Mummy's Still Here

by Jeanne D'Olivier

  After walking Coco, I spent the day cleaning the house - a strange occupation for Christmas Day but I needed to focus on something other than my grief and I was too distraught to concentrate on watching TV. I could have gone back to the Island and spent Christmas with my father and my brother, but somehow it was too far from M and I now found it difficult to go back to the place where this horrific nightmare had begun. The memories of the good times on the Island were now overshadowed by the pain and suffering we had endured and my father's house held so many reminders of our former life that were just too painful to face.

  Some friends from the local Church which I had recently joined, had offered to come and collect me and bring me to their house for lunch. I had even begun volunteering to help with the Sunday school there. It was ironic that I could spend time with any other child, other than my own. Despite the kindness of this family, I declined the offer as I knew that I would not be able to face company after I had spoken to M.

  By four o'clock, having had a call with my father, I decided that perhaps company was the only thing that would save me from myself. I emailed my friends as I realised, not knowing them terribly well, that I hadn't got their phone number. Naturally being Christmas, they were not checking emails. Part of me was relieved as I was unsure if I could bring myself to be with other people, but having received my message, they called me at around 6pm and came and collected me.

  I managed to eat some heated up food and drink a few glasses of wine before I knew I had reached my limit of socializing. Fortunately they were sympathetic and understood when I asked if they would mind taking me home. On the journey home, I attempted to share something of my story with the father of the family who had so kindly included me in their Christmas but I sensed from his responses that he found it too incredible to believe. No-one could blame him. They were a conventional and religious family with little experience of the darker side of the world - at least to my knowledge anyway - it was clearly way beyond anything that they could or wanted to imagine.

  Sexual abuse of a child is a subject that most people will avoid like the plague - hardly surprisingly. When it happens to your child, you become a social leper - almost in the same way as if you have suffered a bereavement - which in many ways I had - people would rather cross the street than take one step into your world of pain.

  I came home to an empty house, apart from my stalwart comforter - my little dog. We snuggled up under the duvet and I watched Christmas Day television until darkness turned to light, without having a single clue of what I was watching. The only images in my eyes were of M and the precious five minutes we had shared the day before. I had to hold onto them now with every fibre of my being - the pictures in my mind were now all I had.

  It was three months later before we got back into Court. We were now before a very senior Judge -a woman. I became hopeful when I realised that she did not seem anything like as biased against me as the Island's Judge had been. She even seemed to be leaning more towards me than R and my heart soared. Perhaps all was not lost after all. She suggested that I was clearly a loving mother and appreciated that I was well-prepared, articulate and intelligent. Fine words - that would come to mean very little later on. R by comparison was letting his hostility show and had to be told to sit down and be quiet on more than one occasion.

  The Judge became increasingly annoyed by R's outbursts and I at last began to think we had some chance of getting justice. I was determined to remain calm and collected, regardless of R's accusatory jibes. I was not going to do anything to jeopardize a hearing that seemed, to all intents and purposes to be going well.

  Christopher advised that we steer clear of the Sexual Abuse issue and whilst not saying it had not happened - which I would never do - we offer to draw a line in the sand and move on. In my heart I did not agree with this approach. I felt that the elephant in the room must remain and be discussed. I was surprised that someone who was so much of a public activist against the system would recommend that we water down our beliefs. In my mind the Sexual Abuse of my son was the one thing that should be spoken about most strongly because I feared for his safety and I had no idea whether it had continued.

  I had put my trust in Christopher now and I bowed to his far greater experience. If he felt that this was the tack to take and our best hope of getting Contact or even Shared Residency, then I was prepared to take that stance regardless of my gut feelings. It was not the first time that I had put my faith in the wrong person.

  I had initially applied for full residency of M and a return to the status quo that had existed before the case had begun five years earlier. Christopher felt I had no hope of realising that outcome and had advised changing my position to Shared Residency and regular contact as a fall-back position.

  Looking back this was another mistake for it suggested that I had no fears for M in regard to his father and this made me look inconsistent. Furthermore it was not what I wanted, nor believed. I wanted M back safe with me and would concede to contact with his father only when satisfied he would be safe in his care. This had been the gist of my original application.

  Had the authorities done the job they were supposed to do at the start, by carrying out a proper investigation and examining the evidence, especially the medical views and long history of urinary tract infections that had caused my GP to report the alleged abuse from the onset, then that would have been the position we would now be in and furthermore I would have had no cause to run.

  I should say here that mothers who run from the system, do not do so because they wish to defy authority, place themselves or their children at any risk, but quite the opposite, they do so because they see no other way of protecting their children from harm. It is not a decision that any parent takes because they want to. Sometimes it is the only way they can see to keep their children safe.

  Christopher was all for parents running from the system and often supported them financially to do so. We were of the same mind on the point that you could not currently get a fair hearing in the British Family Court. It would never be a fair system until the same standards were applied to Family Law as Criminal Law.

  Criminal cases are based on the "burden on proof" which means that they rely on evidence. The Family Court works to a different and a much lower and more tenuous standard - "the balance of probabilities." This means that innuendo, hearsay and even hearsay upon hearsay evidence can be used to literally destroy a parent's credibility and more often than not, the suppositions made are borne out of one Social Worker's opinion which is passed on like a baton to each and every Court Officer that follows.

  To allow Sexual Abuse - a serious crime - to be tested by ill-equipped Judges, experts who are often paid to think and find a certain way, and sometimes just sheer prejudice against someone on whatever grounds, is dangerous at the very least. To not rely on hard evidence to test the allegations of children making these claims, is in my mind the most extreme recklessness and leads to terrible outcomes for children who end up living the nightmare of being in the care of the very person they have alleged has abused them. It is far too simplistic to say that a parent who reports abuse must be making it up to be vindictive.

  There are very few parents, especially mothers, who would put their children through the stress of an ABE interview with the police and all of the other things that a child must endure to prove he is telling the truth, unless this was the only hope of protecting them. When this too fails to get a just outcome for the child, the child will likely never open up to authority again, no matter what is happening to them. To be disbelieved as an adult telling the truth is hard enough, but for a child of tender age, as M was when he was interviewed, it is likely to destroy their trust in adults for the rest of their childhood.

  M was now living in a world that I had no access to and no knowledge of. I could only imagine what his life was and pray that anything that had gone on in the past was a distant nightmare. Even if the abuse had ceased, there was the worry of the constant p
ressure he was under to please his father and meet with his approval by learning to hate the people who loved him.

  Parental alienation by one parent against the other is a terrible and damaging thing. Children are susceptible to believing what they are told. M had now faced brainwashing by Social Workers, the Guardian, the Foster Carers on the Island and the Psychologists paid by Social Services to support their views and his father.

  Whilst initially the Judge who went on to retain our case had seemed sympathetic to me, this was to change once Giles began taking an active part in the proceedings. We discovered later that she was far more Draconian than anyone we had previously experienced, had a reputation for finding against mothers - especially those who were considered to have come from a privileged background and whom she considered to be even moderately attractive and intelligent.

  It is ironic that women can be much harder on other women than men at times. Is it borne out of jealousy? Is it because showing bias in a father's favour makes them look less prejudiced towards their own sex? Who knows? In our case, it was likely that one Judge simply protected the decision of the Judge who had gone before.

  The Honourable Justice S had been initially pleasant to me, impatient with R and even seemed to have some sympathy for me. This had given me a false sense of security and I even began to hope that we might get a positive outcome. I still wanted to believe that those making decisions about our future would do so in a fair and even-handed manner and I constantly reminded myself that Brian had always said that we would do far better in a UK Court than we had on the Island.

  I had gone to great lengths to get the ABE interview from the Island's Court and was initially refused this. I fought my corner hard telling the Island's Court that I would appeal if they did not release it and see it as clear evidence that they had something to hide. I was convinced that if the Judge, JS, could only see this, she would not only be horrified at the mistake that the previous Judge had made, but naively thought she would hand M back to me without question and sooner rather than later.

  Christopher cautioned that she may not view the very damning evidence from his son's own mouth against his father, in the same way as we did. The consequences of doing a volte face at this point would place many of the former decisions under serious question in regards to safety and could lead to a great deal of rolling heads, not to mention vastly expensive legal suits and major inquiries. He believed that the Judge would do all in her power to avoid even revisiting the issue, let alone passing Judgment on it and on this point, he was right.

  The Island's Court did agree to letting me have the ABE sent from them direct to the UK Court, despite the best efforts of the former Guardian's lawyer to prevent this happening. I was sufficiently encouraged by this that an airing of M's evidence and full disclosure to the police on the DVD would not only turn the case on its head, but would put right the wrongs of the past, especially for M. Christopher had other concerns and was very much a Job's comforter. He felt that even if the current Judge did accept that M had been abused by his father and even if she was prepared to stick her neck out and say as much, the recommendation may well be foster care and not a return to my care. This would be a terrible outcome for M, albeit a safer one than living with his father. He had had awful experiences in foster care after we had run and being a 'looked after child' in a public school was virtually unheard of and carried stigma. I did not want this for M but I did want him safe.

  I could only pray that the Judge would lean towards me, given that the only existing blots on my copy-book were a spurious and completely false allegation of coaching by a former Social Worker, which had never been found by any Judge and the fact that I had run to try to protect him - for which I had been fully acquitted at Appeal. These were stumbling blocks but would surely be outweighed by the need to ensure M's safety and well-being.

  I contacted the clerk to the Court in advance of the hearing to ensure the ABE had been received and that there would be a DVD player in the Court room. He confirmed this to me and I clung to the hope that armed with this evidence, I could not fail to, at the very least, get some form of contact re-established between M and myself. I was now not getting any phone calls from him at all and my father was only getting through very occasionally and then had only minutes with M whose father would end the call with his grandfather after a few moments of conversation.

  We were in the dark on nearly everything concerning M's life or well-being. The one thing that we did know from our calls at Christmas, was that M still loved both his mother and his grandfather and was not afraid to say so - Thank God for that at least. Whatever methods R was using and I was in no doubt that he would be doing all in his power to turn M against us, it was for the time being anyway, not working.

  For the next hearing before JS, we all arrived at Court in good time and this time Christopher had come over from France to attend Court with me. He had decided to take a very personal interest in my case as one of the worst he had come across and having initially grilled me hard to ensure I was telling him everything and didn't have any secret skeletons to hide, he was now determined to stand by me through the ordeal. I was grateful for the moral support as well as his greater experience and even though I did not agree with him all the time, I would have hated to face the Court alone. For this support at least, I am thankful.

  The last few years had depleted me of my health, my confidence and any faith in the Justice system I might have had. Christopher had been involved in cases like mine for many years and had successfully helped others through the quagmire. I was willing to gratefully accept his experience over my own intuition at times - looking back, I am not so sure now that I did the right thing. In his defence, I will say that for the time we worked together, he vested a great deal of his own time and money in both coming to Court with me and sticking with me through the process and I am in no doubt that his intentions were good, if at times, perhaps misguided.

  The Family Court is a minefield for lawyers, let alone Litigants in Person. None of the normal rules of justice and protocol seem to apply and to journey alone through such a difficult and gruelling process is difficult, if not impossible. Sometimes having someone sitting next to you in the most oppressive and intimidating of situations as a Family Court hearing, is worth a great deal. Having a second person to consider the problems and challenges faced which are far from the experience of any lay person, is a gift not to be turned down.

  Moral support through a time like this which is fraught with unimaginable grief, emotions so deep they are indescribable and exhaustion beyond anything you have ever felt, is a valuable asset. Facing a room of people determined to cut you out your child's life on your own and hardest of all facing your opponent, for there is no other word to describe a hostile ex-partner, is not wise and few are strong enough to walk into that situation without support of some kind.

  Those who come into Court, do so at the discretion of the Judge. She alone decides who is allowed into the courtroom - especially if they are not directly involved and I could only be thankful that I was not refused Christopher's presence by JS, despite the strong objection by both Giles and R. They had both researched Christopher's background as an activist and neither of them wanted him there, unsurprisingly. That they were so firmly opposed to him being allowed to assist me, only made me more sure that I needed him - if only as a means to dilute their combined hostility towards me. Again in hindsight, I now wonder if his public reputation as an agitator against the system, may have put me further at a disadvantage with the Judge. She had left the Court room to view his website and whilst she didn't object to his presence, she could not have been happy to read how much he openly damned the system. She did, however, make it a condition of his presence, that he signed an agreement not to go public with our case in any way.

  Our first major disappointment and sign of the way the case was going to be handled was the Judge's refusal to view the ABE or even consider the transcript of my son's evidence. She st
ated firmly that she would not go behind the finding of the first Judge and could not. This was not strictly true in law for Judges can overrule a decision when a child's safety is at stake and there were precedents to show this.

  The legal term is Estoppel - when a Judge cannot question an earlier Judgment - but it does not apply in certain situations and ours was one of them. I raised this to counter her argument but unsuccessfully. She was adamant that the Fact Find Judgment would remain unchallenged and this would seriously hamper our case. It would leave R as guiltless and me as a mother with an implied agenda that I had never had.

  Against this decision we must now may a strong case for shared custody - a position Christopher felt was the only one open to us, but in changing my original application from Full Residency to Shared Residency, I was weakened again for I would be questioned interminably on my reasons and this meant backing down on the view that M was not safe with R.

  I did not know how I could do this without it looking strategic rather than genuine and felt we should retain our initial view even without the strong evidence of the DVD interview where M had made his allegations to the police. Christopher, by contrast, felt my only option was to draw a line in the sand and without withdrawing any of my concerns or denying them, suggest we had to now all move on and put the past in the past.

  How does one move on from a child telling you that his father has sexually abused him? How do you forget your little boy's pleas not to be forced to be in the same room as this man - his cries of despair to the point of wetting himself at each of the forced contacts the Court insisted he attend? His shaking with fear - his nightmares - and the wealth of medical evidence that would convince any reasonable person that he had been a victim of attempted penetration at the very least?

  The Appeal Court Judgment from the Island still loomed strong in my mind. Their view that R had masturbated in front of his child in the bath, that he may have attempted something much more violent, but watered down by their comment that they could not be certain. How certain does one have to be to leave a child with a man he has alleged had hurt him this way? It was insanity - it was evil and for a mother, it was a life of torture - how much more of a tortuous life was it for my son?