Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) Page 13

  It appeared that Neil had been working on the Island to escape twenty year old historical charges of child abuse in the UK. He had been extradited to face these charges and was now out on bail. This was shocking in itself but it seemed rather coincidental that he'd been the only lawyer available to me the fateful night I had been remanded in custody on my return from the US. His chilling words to me that night resounded in my mind “no one believed you then and no one believes you now.” It had appeared odd to me at the time, that he appeared to have so much prior knowledge of our case but comments he had made since began to now make sense. “I have known lots of women who cry rape or abuse just to be vindictive,” was the one that sprang most readily to mind. Clearly this remark had had a personal subjective meaning to him. He had also been going through an acrimonious divorce at the time and his view of women was disparaging to say the least.

  I had two options now. One was to accept further Duty Counsel and the other was to represent myself on my first appearance in the Criminal Court. I decided to opt for the latter. I now had a UK solicitor who was willing to come on board, should I get leave for him to do so and I no longer trusted any of the local lawyers fearing that the judiciary were far too closely linked. The family Court Judge himself was not only the brother of the Attorney General, but had previously been part of the same law firm as two of the other lawyers involved in our case. It was well known that he still socialized with the advocate for the Guardian Ad Litem and he and the advocate representing the Department had trained in the same office. Nepotism was a feature of the court system that was impossible to avoid in such a small community but it made it even harder to get justice if the system put you out of favour. The expression "closed shop", synonymous with any close knit faction was even more significant in a society such as ours. Island living is wonderful if you are on the inside, but if you step outside of the "old boy's club" or are considered a threat to its squeaky clean facade - then they will not rest until you are marginalized to the extent of non-entity.

  Nervously I entered the Court for my first appearance in the Court of General Jail Delivery. Unlike the time when I had gone up for bail, after a gruelling night in custody, I was now suited and booted, clean and tidy and this in itself gave me confidence. I had been advised by the UK solicitor to do nothing more than seek an adjournment and leave to appoint UK counsel and despite the fact that my hands were shaking, I stood in the dock and managed to clearly state my intention.

  A brief adjournment of a couple of weeks was granted and my bail conditions were renewed on the same basis as before - namely signing in daily at the police station and residing at my father’s home. I don’t know if the latter was harder for him or for me as there was so much tension between us, that we would often writhe and rail against each other and them dissolve into tears as we both felt the complete and utter despair and powerlessness and the grief of no longer having M. We both sought comfort from each other, whilst venting our full frustration. However, it remained that we were stuck with each other and as it was I still not could face going back our cottage overlooking the sea that M and I had both shared and the memories of our idyllic life before this nightmare had begun.

  The signing on part of the bail condition was problematic to say the least. I had been given a daily time with which I must comply but the small station in the south of the Island was very often not manned when I arrived. There was a phone outside and I would often have to wait for up to twenty minutes to register my attendance. trying to get through to headquarters. It was farcical and at the same time nerve wracking. I feared that I would be accused of breaching my bail conditions, so I began taking a picture of the station with my mobile phone to prove the time I'd been there. It was also the wrong time of year to be faced with this, as late October weather was turning increasingly inclement and I often got soaked to the skin, trying to comply with the strict regime. One failure would render me back in custody. One more black mark against me to use to ensure my son was never returned to my care. My life had become a daily path through a minefield.

  Whenever there was no one physically at the station, I had the added fear that whoever was taking the call in the custody suite at HQ would fail to record it in the book and so I lived in a state of constant anxiety. I was looking over my shoulder far more now than I had ever done whilst on the run in the States.

  Contact with M had settled now into something of a pattern. I only got one hour a week with him initially and the venues offered were anything but conducive.

  I would endure anything to see my son and tried to always be bright and cheerful for him and as positive as I could be under the circumstances. He was always overjoyed to see me and greeted me with total delight on arrival and visible distress on departure. We always ended our contact with our own special words, “I love you the world and back,” something that we used to say to each every night. I wished I could tell him how hard I was fighting to bring him home and how I would never give up but unlike in America where the Social Workers had shown a grain of humanity, the two Social Workers assigned to our case appeared to be devoid of any human emotion whatsoever and immune to the pain and suffering of my innocent little boy. Any comment of this nature, would have ended our contact immediately.

  The Foster Carers helped M to make a cake for me for my birthday. I had not been able to see him on the day as they were rigid about the time of contact irrespective of anything. I now had weekly phone calls but I was not sure if these were a blessing for M or a strain as it increased our sense of longing for each other. Furthermore they were closely monitored by the Foster Carers which meant we could have no sense of natural conversation. I feared that anything I might say to M could be twisted and used negatively against me, so we talked only about school and mundane things.

  School was the one constant for M. He had been allowed to go back to his original school and I knew that seeing his old friends and having the support of his peer group, in particular his closest friends, brought him some comfort at least and some sense of normality.

  The paranoia around my departure continued as I continued to be viewed as a very serious flight risk, despite the fact that I had no idea where M was and had I known, the chances of getting away a second time were less than nil. Even the fifty thousand pounds bail and the daily signing on did nothing to decrease their fear I would somehow take my son and vanish. It was an extreme reaction but I suspect it had more to do with keeping me in a state of fear, giving them an excuse to place rigid restrictions on our contacts and make it as unbearable for me as possible. The consequence of this for M didn't appear to concern them at all. They wanted only one thing - to break me- because I had dared to run - had dared to report abuse and refused to say I had coached my son against his father.

  How, exactly, they expected me to be able to remove M, I am not at all sure, but they used this a reason to keep M out of school for nearly a month on his return and I think, for him, that must have been one of the bleakest periods because he was alone with two adult strangers and no one to play with. I knew from our contacts that his life contained little now of the healthy activities that had formed part of his previous existence, cycling, walking, swimming, horse riding, to name but a few - now his time was spent largely playing solitary computer games in his room.

  The next milestone I had to face was the insistence of R's lawyer that I be tried for the offense of breaching the Prohibited Steps Order. It appeared I would be tried now in both Courts on the same evidence - to all intents and purposes - double jeopardy - something that is not usually allowed, but it seemed anything went as far as the Island's courts were concerned. A date was set for a hearing soon after I was granted bail by the Criminal Court.

  I was still a litigant in person and it would take some time to get the UK lawyer licensed if indeed they accepted them and were seen to fulfil the strict conditions that kept the closed-shop door, firmly shut.

  I wrote to the Court seeking a further adjournment based on the f
act that I had no legal representation. The Court refused my request and insisted I attend the hearing anyway. I had already filed an application to challenge the Interim Care Order, to obtain my own expert witness in the form of a child psychologist and to gain more contact with M. I had delivered these to the various advocates and I understood that dates would be set for hearings on the same day. However, if they jailed me for contempt, I would have no opportunity to pursue any of my applications.

  I wrote to John Hemming, the MP who had guided me in the UK and much to my amazement and immense gratitude he wrote direct to the Court stating that he would cite this as an egregious case to the European Court of Human Rights should they continue with the contempt hearing when I had no legal counsel. However, neither he nor I got a response and I awoke on the morning of the hearing ready to face dire consequences as best I could.

  I asked my friend Jan to come with me to support me at the hearing as my McKenzie friend and I arranged to meet her at the Court.

  As I was getting ready to leave, I heard on the radio that Neil, my former advocate, having been released from jail, had been found dead, having supposedly jumped from a known suicide bridge. He had been found with stab wounds in his stomach. It struck me that no one stabs themselves before jumping to certain death. I wondered what he had known and been prepared to share perhaps in return for a promise of leniency, that had led to his untimely death. I felt no sympathy, however. How could I? He had done nothing to assist us in our plight and if the charges against him were valid, and from his attitude, I believed they were, then I could only think that the world was free of one more Paedophile. This might sound harsh, but under the circumstances, I could feel nothing but contempt towards the perpetrator of a crime against nature, when my child had suffered the same fate. Whether those who commit these acts are sick or not, as a mother. one can only think of the child and forgiveness towards someone who has violated them in this way is impossible.

  I was deeply worried as I sat outside the small family court awaiting my fate, but as it turned out, the hearing did not proceed on the basis that the advocate for the Department did not turn up. I was blamed by the Judge for this who accused me of not filing my application with her. I knew that I had and had a receipt for this, unfortunately I did not have it with me.

  It seemed though that John Hemming’s letter had done some good after all and this was the Judge's way of making it look like a legitimate block to the process. Looking back, the Department's lawyer was not really necessary for a hearing on this point, but at the time I could only breathe a huge sigh of relief and bear the Judge's open hostility and sarcastic remarks about the problem of self-litigants which I suspect stemmed from being thwarted in his plan to jail me. I would never know just how much effect that letter had, but I suspect it secured me my freedom, but on the down side, the Judge now knew I was being helped from outside by those with some authority and it did nothing to improve his attitude towards me.

  Regardless of the reasons why, I walked from the Court on that occasion with my freedom intact, if you could call it freedom, for my separation from my son was prison enough. I began to feel a deep hatred for my birth place which on the surface was so beautiful but had a heart of corruption and evil that oozed black through the soil despite the verdant land above.

  Chapter 9

  It was soon after this that I got leave to appoint UK counsel. I had already secured the English solicitor and he in turn, chose two female barristers for the criminal and family case - one of whom was his daughter.

  I had little to go on as far as the solicitor Brian’s reputation was concerned, other than his involvement in one high profile case. He came highly recommended by John Hemming though, so I believed he must be good. He came across as well-spoken and determined on the phone and appeared to think highly of my newly appointed barristers. The cost of all of this was going to be phenomenal but we still had hope that with a strong legal team, things could be turned around.

  Brian talked optimistically, but my one reservation was that that the child abuse aspect of this case seemed immediately be replaced by a strategy of appeasing the court. I tried to push my fear to the back of my mind that he didn't perhaps understand the horrors of what had happened to M and as we had not yet met in person, decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  It was important that we meet as soon as possible and he arranged for himself and the family court barrister to fly over to the Island so that we could have a conference. I was not at all sure what to expect but I remained upbeat and positive.

  My father and I met the flight and found Brian to be a very tall man in his sixties with white hair and a ruddy complexion that betrayed a taste for a great deal of the amber nectar. His physical stature reflected this also, but he was polite and affable and greeted us warmly.

  The Family Court barrister was flying in separately and she, like Brian, seemed friendly, efficient, rather heavily made up and somewhat affected. I did not immediately warm to Alison. There was a hardness behind the practised smile and one feature that struck me immediately was that she carried a handbag with photographs of her two children on it. It was almost as if she was reminding herself and the world that she had them and I suspected they saw little of her. Obviously it was her choice to be a busy working, ambitious mother, but as a hands-on mother myself, I found it difficult to relate to her. I decided I should not judge too soon and emotion was not going to win the day in any event. I needed someone professional, efficient and aggressive in Court. Perhaps she would be the woman for the job.

  The conference took place at my father’s house around his dining table. How many times had M and I shared a meal with him there? How many times had we sat in his long kitchen watching through the window as M and a friend cycled up and down the terrace on their bikes or went backwards and forwards over wooden ramps my father had built for them, laughing excitedly as they clattered back and forth? It was a dim distant memory now- a postcard from the life we had once shared and one of many memories that were stored in my brain as if they were yesterday. They seemed so close and yet so far from the life we now lived - or rather endured. I still half expected to wake up from this purgatory and find that none of this had happened.

  Long hours were spent drinking coffee and preparing the lawyers before taking them to their hotel where we shared dinner and a bottle of wine in readiness for the Directions hearing in the Family Court the following day where Alison would represent me for the first time. I had nothing to pin it on, other than my strong intuition, but each time I talked to her I had an increasing sense of foreboding, that somehow she neither understood our predicament nor cared. As with the former barristers I had met, I felt constantly being reprimanded as repeated aggressively, “well you did take him to America,” as if that were the only aspect of the case. I kept defending my reasons but I sensed she was already setting us up for failure.

  The following morning I rang Brian saying that I didn't think she was the right person for the case. He persuaded me that I should give her a chance and that nothing would be lost if she did not perform as I wanted. I decided to go along with it as he had advised. I needed to put faith in somebody, but even as I agreed to this at the end of a lengthy phone call, I had this nagging doubt that she may do us more harm than good. The decision to trust Brian here, was another one that I would later regret.

  I should have followed my intuition - Alison went into Court and much to my horror, withdrew my challenge to the Interim Care Order - the ICO and agreed to negotiate the terms of contact after Court with the lawyer from the Department. I was particularly shocked by her withdrawing this challenge as I had worked hard on putting forward my skeleton argument and I believe it was sound. In fact, I had consulted with another girl who had a child in Care on the Island – who had got in touch with John Hemming regarding her own case and had come over at my expense to assist.

  She was a strange girl in many ways and I was not sure if I had trusted her entirely, but she
seemed to know more than I did about how to set things out. She was also studying for a law degree, so I had allowed her to assist me in drafting my application – all to no avail, thanks to Alison.

  I later discovered that this girl had been a plant for the Department – she showed everything we had shared by way of emails and documents to Social Services and tried to get me jailed for contempt. Fortunately she failed, but it seemed everyone I put faith in did further damage to our situation and this increased my sense of isolation. I was the sole voice for M and the truth, a voice that was barely a whisper as far as everyone involved was concerned. Like other parents placed in this situation, it matters little what you say or how you say it, or even what evidence you present, you are powerless against the evil of so many all determined to make a lie stand.

  After Court I tried to talk to Alison about what she'd done, but she'd arranged to meet with the Guardian Ad Litem’s Advocate – a tall, arrogant man, who had boasted to my solicitor that he as good as ran the Family Court which it soon became apparent, was largely true. He did not, however, represent the voice or wishes of my child, which was the role for which he was appointed.

  As I followed the lawyers into a side room, Alison turned to me and said “you can leave now – you're not needed now you have us.” I forced a wry smile as I looked at the faces of Brian, Alison and Kirk, the GAL’s advocate – “Just wait for me to leave the room before money changes hands,” I said, attempting cynical humour that may well have been apt. One thing was clear, that some form of dealing was about to start in that room and I was now out in the cold with no voice for myself or my child. It was later I learned that Kirk and Brian had known each other for years and whilst Brian swore blind his allegiance was to me, I never quite trusted that relationship – it was too sadly coincidental that everyone who got involved in this horrendously evil mess seemed to have a link to another party in the case and the chain kept getting longer, winding itself around my throat, stifling my voice and suppressing my cries in the dark for my lost boy.