Mummy's Still Here

by Jeanne D'Olivier

  Every attempt was made by R and the Guardian to demonise me. On Christopher's advice I did not take the same approach, but I had never played dirty throughout the case and it was not in my nature to do so. I was there for one thing only - to defend my right to be a part of M's life. I was not interested in mud-slinging or fabricating evidence to attack my opponent - M's father. Yet - every piece of dirt he slung in my direction was scrutinised and some of the most ludicrous of suggestions were fully accepted by the Judge.

  R put forward very little by way of actual hard evidence. He relied on hearsay and hearsay upon hearsay to make his case. By contrast, I relied only on hard evidence and well-researched precedents. One would have thought that in doing so, I would be in the stronger position but none of the normal rules of justice apply to the Family Court. It very soon became abundantly clear, that just as on the Island when the case appeared to have been decided from the onset, the same was going to apply now. The Judge even went so far as suggesting that our photos of family holidays were somehow fabricated and that I had some magic power to make M look joyful in each and every one. How she could imagine that I could have forced M to smile in a photograph was beyond me.

  The first person to give evidence in the case was the psychologist, Dr T. I was to cross-examine him first as it was my application. I had been through his report with a fine tooth comb, highlighting clear inconsistencies. I had also put the recording of our first meeting into evidence to show that he had been sympathetic to me at the start and had carefully transcribed the most pertinent parts of this. The Judge refused to listen to it. Instead she handed it to her clerk and suggested it be checked to see if my transcription was accurate. Beyond that, she refused to consider or discuss it.

  Dr T began by talking endlessly about "a circle of trust." In his words R and his wife were inside the circle, whereas M's grandfather and myself were not. This metaphor was played out for hours on end and I wondered if I would ever get the chance to put my questions to the Expert.

  The whole of the morning was taken up by the Judge quizzing Dr T endlessly about the circle of trust and very little else. He rambled on the point without making any definite findings of any sort, although he did concede that R had made no attempt to encourage R to come for contact on the day that he had been supposed to see me with the psychologist and described his parenting as "weak and ineffectual."

  I quickly noted this and felt it would be a way in to demonstrating the influence that R was having on M's decisions. I had also highlighted the section of his report where R's wife had allegedly recommended that we all work together for the sake of M. Whether she had said this to impress the Expert and appear to be "reasonable", which was likely, or not, it was valuable as far as my cross was concerned and I intended to use these two points to make my case for contact.

  I scribbled notes endlessly, in readiness for my cross-examination - noting anything and everything that might make a difference, particularly on the point of the failed contact, but it was looking increasingly like I would get little chance to put my questions.

  We broke for lunch at 12.30pm and Christopher, in an attempt to keep my spirits up, made jokes about the "cosy" relationship between Dr T and the Judge and their lengthy "chat" as we walked to a pub opposite for some lunch.

  My father looked tired and worried, as was I, but, ever-the optimist - Christopher insisted that I would soon get a chance to put my cross and show this man to be both useless and a turncoat.

  We returned to the Court and again Dr T was put on the stand. The Judge continued to question him for another two hours. Again they talked psychobabble without addressing one point from his report or attempting to reach any conclusion about the way forward.

  The Courts ceased session at around 4.30pm each day and it was now 3pm and I had yet to put a single question. Dr T had also announced that he would not be returning the following day as he was headed to Wales. I was getting more and more anxious, as I knew now that I would have limited chance to go through my comprehensive and carefully constructed questions, based on his report - which was supposed to be the evidence to be argued and had yet to be even mentioned.

  The Judge suddenly announced she was concluding her discussion with Dr T but had one final question. My heart missed a beat and I went cold as she asked him if she was to write a letter to my son to tell him that he was not going to see his mother for the next four years, how should she put this? I had not yet even begun my evidence and she appeared to be discussing an outcome that would devastate me, knowing the effect this would have on my equilibrium and implying that this was something she was seriously considering or worse still, had decided already.

  I looked over at Christopher with tears in my eyes. He looked aghast. I could not see my father's face because he was on the other side of me and his head was bowed. He was visibly shaking.

  Having heard this bombshell, I now had to question Dr T and there was only one hour to do so, which would be split between myself and R.

  I got to my feet, legs like jelly and tried hard to focus on my questions - keeping only to the report as advised by my lawyer friends Peter and Sarah and in line with correct protocol. The Judge kept interrupting and taking over my cross, leading it away from the evidence and asking again, what seemed to be irrelevant questions about psychological terms. It was hard to stay focused in the light of this, but I kept my eye on the ball and ploughed on. Before I had barely put four questions to Dr T, she called for the end of my cross-examination and insisted it was now R's turn to put his questions. I had not yet managed to raise either of my key points as I had only gone through the first few questions on my extensive list. I tried to protest that I had barely begun, but the Judge insisted I sit down and R took to his feet, a look of thinly disguised glee on his face.

  R's supposed "questions" took the form of hostile statements directed at my father and myself. The Judge allowed this regardless, despite my objection that R was giving evidence rather than conducting a cross of the expert.

  R suggested to Dr T that he had received a threatening and hostile email from me that demonstrated my contempt for him and showed that if I had contact, I would turn my son against him. I was horrified. I had never written any such email.

  I waited for Dr T to say that he hadn't seen this as I knew it didn't exist. I listened mortified as he replied that he knew of the email but didn't have a copy with him.

  The Judge jumped on this and I saw her writing it down. Again I raised an objection but she told me I had had my turn. I was being framed yet again and there was nothing I could do about it. It was an elaborate game of Chinese Whispers where one person confirms the hearsay of the other and no-one has to produce any evidence whatsoever. Anyone who has suffered a Family Court hearing, will be familiar with this. More bullying goes on in the name of justice, than in any school playground and what is more it is state enforced. The system will go to any lengths to protect its mistakes and avoid being sued.

  I stood up after R had finished his rant against me and asked the Judge if Dr T could be asked to provide the email that he alleged he had seen. The Judge said he could bring it the next day and I tried to object that he was not coming the next day but she rose and walked out of the room.

  Dad and I asked Christopher to come with us for a drink to talk about what had gone on that day. He refused, saying he must get back to his hotel. Even he, could no longer suggest that I would end up with any contact at all. He was now talking about an Appeal, as if he was certain that I would lose. We were all stunned. If this was what happened at the Royal Courts of Justice, the highest Court in England, then it made the Island's proceedings look like a picnic by comparison. At least there had been some semblance of following procedure in the historical proceedings, even if the odds were all stacked against me. Now we were faced with a situation where anything goes - no adherence to the law or protocol and a Judge who seemed to have made her terrible decision already.

  The long hours of work I had done
on preparing for my cross of the Expert, had all been in vain. I had not been able to put one piece of evidence to Dr T and I was completely demoralised now. I could only hope that when I gave my own evidence, the following day, I would be able to make a strong enough case to challenge what had gone before.

  I spoke to Christopher late into the night as we discussed the preparation for the next day's hearing. He tried his best to encourage me, but he was far less certain now of a good or even tolerable outcome. M was slipping further and further away from me and I could do nothing to stop the galloping horse that was careering forwards to disaster.

  The next day, it was my turn to take the stand. I was already completely drained and had had virtually no sleep. It was taking us two hours on the train and tube to get to Court each day and Dad and I looked like ghosts, white-faced with dark circles under our eyes. This, however, would be my one chance to put my position to the Judge.

  Christopher had dictated a speech that he wanted me to give. I have to say, I was not entirely comfortable with what he was suggesting as I felt it was too aggressive and may alienate the Judge further, but I had decided to put my trust in him and there was nothing in it that I didn't agree with. I just wasn't sure that it was versed in the best possible terms to get the Judge onside. If that were even possible. Having said that, after her bombshell of the day before, I wasn't convinced that anything now would make any difference to the outcome.

  Dad would give evidence first and I would take him through his evidence in chief and then R would cross-examine him.

  We met Christopher early in the coffee bar at the Court and he advised Dad on what he wanted him to say. He told him that he must not speak about the Sexual Abuse at all and suggest that he too was willing to move on. Dad was not comfortable with this. M had disclosed to him on two occasions and Dad felt that to avoid the issue would place M in further danger. My father has always been a man who told the truth, regardless of the consequences. In some ways this had been our downfall when we were in hiding in the States and he had been pressurised to give us up. He simply did not have it in him to lie and to say he had moved on from M's disclosure would compromise his natural honesty. He agreed to do it though because Christopher was adamant that it was our only hope now. The Judge had made it blatantly clear that she was not going to revisit the issue of the abuse and in many ways our hands were tied.

  In situations such as this, it is impossible not to go back and relive and dissect every part of the process and wonder if anything you had done or said, could have been approached differently. I had been doing that since the case began but having now heard countless women's accounts of their hearings, all whom had taken different approaches in Court, they had all ended up with the same outcome regardless. We had few cards in our hand. The only thing we could do, was play the ones we were left with.

  Dad was due to go on the stand at 10 a.m. but we were advised that the Judge was first going to have a preliminary hearing on another case, so we were left waiting to start for well over an hour. It was close to lunchtime before my father was put on the stand and reiterated what Christopher had suggested as his evidence. I could tell that Dad was finding it hard to keep his anger under control. He wanted to express his true feelings and confirm what his grandson had told him on two separate and shocking occasions.

  He was clearly thinking of the day when M had been just seven years old and they had been huddled on the settee watching Wimbledon on the television. M loved being with his Grandad and always felt completely safe with him. He had suddenly turned to Dad and in a quiet and matter-of-fact little voice said, "Do you know Grandad, Daddy said he would punch me and hurt Mummy if I ever told anyone what he did?"

  My father had been aghast, especially as only weeks earlier whilst having supper at his house, M had told my father that R had "put his winky in my bum and it hurt." What threats might M now be living with? Even if he disclosed again, who would listen? He had taken the chance of revealing what had happened to him and no-one had believed him. He had been told by the police that they could not, "make anything stop." He was now in the sole care of the person who did this to him. Naturally my father wanted to shout it out to the Court and the Judge - but who would listen to him? Who had listened to any of us? The only Expert qualified to judge the abuse, who contested the Judge's findings, had been ignored. What hope did any of us have in the face of that?

  I watched Dad squirm as he tried to tell the truth about what he felt, without coming outright with what he wanted to say. He did not retract anything he had said earlier, but he said that " we would never know what really happened" as Christopher had advised. I knew that he wanted to scream that he believed that M was living with a paedophile and must be immediately removed and given back to his mother. The Judge would most likely have taken him off the stand and possibly held him in Contempt of Court, had he said what he truly believed in his heart. We were under orders from the Judge herself, not to raise the Sexual Abuse allegations and had no option but to comply with that.

  R was aggressive in his questioning of Dad and immediately asked him if he considered R to be a risk to M. Dad was in a difficult situation because he obviously did believe that R had hurt M historically and may still be doing so. At the very least, he firmly believed that M was in a very dangerous situation emotionally because he was now living in a pressure-cooker environment of R's hostility towards his mother and grandfather.

  Dad was afraid of angering the Judge, so he answered cautiously, saying that he had believed his grandson, but that only R and M knew exactly what had happened.

  R tried to pressurise Dad into saying that he saw him as a paedophile because he wanted the Judge to cut us both out of M's life. He knew that any mention of our believing in the veracity of M's allegations against his father, would likely seal our fate in being cut out of M's life for the foreseeable future. My father again gave a vague answer, refusing to commit to anything but suggesting it was time to move on and put the past behind us - the only answer he could safely give.

  We had not been allowed to run the case in the way that we wanted to because of the Judge's blind refusal to consider any evidence that supported M's allegations but she had been happy to consider any historical evidence by way of Social Worker and Guardian's reports that damned me or my father. In fact she had allowed these to be filed by the Guardian the night before the proceedings began. There had been over a hundred pages and I had had no opportunity to go through them with so little time. Knowing that the cut off point for filing evidence had been four weeks earlier and having been told by the Judge most forcibly that we must all comply with that, Peter and Sarah had advised that there was no way she would allow these reports to be included. Most of them had been written four years earlier and it was ironic that I had been refused all of my witnesses, the only people who had seen M and I together alone, on the basis that she was not going to hear from anyone that had been part of the former proceedings or even consider evidence that was over six months old. In other words, nothing that had happened prior to contact being ceased completely. Yet now she was giving much credence to reports that had been written so long ago that they preceded Judgments that had since undermined much of their content. Nothing about what was happening was even remotely fair. Had I put evidence in at such a late date, it would have been completely inadmissible.

  By the time Dad had finished giving evidence, it was almost lunchtime and I would be next in line to take the stand.

  I stood up and said a silent prayer that I would say something that would touch the Judge's heart enough to keep me in M's life.

  I had produced my prepared speech and asked if I could read from it. The Judge agreed to this and copies were handed to the other parties. I made a heartfelt plea for my relationship with M to be maintained whilst stating firmly, as Christopher advised, that nothing short of death, could be compared to cutting a mother out of a child's life and likening the process to Nazi war crimes. These last words being the ones tha
t I had been reluctant to include, no matter how true.

  The Judge listened, steely eyed and with no sign of hearing a single word. She then asked me directly if I believed my son had been sexually abused and if not, why had I put this in my application to the Court.

  I could not believe that I was now being questioned on the very thing, I had been told I could not discuss. I took the approach that Christopher had recommended and said whilst I had believed this, it was now in the past and we must move on. The Judge would not accept this. She kept referring to my application and the fact that I had ticked a box that said I believed M was at risk from his father. Naturally at that time I had believed that I would be allowed to show the ABE interview in Court which I had been sure would have made this Judge question the decision of the Island's Judge. I was expected now to defend my earlier position without compromising my current one. I was between a rock and a hard place but I repeated what I had said earlier and kept doing so.

  I was feeling very insecure about our position now. It seemed the goal posts had been moved significantly and I was trapped in a position that made me wrong whatever answer I gave. In the end I told the Judge that I did not believe that there was any answer I could give, that would satisfy her and that was the truth. Naturally this did not please her. I even went so far as to say that without being able to rely on any of the former evidence, she might as well ask me whether I believed in God or not. I could no more produce him to prove the fact, than I could demonstrate my reasons for believing my son, without being allowed to refer to any of the evidence that showed this or call a single witness who agreed with this view.

  I had most importantly been denied my Expert witnesses - the Clinical Psychologist who had disagreed with the earlier Judge's finding of "no abuse", the GP who had been willing to travel from the Island at her own expense to testify as to M's long history of urine infections which had begun when M had his first overnight stay with his father and had led her to involve Social Services in the first place or most importantly M's ABE interview where he disclosed the abuse to the police. Without any of this to support why I had suggested on my application that I believed M to be at risk from his father, I was doomed. I had nothing with which to show my concerns were well-founded and yet the Judge relentlessly questioned me on it, until she herself decided to move on, having spun me round in circles.