Teenager sent from UK to school in Ghana wins legal challenge against parents – Ghana Business News
A 14-year-old London boy who was sent to boarding school in Ghana by his UK-based Ghanaian parents has been allowed by the Court of Appeal to challenge the decision.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claimed that he was tricked by his parents and taken from London, where he was born, to attend a boarding school in Ghana in March 2024.
They had told him that they would be visiting a sick relative.
The teenager’s initial legal challenge against his parents was brought to the High Court in London in February this year but he was unsuccessful in getting the decision rescinded so that he would return home.
He is still attending school in Ghana.
The court heard that the boy was homesick, while his parents argued that the decision to send him to Ghana was for his own good.
They said that they were worried that their son was drifting into criminal activity in the British capital where a high number of black teenagers have been involved in fatal knife crime.
On Thursday, the Court of Appeal ruled that the boy’s case could be reheard.
Sir Andrew McFarlane, a judge in the Family Division, said there had been confusion in the previous decision.
“We have become more and more concerned as to the exercise the judge undertook,” he said, while urging the family to find a solution through constructive dialogue.
The boy’s lawyer, Deirdre Fottrell KC, told the court: “He is culturally displaced and alienated. He considers himself abandoned by his family. He feels he is a British boy, a London boy.”
However, the parents’ lawyer, Rebecca Foulkes, said: “The parents found themselves in a wholly invidious decision when they made the decision they made. Ghana provided a safe haven, separate from those who exposed him to risk. The least harmful option is for him to remain in Ghana,” she added.
In the earlier High Court judgement, Mr Justice Hayden said that he was of the opinion that the boy’s parent believed that he had “at very least peripheral involvement with gang culture and has exhibited an unhealthy interest in knives”.
Black parents in the UK have regularly sent their “wayward” children to Africa and the Caribbean to become more “disciplined” in those stricter societies.
The matter has now taken even more significance for parents in London who are worried about the high rate of knife crime among black teenagers.
While black people constitute 13.5 per cent of the population of London, they account for 47.40 per cent of those arrested for knife-related offences, while white individuals account for 36.50 per cent, according to the Metropolitan Police.
The situation is now so dire that the UK government has appointed British actor Idris Elba, who has Ghanaian and Sierra Leonean parentage, to spearhead the challenge to the knife crime crisis that the country is facing.
Elba has been meeting young offenders, bereaved families and the police to understand why there has been an upward trend in knife crime.
In the boy’s case, a full judgement will be given in writing later.
Source: GNA
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