Mummy's Still Here

by Jeanne D'Olivier

  The only place open where I could purchase cigarettes, was the pub in the town where we lived but my need to get through that day somehow, overtook my desire to stay cocooned in the house. I guessed it would be quiet early evening and I could slip in and out and use the cigarette machine quickly and unnoticed.

  I waited until opening time and drove the short distance, dressed still in my track suit, no make-up, hair un-brushed and an old anorak thrown over my sweater.

  To my chagrin I realised I had no change and would have to go into the bar area and get some. As I walked into the lounge of the virtually empty pub, I noticed two people in the corner of my eye - a chill went through me as I realised it was my son's father's solicitor and her boyfriend. Seeing me so broken must have been the icing on the cake for her.

  I fled to the back of the pub and quickly bought my cigarettes and slipped out the back door - another of life's cruel ironies that they should be the only other people out at this time - no doubt celebrating the victory of taking an innocent child from his loving mother.

  I felt no anger, nor the desire to confront her. In the past I would have been devastated to be seen by anyone in the state I was in, but the shadow of who I had once been felt only the need to run back to our home - the home where M's teddy bear still sat on the bed and the rocking horse sat unmoved from its spot in the corner - the room I had not been able to go back into for fear I might never leave.

  But the room was inside me, along with M - the blue ocean and dolphins of the mural I had painted on the bedroom wall, etched on my heart - the little shelf of precious bedtime stories above his patchwork quilted bed, the blue and white dressing gown hanging on the door - all of it held inside me - held in my heart - a heart that threatened to burst in my chest.

  Where was M now? Did he long for the comfort of his little room? Was he waiting for Mummy to tuck him in and read to him from his favourite Harry Potter book? I did not need to ask the questions, because I already knew the answers and they burned through me like a sword of molten steel, tearing through my agony - I fell onto the settee once more howling in torment, screaming his name, as I shed tear after tear after tear for my son.

  I remained on the settee until Christmas was over. The only communication I had was the allotted phone call on Christmas day that the Court had awarded me - twenty minutes with the son I had raised for his whole childhood as a single parent - a call that was being listened to by his captor. It was like speaking to a hostage and it took every fibre of strength in me to hold it together whilst I tried to feign brightness - I could not worry him and I could not show my grief. He had to believe I was strong.

  "When are you coming over Mummy? I miss you." M's little voice on the end of the phone may as well have been coming from Australia, not just the mainland - for the sea that separated us by some forty miles, was oceans apart for us.

  "As soon as possible Darling. I'm doing all I can to arrange it quickly." I told him. The reality was that R's solicitor was making it as difficult as possible to arrange anything according to the call I had had with Brian the day before. The Psychologist had had no words of advice and I could not tell M that his father would now do all in his power to keep us apart.

  The call was over so quickly. R had insisted that M end it and go and have a bath ready for lunch. Neither of us wanted to hang up. I suspected bathing had nothing to do with it, but knew I must not protest. R held all the cards now. The court had empowered him completely. I no longer owned my life. He owned us all. He was the puppet-master in this cruel and terrible game of revenge. For revenge was what this was for R. He no more wanted M than he ever had, but he wanted to punish me for daring to report what M had told me. Attack being the best form of defence as always, he would now begin his mission of destroying me completely, alienating M from those he loved and no doubt hoping my father would offer him money to give M back. We'd have given him anything to have M safe but he would merely have told the Court we had bribed him because he wanted me to suffer, far more than he even wanted the money.

  He had asked the Court to place M on a Care Order rather than give him residency. This might seem odd, as who would really welcome the intervention of the State in their life? But I had known that this again was about money for if he got Full Residency, without even a Supervision Order, he would be liable for supporting M.

  R had nothing to fear from the authorities if he had got his wish, the Social Worker, Guardian ad Litem and almost everybody in the establishment had backed him to the hilt. He was fireproof, but the Judge gave him Residency without his requested Care Order. He did help him financially by ordering me to pay half his legal fees. I had no money. My career as a struggling crime writer and former teacher, were in tatters. No school would employ a mother who had lost custody of her own child, despite my abduction conviction having been fully quashed on appeal, the one good thing that came out of the exorbitant legal fees my father had paid.

  The criminal trial for abduction had been well-publicised and everyone on the Island knew I had been to jail. Should I move to the UK, which I would obviously now do to be near M, it was likely that whatever had happened on the Island would be registered with the authorities there - I would be named and shamed for daring to run away with my child, to protect him from his abuser. No-one would care or consider the fact that I had been exonerated.

  After my call with M, I wept for hours. I tried to contact Brian by email to no avail. He was in the Caribbean now for Christmas with his family, enjoying the money our case and others like it had brought him. The spoils of war - a war that had all begun because M had told me what his father was doing on the two nights he had spent with him each month since he was three. The horrors of bath-time - the horrors of bedtime - the horrors of visits to Dad.

  M had been only five when he first disclosed. He had had urinary tract infections since the first overnight stay, but no-one made the connection, least of all me. It would be some time later that I would discover the significance of Urinary Tract Infections in boys - particularly the rare infection M had had -a known indicator of sexual abuse.

  The Paediatrician was head of Child Protection on the Island but sat on the fence when questioned in court - no one would acknowledge what M had told the police to be true. Imagine being six years old, the age he was when they finally got round to interviewing him, a full year later and believing that your only escape was to tell the unimaginable to a stranger - a police woman - whom he begged to make it stop - only to be told they could not make it stop and that either his Mummy had coached him or he must be making this up.

  In the next 18 months, M would disclose to teachers at school, psychologists, his grandfather, the GP, the Guardian, the Social workers, the foster carers and finally the only properly qualified clinical psychologist to be appointed - the only independent expert - who told the Judge he would not be safe with his father, only to be discredited.

  M had no voice and the more I tried to give him one, the more I was vilified, attacked, threatened and bullied - whilst M trusted me completely to keep him safe. At last I had made a snap decision to leave all that we knew and loved and take him to safety thousands of miles away - only to be found and lose him forever to the person who had driven us from our home.

  Eventually I could cry no more. It was dark, past midnight. Christmas was over but the nightmare that began three years earlier, may never end.

  Chapter 2

  Weathering the storm

  January 2011 came in its bleak cold dampness - a new year and still no contact had been arranged between M and myself. Plans to come over were made, flights booked and hotels at the nearest airport but each attempt was thwarted by R's solicitor on his instruction. We battled on regardless. I wanted only one thing and that was to see my son.

  Every day now was an endless bleak desert of emptiness. Each day seemed longer than the last. Each hour was to be got through and endured with the pain becoming greater and more acute – I knew only an ache and longing in my
heart for my son who had now been away from me for nearly two years. Two years since he had been so brutally and forcefully removed from the person who loved him most in the world and yet it seemed like only yesterday that I had opened the door in Florida – onto a nightmare of brutality and cruelty beyond our wildest imaginings. I had opened the door to our heaven and hell had walked in.

  Life was a barren land with no oasis - Nowhere to quench the thirst of longing for my beloved child. Tiny droplets of hope dripped off the tongues of the lawyers, but did nothing to sate M’s thirst or mine because it seemed as soon as a one drop materialised it evaporated as fast as it had appeared, into the tears of my despair.

  I would long for night and the stillness of its black mantle behind which to hide. I would fall exhausted under the covers, exhausted from living yet another day of desolation. Sometimes I would manage to escape into sleep just for a few hours, but there was no solace there as I would be met by the demons of the day and the movies of the past events that ran through my mind – footage of M being taken, footage of jail and the locked cell door where they had incarcerated me for daring to try to protect him – footage of the angry accusatory faces of our enemies-the so called professionals of the State.

  I would wake after those few hours and try to immerse myself in television – images on the screen to replace images in my brain. I watched into the early hours until dawn came and cuddled the tiny dog that had become my saviour and companion.

  The Chihuahua was supposed to be M’s dog – I still saw him as such – I was merely the caretaker until he came home. The greatest comfort he brought was that he gave me a reason to still exist. His need to be walked, his need to be fed and his warm little presence keeping me silent company through the long lonely hours, ensured that I did not try to escape into endless sleep.

  Of course, if the temptation became too great, I would remind myself of the devastation it would bring to M and knew that whilst we both breathed I would never desert him. I could not. For useless and powerless as I felt, I needed to exist for him and to be there for the day when I must believe he would return to me, a day, I knew, must come.

  Brian was still on the case, but my father was beginning to seriously feel the strain of the £50,000 a month legal fees he had been enduring for three years. It seemed that even with the crème-de-la-crème of a legal team and I speak here for Philip the QC and the reputation of a solicitor who had, in the distant past won a very high profile and difficult case, we could still not make a dent in this evil system that allowed Paedophiles to gain full custody of their victims.

  My one aim now was to move from our home, to England to be near M but first I had to endure four miserable contact sessions in a contact centre that made the one on the Island look like a palace. It seemed even this, would be nigh impossible to achieve with the resistance from R at every turn.

  M's calls which were still coming frequently were more desperate each time. "Please Mummy come soon." I wanted to tell him that I was doing all in my power to set up the contact but his father was blocking my every move with excuses of commitments elsewhere, work, M needing time to get settled into his new life...anything and everything was put in our way of seeing each other.

  By grim persistence, we eventually succeeded in getting contact arranged and a flight booked for me to leave the Scottish Island, my home, although I no longer thought of it as such, and fly over for a one hour contact at a Luton contact centre. This would mean staying the night in a Travel Lodge as flights to and from the Island were limited. It would cost in the region of £500 to achieve one hour of contact with my son and on top of that I had to pay for the room and supervision - so with meals, I was looking at around £750 to see my child for an hour. No amount of money would deter this from happening. I would have given my house to see him.

  The morning I was due to fly over, he rang me early and I panicked thinking R was going to cancel for the third time, but M was just ensuring I was still coming. He was crying and begging me to come quickly. Any mother can imagine the tug on my heart strings. I could not get there quick enough but we both had to be patient. I would fly over that morning and we would be together for a precious hour later that afternoon. A member of the contact centre staff had offered to pick me up from the airport on arrival. At every step I held my breath that something would go wrong and we would not meet. I had been counting the hours, minutes and seconds since we had managed to agree a date. It was now the end of January and I hadn't seen my son since just before Christmas - over five weeks ago.

  Two social workers had brought him to our house for a farewell visit. We had not yet had the final decision from the Judge, but it was clear what the outcome would be. Both M and I knew we were saying goodbye to the life we had shared at our little seaside home. He had walked through every room, opening every cupboard and examining its contents - taking snapshots in his mind of the beautiful life we had shared there. I could see him carefully placing treasured pictures in his little brain to hold onto, lest he forget the life he had before.

  Our life was unrecognizable from what it had once been. I had never gone a day without my son until he was so brutally taken. We had never gone a single night without saying "I love you" to each other. Now we were at the mercy of his cruel father who would dictate when and how we saw each other.

  That last visit on the Island would stay with me forever and I suspect it is as firmly stored in M's mind as it is my own.

  We said goodbye to each other that day, clinging so hard we could hardly breathe - for it was not just farewell to each other - but to the life we had shared at the cottage and the moments of pure happiness that would live in our hearts forever.

  There was a Contact Order in place for now at least. The Judge also placed no limit on phone calls and had grudgingly awarded me the four one hour supervised contacts with M that we must endure in order to earn unsupervised contact once a week, when I moved. This was all that I had left after seven and half years of raising him entirely by myself.

  For now we were still in a straightjacket, as although calls were technically unlimited, R rarely answered the phone and it would just ring endlessly when I tried to call M. We also had to "pass" the contact sessions with four flawless contacts and given the amount of restrictions placed on us, this might not be so easy.

  We were told what we could and could not say to each other and any breach of this could end in contact being stopped. The list of rules to be obeyed included not asking him about his new life, not telling him I missed him, not becoming emotional, not referring to our life before...to name only a few. It was a minefield to be navigated with precision. Did I ever consider not continuing? Never, not even for a second. I would have walked on burning coals to see him for five minutes - and more.

  My heart was in my mouth as I walked into the dingy drab building that served as the contact centre in Luton. I hardly dare breathe because I was so afraid that R would not bring M.

  The centre was dirty and smelled of nappies and space was limited. But it had one thing that the Island's centre did not - it had a heart. The staff were warm and welcoming - a delightful Asian lady was to be our supervisor and I could tell that she felt compassion for us and was somewhat surprised, I think that we were in this position.

  M and I were clearly not her usual clientele. I was reasonably smartly dressed, spoke well and was educated, unlike most of the parents who saw children at the centre. I say this not by way of judgment but purely as fact. I had long since lost any sense of pride. When you have been incarcerated in a prison cell, you are as equal as anyone else, whether they be a millionaire or a homeless person. Try telling someone you went to jail for trying to protect your son from sexual abuse and they will look at you suspiciously and in disbelief and think you are fabricating this to cover some heinous crime of your own, but that was the reality and the truth and that was my only crime.

  For this I had paid the highest price, my son. I was accused of putting words into his mouth, des
pite the medical evidence. I was accused of manipulating the truth, despite my son's evidence, the evidence of innocence - the evidence of a then six year old - a six year old who could not lie, as any mother knows.

  Children cannot be coached at that age to say anything. Try asking them if they have done their teeth and see how well they manage to convince you that they have brushed them for ten minutes when the toothbrush sits with dry bristles next to the basin. But try telling someone with no experience of this that you went to jail for trying to protect your son from a paedophile and they will be afraid - not of you - but that the system might not be what it is supposed to be - in the best of interests of the child - they would far rather believe the lie - the lie that it is working for the greater good - anything else threatens their whole perception of Britain as a safe community with its doors open to accept the oppressed, not to be the oppressor.

  M rushed in through the doors and I let out my breath as I ran towards him and threw my arms around my precious son. We held each other tightly, not wanting to let go. It was nearly two months since we had seen each other. His father stood in the background with his wife with a grim brooding look, clearly resenting even this one hour that we would spend together.

  I was determined to act dignified and thanked him for bringing M before we headed upstairs to the room that would be our meeting place for the next four weeks.

  Dipika sat in the corner of the room. She was a kind lady, non-intrusive and whilst she had to take notes of what was said as part of what she was paid to do, this was as much for our benefit as anything. It was important that someone independent had a record, so there could be no dispute. R was looking for any excuse to stop the contact. At least this lady was impartial, unlike the social workers who had supervised on the Island. She had no agenda and just wanted us to have a happy time together. She could see that we shared a loving relationship and that M was completely relaxed with me. I posed no threat.