A Kidnapped Mind

by Pamela Richardson

  When Lana called me, I was driving to pick up Colby and Quinten from school before heading to Whistler for Thanksgiving weekend. I drove with the phone pressed close to my ear.

  “Pam, we can work with him. His pain and grief is right there at the surface, ready to gush out,” she said. “He needs this. He is in the right place.”

  I cried and cried listening to her. Having him taken from our Seattle hotel room just two weeks earlier, knowing I was shattering his gossamer-delicate trust, was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life, and now, with Lana’s few words, I poured out relief and grief and tears.

  Lana reminded me of Dash’s arrival-day comment, “I will die if I have to stay in this fucking place for six weeks.” (Dash had been put on a twenty-four-hour suicide watch, and the next morning said he hadn’t meant it. He never said it again, nor did he ever threaten to run away from Ascent.) Lana had begun to see just how enmeshed Dash and his father were, and how Dash’s identity was entwined so deeply with Peter’s. She saw how dangerous it actually was. “Pam, there are no quick fixes to this,” she told me bluntly. “This will take years. We have to tread very, very carefully. Dash has deeply rooted emotional problems. He is in an extremely delicate place.” He was like a seedling — the process of transplanting him into more fertile soil could kill him. Destroying the image Dash had of his father could destroy him, too, Lana said, because everything about Dash was wrapped up in who Peter was and what they believed they had survived together. So they had to unravel Dash slowly. If they showed him what had happened to him, or allowed him to discover it too quickly or in an uncontrolled environment, Lana said Dash would probably go under. He hadn’t developed any tools to deal with the information that he would find.

  The counsellors knew they were in a precarious position. Reckless intervention would do untold damage. Dash needed Ascent to start the work, and he needed the two-year residential program at Cascade to continue it, Lana said. I felt a fleeting, hollow victory, knowing I had been right about how sick my son really was, but mostly it just added another layer of fear to have it confirmed in such a clear way, by a specialist like Lana. I knew that, if Dash was to be free emotionally, he would have to be strong enough to withstand what he had been through, and I worried for a moment that he never would be. But I told myself that this was just my fear speaking. I knew he was being nurtured at Ascent. He was getting help. If he could do his six weeks there, then move smoothly on to Cascade, Dash would get there. I couldn’t let myself believe anything else.

  When Lana hung up, I tried to steady myself for the boys. My knuckles were white from gripping the phone as I drove, crying, through the October drizzle to the boys’ school. I searched my thoughts. I was very frightened. My son was damaged beyond belief and had a long climb back to health ahead of him. He may not ever fully heal. But there was another thing, too; I felt it inside me. It sidled up alongside the hope I always managed to find. I felt empowered. Somehow I even felt strong. I knew Dash was in the right place. I knew he was going to be okay. It had taken twelve years, but I had made the right decision for him, despite the personal cost from which I would probably never recover. He might never speak to me again and was lost to me, at least for now, but he wasn’t lost to himself. He would find his way back. I got to the school and my boys flew down the hill into my arms, brimming with their day’s news and excited about our trip to Whistler. I hugged them tightly as they chattered on and let myself get caught up in their world. My family, for the first time in years, was whole. I had Dave, I had my boys, and Dash was finally safe. What I felt, more than anything else, was joy.

  Dash was surmounting obstacles and had made that breakthrough, but that didn’t mean he was performing any miracles. His life’s lessons weren’t going to go away that easily. Although I got nothing, Dash faxed his father some finely crafted messages. One the first week. One the second week.

  Week 1:

  Dear Dad,

  I am adjusting at a low rate. This is hell! Did my mom tell you that I was going to come here? If so how come you let her. What can you do to help me home? Am I going to a boarding school after this? If so could you tell my mom that she is making a big mistake? There are too many rules hear. I am not allowed to draw or sing. I only get your letters once a week. ON WENDESDAYS. I hope to see you soon.

  your ever loveing son,

  DASH

  Week 2:

  Dear Dad, Sorey I did not wright you back sooner, but they only give you a limited time! I can’t wright the truth because they say that I am being manipulative. Or that I am black-mailing her. Could you answer my question? Does my mom have full CUSTUDY? In other words does she own my LIFE!!!

  As for what I do ALL DAY LONG IS wake up. Its every body is up within 5 mins or every one back to bed (ther are 15 to 19 people within a group). This can be repeated several times on a daily basis! Food, bathrooms, cut wood, bathrooms, food, bath rooms, cut wood, bath room, food, bathroom, journal time (NOW) then bed. The repetative life style leaves me in a motionaless time state thus makeing the past 2 weeks feel very short and the upcoming 4 feel very long.

  Eternal Love DASH Your Ever Loving Son.

  Dash was used to having the cavalry arrive whenever he didn’t want to do something, and his letters were skilled attempts to manipulate his father into getting him out of there. Lana knew it, and she was worried. She called me, alarmed, one afternoon.

  “Peter has been trying to speak to Dash,” she said. “We’re not going to let him, but he’s calling constantly. I thought you should know.”

  Lana had told Peter over and over that direct contact was against the rules and might retard his child’s healing. It was the same for each and every one of the thousands of children who completed the Ascent program each year: there is no contact by phone. Peter couldn’t speak to Dash. For days in a row he called incessantly, demanding to speak with Dash, demanding to talk to Lana at all hours, flagging himself as a real problem and exhausting the staff, who needed to be left alone to do their work. But Peter was used to getting his way, and the tension was building.

  At the end of Dash’s second week at Ascent, and just half an hour after Lana had called to tell me about Dash’s huge breakthrough in the group session, she called again. The boys and I were just turning onto the Sea to Sky highway.

  “Peter is here to take Dash home,” she said.

  Not now! Not after all this! I wanted to shout out but I couldn’t — the boys were in the back seat. Ascent’s program director, Brian McInnes, and Peter were locked away in a room with a “DO NOT DISTURB” sign hanging from the doorknob. “That’s all I know,” she said, “but I’ll tell you what’s happening as soon as I do know.”

  Even in the warmth of my car I was suddenly chilled to the bone as I put the phone back in my bag. The boys chattered happily in the back, asking me mercifully mundane things that took my mind off what was happening in Idaho. “Can we have pumpkin pie with as much whipping cream as we want?” “Who’s coming, Mommy? Uncle Davie? Warren and Georgia?” I couldn’t erase what I had just heard from Lana, but I also couldn’t do anything about it. I had to trust that Brian could convince Peter that Dash was doing fine and needed to stay where he was.

  Two hours later Lana reported in. Brian had kept Peter locked away with him for two hours. He was adamant that Peter not see Dash. Brian took Peter on a tour of a secondary camp (it was empty), so he could see the facilities and grounds, and at the end of a long day, Peter finally told Brian he felt really good about Dash being at Ascent now that he had seen it. He said he had only come to see that his son was all right. Dash would benefit from the program, he said, and the upcoming backcountry camping experience would be exciting for him. Peter wrote a quick note for Dash, gave it to Brian, and drove the eight hours back to Vancouver alone. A sigh of relief went up from all the staff.

  Such relief. The idea of Dash going back to Vancouver, back to his father’s house, back to their Greco-Roman wrestling, and back to that mattress in hi
s graffiti-lined bedroom would have been too much to bear. When the danger was over, when Peter was on his way home, that relief took the form of a strange and infinite fatigue. I just wanted to sleep. Sinking into my comfy chair, I stared at the fire, the embers glowing so hot they hurt my eyes. I heard the faint trill of laughter coming from Dash’s old bedroom upstairs — the boys were playing their favourite video game, and I felt, as I had so often, the vast chasm between the life Colby and Quinten lived and the life Dash lived.

  After Peter’s visit to Idaho, his letters to Dash changed in tone, containing what Lana described as “mixed messages”: general encouragement, but with an added, subterranean, message. Lana called me, worried. She had considered not giving Dash Peter’s letters, but Ascent’s rules don’t allow that kind of censorship, even when the counsellors believe the child will be set back. With great trepidation she had given the letters to Dash, and although she wasn’t allowed to show them to me, she did tell me about them. She described them as “ominous.” There was enough embedded in them to give Dash a back door. The message, she believed, was: Hang in there Dash, I may come and get you, so don’t do or say anything you don’t want to. Just hang on.

  And with that message, in whatever words it was rendered, Dash heard the same one he had heard in a million different ways throughout his life. His progress at Ascent disintegrated. He was going to be rescued. Peter and Dash had devised a sophisticated and largely unspoken code over the years, in which subtext was injected into every gesture or word: “Do you want to come home yet, Dash? Are they questioning you?” Or Dash’s complaints: “I’m not having fun here, Dad. Mom isn’t letting me watch TV” and “They’re having people over for dinner and I don’t want to stay.” Peter had taught Dash that he could control his environment as long as it was for his father’s benefit, and it continually gave Dash new ways to manipulate his father.

  Dash flexed that muscle now, and his dad, who before had confidently left Dash at Ascent to finish the program, now flew into the fray, just as Dash knew he would. Dash had been surmounting obstacles and achieving small wins every day at Ascent. The journal writing was good for his mind, the carting of wood was good for his body. He was finally away from his parents’ “battle,” he hadn’t smoked a joint in two and a half weeks, and he was sleeping solidly at night for the first time in years. He was looking healthy and strong. But Dash knew what “hang in there” meant, and with a casual “Fuck this,” he stopped working and disengaged from the group sessions. He didn’t come close to opening up again, because he guessed he wasn’t going to be staying. Dash wasted that whole week before his backcountry trip, not moving forward and no longer interested in the hard work it would take to heal. Don’t worry, kiddo, no matter what your mother does, I’ll rescue you. Peter had done it time and time and time again. Dash may not have liked it at his father’s house — particularly the “wrestling” — but it was the only place he had and he could fade out there. He could go numb again. When his father opened the door to him, Dash could do nothing but to go through it. He was about to go off into the wilderness with his counsellors and peers for eight days of introspection, self-reflection, journal writing, and intense counselling. It was the most critical eight days in the program, a time when Dash was to take his greatest steps toward healing. He was to leave on the weekend. But Peter’s next moves were swift and decisive.

  That Friday (the thirteenth, if you can believe it), Colby, Quinten, and I were just walking out of the comic-book shop on Fourth Avenue about to head to Blockbuster for our Friday-night movie, when Mimi called. “Pam,” she said, “a courier has just come to the door. He has a package, but he won’t let me sign for it. He says only you can. I told him to wait in the car and I would call you.” Legal documents. I had seen this a hundred times. I bundled the boys in the car and drove home, my blood racing. What is Peter doing now? I pulled into the garage too fast and raced through the house to the front door. The “courier” climbed out of an old unmarked car and strolled to the door. He handed me a large envelope.

  “Where do I sign?” I said automatically.

  “Not necessary,” he said, turning on his heel, striding at a half-jog back to his car. Something tweaked at the back of my mind — that’s strange — but I brushed it aside.

  I was expecting to find a notice of motion telling me that Peter was taking our case back to court, but it was half past four on Friday afternoon, and my gut screamed at me. This is worse. I tore open the envelope and stopped breathing. This cannot possibly be true.

  Peter and Ken Westlake had gone to court a day and a half earlier, without informing me or my lawyer, or Allison Burnet, and got themselves an ex parte order to pull Dash out of the wilderness program. “She has abducted the child,” Peter had said. Peter wanted his “rights as a custodial parent” enforced. He wanted to regain the access that had been “abruptly terminated.” Dash was being held “incommunicado” and against his wishes in a boot camp in America, far from the custody of a desperately worried and loving father. And with those lies, Peter got an order to bring Dash back to Vancouver. Peter must have stacked the deck. The hearing had not been in front of Justice Brenner, who was still the judge of record on our case. Brenner knew our story and had seen Peter and Ken in action. He knew Allison Burnet was Dash’s advocate. Ken and Peter knew that Justice Brenner, with his past history of not giving Peter an ex parte order without calling me to court, wouldn’t have given them this order either, so they avoided him entirely and went straight to chambers, lined up in the cattle call, and got a judge who knew nothing about us. Any judge would have done the trick, as long as it wasn’t someone familiar with the case.

  Justice Jon Sigurdson had in front of him a custody case that had been before the courts in multiple guises forever and was again in court, this time for an ex parte order. The evidence consisted of Ken Westlake’s affidavits, Peter’s affidavits, and the manipulative letters from Dash describing the hell of having to get up at seven forty-five in the morning. Peter said, “You’ll see from his letter if they don’t all get up at 7:45 in the morning at the same time, they are all put back to bed again. And if they don’t, you know, do all the dishes at the same time, then they don’t eat.” That was a lie.

  Ken piped up, describing it as “autocratic.” Sigurdson didn’t say a thing; he was clearly moved. They used the tried-and-true character assassination of me: “She’s got an enormous amount of money. She’s extremely litigious,” said Ken Westlake. “When I’ve previously attempted to contact Dashiell and speak to him when he’s with his mother, because he’s left messages for me, I’ve not been able to speak to him. So she will actually cut him off from communication and even with speaking to me and so forth,” Ken lamented.

  Peter painted a picture, to a presumably horrified judge, of Dash being picked up in Seattle and dragged against his will to Ascent. He had found out where Dash was, Peter claimed with deliberate vagueness, only by speaking to “somebody who knew Pamela.” He said, “It took me an entire day through information.… I looked through the maps and within a day I found out the place he was at. I called there.” The “somebody who knew Pamela” was Dr. Rick Brennan, an expert, the man who had overseen Dash’s educational welfare for the previous six months and who had recommended in the strongest possible terms that Dash go to Ascent and Cascade. He had told Peter all about the wilderness program. He had faxed him all the information. He had told him that Dash was going to be escorted to Idaho.

  Ken said, “He was, in essence, taken by two men back to some form of camp or school setting in Idaho, which is basically a deprogramming school.”

  Peter summed it up, “They grabbed him, put him in a car, and drove him to Idaho.”

  Sigurdson must have believed them, because he later described Ascent as a “preparatory boot camp,” rather than as a treatment facility for damaged children. Sigurdson never got on the phone to ask me if I had abducted Dash, and he didn’t ask Peter why Dash was in the program in the first place.
Peter and Ken Westlake used the words “taken by force” and “abducted” over and over for maximum impact. Peter said. “He was taken by deceit out of the country, and by force once out of the country, and then kept incommunicado.” Peter didn’t tell the judge that Dash and his father were able to write to each other. He didn’t tell the judge that family involvement was considered crucial to the children’s progress. He didn’t tell the judge that direct contact was not permitted for any child. He didn’t tell the judge that he was able to talk to Dash’s counsellor every day, or that he had gone to Idaho, spent hours with the program director, and left having given it two thumbs up. The judge didn’t hear about any of that. We have the transcript. What he heard were the words “abducted” and “incommunicado” — a dozen times in as many minutes.

  Peter convinced Sigurdson that he only wanted an order for Dash to be returned to “the jurisdiction,” so that Dash could tell the court where he wanted to be — in Vancouver or at Ascent. Sigurdson thought Ken Westlake’s argument was sound, and set about writing an order that Dash be brought back. Along the way he did make some attempts at caution, but they were as weak as every other court order we had had.

  “Judges are always concerned about ex parte orders,” he said. “I am not being disrespectful to you, Mr. Hart, but there’s often some other story or another twist or something even that you don’t know about.”