A 'cruelly deceived' father who has never seen his five-year-old son today had his hopes dashed of building a relationship with the boy.
Appeal Court judges recognised the 'bitter heartache' of the father, who found out he was the boy's father when he was aged four, after a DNA test.
The youngster was conceived during a brief affair the man had with his mother, who had always lied by insisting that the child was not his.
Royal Courts of Justice: Judges recognised the 'bitter heartache' of the father, who only found out he was the boy's father when he was aged four (file picture)
The father only smelt a rat when his sister saw a photo of the boy, referred to as 'C' in the central London court, and spotted the family resemblance.
The boy was taken from his mother by social services when he was just three days old because she was incapable of caring for him.
He was placed with adopters in November 2010 - and they are desperate to finally have him legally recognised as their son.
But the adoption process was stalled when the truth about the boy's paternity emerged. The father then fought through the courts in the hope that he or his sister would be allowed to bring him up.
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The mother, who later rekindled her relationship with the father - although they are now apart again - supported his campaign, saying: ‘I do not want my child to be adopted by strangers.’
The father was in the process of taking his case to the Court of Appeal, citing alleged breaches of his human rights, when a final adoption order was made by a judge in April last year.
Judgement: Judge Sir James Munby ended all prospects of the boy having a relationship with his natural father
The country's most senior family judge, the President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, today ended all prospects of the boy having a relationship with his natural father.
He said: ‘Recognising the bitter heartache that this must cause a father who, it would seem, was cruelly deceived by the mother of his child, I was in the end entirely satisfied that his appeal had to be dismissed.
‘Standing back from the detail, the reality is that the father has no relationship with C, indeed he has never even seen him, and that C has now been settled for over two years with the adopters.
‘How can we, how can any judge, take the risk of disturbing that?’
Sir James, sitting with Lady Justice Arden and Lord Justice Aikens, said that the adopters had been waiting for two years for the adoption to be finalised and had ‘been through the mill’.
The boy is deeply attached to them, having never known his father or any other family, and it was in his best interests to stay where he is, the court concluded.
After criticising the making of a final adoption order when the father still had an appeal pending, the judge said: ‘I cannot part from this case without expressing my very great concerns about that it reveals about our system.
'No humanly devised system can ever be foolproof, but we must do everything to ensure as best we can that future catastrophes are prevented'
Sir James Munby, President
of the Family Division
‘The history of events...makes for depressing and profoundly worrying reading. This is not, I stress, necessarily a criticism of those involved, most of whom did what was required of them.
'It is a criticism of a system whose inadequacies and potential for catastrophe have here been all too starkly exposed.
‘No humanly devised system can ever be foolproof, but we must do everything to ensure as best we can that future catastrophes are prevented.’