If Dundee City
Council acts on its threat to remove their children, the mother and father face
the “unbearable” prospect of never seeing their four youngest children again. The couple have seven
children and cannot be named for legal reasons.

Social workers
previously took all seven children into care, including the youngest when she
was a newborn, after their parents were judged to be too overweight to look
after them has had their baby returned home. The children were subsequently
returned to them.

Three girls aged 11,
five and one, and a boy aged five, are to be put up for adoption or “fostered
without contact” because their parents failed to help them slim
down.

If the children are
placed in foster care or adopted, the parents will be unable to trace them and
the family could only be reunited if the children attempt to find their family
when they are grown up.

Social services
warned the couple three years ago that their children would be taken away from
them if they did not bring their weight under control.

The family spent two
years living in a special council-funded house in which they were placed under a
curfew and only three of the children were permitted to live with their parents
at any one time.

But although they
were placed under constant supervision and social workers observed them during
meal times, no dietary rules were imposed and there was no significant
improvement in the children’s weight.

On Tuesday social
workers informed the parents, who have been married for 20 years, of their
decision to permanently remove their children.

The couple, from
Dundee, are not guilty of any crime and have faced no accusations of deliberate
abuse or cruelty.

Critics said the
case, which is without precedent in Britain, was a serious breach of the
family’s human rights and exposed the worrying extent to which the State can
interfere in family life.

The mother, aged 42,
told the Mail on Sunday: “They picked on us because of our size to start with
and they just haven’t let go, despite the fact we’ve done everything to lose
weight and meet their demands.”

The father, aged 56,
added: “The pressure of living in the family unit would have broken anyone. We
were being treated like children and cut off from the outside world. To have a
social worker stand and watch you eat is intolerable.”

A Dundee City Council
spokesperson said: “The council always acts in the best interests of children,
with their welfare and safety in mind.”