes on in family courts that would be unacceptable if more widely known.

 

The Ministry of Justice consultation ‘Confidence & Confidentiality: Openness in Family Courts – a new approach’ which admits that public confidence in the courts is at risk of being “undermined”^[1], proposes to increase the information coming out of the courts, but fails to allow greater access into the courts.

 

John Baker, FNF Chair, said: “The operations of the family courts must be open to scrutiny. The terms of that scrutiny must be set by people who are independent of the court and whose own work can be publicly examined. 

 

It is not enough that the system remain closed, but permitting selected information to be used publicly.

 

People behave better and are more careful in public, or where there is a possibility that what they do will become known, than they do in private. The way decisions are made in the secret family courts have become lax and arrogant”.

 

The case of Bruce Hyman should act as an urgent call for change lest more injustices of this sort are overlooked.

 

FNF representative Rebecca Kingdom-Kruszewski, attending the sentencing in Bristol today, is available for comment on this extraordinary case (see details below).

-  ENDS -

Note for editors: Families Need Fathers (FNF) is a registered charity providing information and support on shared parenting issues arising from family breakdown, and support to divorced and separated parents, irrespective of gender or marital status. Our primary concern is the maintenance of the child’s relationship with both parents. Founded in 1974, FNF helps thousands of parents every year.

 

 

 

 

Please see Families Need Fathers ‘programme for change’ Father’s Day Manifesto