Christian foster child story distorted by newspaper

Tower Hamlets Council in east London said the story was inaccurate and the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) upheld its complaint.

The Times trailed the ruling on its front page and published it in full on page two.

In a series of articles about the case, the newspaper alleged that the Christian girl’s foster carers stopped her eating bacon, confused her by speaking Arabic and took away her crucifix necklace.

Tower Hamlets complained about the third article, published on 30th August 2017, which said the child was “removed from her Muslim foster parents yesterday and reunited with her family as a judge urged councils to seek ‘culturally matched placements’ for vulnerable children”.

The council said it had “actively sought” to place the child with her grandmother, who was from a Muslim background.

In its ruling, the watchdog said: “Ipso’s complaints committee found that the article gave the impression that the judge had found that the placement was a ‘failure’ by the council; and that this was why she was ‘removing’ the child from her current foster carers, and placing the child with the grandmother.

“The committee ruled that this was a distortion. The complainant had been in the process of assessing the grandmother, and, when those assessments were complete, it applied to the court for the child to be placed with her.

“The complainant had in fact agreed at…