A leading judge has criticised social services bosses who asked for a toddler to be adopted after raising concerns about his father’s links to the “racist” and “immoral” English Defence League.
Staff at Darlington Borough Council had also been troubled because the man, who is in his mid-20s, had sex with a 13-year-old girl when aged 17 - and accepted a police caution.
But Sir James Munby, the most senior family court judge in England, dismissed the adoption application and said the 13-month-old boy should live with his father.
Sir James, president of the Family Division of the High Court, made his complaints in a written ruling after analysing the case at a family court hearing in Middlesbrough.
He did not identify the family involved.
“The city fathers of Darlington and Darlington’s director of social services are not guardians of morality,” he said. “Nor is this court.”
He said the justification for “state intervention” was “harm to children, not parental immorality” - and he said courts must guard against the “risk of social engineering”.
Sir James said the council had “conspicuously” failed to show that the toddler would be at risk of harm or neglect in the care of his father.
“It is an undoubted fact of life that many youths and young men have sexual intercourse with underage girls.
"But if such behaviour were to be treated without more (evidence) as grounds for care proceedings years later, the system would be overwhelmed,” he added.
“Some 17-year-old men who have sexual intercourse with 13-year-old girls may have significantly distorted views about sex and children, and therefore pose a risk to their own children of whatever age or gender, but that is not automatically true of all such men.”
And he added: “The mere fact, if fact it be, that the father was a member, probably only for a short time, of the English Defence League is neither here nor there, whatever one may think of its beliefs and policies.
"It is concerning to see the local authority again harping on about the allegedly ‘immoral’ aspects of the father’s behaviour.”
Sir James said the man and the toddler’s mother had been in a relationship for several months during 2013.
He said shortly after becoming pregnant the woman had been jailed after being convicted of dishonesty offences and sexual offences against a “minor”.
Their son had been born while she was serving her sentence and taken into local authority foster care.
The woman had not put herself forward as a carer but had said the father should care for the little boy.
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