'Please don't take my baby!' The harrowing video that a council tried to suppress By James Tozer and Steve Doughty, Social Affairs Correspondent A couple who made a harrowing video of their baby boy being taken away by social workers at six hours old yesterday backed a senior judge's call to expose family courts to "the glare of publicity." The parents secretly filmed the moment council staff seized their fourth child after being told they were not capable of looking after his elder siblings. They then posted the clip online. The footage shows the 36-year-old mother, who has learning difficulties, screaming "No!" as social workers warn they will "get physical" if the couple resist. Yesterday her husband backed Sir James Munby's attack on the secrecy which shrouds Britain's family courts as he rejected the local council's bid for an injunction to suppress the video. The injunction was also designed to prevent anyone knowing the names of the social workers, or discovering the name of the local authority that applied for the order, Staffordshire County Council. Sir James, president of the Family Division of the High Court, also rejected the council's bid to bar the father from sharing information about the case. And in a dramatic intervention, he said there was a "pressing need" for more transparency in the family justice system as a whole. The 41-year-old husband at the centre of the case said yesterday: "Taking our children away destroyed my life and my wife's life. I posted the video to show how draconian the state can be even when social workers have accepted we would never have harmed our children. The father, whose comments could not be printed until the judge's intervention, added: "Hopefully if there's more openness in how these decisions are made it will prevent injustices." They claim social workers removed their baby because they decided the mother was incapable of bringing them up because of her learning disability. The couple said it was only after they had a second daughter in 2008 they came "under the microscope." Two years later, the mother was accused of pulling her elder daughter's hair - which she denies - and after an investigation, both girls were taken away. The couple had a third daughter last year, but she was taken away aged six hours, the same fate that was to befall their baby son, known only as J. Accompanied by police, social workers allegedly citing "risk of emotional harm" took him away following his birth in April, unaware the father was filming on a computer webcam. In the video, the mother is clearly distraught as her husband remonstrates with officers and council staff at their Staffordshire home. In June the father was given a suspended six-week prison sentence for refusing to co-operate in removing the video from internet sites. An edited version of it plus the parents" account can only now be published following Sir James's ruling, although they still cannot be named in order to protect their children, three of whom have now been adopted. The father said: "The social workers said my wife and I were in a volatile relationship. There has never been violence. The court was told there was a risk the children would come to harm in the future. He added: "The judge's comments are a step in the right direction, but I'd like to see the Press allowed into all family courts to stop social workers getting away with telling lies." The father said that although social workers considered his wife disabled, her disability benefits were halted after intervention by council staff, and because neither work they had to be supported by family. Staffordshire council said it had never tried to shield itself from scrutiny. "I believe any parent in this situation should be able to tell their story, but the prime interest of the local authority is that the child has to be protected," council leader Philip Atkins said. Last night the British Association of Social Workers warned that encouraging aggrieved families to publicise their experiences risked "demonising" their profession. Chief executive Bridget Robb said: "Such images do not tell the whole story. If the public want children to be protected, they have to get behind social workers, understand that removal of a child is not a decision taken lightly by them alone. Sire James Munby told his colleagues they must learn to deal with offensive and defamatory material on the internet, rather than "throw up their hands and moan." The country's most senior family law judge said much of what is posted online about the courts is "highly objectionable" but the law had to adapt to it and judges must stick to the "fundamentally important principles" of free speech. Sir James spoke during his High Court "Child J" ruling this week, one of the first to advise judges on how to deal with material on the web and social media. He said: "The internet allows anyone, effectively at the click of a mouse, to publish whatever they wish. The consequence is that the internet is awash with material couched in the most exaggerated, extreme, offensive and often defamatory terms, much of which has only a tenuous connection with objectively verifiable truth. The law must develop and adapt, as it always has done down the years in response to other technologies. We must not simply throw up our hands in despair and moan that the internet is uncontrollable. Nor can we simply abandon basic legal principles.