Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) (32 page)

              My skin was dry and patchy from the ice-cold air and no available moisturizer.  The strip lighting on the wings sapped all vitamin D from the body and highlighted flaws.  Stripped bare of all the accessories one takes for granted in the daily routine of “normal” life, it's incredible how exposed and vulnerable one feels.

              I'd always had a slightly lazy eye, made worse by sleep deprivation, the harsh lighting and sleeping with the television on every night.  I was afraid to be “alone” in my cell  or with the metaphorical embodiments of my fears – the monsters that haunted my heart, soul and mind – the fears and horrors of our new reality.  One thing was certain, what I was seeing now, was a skewed view, a world that has swung from reason, normality and simplicity, to this crazy distortion of what life should be.  If our bodies reflect the pain we feel inside, then certainly my left eye shifting off centre was an apt metaphor –  I was seeing a world that was one-sided and completely wrong.

              Whereas in the past I had always had lots to say, suggestions to make and a strong need to fight, I now felt defeated, overwhelmed and paralysed by my grief.  I no longer felt the closeness I'd previously shared with my legal team and saw them as part of the outside world that I had ceased to belong to. They couldn’t feel my pain or desperation and they were paid to represent me, not support me. 

              As my lawyer in the States had said many times, neither M, nor I, had ever had a voice and my voice was buried so deep within me now, that I couldn’t externalize it any more.  I knew that would be the same for M too, who I had watched slipping away before me.  He had gone further and further inside himself, since they'd taken him.  I'd tried so hard to help him to stay outside of that shell, but in here I could do nothing.  At least when I'd been able to see him, despite all the restrictions of the contact centre, I'd been able to encourage him back out into the light – now I could only pray that he would do that for himself.

              I was the embodiment of Edvard Munch’s “Scream, "painting – the silent, voiceless, piercingly loud, but intangible and inaudible -  beyond the hearing of anyone other than those who'd been impaled like a thorn bird on the pinnacle of Motherhood; a  knife rent through -an agony and horror that no-one but another mother in the same situation could feel.  No release – no end – not even the release of death – because to die would leave M alone and I could never abandon him.  There was now only a tiny window to our purgatory which I must try hard to keep open before it was obscured forever.

              After what seemed an interminable wait, Phillip and Brian came into the cubicle. They feigned positivity.  Brian’s huge form seemed even more awkward in the tiny room and I felt small and embarrassed in my altered state, with my bright orange plastic waistcoat – marking me out as a prisoner.  I stood up and accepted an awkward hug from Phillip and then we all sat down.

              “When can I see M?”  I said frantically.  But they had no more news  than I did.  I wanted to shake them, beg them – why was this proving so difficult?  Brian made noises of red-tape, bureaucracy, the difficulties of co-ordinating the jail, with the Department – but I didn't hear any of it.  All I heard was the heavy thud as my heart hit the floor.  The news I was living for, still eluded me and nothing else mattered.

              “You mustn’t see this as the end.”  Brian continued, trying to sound upbeat and reassuring – but he didn’t sound convincing.  He knew, as I did, that my chances now of regaining custody of M were one in a million. 

              I'd learned the hard sad fact that the Family Courts, had nothing to do with justice. It was a forum where those who held the best cards won.  M’s father had held the Ace Card from the beginning.  Having seen the psychologist privately, he had convinced her that I was nothing more than a vindictive ex-partner carrying bitterness for him leaving me, when nothing could have been further from the truth.  The reality was that I'd felt relief when he'd left me, my only anguish was for M who I believed needed a father and any pain I felt was for his loss, not my own.  But R had sounded plausible to those who'd listened and like a domino wall, each one falling into the next, the experts kept on passing the baton of untruth forwards. Unless someone could discredit the first one, the rest would just go on building the same wall and no-one seemed to consider the damage to an innocent child – my child.

              If I'd felt that R had even an ounce of love for M, and could be sure he wouldn't harm him, I might even have conceded to residency for R, to free M from the restrictions of foster care and its oppressive regime, but I lived with the fear that he'd abuse him again and for the time being, at least he was safe, even if conditions were less than ideal.

              I felt surges of anger that even our own “expert” had taken some of the lies on board and reiterated them in her report.  But put the microscope on any parent and you can take anything and twist it into something that makes you a “less than perfect” parent.  I'd even been criticised for choosing to support M in sporting activities, rather than encourage him into a world of watching more television, playing computer games and apathy.  This was described as him over-doing sport.  The foster carers seemed to have made those observations to the expert, no doubt to cover their own shortcomings.  I'd always been slim and keen on exercise; but from the pictures I'd seen on the internet, I knew they were both short and overweight, had they not been, they may have seen M's former life as preferable to a life spent on the settee - and yet strangely, even our own expert had supported their view.  It was crazy, but that was how little it took to damn you - despite this, she had been firmly against M going to his father.

              A year later, the press would go to town on the subject of Family Court "experts," but for now, these people were revered and made decisions about the lives of children every day – decisions that took children from loving homes and placed them in foster care – an industry that made millions out of wrecking families and where each person in the chain, Guardian Ad Litem, Social Worker, Psychologist and all kinds of expert witnesses, skimmed the cream from the top of the destruction of a family unit. 

              Of course there are incidents where children are at serious risk of harm and need to be removed for their own safety, but since Baby P, the state began snatching children with alacrity from good homes on the flimsiest of grounds.   In a huge proportion of cases children were taken on the grounds of emotional abuse – a term that is so wide and non-specific, that it could amount to as little as a parent raising its voice to a child when it is naughty and a neighbour rushing to the authorities.  A simple thing such as a child having grubby knees, could be turned into a case of serious neglect. What little boy, playing outside in the playground at school, doesn’t come home with a bit of mud on them?  But they could take anything and twist it into something sinister.  Just as I'd been criticised heavily because one term M’s clothes hadn't been ironed very well – even though the school were aware that I had broken my right wrist and it was in plaster at the time.

              Whatever M's father did, right or wrong was described in glowing terms.  A simple game of football, observed by the foster carers made him suddenly a wonderful dad.  The fact that M and I had shared many such a game, almost daily after school counted for nothing at all.  That was the way the system worked.  Once those within the chain had made their choice, the dice were heavily loaded in the favour of the chosen one.

              I so much wanted to believe that this Kafkaesque nightmare could still be turned around and I would wake up to a world that made sense again, but as Brian and Phillip talked about strategy, their words seemed hollow and empty.  There was only one thing in my mind that turn this around and that was to challenge the Judge’s Judgment that had found for "no abuse."  They needed to appeal the Fact Find out of time.  I'd been saying this all along from my first lawyer onwards – but still no-one listened.  They said it was too late – they said we couldn’t go against the Judge’s findings – even when our expert, the only properly qualified psychologist on the case had found otherwise – for despite her report being less than favourable to me, having reiterated some of the nonsense from the school – where R was the fee payer – M had told her – “I hope Daddy won’t do it again".

              “Trust us.  Our way is best.”  Brian said. 

              But I neither trusted them, nor believed they were right and they were my only key to getting out of jail where at least there was something I could do to help M. 

              “Appeal the Fact Find.”  I reiterated every time they came to see me.  So they stopped coming and sent an underling instead.  They only wanted to hear what would please the Judge - it was a case of appease Court first and client last – that way their jobs remained secure. 

              I was led back to my cell – cold, empty and desolate.

Chapter 15

              I thought things couldn’t get any harder in those first few days; but worse was to come. The Deputy Governor called me to his room.  The probation officer was with him.  They said that Social Services weren't going to bring M to see me.  I'd already gone without contact for over a week and was grieving every second more and more.  I needed to see him to reassure myself that he was all right and so he could see that Mummy was still around and would go on being so.  I knew my incarceration, to M, still a small child, must have seemed very frightening.  He was likely too to have endured some hard questions at school and possibly even jeering.  Some of the parents were not sympathetic to me and might talk in front of their children.  He needed even more support than before to cope with this, but he'd only his abuser, the cold faces of Foster Carers and social workers.  

              I told the Deputy Governor that M and I had a right to see each other under the Human Rights Act.  He looked at me with disdain as he said chillingly: - “You’re in jail, you have no human rights.”

              This comment reverberated in my mind for years to come – it said it all – the complete lack of adherence to the law of this police state – a child having no human right to see his mummy – the person who'd raised him his whole life so far. How could it be justice?  It was inhumane, but they made no apology for  it.  In fact, there was a glint of cold steeled cruelty in the Deputy Governor’s eye as he delivered his missile – a little power, certainly went a long way.

              I left the room stunned and rang my Dad for my cursory ten minute call.  He was with Phillip and Brian.  He put Phillip on the phone.

              “That’s completely wrong, of course you have human rights and so does your son,” but somehow his words meant nothing as the bottom line was that I had no control inside the prison that held me.  Whatever Phillip said, those holding the keys - held the only key to my seeing M.

              We had an artillery of truth, nobility, bravery, integrity, honesty and love, but we weren’t fighting in an arena  that was right or human and none of us were equipped to know how to defeat such evil – not even the big gun QC that we'd brought in and the supposedly highly experienced team of lawyers.  Something deeper and more sinister that lay behind all this - 
radix malorum est cupiditas
– but was it money or something more primitive and deplorable that lay at the root of this?  Would we ever know?

              All I had left to hold onto was the love I had for my son.  I kept telling myself that love was a higher and stronger power than this evil anti-world we'd entered. No matter how much I willed that love would, as the cliché, conquer all, it was conquering nothing at present and the fierce tigress of motherhood raged inside me, trapped in my cage whilst watching my cub taken by hunters.

              It seemed obvious that Miss Whiplash, the Social Worker, was now getting her revenge for my previous barrister lambasting her in Court.  Not one thing that Social Services had done, had been in M’s best interests, but certainly it had been in someone’s and I longed to know whose.  Why had everyone backed a paedophile?  What dark secret was this Island hiding that allowed such cruelty?  As each day passed, M’s fate to be placed with this man, drew closer. 

              The best we could now hope for was that he be kept in Foster Care until I was released. I knew that M had begun to forget and be confused about the danger.  It was more than three years now from when he'd first told me what had happened to him.  It was written in one report that he  “didn’t know what was real and what was a dream.”  The result no doubt, of much brainwashing.  Deep down, I suspected that M still knew what happened, even though they had distorted the facts in his mind.  I was sure that one day it would surface from his unconscious -  whatever lay in his future. 

              I could only hope that M would wake from his trance in time to save himself.  I knew that he was now accepting his father to a certain extent and was developing "Stockholm Syndrome,"  borne out by the recent change I'd seen in him .    For now, he seemed to have switched the past off in his mind.  He had stopped fighting the system and was understandably desperate to get out of foster care.  He no longer saw coming back to Mummy was as an option - and indeed he could not for the next four months.  He simply didn't have the strength to fight anymore and no longer saw the perils, slipping instead into dangerous unconsciousness in order to survive.

              Whilst they had me safely out of the way, denying M contact with me, they held another Looked After Children Review meeting.  This time M was taken by his father and my views were not even sought.  Protocol dictated that I should have been sent a form to elicit my views, but these failures to adhere to the law, were considered minor infringements by the Judge and were overlooked, not that they would likely have made any difference to the final outcome.  The Department adhered neither to legality or protocol.  They were outside the law.  And so with his father sitting right beside him, a man who had harmed him, a six foot man, and his mother in jail, M was asked with whom he wanted to live?  Even under those conditions, he'd said either parent, so long as he could see the other – but it was the first time he had not said with Mummy.   I had no doubt that R had been on his best behaviour since he had begun seeing him again in February that year.  He was playing a careful game of plausibility and credibility and I knew only too well, how good at playing the victim he was, of twisting the truth - a man with no conscience - not really a man at all.

              The world had gone mad and I was trying to stay sane within its confines, whilst the system closed ranks, backed each other up and covered each other’s mistakes – making every piece fit the picture they chose to present to the Court – a distortion of truth built out of mirrors and smoke.

              I, the caged animal, sat waiting to be brought back into the ring before the ringmaster – a cruel Judge who with a flick of his whip would make me jump through hoop after hoop and then cage me again.  A Judge who would  use any cruel means at his disposal in denying me my child.  Like the acts I had taken M to see in the
Cirque de Surreal
, nothing was real - only an illusion and one which we couldn't escape. 

              No one can touch a mirror image and make it change – things remain in reverse no matter what you do, the only escape was to move away from the perceived reflection of self altogether, become invisible – give up identity- leave the ring.  That was not an option.  So I stood in front of the mirror, willing the impossible to change.

              My first week in jail seemed like one continuous day, followed by endless night.  It was the bleakest time of year too, approaching winter, short days, less daylight, which only heightened my feelings of isolation and despair and the incessant cold that penetrated every cell of one’s body. 

              The one duvet was thin and completely inadequate – the concrete slab we slept on was no more than a few feet wide and the mattress only a couple of inches thick.  There was no escape into the comfort of sleep, so I stopped trying and instead watched the news endlessly through the night.  I was in the Twilight Zone – endless, deepest, darkness, lost in the shadows, without one chink of light,  distraction my only chance of survival and yet there was nothing to do. 

              I had immediately signed up to attend both Education and the gym.  Education was something of a joke as it was tailored for people with none.  I was asked to complete a literacy and numeracy test that my son could easily have managed.   It was insulting.  I had two degrees, a BA Honours in English and Drama and a Masters in English – the only education beyond that would be a PhD and once again, in a vain attempt at humour, I suggested I commence one forthwith. 

              Humour was not part of the menu of jail and the little old lady who had come to present me with the temptation of Education, was anything but amused.  I tried to be more obliging.  I asked if I might use this time to write.  That was eventually agreed to by the Governor, but as I 'd already experienced the jealousy of the other girls when anything went outside the realms of what they did, I chose not to go in the end.  Furthermore, I didn't feel it safe to write anything on the prison computers, so I spent most of my hours in my cell, writing on sheets of paper and hoping that they would be decipherable when I came out.  This was more therapy at that time - a way of organizing my thoughts and externalizing my pain.  Did it help?  I don’t know, but it passed the time and gave me a sense of purpose.  One day I hoped my son would be able to read my account so that he could make sense of what had happened and know that I'd tried to save him, even if I had failed.

              The gym would have been a way of venting some of the anger I felt towards those who had hurt my precious child, but it seemed to take forever to arrange.  That in itself was strange because others who were brought in after me, were in the gym within days.  It seemed I was being denied what was considered to be a privilege.  Some privilege – the gym was a few archaic machines and a couple of beefy instructors who had no interest in doing anything much more than sitting in their office, no doubt until it was time to go to the pub or a real gym.   I was from the wrong side of the tracks – I was from the house on the hill – the over- privileged and someone to be punished for what they perceived I represented. The cynicism that pervaded Cell Block D was contagious, as was the raging anger that paced the floors daily in the form of women who'd chosen the wrong path. 

              I waited patiently to be allowed to use the gym, asking daily, but always given some excuse.  I had to settle for my daily half hour around the exercise yard, whilst the girls sneered and muttered behind me, staring blankly ahead of me as my feet paced one in front of the other and the ice cold wind froze my breath into white and blue streaks before me.  The dark green metal walls loomed high above.  The spikes of barbed wire at the top, a warning against attempts to escape – relentless pacing until the half hour was up, but I took the opportunity every day regardless – anything to pass my time, as I counted the days to my release, marking them off one by one on a piece of paper, stuck to my notice-board with toothpaste.

              My father had brought in a radio, but I'd not yet been allowed it.  Everything had to be checked and double-checked, especially electrical items. I guessed it was so that people couldn't make bombs – or perhaps there was some other explanation, but I didn’t know what it was.  My prior experience of anything like this was zero.  I had no friends who'd been inside.  I didn’t even watch
Bad Girls
– in fact I hadn’t even heard of the programme, until a warden made a comparison.  I was as green as the exercise yard walls.  All I knew was that whatever the question, the answer would be "No," as M’s experience had been in Foster Care.

              I waited for the privilege of gym and my radio, hungrily.  To be able to listen to Radio 4, a half decent play, some music that wasn’t the blare of thumping, tuneless, noise - the girls playing music all day long from which there was no escape. 

              I wondered how they could stand it, but perhaps it was their way of surviving.  To start with, I was glad to be on the ground floor where I was furthest away from it. The days dragged on and the No’s kept coming.

              In my second week, I was allowed to go to the library for the first time and saw Sophie's husband - friend from the outside world who'd also been framed by the legal system it seemed.  He'd been jailed for money laundering and rumour had it that he'd been made fall guy in the case.  Nigel was an old- school gentleman, something of a likeable rogue, but kindly, and his wife who I'd shared my last night of freedom with, had been a tower of strength to me throughout my trial. 

              It seemed bizarre to see Nigel in this unfamiliar context.  He feigned cheerfulness and told me, “to be a good girl”, in his typical manner.  I noticed how much older he looked, how broken.  He wasn't a young man any more, but he'd always had a glint in his eye, albeit a wandering one.  He and Sophie had lived with the trappings of wealth and there was a strong feeling that the system was harshest and took most satisfaction in cutting down to size, those who they felt had had it too easy.   Termed “crab syndrome” by someone - the analogy was that the crab trying to get out of the bucket reaches the top and those left behind ask him to reach down and pull them out - instead they pull him back in before he secures his freedom.  This metaphor was well known to be synonymous with Island mentality and I saw over and over again the left wing, inverted snobbery and jealousy that seemed to motivate their acts of cruelty on those they perceived as successful.  From a distance, no-one sees the truth of a person's life.  Even those who seem to have it all, don't escape the pain and hurt that is part of the human condition and if only people would accept the collective consciousness of mankind, then crimes against class, whether upper or lower, would not exist.

              Poor Nigel, I guess he was as embarrassed as I was to be meeting in this stark library, amongst a few old battered paperbacks donated from the depths of people’s yearly clear outs.  There was nothing to choose to read to engage my thoughts, but I selected a couple of books so that I could speak to Nigel a little more.  He'd been given the job of library attendant and this meant we were able to exchange a few words as I signed the books out.  We didn’t really know each other very well as he was more a friend of my elder sister’s than my own, having never belonged to the world of extreme wealth, but he'd more of a connection to me than anyone else in the place and even a little familiarity was better than none.