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Ben Fogle’s wife Marina has revealed that she was once falsely reported to social services for child abuse in the wake of the Kirstie Allsopp backlash.
The TV star, 52, found herself at the centre of a social media debate after she shared that her son, 15, had just returned from three weeks of interrailing around Europe with his friend, 16.
While some saw nothing wrong with the revelation, others argued that the Location, Location, Location presenter’s teen was too young to have been allowed to travel extensively by himself.
Allsopp subsequently received a message from social services and was questioned about what “safeguards” had been put in place for the trip, the Mail on Sunday reported.
She refused to provide this information and was told that her local council could keep the file open “in case there was another referral and we needed to come to your house and look into this further”.
Recalling her similar experience in The Times, Mrs Fogle wrote that she returned from holiday in 2013 to a letter “from social services saying that there had been a report of verbal abuse at our address.”
Her first thought was that the letter had been sent “in error”, but before she had a chance to contact authorities, they came to her home to “have a chat about my children.”
“[Someone] had reported us for supposedly shouting at our children, they said, the kind of sustained verbal abuse that was simply unacceptable,” she explained.
Mrs Fogle, who married TV star Ben, 50, in 2006, said she was so shaken by the realisation that she was left “trembling”.
She then asked when the alleged incident took place, and social services told her it was four days ago, which was when the family was out of the country on holiday.
But despite proving their absence with boarding passes, this was not enough to placate the social worker investigating, and Mrs Fogle was questioned in more detail about her children’s home lives.
“My children spent 20 minutes showing off their Lego and toys, after which I was told that clearly there wasn’t an issue and she hoped that I understood why they’d needed to investigate,” she explained.
While Mrs Fogle said she understood, she wrote that while many tip-offs to social services are genuine, others are “wrong” and can result in children being unnecessarily taken away from their caregivers.
She added: “My husband, Ben, was so shocked that anyone even knew this was possible, combined with the fact that we are very much not a shouty household, suspected it might have been someone wanting to cause trouble.”
Mrs Fogle then revealed that a similar situation befell her friend and almost resulted in her family being ripped apart.
It took place after her friend’s child broke their arm falling out of a tree, and an A&E doctor concluded that the fracture was the result of domestic abuse.
The mum-of-four then had to “frantically” contact a lawyer, who helped her “narrowly avoid” having her children taken into care, adding that “the court only allowed her children to remain at home with a supervisor”.
“After months of investigation and court hearings, three other doctors gave evidence that the injury could well have been caused by a childhood accident, and social services finally left them alone,” she wrote.
The anonymous woman told Mrs Fogle that without English as a first language and “the social contacts I had” as well as “support from my children’s school, our church, my family and my friends” she would have had her children wrongfully taken away.
Concluding her account, Mrs Fogle said she “felt for” Allsopp after her recent experience, describing her as a “brilliant” mother.
“[She] recognises that life is a series of risks and bringing up children is all about teaching them how to evaluate those risks, and how to either embrace or mitigate them,” Mrs Fogle wrote.
She then shared her own experience of travelling “independently as a teenager” and said it allowed her to not only “thrive” but “grow from being exposed to risk” and said others should “the same privilege” available to them.
The Independent has reached out to a representative for Marina Fogle and Kirstie Allsopp for comment.
