by Sharp, Janis
Professor Baron-Cohen’s report conclusively diagnosed Gary as having Asperger’s syndrome and deemed him at risk of suicide. That was the thing: Gary had told Professor Cohen intimate things that he had felt unable to tell us. Some of those things confirmed the risk to his life and as we hadn’t known, Karen didn’t know, so hadn’t been able to use it in evidence.
Asperger’s syndrome is a condition that is often masked by intelligence. This makes it much more difficult for other people to understand why some people with autistic spectrum disorder can often find it so difficult, and sometimes impossible, to grasp some basic concepts, while understanding the most complicated of things.
When Gary was a toddler, whenever I took him on a bus he used to scream continually and throw himself around. Nothing would calm him but as soon as we got off the bus he was quiet again. He was afraid of travel.
At the age of nine Gary would buy books on body language and study them and I couldn’t understand why. I now I realise that he couldn’t understand what the various expressions on people’s faces meant and he was trying to learn it all by himself.
Gary took everything literally; so much so that it tended to cause confusion.
Gary’s mental breakdowns when we took him on holiday as a child and in his early teens were likely to have been induced by his fear of travel and his inability to be far from home and familiar surroundings.
Gary’s collapse on the platform of the tube when he was sixteen years old and the loss of his intellectual faculties was probably because he had left his local surroundings on his own for the first time ever, to start work in town, causing him to go into meltdown.
His obsession with computers which had caused his downfall was also an Aspie thing. Gary’s world was a literal world, one of logic and obsession, and the logic of computers made perfect sense to him.
If we hadn’t been living in such intense fear we could have taken comfort from the knowledge we had just acquired. It was like a jigsaw puzzle that had fallen into place. We always knew Gary was vulnerable and eccentric and different in many ways – but we were different and our unconventional lifestyle included many very eccentric friends. Gary was just Gary, more fragile and more vulnerable and more eccentric than many eccentrics, and we loved him.
ASD wasn’t recognised by the World Health Organization until Gary was around thirty years old, so it would have been impossible for him to have been diagnosed as a child or for me to have known anything about Asperger’s at that time.
Surely Home Secretary Jacqui Smith would now refuse to extradite Gary. The doctors’ reports made it crystal clear that Gary’s obsessions and search for the truth were connected to his ASD. He had no clue that he might face extradition for accessing US computers, given that the 2003 extradition treaty hadn’t been written and no one else had ever been extradited from the UK for computer misuse – even in other cases deemed by the judges to be significantly more serious.
On 13 September 2008 we got more bad news. Jacqui Smith refused to stop the extradition and, just to finish Gary off, she refused to give him fourteen days’ grace to allow the new medical evidence to be considered.
I couldn’t understand how this crucial medical evidence could just be dismissed out of hand by the government, but Karen flatly refused to give up on Gary and said defiantly, ‘I’m putting the new medical evidence in anyway and Jacqui Smith will just have to consider it.’
I was so glad of Karen’s fiery nature and of the fact that despite awesome odds she fought and managed to keep Gary here until we could eventually win his freedom.
• • •
For the first few years I said barely a word in public, respecting Gary’s wish not to make him feel silly by having his mum speak up for him. But when the situation became bleaker and bleaker, embarrassment was the least of our worries.
Gary was shutting down and deteriorating mentally at a rapid rate, unable to tolerate the constant stress and rollercoaster of emotions when hopes raised were continually crashed to the ground.
Duncan Campbell from The Guardian asked me if I wanted to write a piece in the paper’s ‘Comment is Free’ section. So on 22 September 2008 I did just that. I wrote about Gary and extradition and how just the threat of it destroys lives.
Among the mostly positive responses, loads of negative and even abusive comments started to appear, many from people sounding American. One of those posts retained a link that someone had accidentally included in their post. I was amazed to discover that the link was to a website exclusively for American prison officers, soldiers and police, and that my Guardian piece was posted on the front page of this US website, from which most of the negative comments seemed to be emanating.
I was genuinely shocked at this and at just how far the US prosecutor’s PR machine goes, that they apparently even have comments flooding our system, in an attempt to combat supportive articles written on someone they want to prosecute.
In September 2008 I arranged a protest to demonstrate outside the American embassy in London. If it’s inside the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) area, you have to inform the police of the names of the key protestors, the steward you nominate and a rough estimate of the numbers expected, so that they know how many PCs are needed to police it.
Because ARM, the Autistic Rights Movement, was joining us, police with experience of autism were also used. The Autistic Rights Movement made huge, impressive banners that looked like solid stone. The demo was well attended and gained a lot of TV coverage. It was both a plea to President Bush and a protest against what was happening to Gary via the UK’s horrendous extradition treaty.
Gary was in a deep depressive state and there were serious and justifiable concerns that his life was at risk. He believed that death was preferable to being removed from everyone and everything he had ever known.
I felt as though I was wandering through a wilderness and calling out for help but no one could hear me. So many things had happened that I believed should be more than enough to change the government’s mind, but they all led to nothing. Government hearts seemed cold and untouched by the cruelty being inflicted by outlandish threats. I needed to make my voice heard and to fight harder to make people aware of what was happening.
On 29 December 2008 I was looking through the newspapers online and discovered that Duncan Campbell had made Gary one of the ‘Brits who stole the show this year’ in The Guardian. This was amazing.
As if that wasn’t enough of a boost to our spirits, Nadine had been in contact with Peter Howson, the famous Scottish artist, and in January 2009 Peter unveiled his impressive and powerful portrait of Gary, leading to extensive press coverage all over the country.
Suddenly people were coming on board from all directions to help us, and at a time when we most needed it.
The Home Office in the then Labour government wrote to Karen asking her to ask Gary’s supporters to stop writing to them, as the volume of mail was stopping them getting on with their work. I couldn’t believe the cheek, and let’s just say that my heart didn’t exactly bleed for them.
Gary’s life was under threat and they were upset because they had received too many letters in his support?
It felt to me as though Gary was on death row and we were fighting to prevent his execution. In Gary’s case extradition would have meant execution, but by Gary’s own hand.
Before I opened my eyes in the morning my heart was filled with dread that Gary might not have made it through the night. The unrelenting fear of losing him and working 24/7 on fighting for Gary was physically and mentally exhausting.
I once fell fast asleep during a conversation with my friend Pauline on the phone and woke up with her shouting down the phone, ‘Janis! Janis! Wake up, Janis, you have to go to bed, you have to sleep.’
I also regularly fell asleep in front of the computer in the early hours of the morning and Wilson would come down to take me up to bed.
Wilson was wonderful and without him by my side, lif
e would have been infinitely harder. Wilson is gentle to the core. He fed me and made me endless cups of tea and understood that sometimes when I seemed irritable it was because I was beginning to crumble and was fighting hard to keep it together.
Wilson helped give me the confidence I needed to do what I was doing. I was shy and hated talking on the telephone, rarely answered the door and had never spoken on TV. Suddenly I had to do so many things that I wasn’t prepared for and didn’t know if I could do without falling on my face, but I couldn’t afford to fail.
Wilson held me in the night when silent tears were falling and rubbed my back until I drifted into sleep. When I woke at an unearthly hour every morning, he would get up at 5 or 6 a.m. to make me tea and toast and to help me to find the information I was searching for on the internet. We’ve been married for thirty-nine years and together for forty-two and still love each other deeply.
Wilson is an artist and a musician and has a great sense of humour. He always tries to keep everyone happy and has helped to pull Gary from the abyss in the darkest of moments.
I remember thinking that what was happening to Gary was the worst thing ever, and then our neighbours called at our house and told us that their fifteen-year-old son had had an accident when he was jumping on a trampoline. Three friends had fallen on him, and because of the way they had all fallen, he was permanently paralysed.
I felt so sad for this family, whose lives were changed forever. The couple were going to have to employ a full-time nurse, which they could ill afford, but that wasn’t the point. Their son was paralysed! The hopes that he and his parents had had for his future were gone in an instant, because of a freak accident that had occurred totally out of the blue. There was nothing I or anyone could say to lessen their pain.
‘What would we choose, I wonder, if the choice was your son facing extradition and a possible sixty-year sentence but with a tiny glimmer of hope, or your son being safe in his own country but being permanently paralysed?’
‘Where’s the choice?’ he answered.
‘Where’s the choice,’ I agreed.
As we stood at the door to say goodbye, I watched them walk away slowly, shoulders bent, reflecting the weight of their hearts.
CHAPTER 12
PRESIDENTS AND PRECEDENTS
My heart was heavy too. Who knew what lay ahead for us? No alleged hacker had ever been extradited for computer misuse and the first person was not going to be Gary, it just couldn’t be.
I received numerous emails about Gary every day. I’d even got some from classical musicians and cryptologists asking if it was right that Gary had cracked the ‘Dorabella cipher’. I discovered that this was an encrypted letter written by Edward Elgar to Dorabella Penny in 1897. It seems that Penny never deciphered it and its meaning remains unknown.
I didn’t know where the rumour had come from that Gary had cracked this code. I was asked to ask Gary whether, even if he hadn’t cracked Elgar’s code, he would take the time to try. They seemed to have no idea of what Gary was going through.
The Dorabella cipher, consisting of eighty-seven characters spread over three lines, appears to be made up from twenty-four symbols, each symbol consisting of one, two or three approximate semicircles oriented in one of eight directions (the orientation of several characters is ambiguous). A small dot appears after the fifth character on the third line.
I think just about everyone believed that Gary would not go anywhere in the end and, somewhere inside, I believed that too but I knew I had to keep fighting. We were desperately hoping that Barack Obama would win the American election as we believed that he would be a more compassionate President and might drop the extradition request.
When we switched the TV on to find that Barack Obama had indeed won the presidential election we were overjoyed. This was a true landmark in American history. Barack Obama would be the first ever black President of America and he could change the world for the better if he wanted to. I hoped he had the courage to do just that.
Melanie Riley, who had done the PR for the NatWest Three and who also ran the Friends Extradited campaign group, was committed to seeing the introduction of ‘forum’ in extradition cases, to allow people who were in the UK when the alleged crime took place to be tried here instead of being extradited.
In my very first contact with Melanie I argued with her about a demonstration she had organised, a protest by businessmen in support of the NatWest Three, who were fighting extradition to the US. I didn’t know Melanie then but I sent out emails to Gary’s supporters asking them to come along to the demo, as I felt that by joining forces we’d be better able to fight the extradition treaty. Melanie contacted me in panic mode, asking me to tell Gary’s supporters not to attend as the demo was for businessmen only.
I wasn’t happy about this but as I got to know Melanie, I understood more about her methods and realised she was caring and compassionate and was working extremely hard on trying to achieve forum.
I had been doing interviews for various newspapers and had got to know a lot of the journalists. The media would generally contact me at home, via Karen, or via the Free Gary website, which was run by the amazing Mark.
Melanie Riley rang me in January 2009 and asked me if I would do an in-depth interview with Lucy Bannerman of The Times. I met Lucy, a young Scottish woman, in the Cock & Dragon pub at Cockfosters. She was easy to talk to and there was a photographer with her who took lots of pictures. It’s hard to smile or to look serious to order, so it never really feels or looks natural, but that was the least of my worries.
After the interview was published it got a huge reaction. Lucy Bannerman rang me to say that ITV had seen the story and wanted me to do a TV interview. That made me nervous but Lucy said, ‘You’re articulate and it could help Gary, so it’s worth doing.’
I had no idea of how I’d come across on TV but knew that I couldn’t let Gary down and had to do my best to put his case across well.
In the meantime Melanie approached us about arranging a press conference on 15 January 2009 at Gary’s barrister’s chambers in Doughty Street. I had reservations, especially about whether Gary would be able to cope with it, but we eventually agreed.
Karen Todner and Ben Cooper from Gary’s legal team, Gary’s MP David Burrowes, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Mark Lever from the National Autistic Society, James Welch from Liberty, Nadine Stavonina, Gary and I were on the panel. The press conference was packed with journalists from all over the world plus all the British newspapers and TV stations.
Melanie was right. It was well worth doing as it raised the profile of Gary’s case and the extradition treaty even further.
I had emailed all the journalists I’d had contact with and when Alex Thomson from Channel 4 walked in an hour early because of a mix-up in times, he said, ‘You sent me an email asking me to come to a press conference.’
‘Yes,’ I said embarrassedly, as I had to explain to Alex that it wasn’t due to start until an hour later. This extremely tall, charismatic man with the warm, open smile wasn’t at all annoyed and waited patiently. I’ve since discovered that he has a son with autism and I’ve been amazed at just how many people I’ve met from the media who have an autistic child.
It was much harder to speak off my own bat to an audience of seasoned journalists than to answer questions in an interview. My leg was shaking, but Gary was as articulate as always. However, when asked by one of the journalists how he felt, Gary said, ‘I might appear calm on the outside but inside the fires of hell are burning.’
Gary had said that he couldn’t look into his own eyes in the mirror when he was shaving, that he felt as though he was walking through a world that was about to end, and that there was a veil between him and the world he was living in. The psychiatrist told me that these were all dangerous signs.
The press conference was well organised and an old friend of Gary’s named John Tayler who worked in PR was helping Melanie and paid for a buffet out of his own pocket. We espec
ially appreciated his thoughtfulness in including the vegetarian food.
At the end of the press conference there were lots of interviews with journalists from all over the world. Everyone hung around afterwards chatting and eating and drinking and it was a good atmosphere with lots of positivity. Melanie was so right about the wisdom of doing a press conference – it had been an undoubted success.
• • •
The judicial review of the decision to extradite Gary took place on Tuesday 20 January 2009, the same day that George Bush officially handed over the presidency to Barack Obama, which I hoped was a good omen. Gary’s lawyers had fought against fierce government opposition to get this date.
It seems that the QC acting for the Treasury solicitors argued against any sort of judicial review, and had apparently been demanding that if there was a ‘JR’ it should take place on 2 December.
Mark, who set up and ran the Free Gary website, reported that more public money was then wasted on legal fees, and the already overburdened court system slowed down, by a hearing in front of a judge to try to overturn Karen’s rejection of the 2 December date. I’ve always wondered why the prosecution were so fixated on this specific date and I felt pleased that they failed – their desperation worried me. We were up against some very experienced prosecutors and every move they made was purposeful and with the intention of winning.
ITV rang me to ask me to do a TV interview on 21 January 2009. It was with Fern Britton and Phillip Schofield on ITV’s This Morning show. They sent a car for me and Wilson came too, although he preferred to keep a low profile and didn’t want to be interviewed.
I was nervous. Even when Wilson and I played gigs in music venues I never spoke between the songs, but I knew that I had to do this and do it well.
The people who worked in the green room were nice and everyone tries to put you at your ease. They have lots of tea and croissants and fruit, in case anyone hasn’t had time for breakfast. They took me in to have my makeup done but I told the makeup artist that I didn’t really want any added, so she kept it to a bare minimum.