j. Candida Mulliner’s view of adoption was resolutely black, coloured by her own unhappy experience. Nevertheless, she placed her total trust in the prospective adopter, whom she asked to be her co-parent while she lived and made the child’s testamentary guardian on her death.
k. It should be noted that, owing to the mother’s death, all the above information has been provided by the prospective adopter.
1. Not applicable.
The Putative Father
a. Robin Perceval St John Standish was born on the 13th August 1954 in Crierley, near Fownhope, Herefordshire. He died on the 25th April 1987.
b. He was unmarried.
c. See under mother.
d. He was 6 ’0” tall, slim, with golden hair, full lips and cornflower-blue eyes. He had rare physical grace and, throughout his life, retained a boyish charm.
e. From information furnished by the prospective adopter, it would appear that he was genial and generous with a relaxed intelligence, which he played down in order to trade more easily on his physical allure. His surface confidence was belied by inner doubt, which drove him to excessive and self-destructive behaviour and, ultimately, to suicide.
f. He was a practising Roman Catholic.
g. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cambridge University.
h. On graduation, he worked as a film critic for Scoop magazine. He spent some time managing the family estates in Herefordshire but refused to follow a conventional career path, believing that ‘one should work to live, not live to work’. He travelled extensively and took part in various counter-culture activities on the Continent.
i. His parents are both dead. His father, an alcoholic, died in the mid-1980s. His mother died of heart disease in October last year (there is no suggestion that this was congenital). He has a surviving sister, Lydia, who was born suffering from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, which has left her physically scarred, emotionally withdrawn and mentally retarded. No one in Robin’s family is aware of his relationship to Pagan.
j. He never expressed any desire to see his daughter or any opinion on her future.
k. It should be noted that, owing to the father’s death, all the above information has been provided by the prospective adopter.
i. Neither parent ever revealed to anyone, including the prospective adopter, the truth of Pagan’s paternity. The facts have only recently and unexpectedly come to light. It is thought likely that the Standish family would resist any claim against it made by, or on behalf of, the child.
3. The Prospective Adopter
a. Leonard Peter Young was born on the 1st May 1955 at Nant-y-Glyn Maternity Hospital, Colwyn Bay, North Wales. His current address is 64 Addison Avenue, London W8.
b. He is the child’s testamentary guardian.
c. He is homosexual and, while currently unattached, does not rule out the possibility of a relationship in the future. He nevertheless insists that Pagan’s needs will remain paramount. In the past year, he has discussed his sexuality with her and found her to be wholly sympathetic. He has many close women friends, who will provide her with appropriate role models.
d. He has never married.
e. Not applicable.
f. Not applicable.
g. Not applicable.
h. He is 6’ 2” tall, broad-shouldered and lean. He has copper-coloured hair, pale, heavily freckled skin and sea-green eyes.
i. He has an exuberant, outgoing personality which is well suited to his media role. He leads a busy social life with diverse friends. At the same time, he is a deeply private man, sensitive, reflective and warmly empathetic, particularly with children. He has a sharp wit and a shrewd sense of humour.
j. He has no religion but was brought up a Methodist. He declares himself neutral on the subject of God, while deeply hostile to the myths and teachings of the Christian church, claiming that ‘the Garden of Eden is no place for a child; I would rather that she grew up with Ken and Barbie than with Adam and Eve’.
k. He obtained a first-class Bachelor of Arts degree from Cambridge University.
i. On leaving university, he taught for fifteen months in a preparatory school and then joined the BBC where, for several years, he worked in radio. In 1983, he moved to television and, for the past ten years, has hosted a chat show. He has presented numerous documentaries and arts programmes. He is also an experienced journalist, who, since last autumn, has written a weekly column in the Observer. He has wide cultural interests, particularly in music, which he once thought to make his career.
m. He owns a large detached house with a substantial garden in a quiet, residential neighbourhood. The house is beautifully furnished and maintained, without being over-formal. Pagan has her own bedroom and playroom and shares a bathroom with her nanny. The garden is well tended and equipped with a slide, swing and sandpit. Holland Park, with its children’s playgrounds, is a ten-minute walk away.
n. He has a high disposable income. In April 1994, he signed a new contract with the BBC, worth £350,000 a year over the next five years. In addition, he commands considerable fees for after-dinner speeches, personal appearances and newspaper articles.
o. There are two other members of the household: Juliet Croome-Clark, Pagan’s nanny, and Una Wilmott, the housekeeper.
p. He is an only child. Both his parents are living. His father is a permanent invalid following an assault. His mother is asthmatic but otherwise in good health.
q. After initial opposition, his mother has given her full backing to the proposed adoption. Mr Young believes that, once the relationship is legally endorsed, she will finally accept Pagan as her grandchild. His father is unable to express a view.
r. He has lived with the child all her life, playing a major role in her upbringing. He assumed sole responsibility for her on her mother’s death.
s. He has a good understanding of the nature of the proposed adoption. Given the Residence Order currently in force, it will have little effect on their day-to-day lives. On the other hand, it will profoundly alter the way that both he and Pagan perceive their relationship and provide them with much-needed security. He remains bitter about the way in which he has been treated during the past three years, considering that he has been victimised on account of his sexuality. The adoption will mark official acceptance of his love for the child.
t. His principal goal is to ensure that Pagan enjoys a peaceful and happy childhood in which she can put the anguish of abuse behind her. He aims to be protective but not possessive, encouraging her to form friendships and to develop talents that will sustain her throughout life. He places a high – though not exclusive – value on academic progress and is particularly keen that she should pursue her interest in art.
u. He is well informed on the sexual issues that affect a young girl, especially one who has suffered such trauma. He has a strong support network and appears highly qualified to care for the child both now and through adolescence.
4. Actions of the Local Authority Supplying the Report under Rule Twenty-Two (Two)
a. The Local Authority was notified of the proposed adoption by Mr Young on the 12th May 1995.
b. The Local Authority was required by the Court to submit a Schedule Two report on the 26th May 1995. Mrs Charlotte Walsh of the Family Placement Unit Adoption Team was appointed as the Social Worker in the case. She proceeded to interview the prospective adopter and the child and to prepare the report. The Adoption Committee agreed on the 3rd August 1995 that it was in Pagan’s best interests to be adopted and that Mr Young was suitable to adopt. Pagan Mulliner was placed for adoption on the 15th August 1995.
c. Not applicable.
5. Generally
a. Not applicable.
b. Not applicable.
6. Conclusions
a. See attached medical reports (Schedule Three) for detailed assessments of the health of both the prospective adopter and the child. Pagan continues to show signs of disturbance associated with the abuse but has established a good relationship
with Dr Lister and is responding well to therapy.
b. Adoption is clearly in the long-term interests of the child, who is devoted to the prospective adopter and determined to have their relationship legalised – and, in her eyes, legitimised – as that of father and daughter. It should also allay her remaining fears of being removed from home.
c. Not applicable.
d. Adoption is clearly in the long-term interests of Mr Young. It will enable him to be the father de jure which he has long been de facto. It represents a recognition of all that he has done for Pagan in the past and a declaration of faith in their future.
e. Renewal of the Residence Order would be an inferior option. It would confirm Mr Young’s sense of himself as a second-class parent and might well divert his attention from caring for the child towards nurturing his grievances against the authorities.
f. I conclude that the Adoption Order should be made. If the Court, however, takes a different view, then the Residence Order of the 12th May 1994 should be renewed.
Charlotte Walsh,
Social Worker, Family Placement Unit,
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
1
I walk up the gravelly path past a forlorn patch of primroses. I pull the doorbell like an organ-stop. Another pane in the fanlight has been boarded up since my last visit. I speculate on the cause … deliberate vandalism, a fit of rage, an escape attempt, or just the natural process of decay?
I am relieved when the Manager opens the door. On Thursday, the only adult on the premises was an agency worker who had not been informed of my visit. She left me kicking my heels on the step and Pagan pressing her face against the window, while she phoned for authorisation. When she finally let me in, she made no apology, seeming to feel that I was at fault for disturbing her shift. After all, none of the other children’s parents had come.
The Manager asks if we might have a word while Pagan finishes her lunch. He shows me into his office and then immediately departs in search of some coffee. I peer at the portrait of the home’s benefactor, Sir Johnson Gurnett, Victorian industrialist turned death-bed philanthropist who, after a lifetime spent exploiting their parents, left his Kemp Town home, suitably endowed, for the care of indigent orphans. His expression puts me in mind of Judge Flower.
The house is an impenetrable labyrinth of faded formal rooms, connected by cavernous corridors in which the least sound becomes an echo. And yet, although the council has run it down, in every sense, it cannot afford to close it completely. So, several passages are roped off, while an entire wing is abandoned, unfurnished and unheated. Ten children, aged between three and twelve, occupy a space originally intended for thirty; which only adds to their sense of loss.
The Manager comes back with the coffee, apologising, firstly, for having spilt it; secondly, that the milk is powdered; and, thirdly, that it is in a Thomas the Tank Engine mug. Once settled, he returns to the subject of the late lunch, which he blames on an incident in the dining room involving two boys and a billiard cue. He mops his mug with a dirty handkerchief and, the next moment, uses it to blow his nose. Stirring his coffee with his biro (he regrets the lack of spoons), he makes further excuses for Thursday’s confusion over my arrival.
‘It’s good to see that you haven’t given up on us.’
‘I’ve no wish to sound rude, but I don’t come for the pleasure of the company. I’d be back even if your assistant had set a pack of Alsatians on me. I’m here for Pagan.’
‘Yes, of course. Point taken. I only hope she realises how lucky she is.’
‘Lucky?’
‘Relatively speaking,’ he qualifies quickly. ‘I really don’t know what some of these kids have done to deserve this … that is, I know that they’ve done nothing. They’re dumped here through no fault of their own and then we dump on them twice over. I tell you, you should make a programme.’
‘Perhaps I will.’
‘Naming no names, of course?’
‘Of course.’ He looks relieved.
‘It means so much to Pagan that you come down three times a week. We have some parents who can’t even be bothered to cross the road.’
‘I want her to know that I’m always here for her.’
‘Believe me, she does. The other day, she was in one of her “shouty-shouty” moods, as she calls them. She was having a bit of a ding-dong with another girl … oh nothing to worry about. She told her that, if she didn’t leave her alone, she’d cut her up and serve her to her daddy for dinner.’
‘Is that good?’ I am alarmed by this vision of myself as a modern Moloch.
‘Oh sure. It shows that she feels protected by you but not dependent.’
The telephone cuts short his explanation. He reaches to answer it and knocks his coffee over a pink file marked Confidential. As he flounders, I offer him my clean handkerchief and take the opportunity to escape. ‘As soon as the meal’s over, they’ll head for the rec. room,’ he says. ‘Make yourself comfortable there.’
I walk out into an atmosphere of sanitation and Savlon, damp clothes and wet beds. I move down corridors hung with posters of dolphins and defaced by graffiti. I enter the recreation room which, with its mixture of expensive curtains and furnishings, chipped plaster, torn lino and ancient mashed potato calcifying on the ceiling, embodies all the home’s incongruities. I swear loudly as I trip over a model car and am startled to discover a woman sitting in a sagging armchair, hidden by its high back. We have met before. She is the mother of a gangling, snub-nosed boy, who propositioned me on a previous visit. ‘Don’t let it worry you,’ said the Manager, whose response to my report showed that he has never faced a charge of child abuse. ‘He was sodomised by his father and uncle; it’s the only way that he can relate to men.’
I turn to the woman and hope that she was not as offended by my ‘Fuck’ as I was by her son’s offer. She flashes me a fuzzy smile and I pick up on the Manager’s description of her as high on Valium and low on self-esteem; to which he added that she is in and out of clinics so often that even her dog has a social security number. In a voice eerily drained of emphasis, she tells me that she has come to see her son Ronald, whom they named after the President. I ask politely if his father is American; she stares at me as though the suggestion were insane. She informs me that, for the moment, all four of her children are in care, but she wants to have another three because seven is her lucky number. I despair to think that parenthood can be entered so lightly … at least she had to buy a licence for her dog.
A mob invades the room and demands my attention. I am surrounded by older children who know my show and younger ones who have seen me on Jackanory (I smile at the thought of the olive branch recently held out by Ianthe Snowdon). Pagan detaches herself from Shona, the mournful, disfigured girl who has become her new best friend, and runs into my arms, planting a creamy kiss on my cheek. ‘I’m going out, I’m going out,’ she shouts. I fear that she may incite envy – or worse – in the others. ‘My daddy’s taking me to a castle. I’m going to live there soon. We’re going to pull up the bridge and drown everyone outside in the moat.’
I am disturbed by the increasing violence of her speech and its connection to her environment. Even now, Ronald, who has yet to acknowledge his mother, is engaged in a frenzied row with Eugene, the one black child in the home, a deeply disturbed boy with cigarette burns and razor slashes covering his arms like tribal markings, who sought me out last week to explain that he had not been born black but that he had been bad to his parents and God had put a curse on him. I asked who had filled his head with such wicked nonsense.
‘My parents.’
‘How could they? If it were true, it would mean that God had put a similar curse on them.’
‘He did,’ he said. ‘It made them blind; which was why they adopted me.’
The pattern of prejudice recurs, as Ronald takes off his trainers and hurls them at Eugene, yelling, ‘Own up, you black bastard; I’m not going to be stuck indoors all day beca
use of you.’ His mother reproaches him, her words at odds with her permanent grin. Ronald quickly turns the full force of his fury onto her … ‘Don’t tell me what to do! You’re a fucking schizo.’ He mimes lunacy; she obediently backs off. Aware that the children are looking to me to take a lead, I gently suggest to Ronald that that is no way to talk to his mother, at which he rounds on me … ‘What do you know about it, you great poof!’
The word hits me like an electric shock, the charge intensified by Pagan’s presence. She grabs my hand; ‘I want to go out; you said we were going out; I want to go to the castle.’ I promise her that we will, just as soon as Ronald and Eugene stop rolling around on the floor. And yet, although all my instincts are to intervene, I fear that, in this world of loud whispers and long shadows, I may lay myself open to censure and decide that the wiser course is to inform the Manager, whom I find in the kitchen, washing up. He listens wearily to my account and explains that it stems from one of the children setting off the fire alarm in the night. As no one has admitted to it, this afternoon’s cinema trip has been cancelled … ‘I tell you, you should make a programme. You really should.’
I follow him back to the recreation room where the fight continues, watched by two excited four-year-olds as though it were Tom and Jerry, while the other children, Pagan included, ignore it completely and play among themselves. I am not sure which depresses me more: the brutality or the indifference. I resolve that, as soon as I return home, I shall ask Max to make another attempt to advance the residence hearing. I dread to think how a month in this world of rage and anguish has affected Pagan. She has been rescued from one kind of violence, only to be subjected to another. Nothing can be more calculated to sustain her sense of guilt.
I can, at least, offer her a temporary respite; and we walk upstairs to fetch her coat. I am relieved that Jess, the fearsome deputy manager, is not on duty, or I would never be allowed in the bedroom unsupervised. In her view, I am a man and therefore innately guilty, whatever the verdict of the trial.
Pagan and her parents Page 42