Tom, Brian, my father and my friend Jan who I had asked to come along, given that she had been supporting me at meetings with the Department, went for lunch at a local pub and opened talks about the way forward. Tom didn't seem to have the fire or the promise of his earlier claim to Gabby that he could get the ICO revoked and bring M home to me. I stood my ground, and made my points as clearly and reasonably as I could and hoped that I had got him to see past my outer appearance which I'm sure he'd stereotyped and into the truth and love in my heart.
Like so many who had come before, Tom's manner was that of Headmaster to child. He talked to me as if I was a wayward school girl who had played truant. I hated this, but trusted Gabby’s opinion enough to give him a fair chance. After all we wanted a lion going into Court, not a pussy cat. If he was condescending and intimidating towards me, I hoped he would equally be to those who were destroying our world.
My first appearance with Tom came a few weeks later. We had a Directions hearing and he flew over to accompany me, along with Brian. Brian met us at the Court and I met Tom slightly earlier. What struck me most was that he walked ahead of me and made little conversation when we got to the waiting room outside. I didn't get the feeling of a united front. There was a huge divide between us. He was there to do a job, I was the client and a woman and he did not hide the fact that he clearly had contempt for me or maybe more than that, that I was irrelevant as a human being.
I had always found it difficult waiting to go into Court in close proximity to the very people who were hell bent on destroying and vilifying me. The hostility that hung in the air was oppressive and harsh and yet I had to sit alone, faced with the firing squad of the lawyer for the Department, the Guardian’s lawyer, the Guardian himself and M’s father and his lawyer. I would have been grateful for a sign of allegiance or support from my own barrister, but clearly he did not see this as part of his job description.
The hearing passed uneventfully. Tom, at least had had a chance to view the opposition. He was completely unimpressed with both R’s lawyer who he saw as a weak and silly woman and the Department’s lawyer for which he only had a few words – “what a total bitch." As he came from the Court room, he announced, “That is one of the most unpleasant women I have ever met.” At least we were united in that opinion. One thing I will say for Tom is that he shared my contempt for the other players, but that did not make us friends. He appeared to have contempt for most people.
I have to concede that Tom was much stronger in Court than the first barrister had been. He opposed the signing of the second “Agreement” that the Department were trying to force on me, referring to it as "a decree" and a "an unreasonable straitjacket." He also achieved one other very positive thing, which was to get my psychiatric evaluation on record. He did this very deftly by asking the current psychologist to comment on it. Professional jealousy meant that having been criticised in it by the psychiatrist who had assessed me as mentally sound and rejecting his report as inaccurate, the psychologist felt compelled to defend their position in their next report. As soon as they made comment on the Psychiatrist’s report it became a matter of record.
This had been a clever tactic on Tom’s part and was one of a few moves he made that were aggressive and inspired. However, he wanted to totally control everything and my voice was silenced completely which I was not entirely happy with. In hindsight perhaps I should have just stepped back and let him do things his way, but the niggling doubt that stayed with me were the words he then uttered when I took him back to the airport. I had asked him whether he believed in the abuse, to which he had responded “I don’t have to believe you in order to represent you.” In my mind, he did.
I needed someone in Court for me who was truly on board and on side and I needed to know that they trusted me. This niggling doubt grew over the next few weeks and when we reached the Contact Hearing – the application that I had filed on my return from the US for more contact with M, I hoped that Tom's rather aggressive approach may at least do us some good in Court. He certainly didn't pull any punches and seemed to take delight in attacking Miss Whiplash in particular, who, dressed in her customary black attire and long black leather boots resembled a Storm Trooper. She clearly hadn't come up against someone like Tom before and he not only made her look foolish, but a first class liar to boot. She became increasingly sheepish and squirming as he fired questions at her designed to demonstrate just what a bully she was.
Naturally the whole Moshi Monsters incident was brought up by the Department, as was Club Penguin and a video I had made for M of his bedroom on his I-pod Nano when had given it to me to upload some music for him. I had taken the opportunity to make him a short film of his room with the painted lighthouses, dolphins and sailboats and his beloved rocking horses. I felt this would bring him some comfort. I had included a very brief commentary saying that I loved him and missed him and his room was waiting for him exactly as it had been. Innocuous as it was, the Foster Carers who seemed to be hired spies for the Department, had found the I-pod and told them that I had tried to communicate with M. To anyone outside it would seem absurd that these small expressions of love from a mother, separated from her child now for nearly a year, would be considered acts of subterfuge., but to anyone who has ever been put in this position by a Local Authority, it will come as no surprise.
The Judge supported the Department, unsurprisingly having formerly represented them on the case where two children on the Island had died.
This, at the time had been a horrific and terrible event that had led to a full public inquiry, but despite the recommendations made at the time that a more thorough form of monitoring be applied to the behaviour of the Department, none had yet been implemented now five years on. MP’s were still pushing for this, but the Department remained seriously flawed and with no accountability. The most difficult problem being that managers oversaw more managers and complaints were investigated by people who sought to protect each other and cover each other’s mistakes.
The Senior Social Worker in this case had then been promoted to the more senior position of Reviewing Manager, giving him even more power to destroy people’s lives. This same Reviewing Manager was now heading up our case. He was a weak, ineffectual man who looked like a throwback from the sixties. However, weak men in positions of power have an even greater tendency to lie to cover their inadequacy. This was a common theme throughout our case and I resented the fact that mostly I was dealing with very ill-educated people with no moral conscience and no ability to think beyond tick-boxes.
Despite the robust efforts of Tom that day, it made little difference to anything. The Judge did make a concession that there should be no reason why my recently purchased puppy, a gift for M, not attend contact and granted me one extra half hour a week’s contact. However, the Department whilst agreeing to the half hour, largely ignored his recommendations over the dog and that was all we had gained for several thousand pounds of his time. Whilst every extra minute with M was precious, it seemed a poor result.
Naturally the lawyers didn't see it that way and when I dared later to say that I was disappointed, they tried to pass it off as a huge victory and accused me of annoying the Department by writing too many emails. I guess all bad workmen blame their tools, but the only way I had been able to get M to see the puppy at all had been in writing and rewriting to them – they usually ignored at least six emails before they bothered to reply to anything.
It was soon after that that I decided to attend a meeting being held locally of an action group who were against the proposed Children’s Bill being introduced in the Island. This Bill would allow all families to be put on a data base and children taken on virtually any pretext. It had already been introduced by Blair in England but was not successful as the amount of Data needed took so long to accumulate and enter onto systems – it was, however, a move towards the Big Brother Regime that Orwell prophesied in his novel, 1984.
It was, indeed a frightening thought that babi
es could be earmarked to be taken at birth from a parent, because there was something in their family background that was considered a flaw. This could be as tenuous as someone having a Grandmother who had suffered depression or a distant cousin who had taken drugs. Virtually anything in a family’s history could be used as an indication that the child would have some kind of genetic flaw and the whole idea of this bill was reminiscent of a move towards some kind of Aryan Race – was this Neo Nazism in action? One could only wonder, but it certainly felt that way. As I listened to the views of those speaking out against the bill being actioned on the Island, I felt increasingly compelled to speak. I was a victim of the way that children can be suddenly and unfairly stolen from a loving home and I needed to warn people to register their opposition to such a bill to avoid suffering the same fate.
Standing right next to the Minister for Social Services, whose face turned purple as I told the audience of some two hundred people what I had experienced, I described the harrowing events of what had happened to us. I was careful not to give out my name or the names of anyone involved so that I couldn't be accused of Contempt of Court, but several people knew me or my family and in a place that small, there could be no hiding one’s identity. I finished my tale of horror, then quickly left.
It had taken me courage to stand up and speak and I now felt drained. As I left the room, several people patted me on the back and congratulated me for speaking out and it was then that I met two people who would have important roles in my life from then on – one was a non-practising psychologist who offered me her support and one was a man with political aspirations who, as soon as he was elected made contact with me and had his own concerns about the Department. The lady, Sheila, offered me friendship and emotional support but I was not sure whether to even trust her. I was battered and suspicious now of people’s motives and had had my fingers burned so many times in placing my trust in people who turned out to be false friends, that I didn't ring her until some weeks after the meeting. I agonised for quite a while before I finally met her, but she turned out, at least on the surface, to be genuine and very supportive.
Speaking of false friends – I digress here back to America for a moment and the realtor Miriam who had befriended M and I, but had seemingly jumped ship when she attempted to negotiate with his father. Consequently, a number of things happened. For one my car which had been put into her safekeeping disappeared without trace. She had volunteered to sell this for me when I left but two years later, I still had not received any money and attempts to find out where it was, failed completely. Secondly she found a tenant on a private basis for the house and I was delighted to have some income, but nervous when she said this woman was a friend and that she had taken no deposit or references from her before giving her the keys – knowing I was far away and could not check things out – I had a bad feeling about this from the start.
I knew that Miriam considered anyone who walked into her office seeking to buy a house, a friend and that most likely she knew nothing about this woman at all. Miriam was persuasive and told me that the lady in question was going through a terrible divorce and had a son the same age as mine. She very much played on my sympathy and convinced me that I was as good as saving these poor soul's lives by offering them refuge. I still remained unconvinced deep down and had a feeling of impending doom about the outcome of this arrangement – which sadly turned out to be right.
The woman paid one month’s rent before defaulting. They trashed the house causing thousands of dollars worth of damage and left it full of cat urine, garbage in the garage and rotting food in the fridge. Miriam did ask them to leave eventually but I then sent her money to get the house cleaned which she pocketed. By the time I had found a reputable Property Manager to take the house on, it was in such a bad way that it took a year’s rent from the new tenants to fix all the damage. It was heartbreak – I still considered the little house our home and to have it so violated was very upsetting indeed, not to mention the financial consequences which were hard to bear. It seemed that everything we had built, was being torn down around us.
At this time, I had also made a complaint regarding the UK police force in R's county. I had begun this before I had gone to America, when they had failed to investigate the allegations that M had made in regards to staying with his father in England. They refused to do so, saying that the local police had already investigated and they were not going to do this again. I'd then passed the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission - IPCC, who upheld my appeal against this decision, just before we ran and I decided to attempt to reopen this which I managed to do successfully. When again the UK police failed to agree to carry out any investigation of their own, Tom wanted to take the matter to Judicial review. He wrote one of the strongest letters we had in the case and he described in it what he had witnessed on viewing M’s DVD evidence which he had previously done along with Brian and Brian’s assistant Julie who had come over with him to take notes.
All three had come back from watching the DVD with the same reaction “M was definitely abused by his father.” Tom went further in saying that he believed that in the UK, M’s father would have been charged on far less than what M had disclosed to the police.
The part of the interview which had struck me most was that M had begged the police officer who interviewed him to “please make it stop,” in regards to the abuse. Her response had been, “we can’t do anything and we can’t make it stop.” This was what they called Child Protection. They protected themselves, each other and the perpetrator but not the child.
Regrettably Tom came off the case before we had an opportunity to follow the line of action he was then recommending. I believe not doing so was a grave mistake, but the person who replaced him wanted to focus on my Criminal Trial and felt this was a side issue.
Tom's demise came when the Judge decided to press on with M’s father’s application to have me committed for contempt by breaching the Prohibited Steps Order. A Directions Hearing took place to set a date for the Contempt Application to be heard in the Family Court. Tom took the decision, without my instruction or consent, to make an admission of guilt on my behalf. I had been given five minutes to leave Court for him to supposedly take instruction. He fired statements at me very quickly; “It's true that you went to Florida, isn't it?" "It's true that you breached this Order, is it not?” Of course, both of these things were fact, but when I tried to argue that I had done this for good reason, and that any admission of guilt would contradict my defence of necessity in the Criminal Court, he just said, well “those are the facts and you can’t argue with them.” He then returned to Court and made a plea of guilt, which placed me in the position of facing possible sentencing, prior to trial, potentially weakening our stance in the Criminal Court.
I was horrified, but sat there powerless to do anything about it. Gabby was furious and I understand that afterwards she had a face to face heated argument with Tom for jeopardizing our position in the Criminal Trial.
I emailed Tom the night he'd thrown me to the wolves. I asked him again if he believed in me and believed in our situation. But despite his fine words in his letter to the IPCC, he again replied that “he didn’t need to believe me in order to represent me.” On this, Brian was of the same opinion as me, Tom had to come off the case.
It was a shame that someone who had had such good ideas and was so strong in cross examination, had so little faith in me. He had even tried to persuade me to tell the Guardian Ad Litem that I had inadvertently influenced M and had become angry when I would not agree to. I had not influenced M in any way and nor could he have been influenced. Children of six cannot sustain a forty minute interview if they are not telling the truth. I pointed this out to Tom. I told him that M could barely remember what he had for lunch at school that day at that age and there was no way I could have scripted him for an interview. What was more, I had no prior notice of the interview and thus no opportunity and certainly had no motive for doing s
o.
His father at that time, was only seeing him a couple of days a month and was paying good maintenance and private school fees, as well as contributing towards holidays for M, so what on earth could be my motive for wanting to risk losing all that? Common sense dictated that M had to be telling the truth and I felt deeply let down that Tom did not seem to have the faith in us that we needed in someone who was going to represent us. Whilst he was an aggressive lawyer, he achieved very little in the end.
Despite the huge fortune we were paying our ever-expanding legal team, our average monthly bill now mounting to close to £50,000 between the family and criminal cases, little progress was made and we didn't know how long we could go on.
Brian headed to London the next day and texted me from the train to say that he was on his way to seek new Counsel. I hadn't even got as far as asking him to do this, but he knew that I wouldn't accept anything less than someone who was totally committed to us, and most importantly at least was sure our innocence. If there was even a shred of a doubt this may inadvertently reveal itself in Court.
It was a shame really as in many ways Tom was a better performer in Court than anyone we had had before. He'd been very tenacious but without that relationship of trust, it was not going to work. Later on I learned that Tom had just landed a much bigger case and Julie, Brian’s assistant told me that she believed he had lost interest in us in favour of the new case.
Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) Page 16