Secrecy stops us knowing the truth, but friends say she’s a great mum

BEcAUSE the courts are so secretive, it’s often very hard for the Press to establish the truth about what happens in family cases. But, certainly, loyal friends describe Samantha Baldwin as a perfect parent who dotes on her children.

Furious at the way she’s been treated by the English family court system that removed her two young boys and put them into care, they are raising money to pay her estimated £100,000 legal bill to fight the controversial ruling.

They are also planning street protests to highlight her unfair treatment, and accuse the police of acting ruthlessly by ‘hounding’ them and wrongly accusing them of helping her disappear.

A close friend and civil servant who has known her since her teens said yesterday: ‘Samantha’s whole life was her sons. She was amazingly devoted and we are proud of her and how she brought them up.

‘I’ve known Louis and Dylan since birth, and everything she did was for them. Something very wrong has happened here. There has been a mistake.

‘Both children adore her and she does them. They will be distraught at being taken from her and being given to strangers.’

Another friend, Beth, 37, added: ‘If ever there was a good mother, she was it. She didn’t go out at night, she was always there for them.

‘The system has badly let her down. It is heartbreaking to think those boys will no longer have their mother with them.

‘Everyone is rooting for her locally. There is nothing negative we can say about her. I have five children and they love Samantha. One was a particular friend of her eldest son Louis.

‘When he visited, Samantha would take them out to the local café as a treat. My children thought she was wonderful.’

During the ten-day search for Samantha, a graduate and middleclass marketing executive, police used sniffer dogs to scour her neighbourhood and visited houses of friends and family.

On the evening she vanished with her boys, her mother Dianne, 62, and sister Leonie, 36, were put in police custody for 30 hours, each in a cell with a concrete bed and a bucket for a lavatory, and closely questioned on their whereabouts.

For legal reasons, the women cannot discuss the case publicly. They are on bail and are thought to be adamant that they knew nothing about her whereabouts.

During the police hunt, which involved 100 officers and stretched across Europe, people who knew Samantha had their mobile phones and computers checked and their personal papers, even bedrooms, rifled through by police.

Sniffer dogs were sent down her road and neighbours said it resembled a murder hunt.

A friend condemned the ‘heavyhanded’ approach, adding: ‘The police did not do themselves any favours.’

Edina Holt, a former social worker who lives in Yorkshire and is Samantha’s mother’s closest friend, had her own house searched by police. ‘It is beyond belief what has happened – and so wrong.

‘I last saw them three weeks ago and Sam was very worried that the authorities were not listening to her side of the story or realised what a caring mother she is.’

Mrs Holt said the police treated her well but a friend had her property searched four times, adding: ‘People are very upset. Was this really necessary?’

A funding website set up to pay Samantha’s legal costs was taken down for legal reasons when the sum reached nearly £3,000. One friend said: ‘We are now raising money to help her in another way.’ Samantha’s network of friends have hired a senior lawyer and believe she could sue for defamation after pictures of her and the boys were issued publicly by the police, with statements claiming she was a danger to her children.

Kate Greenfield, who knows her, commented: ‘She is an ordinary mum with ordinary children whose lives have been ruined by the wrongful actions of those who are meant to protect them.

‘The emotional damage England’s family courts and the criminal justice system is doing in removing them from the care of their mum far outweighs any risk they think she poses.’

Supporters say Samantha was trying to do her best for her children. They plan to protest in Parliament Square about her treatment and the boys’ removal.

Samantha disappeared after a court ruled that her children must go into care.

Police initially treated her disappearance as a missing persons inquiry, but hardened their stance within 24 hours, saying it was abduction and alleging publicly she was a danger to her sons.

A brief statement from nottingham family court, where Judge Jeremy Lea made the boys wards of court, said she was thought ‘to pose a risk of harm’ to them.

However, a completely different picture of her emerged yesterday – a gentle, stay-at-home mother and teetotal vegetarian who did not foist her diet on the boys.

She kept a lovely home for the children, said her friends, and taught them drumming, chess and tap dancing. A talented pianist, she often played for them.

Her friend Fiona added: ‘There were picnics in the park and her boys loved her.

‘She was a beautiful person, although she looked worried recently with the family court hearings going on. We saw her age 20 years before our eyes.’

Samantha herself had a perfect childhood. Even though her parents divorced, she grew up in Rochdale in a house, overlooking fields, where her mother cooked on an Aga and all her friends would visit.

‘We were always round at Samantha’s house because her mum is such fun and the food was so good,’ said one of her former schoolfriends.

Until meeting the boy’s father, David Madge, who runs an importexport business, through mutual friends in 2004, she had only had one boyfriend whom she met while at Luton University where she read business studies and psychology.

The couple married two years later and began family life together happily. ‘When Samantha gave birth to a baby boy, she was over the moon,’ remembered one friend yesterday.

In her gap year, she had been a nanny in America working for a series of families who wrote to her after she returned to Britain saying they missed her. ‘She knew all about looking after children properly,’ added the friend.

AnOTHER glimpse of her lifestyle came from a friend who said she was ‘very anti foxhunting and that kind of thing’, adding: ‘Talking about such issues was the only time she raised her voice. Most of the time she was so gentle. You could not have met a better mother’.

However, her marriage began to founder after the birth of her second son, Dylan, and the father has not seen the boys since 2014.

Meanwhile, Samantha’s friends have raised questions about the judge in her family court case.

Jeremy Lea became chairman of the trustees of a private adoption agency called Faith In Families in 2009 and served for three years.

They plan to bring this role to the attention of the Ministry of Justice over concerns about a possible conflict of interest considering that as a family court judge, he decides whether children should be removed from their birth parents.

The charity says on its website: ‘We do what we do because we believe every child has the right to grow up in a loving family.’