I was silent and sombre as they cuffed me in steel bracelets and led me to the car that was waiting. They didn't take the van on the first day as there was only myself going to court and as soon as I was inside the kindly young girl warden beside me told me to slip off my cuffs which she had only put on to satisfy the tick boxes of her job.
We talked as we drove through heavy snow against a background of local radio blaring tuneless musak. I cannot remember what we discussed, but it was probably pleasantries about her job and her life outside the jail.
It took two hours to get to the Court and we faced heavy criticism for being late. The Judge took this out on me as if I had any control over it at all. I closed my mind to his words as I took my place next to Phillip. The Judge had ordered there be no cuffs in court as some kind of token gesture to my dignity. I waited for the witnesses for the Department of Social Care to come in one after the other as they told their duplicitous fictional stories of contacts they had supervised, my character and what they considered to be my fatal flaws.
"Don't listen." Phillip whispered, placing a hand on my arm. He handed me a notebook and a pen so that I could pass him comments or notes, but as I began to protest to each lie, he hushed me and in the end I realised that my voice was as unwelcome now as it had been from the start. Instead I drew cartoons on the paper of each of the witnesses to satirise the situation and make it less threatening. Mel Brookes had used humour in The Producers to ridicule the Nazis and as a Jew himself he had been asked how he could laugh at such a serious and horrifying event as the Holocaust. He had said that ridiculing horror diminishes its power for more than rage and in this moment I tried to adopt the same strategy to keep me from screaming out loud at how wrong this all was.
My legal team had described the Guardian as a toad of a man, so I drew him now sitting on a toadstool - the lawyer for the Department had a name associated with toilets so I drew her reading from a long scroll of toilet roll and of course, Nanny McPhee and Miss Whiplash had their identities already.
As Phillip attempted to counter argue each of the lies that were given as evidence - hearsay - hearsay upon hearsay, everything unsubstantiated, I zoned out and entered my fictional drawing telling myself, as I had so often done before, that nothing that was happening was real. As Shakespeare said, "we are such stuff as dreams are made of" - our life was a merely a play and this was a scene from a horror movie that would reach an end - an end of what we had known as a simple, quiet and beautiful life.
I wondered how my precious little boy was coping, knowing the scene was unfolding and that he would soon be transported from all he had known and loved to be placed into a new world, a world without Mummy, Granddad, his friends, his little room with the blue dolphins on the wall that I had so lovingly painted for him - his rocking horses, teddy bears and stack of Barney and Pepper Pig DVDs - his wooden toy box with Harry Potter dressing up outfits and magic wands. If only we had a real wand now that could transport us back to that simple life of love and happiness and safety.
It mattered none that my father had emptied the coffers of his hard- earned savings to provide me with this slick QC and highly commended legal team. It mattered none that nothing that was being said held even a grain of truth in it as they passed the baton of lies from one to another in a relay of damnation. We were up against a closed-shop, an old boy network, a web of deceit and I was the fly caught in the middle with no possible means of escape.
I had spent the afternoon with Annabel in her cell the day before the hearing. We had attempted to watch a film but again, I cannot remember what. She had opened up to me sharing her deepest secrets, her attraction to another girl who had come onto the wing, her confusion, her childhood of abuse, her lack of love. I had felt vaguely uncomfortable, a fish out of water, unused this soul baring from someone I barely knew and would never have known under normal circumstances. I listened and tried to understand but it was a world apart from what I had known and yet the mere connecting on a human level with this broken young person who was trying to be there for me at a time of crisis, touched me deeply.
I had never been able to open up in the way she now did. I had learned young to hide my heart and my pain and I still did. I held everything deep inside me as far as outward appearances went. I had been raised to consider showing emotion as weakness and a fault. My father was a product of a male dominated environment, my mother the daughter of a cruel man and a fragile woman, in many ways still a child herself having never really had anyone to parent her to adulthood. These two people had set the standards of our value system and our conduct. The fact that I had been a sensitive and unhappy child who withdrew into her stories, had separated me from the others. I tried to fit in and yet never really did. I found myself when I became a mother and poured my own need for love into raising my son.
I was heavily criticised by all for what they said was over-loving M. How can one over-love a child? What is the correct amount of love? How do you measure it? It was absurd but it was all they could really find to damn me with. I had no drug problems, no mental health issues, no alcohol dependency. I had had no boyfriends whilst M was with me. I was even criticised for not going out more and choosing rather, to make M my priority.
Practically as a single parent, there had been little opportunity to go out and socialise but this was considered abnormal. Had I been a reckless mother, putting my own needs before those of my beloved son, I may have fared better in an arena that even criticised the amount of sport M had done. The fact that sport had been his passion and both my father and myself had tried to encourage and support his healthy love of outdoor activity, rather than mindless television and computer games was criticised too. The values held by those who damned us were for stifling of creativity, suppression of enthusiasm for what is wholesome and good and the destruction of what is natural and humane.
I had no weapons to fight this. My elite legal team were polished and well-prepared. Phillip was a stylish performer and played everything by the book and with the panache of years of experience, but he was as much an unwelcome participant in this arena as I was in jail. The fact we had the crème de la crème of the legal profession only engendered more hostility from the little local lawyers who as much as I had been labelled "Posh Bitch" in jail, considered Phillip, the smart boy, the outsider. He was met with disdainful looks from the those counsel who belonged to the Island, owned by the Judge to support him in his mission to stamp on anything that suggested this place was anything other than a sanctity. Sexual abuse was a blot on the landscape that couldn't be allowed. The picture box must remain intact. Nothing must smear the image of a place that on the surface was a beautiful paradise of green rolling hills and iridescent sky and sea- scapes, a haven to those who wished to escape city life. The reality of this Utopian landscape was very different.
Chapter 19
Our witnesses were the last to give evidence on day three of the hearing. By now I had had endured long days of being stoned with endless baseless accusations. I left each morning at six, no time for a shower or to eat, followed by a two hour journey in the prison van, shivering in the back. After the first day, the car was no longer available.
Each day began with the ritualistic stripping down in the freezing cold room and the humiliation of personal scrutiny. I was even accused by the wardens, of smoking because the G4 drivers smoked heavily all through the journey and I could not fail but smell of it by the time I had spent two hours cooped up in the confined and well-sealed airless mode of transport that took me for my daily battering in the court.
I felt dead inside and out. I could see the drama unfolding into a tragic culmination of wrong and I could do nothing.
When our GP gave evidence she seemed nervous and unprepared and described me as an anxious mother. She failed to say that I had been anxious because of the fear of losing my child. She did, however, pay huge testament to the close bond between M and I and that she had never seen him neglected, unhappy or at any risk at all in
my care. In fact, the only time she had seen him distressed was after contact with his father or at the mention of contact when he had wet himself in her office out of fear.
She tried to say that the Court had a fixed idea of what they wanted to do and that nothing would change their minds. The Judge jumped on this and accused her of suggesting he had "fixed" the hearing. That was not what she had meant, but it was probably true nonetheless. He described her later in very unflattering terms, as antediluvian - prehistoric. How insulting to a middle-aged professional woman who had only voiced her experience of treating both M and myself. Her voice, and indeed any of the witnesses we put forward, was a mere whisper of protest against a strong tornado of evil. She was the one person of all the professionals who knew us best and yet her evidence was not only given the least weight, it was totally discredited.
The Clinical Child Psychologist who had come onto the case late, gave evidence by video link. She was off-Island and the weather conditions prevented her getting to Court which was a shame because she was the most qualified of all the many "expert" witnesses and our strongest and probably only chance of remaining together. She was forcefil in her evidence and pushed for M to be returned to me. She also told the Judge he was wrong in the "Fact Finding" and that M would not be safe in going to his father, nor did he want to. She believed the only reason he was now compliant was because, like me, he felt he had no say in anything and was toeing the party line, reading the inevitable writing on the wall- at only eight years old, what did they expect?
Like my GP, the Psychologist was discredited by the Judge who turned purple with rage at her suggestion that he had wrongly judged the case and as all weak men, he put his damning remarks in his Judgment, rather than put them to her face. The weakest of bullies usually bully from afar or hide behind others. One only had to look at how many people M's father had hidden behind during the case.
My character witnesses had all been agreed. This is the usual tactic of lawyers who don't want to hear from anyone who might support the un-favoured party in the case. They agree to the statements so they may not be discussed or form any real part of the Judgment and so that they get no opportunity to expand on what is good about the person concerned.
I was particularly aggrieved that Brian did not call our former GP from the UK who he had told me was on the witness list. He had decided to remove him at the last minute and this man, who was also my son's godfather, not because we had been friends, but merely because I had no-one else to ask at the time, was a much more forceful and fearless character than our current GP. He could have borne witness to M's early life, my care of M and the total abandonment and lack of interest of M's father at that time. I found out later, that Brian had not even told him that he was not needed and he had paid someone to look after his practice for the day so that he go to a video link point twenty miles from home to give evidence, only to be told when he got there, that he was not on the list. I was furious later on that he had done this to someone I respected. I went to see him some months afterwards to apologise and offer to cover his expenses. He declined but it damaged our relationship I felt. He no longer wanted to be involved and who could blame him?
We had relatively few witnesses by comparison with those who were determined to damn me. But then how many times and in how many ways can you say that someone is a good mother, caring and devoted and has never harmed her child in any way?
I was on the stand for hours compared to the father, as per usual, while the other advocates tore strips off me and cross-examined me into the ground. The accusations became more and more ridiculous - mentions of websites with bizarre names that I had never heard of were supposed to be examples of forums where I had published my plight - somewhat difficult when you are in jail with no access to the internet at all.
I was exhausted and defeated but tried at all times to keep my dignity and was grateful for the kindness of the G4 guards, who were throughout my constant companions. None of them judged me and in the breaks when I was held in a cell in the basement of the Court, they would bring me microwave meals, trying hard to find things on their very meagre budget that would bring me any sort of comfort. The odd paper or magazine would be pushed through the door, but their company was what brought me most solace. They were mostly good people just doing their job.
I won't dwell on M's father's evidence. He told one lie after the other and smiled at his partners in crime, which was everyone in the room, other than Philip. He had nothing to fear, he knew as I knew, that this cruel game called justice was nearly at end and that he would be leaving with his prize, my precious little boy for England very soon, taking my heart in a million pieces with him.
The Court viewed photo after photo of our former life with M smiling happily next to me in holiday snaps and playing with both me and his grandfather. They were images of a life that we would never know again - a dream of the past - a Paradise of love and a happiness that was now mere celluloid in a book. These were everything to me and nothing to these masked cruel captors that gnawed our happiness from our very flesh and spat us out as scraps on the floor.
As our photographs were passed from lawyer to Judge, our lives were examined. Every treasured memory was now nothing more than evidence in a court room, medallions of a former life lived, loved and frozen in faded ink on sheets of paper - Images of images, photocopied into an album in a feeble attempt to capture what had gone before.
These photos were printed off from my laptop by the lawyers and had been added to by the few precious ones that had been held by toothpaste to the notice board of my cell wall. I had balked at parting with them as the only link I now had to M, other than the invisible intangible love that held us together in a silver cord - that of mother connected eternally to her child.
The Judge stared blankly at the image of our most special holiday in Lapland. M's joy at meeting "the real Father Christmas" was lit upon his little red-cheeked face, as he clutched the stocking with his name on it, specially crafted by the elves in Santa's workshop. I had photographed him sitting on Santa's knee beaming with the magic of childhood etched upon his face. He had known, without doubt, that this was the "real Santa" because he had M's name on the stocking and only the "real Santa" could have known the name of every child.
The elves had sprinkled glittery stardust into the magic stocking and that year, our very own Stardust elf had visited our little cottage, leaving streaks of glitter - silver and gold stardust from the doorway, up the stairs, along the landing and all the way to M's patchwork-quilted bed. Hours of carefully brushing up the glitter and saving it in a little jar, had followed on Christmas morning. Every speck, a valuable memento of husky rides clad in a fur rug, of berry tea drunk out of wooden bowls in a tent in a silvery snowy forest, pulled by reindeer - stories told by a woodcutter in Finnish whilst huddled in snowsuits in the dark of the long winter's day as he whittled magic twigs into special gifts for the children. It was M's favourite holiday and one neither of us would ever forget.
We rode snowmobiles through the forest in a long train of children and parents. We ate simple but welcoming stews at night in a little wooden chalet hotel and sledged down fluffy white slopes for hours on end. M's laughter as he tumbled into the snowy drifts, musical and filled with delight. My joy in watching him so happy had been worth every saved-up penny for the wonderful trip that would be the last Christmas we would be together. We had not known it then, blissfully happy in our own secret world that nothing could destroy.
Back then I had known nothing of the demons that M had carried in his little heart and soul. In that week, nothing touched us but happiness and the love we shared. He never stopped telling me I was the best mummy in the world or that he "loved me the world and back." It was part of our daily conversation and I never knew that a day may come when I would yearn to hear him say anything at all, let alone, those special words of love.
Our life was captured in the snow dome that we bought back with us - a magical scene in a glass c
ase which sparkled with flakes of silvery snow when shaken. These memories, preserved in this image being handed from person to person and scrutinized to try and turn what was special into something of less than no value, by people who had less than no value to me. These cold, unfeeling, cruel participants in a scene from a surreal Ibsen play, would "throw our manuscript onto the fire", just as in Hedda Gabler the famous Ibsen play and enjoy watching our life burn into ash.
Another photo, my favourite of the two of us together, was now being examined by the Judge. The picture was a headshot of the two of us in Rhodes on the last holiday we had shared with my mother before she had died. It had been an incredible week, filled with laughter and fun. The photo was a professionally taken shot from outside of the restaurant in the hotel. M was beaming and his eyes were filled with the magic and wonder of youth. The love between us was apparent for all to see, yet the cold man deciding our fate appeared immune to the emotion of love. He fingered it for an instant, without interest and then passed us on to the next cruel lawyer in the same way as we had been passed along to the firing squad that had taken our lives and shot us before each other's eyes.
How could any mother watch her child suffer and do nothing? How can she witness her young in danger, hurting, angry and afraid and not sweep them up in her love and run as far away as possible from the cruel perpetrator of the harm? It is nature. It is every animal's instinct to protect their young and yet here I was on the edge of losing mine for the crime of wanting to protect him.
Photo after photo swept through the hands of the Court and ran through their fingers like sand in an egg timer, trickling our lives away grain by grain. The seconds of a life that was now dust, the images of a past that was golden and beautiful and shone with love, all now amounted to "evidence" and yet the precious, treasured, magical moments of M's childhood - his first seven and a half years - was nothing to these faceless, empty shells of the court who took our love and filed it in the past.
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