A Kidnapped Mind

by Pamela Richardson

  Because Justice Harvey had lamented that “A child cannot be forced to comply with access requirements,” I was relieved for him to pass us on to yet another judge. Maybe the next one will get it. Maybe the next one won’t be timorous. I needed a judge who could make visitation happen. Children don’t like cleaning their teeth, but a good parent makes them do it. Children don’t like going to school every weekday morning, either, but a good parent makes them do it. I wanted Peter to be told that, if Dash wasn’t bundled in a car and brought over to me, or put on the doorstep at four o’clock on Wednesdays and Fridays, he would be made to comply. That meant contempt of court. That meant fines, jail time, losing custody. Dash had to know the courts were serious. But this judge wasn’t up for it, and I needed one who was willing to be a super parent.

  Justice Harvey listed our case for April, a long three months hence, and Peter dusted off his weapons immediately. He once again tried to sue Dave and me for invasion of privacy. He accused us of having instructed our “agents” to “harass and annoy” him. Peter’s lawyer, Russell Tretiak, began issuing galling parenting instructions to me:

  I suggest that the best way for your client to have a decent and fulfilling relationship with her son is to gradually build up to that. To demand the impossible will simply exacerbate the problem. I believe your client is at a watershed in her relationship. If she continues the practice she has followed in the past, she will regrettably not have a relationship with this child. I have taken that view for some time now and it certainly seems to have been vindicated by the events.

  And, devastatingly, but unsurprisingly, Peter deployed Dash. That year I received flowers on Mother’s Day — a first — with an attached card from Dash, containing a carefully crafted message: “For you on Mother’s Day. I would have delivered these personally except for… Hope you do the right thing. Dash.”

  What was the “right thing” as far as they were concerned? Two days later Dash faxed a typed note, adding: “it is not right to treat me this way. please do not call, you may call when you stop this stuff. Any way happy mothers day. p.s. this is a follow up note. Love Dash.” We were back to where we had been two years ago. Oh, it would be so easy to believe Dash would come if I drop out. I would give anything for this to have such a simple solution. But I knew PAS now. I had read Dr. Richard Warshak’s Divorce Poison, written following the publication of Dr. Richard Gardner’s book. It confirmed what I had lived. “Some PAS children claim that they will renew contact with the alienated parent ‘when the time is right’ but I have learned that often the time is never ‘right.’” No, I couldn’t wait till Dash got older and left home or Peter sobered up or hell froze over. Dash had a right to a happy childhood. I couldn’t watch him eke out this existence any more.

  The weeks passed and Dash’s continued absence and brutal messages to leave them alone, lay off, stop the court proceedings jangled more and more in my mind. When Dash raged on the phone about the “court stuff,” I listened with my heartbeat suspended, frightened to breathe in case it blew him farther away. I was panicked by the extent of his immersion and, during one phone call, I came to a crystal-clear realization: guardianship isn’t going to be enough. Being able to make decisions for Dash and get him tutors won’t get him to my house. It won’t rebuild our relationship. Peter was going to direct this child forever. I needed custody.

  When Jamie added “custody” to our application Peter’s household must have gone on red alert. Peter wanted my claim dismissed, but the judge wouldn’t do it. He tried to have my entire case dismissed as “abuses of process,” but the judge wouldn’t do it. Peter instructed his lawyer to keep ignoring our letters about court dates, access days, and report cards that still never came. (Peter would write, a month before the trial, “There is no reluctance at all from me that these school reports be provided. There never has been. If your client has not been sent a school report, by me, on a particular occasion, all she has to do is remind me.” By then I had yet to receive Dash’s report cards for Grades Two, Three, Four, and Five.) Peter accepted work on a case that conflicted with our upcoming trial dates, and then insisted that our trial be adjourned. Jamie was incensed and told the judge so. “This trial is about his son.” Peter tried to have a judge remove Jamie as my counsel on some trumped-up legal technicality, and, when that didn’t work, attacked him personally. “Money isn’t everything, Jamie. You appear to have no professional responsibility or morals. You start messing around with the day-to-day happiness of a youngster because of the lure of money that has been dangled before you. You will eventually pay the price of the disrespect of everybody. You, Mr. Jamie Martin, are irrelevant.”

  We pressed on. Peter predicted grandly that the trial would not only be a waste of time, but would further alienate Dash from me. “There is a certain point when even a balanced, strong, well adjusted, popular, untroubled, young, approaching-12-year-old boy, will put his foot down and draw the line.” His reason as to why Dash wouldn’t visit morphed again. Perhaps because the notion of Dash being so “angry” at his mother when she had done nothing wrong had become publicly unpalatable, Peter now made Dash a normal kid who wanted flexibility — he wanted to be with his friends rather than his parents. From what I knew of Dash’s life, this was nonsense. Dash had been inveigling himself into his friends’ homes for a long time now, to be away from his father’s drinking, to get some attention, who knows, but Dash already wasn’t home. He already wasn’t with me. He had the flexibility he wanted.

  As difficult as it always was to reach Dash by phone, make plans, and then actually see them carried through, I never stopped trying. Sometimes I would have to give myself a break, take a few days, dust myself off, and then pick up the phone again. Other times the frustration of trying to make a simple plan a reality would send me to my lawyer. I would ask him to send a letter to Peter or his lawyer, asking for confirmation of an agreed-upon arrangement. It was that way on January 22, 1996, when I had arranged with Dash to take him to a Canucks hockey game. I would use anything and everything to try to get him to spend time with me, and I hoped his beloved Canucks were the ticket this time. Dash was wearing his parka and watching out the window when I pulled up. My heart surged as he ran to the car. I never knew, I never could really be sure, even when I called en route from the car, that he would want to come, that he hadn’t changed his mind. Thank you, Canucks, for getting him out the door. I reached for his hand automatically as we walked across the street to the stadium and was thrilled that he didn’t pull back, or slide out of it once we were across. Dash was eleven years old, and I was impressed that holding his mother’s hand didn’t make him feel weird. I was proud that in some ways he was still his own man. Though I longed to brush his hand across my cheek as I would have with a younger Dash, I instead talked lightly about the game. We joked with and nudged each other as we stood in line for food, then juggled our hamburgers, fries, and cold drinks back to our seats. My leg touched his, our arms brushed, and as we passed the cold drinks back and forth, we analyzed the game, the referees’ penalty calls, and the relative talents of the players on the ice. I looked at him constantly, just to take in his eyes, his smile, the freckles that sprinkled across his nose regardless of the season, his skin and cropped hair. I didn’t waste time worrying or feeling sad or thinking of what was coming up in court. I just sat happily with him as if we saw each other all the time, as if our lives were normal. After the game we followed the crowd out of the stadium and got into the car, disappointed that the Canucks had lost, but happy because our evening had been so much fun.

  “How are things going at school? Grade Seven is a big year, isn’t it?”

  “I guess. Yeah, it is!”

  “Well, enjoy it while it lasts — you’re the seniors now, but next year you’ll all be juniors again!”

  He laughed at that. “Yeah, Mom, I’m the big senior … actually, you’re right! We are this year!”

  “So, how about it? Do you like your teachers? Have you got any
projects or tests coming up? If there’s anything I can help you with, I’m always here to help with your homework — even if you just need help by phone.”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” he said. “But I wish you wouldn’t go to court against my dad.”

  I looked straight ahead. God, how do I handle this? I had to be honest. I had been accused for so long of “lying” to Dash. How much would he accept or even understand? “Dash, do you know something? Court is the last place on earth I ever want to be. But I don’t believe I have a choice now. I worry about you; you know I do. And I don’t see you nearly enough. It’s important for children to spend time with both parents and, when that doesn’t happen, they have to go to a judge who can help. Your father and I don’t seem to be able to work this out ourselves. Sometimes court is the only solution to the problem; that’s why it exists. It’s like, at school sometimes, when you have a problem with your friends and you try really hard but you just can’t sort it out yourself — well, then what do you do? You ask a grown-up to help you, right?” Dash nodded and looked at me. “Well, it’s like that.”

  “But it doesn’t matter who raises me, Mom.”

  “Well, Dash, to me it does matter. It should matter to you, too. Parents are the most important people in a child’s life. Your father and I are the people who should raise you unless we are somehow unable to.” I reached for his hand across the car, keeping my eyes on the road. I wanted to pull over and look into his eyes, but I didn’t dare break the moment. “I love you with all my heart, and I need you to understand me: I’m not going back to court to hurt you, or to hurt anyone. I’m not trying to hurt your father. I’m in court to get them to help us. Do you understand?

  “Kind of.”

  “I’m not trying to make matters worse. I’m doing this so they get better. Please trust me. I only want things to get better.”

  I stopped the car at a red light and finally turned to look at Dash. I spoke softly and carefully. We were nearly at his house. “When it comes to my children, Dash, I’ll do anything in the world to love and protect you. I do it with Colby and Quinten. I do it with you.” From a look that flashed sylph-like across his face, he seemed to swell a little at that. “I’ll never go away, you know, Dash. I’ll never disappear from your life.” I drove on, and as we pulled up in front of his house, I stopped the car. Dash immediately looked down at his lap. “Can you look at me, Dash? This is important.” He did. “I want us to try really hard to keep our lines of communication open. If you’re upset by what you hear or read, please call me. There are always two sides to every story and I want you to call me and talk to me if you’re troubled. Okay? Can you do that?” I looked into his eyes for a long time and we shared a short silence. “We’ll get through this, Dash. We all will — your dad, me, you. You’ll see.”

  I still have hundreds of vignettes, little treasures, that I can call up from those days. The boy who wouldn’t visit made it so clear, when he did come, that he was glad to be with me. We sat in the kitchen and talked about what he wanted to be when he grew up (“a lawyer, like my dad”) and how he was worried about going to a big high school soon. We discussed books he wanted to read and movies he wanted to see, and we made plans for the summer. He wanted to come with us to Lake of the Woods again, and asked me to get him a new wetsuit so he could stay in the water longer with Big D. He talked about how he’d been falling out with some of his friends at school. We didn’t just live in the present, as many estranged parents and children do. I made sure we always, always discussed the future and made plans. When I drove Dash home he said, “You know, Mom, I could take a bus to your house, couldn’t I?” and my heart leapt and broke at exactly the same time. Both of us were trying to find ways to defy his father.

  But the reality was that we were heading into a trial over his custody. Dash was kept right up to date with all the grisly details. According to Peter, Dash had known everything “from day one.” He wrote that, “Dash has been always, without exception, fully aware of what has been transpiring, and said and written, etc, throughout these past 7 years.” And, “Dash is going to hear about this this afternoon, as soon as he gets home.” Dash said later that he read everything that came to the house as he was given ongoing proof about how imperilled he was. Peter faxed me a note in April 1996, a couple of weeks before the trial, after yet more missed visits had forced me to try and have him cited for contempt of court again:

  Dash becomes disturbed by process servers on our home doorstep, presenting documents of accusation against his father, of Contempt. But not for long is Dash upset. Very brief indeed is that. He quickly graduates to a thoughtful analysis, and a resulting displeasure with, and resentment of, his mother and her lawyer … for this invasive conduct, and for the making of these accusations, which he sees not only as false, but also, even worse, as offensive, small and mean.

  In court, Dash would say he sometimes sat down and read the affidavits himself, and other times he read them with his dad. “Take a look at this!” Peter said they exclaimed to one another. When I found out later that Dash had a reading level that roughly followed his emotional level — suspended at a Grade Four — I knew that Dash wasn’t reading those documents alone. I read an article written by Dr. Peggie Ward of the Children and Law Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, who wrote that, “The willingness of a parent to directly involve a child in the litigation should be a red flag that the parent may well be using the child to further his own agenda, even if the child is apparently acquiescent.” All I could do was hope the judge would see it, too.

  Days before the trial began, I had a call from Elizabeth MacKenzie. Peter had called her the night before.

  “He said, ‘I understand that you’ve been talking to Dash’s teachers,’” Elizabeth told me. “He also said, ‘You know that’s against the law. Dash is an okay guy. He may get into fights and smell a bit,’” Elizabeth said.

  “Oh, my God, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry.”

  “I said, ‘I’m not interested in talking to you about this, Peter,’ but he cut me off and said, ‘You’ve involved yourself in my family, so I will involve myself in yours.’” I cringed. Elizabeth continued. “‘You wouldn’t want anything to happen to that beautiful daughter of yours now, would you? If you consider that a threat, it is.’ So of course I hung up — I mean, what do you say to that? He called straight back and left a long message asking why I would want him as an enemy when I had such a nice family, that he’d charge me with violation of privacy. He shouted, ‘Coward, coward!’ and hung up.”

  For as long as I had had problems with Peter, Elizabeth had been around. I had carpooled with her when Dash was a little boy at pre-school. Her daughter had been in Dash’s class since Grade One. When I was forced out of Dash’s school, Elizabeth filled some of the void for me — and continued to do so over the years. Peter called her my “agent,” but to Elizabeth it just didn’t seem right that she would know things about my son’s life that I didn’t. Elizabeth would tell me sometimes when Dash was sick or report that her daughter had told her that Dash was in Mexico on school time.

  Three years earlier, when Dash was nine, Elizabeth had been engaged in a conversation with her daughter’s teacher, when talk shifted to Dash. He was having serious problems at school, the teacher confided. His attendance was poor, he wasn’t happy, and the teacher very much wanted to speak to me, but when she had asked the principal, he told her she couldn’t. Alarmed, Elizabeth had gone to the principal herself and asked him to intervene, but he had said his hands were tied. “In all my years as a school principal, and I’m three years from retirement,” he had told Elizabeth, “Dash’s is the saddest case I have seen.”

  A month before the trial, Elizabeth spoke with Murray Stephenson, the new principal of Queen Mary Elementary. “Dash does almost no work in class,” he told Elizabeth. “He’s bright enough but he’s unhappy.” Murray had spoken to Peter many times about Dash’s troubles, but when Peter had defended his son “as though he was in a courtro
om,” instead of recognizing his difficulties, Murray worried. The fights Dash had been starting at school and his increasingly bizarre playground behaviour should have worried any parent, but when Dash dropped his pants at a teacher in the playground, Peter first dismissed it as something that couldn’t have happened, then claimed that the playground supervisor was “out to get him.” Murray told Elizabeth, “Dash is the kind of child who will be suspended from high school.” Elizabeth asked that I be brought in, but Stephenson reiterated the school’s long-term position: legally he couldn’t tell me. I already knew that. When he had first taken over the job of principal at Queen Mary Elementary, I had written and introduced myself, asking him to send me report cards, attendance records, and anything I needed to know, but Stephenson had written back that he could not. As a non-custodial parent I was not entitled to information directly from the school. I am a pariah, I thought.

  I had tried earlier in the year to meet up with a mother whose son, Ben, was a friend of Dash’s. Dash had mentioned this friend now and then when we talked on the phone, and after thinking about it for a few weeks, I managed to get Ben’s phone number and called his mother. I wanted to get to know her. Perhaps she was someone who would call me sometimes when Dash was playing there and invite me to drop in. I didn’t tell her that, and she probably thought my calling her was a little unusual, but she agreed quite happily to meet up with me for coffee the following week. I sat in the Starbucks on West Tenth and waited for her. When the first hour passed I called her from my cell. I got the machine. “Hello, Trina, it’s Pam Richardson. Maybe I’ve made a mistake! Am I in the wrong Starbucks? Did I get the wrong day?” I went home after two hours without hearing a word. I called again but got no answer. When I finally reached her a few days later, she was angry and agitated. “Don’t call here again!” she said. “I’ve spoken to Dash’s father and I don’t want to get involved. I don’t want to meet with you. Not now or ever.”