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How a slap brought police and social services in to tear a family apart SUSAN POPE There was nothing ominous about the knock at the door, but when I pulled it open I was confronted by four police officers and our street was thick with panda cars. This is not a scene you see too often in our home village of Great Malvern, not even if there has been a rare burglary in the respectable part of Worcestershire where we live happily among other decent, law-abiding families. But the police were not coming to our aid. Instead they were coming to arrest me and my husband Folke for child abuse. Looking me straight in the eye the officer said: "We are about to arrest you for cruelty and neglect to Guy Pope."
(Article continues below) Guy is our 11-year-old son. And my crime? Smacking him once after he had ignored my warnings to stop his temper tantrum and repeated swearing. He and his 16-year-old brother, Oliver, had then concocted a tissue of lies claiming we had starved and beaten them and - far worse in their eyes - refused to let them have their games consoles. But rather than examining my well-fed younger son and his unmarked, if rebellious brother, the police had called in social services and arrested us. Folke and I were about to be thrown in police cells for the next 32 hours, interrogated by detectives and warned we would be facing charges.
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