Grieving parents who lost their son during birth demand nationwide guidance after hospital failings
“When Finn was born, I turned to Ruth and said, just wait. He’ll cry, he’ll cry… But he never did,” says Martin, wiping tears from his eyes.
Warning: This article contains distressing content.
His wife, Ruth, had just given birth to their first son. But after a traumatic delivery, Finn was born pale and limp, needing urgent resuscitation.
Ruth was also injured, suffering a birthing tear so severe it required surgery.
As the room at the London-based birthing centre flooded with doctors ready to whisk their son away, Martin asked his wife: “What do you want me to do? Stay with you, or go with Finn?”
Follow Finn, she told him. As the plastic cot containing his newborn son was wheeled out of the room, a sense of helplessness swept over him. “There was nothing I could do for either of them,” he says, his voice breaking.
While we talk, both Ruth and Martin break down in tears, taking turns to comfort each other, but when I ask if they want to take a break, they refuse. They are clear that what matters now is sharing Finn’s story.
Ruth and Martin
“He was our first,” says Ruth, adding that she had no idea what to expect from the birth in June 2021. “Everyone was still coming out of COVID times.”
Despite this, she said the pregnancy “was smooth sailing”.
“It was when we turned up for the actual birth that things went horribly wrong.”
Ruth gave birth to Finn at the Oasis Birth Centre, a midwife-led unit within the Princess Royal University Hospital in Orpington, Bromley. It is mainly used for women with uncomplicated pregnancies, with access to birthing pools, massages and aromatherapy.
If extra care is needed during labour, patients are transferred to a delivery suite which the hospital trust’s website says is “just seconds away”.
The website adds that it intends to give parents the “control and support” they need and a place where they can “feel at home”.
Martin says he and Ruth were left alone with little guidance
But that wasn’t Ruth’s experience.
From the moment she entered the building, she says: “I wasn’t being listened to.”
Despite her labour progressing quickly and feeling the “overwhelming” urge to push, Ruth says, the midwives largely left her and Martin alone in the birthing pool with no real guidance.
“I remember on a couple of occasions saying to Martin, ‘Why are they not with us? Why are they not telling us what to do?'” she adds.
During this period, midwives failed to identify that Finn was in foetal distress.
Tragically, he suffered a severe brain injury as a result of complications during labour. He was starved of oxygen, a condition called hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE).
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Ruth and Martin would later learn that midwives failed to check Finn’s heart rate in line with national guidelines. There should have been at least 24 readings, but only eight were recorded.
One of his biggest regrets, says Martin, is that during the birth he told Ruth: “They are the professionals. We need to trust them.”
Ruth, Martin and their second child Remy
The brain damage Finn experienced during birth was so severe, consultants eventually recommended turning off the support that was keeping him alive.
Instead of leaving hospital with their beautiful baby boy, Ruth and Martin, in a deep state of shock, left with a memory box containing mementoes including a lock of Finn’s hair.
“No one expects that,” she adds tearfully.
“Finn had a blessing done by a vicar,” Martin recalls. “Then later that day, we turned his ventilator off and held him while he died.”
Ruth and Martin are now also parents to their second son, Remy, who has brought joy back into their lives. They are taking care to ensure the 17-month-old knows all about his big brother.
Martin says Remy has brought joy back into their lives
“We have Finn’s pictures around the house. Martin handmade the cot for Finn. It’s got his name engraved in it, and Remy uses it now,” Ruth says. “And we had Finn’s handprint made into a stamp so we can include him in birthdays and Christmas cards.”
The inquest into Finn’s death concluded on 25 April, Ruth’s birthday.
Coroner Dr Julian Morris found there was a lack of clear leadership at the birthing centre, and a failure to follow established guidelines in place. He committed to writing to all birth centres across London to give recommendations.
“If other birthing centres operate like that three years later, the likelihood is that more children will die as a result of poor care, understaffing, and a lack of leadership and management,” says Martin.
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust apologised to the Kennedy family and said it “fully accepts” the coroner’s findings.
Ruth is now expecting her third child
Tracey Carter, director of midwifery for King’s College, said: “In recent years, we have made positive changes to maternity services at the trust, including a review of midwifery staffing, enhanced training for midwives and ensuring more senior supervision in the department at all times.”
But Martin thinks the same guidance needs to be given to birthing centres across the country, to help avoid future tragedies.
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For now, their focus is on their family, and getting justice for Finn.
“You have to carry on,” Martin says. “You have to pick yourself up and make sure you try and get justice for your children.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
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A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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