Promise

by Sarah Armstrong

  The judge rested his chin on one hand as he listened to the prosecutor, and every so often, pushed his glasses up his nose. His old-fashioned wig only emphasised to Anna how far removed from real life this place was. The courtroom was like a dungeon, with no windows to the outside and a hard fluorescent light.

  ‘Additionally, Your Honour, the offender was not well known to the child – they had met very briefly on five occasions – so the child was taken from her home, and detained, by someone she knew only slightly.

  ‘The offender admitted in her police interview that the child asked for her mother several times, especially in the first two weeks after the abduction. While there is no victim impact statement from the child’s mother, Your Honour,’ the prosecutor glanced down at her notes, ‘the mother indicated in a police interview – a transcript of which I now tender as evidence – how upsetting she found it not knowing where her child was for almost three months, or indeed whether her daughter was even alive.’

  This was the thing Anna felt worst about, in the moments she let herself contemplate it. Even if Gabby was a terrible mother, Anna had taken away her little girl.

  The prosecutor waited while a woman in a blue uniform passed the document to the judge who perused it, then nodded at the prosecutor.

  She went on, ‘This is not withstanding, Your Honour, the fact that the mother – during that three-month period – elected to hand over care of the child to the child’s grandmother.’

  A machine hummed somewhere nearby, a relentless drone that only intensified the constriction in Anna’s chest. Sitting in that stark room, she felt like she was suspended in liquid. She was in a river, and she’d stopped grasping for something to keep her afloat, and instead concentrated on just keeping her mouth above the water, so she could draw each thin breath in.

  ‘As to the moral culpability of the offender . . . Your Honour, she made a conscious and informed decision to take and detain the child. The offender had a phone conversation with her partner, David Wilkins, as she drove away from the child’s home, with the girl in her car. In that phone call, Mr Wilkins, who is a prosecutor in the Sydney office of the DPP, made very clear to the offender the serious nature of the offence she was committing and urged her to return the child immediately. The offender may not have premeditated taking Charlie Seybold, but detaining the child was not a momentary lapse on the offender’s part. It was a deliberate and considered decision. It took her a day to drive north with the child, and in her police interview she said she did everything possible to avoid detection: buying cans of petrol at a station in Sydney’s west and avoiding main roads. And, most seriously, she chose to detain the child for twelve weeks.’

  The prosecutor ran her hands up the sides of her lectern. ‘The offender’s moral culpability is, however, reduced because her intention in taking Charlie Seybold was to assist the girl, to protect the child from what she assessed as potential physical harm. In the two weeks prior to the offence, the offender contacted Family and Community Services’ Child Protection Helpline three times to report her concerns about the child’s safety and wellbeing, and she called police once.

  ‘The offender told police that on the day of the abduction she witnessed the child’s stepfather assault the child and was herself threatened by the stepfather. She again called the Child Protection Helpline to report the assault and when they explained they could not attend immediately and encouraged her to call the police, the offender abducted the child. I tender as evidence a report from FACS about the offender’s three phone calls to the helpline.

  ‘Further mitigating her moral culpability are witness statements that she took good care of the child during the three-month period of detention. Your Honour, the offender has no criminal history. Since her arrest on the second of March this year, she has been on bail, living with her father in Orange, New South Wales, and reporting to police three times a week.

  ‘The maximum penalty for a section 87 offence is ten years, with no standard non-parole period. She made a very early plea of guilty, on the day of her arrest, and gave a full and frank interview to detectives. Notwithstanding any further mitigating circumstances that my learned friend may submit,’ she waved an elegant hand in Lindy’s direction, ‘the crown submits that given the serious nature of the offence, and in the interest of general deterrence, a custodial sentence is appropriate.’

  Custodial sentence. Jail. The cells were just through the door to Anna’s left and downstairs. They’d be cool and brightly lit, and she guessed they’d stink of bleach like the cell at the Byron Bay police station. How many hundreds of people who’d sat in this very dock over the years had ended up in jail? She swallowed the saliva flooding her mouth. If she got the two years that Bridget had suggested, then by the time Anna got out, Charlie would be almost eight.

  The judge shuffled papers on the bench, the noise amplified through the court by his microphone. He glanced up. ‘Thank you, Madam Crown. Anything further?’

  ‘Not at this stage, Your Honour.’

  The prosecutor sat down and, for the first time, glanced over at the dock. Anna found herself smiling, a jerky, tight smile. The prosecutor looked down and scribbled something on a pad of paper.

  The judge pushed the glasses up his nose. ‘Ms Allen?’

  Lindy stood. She was at the same table as the prosecutor, but closer to Anna. Her long dark hair was bundled into a low bun under her wig. Anna focused on her serene, oval face.

  Lindy laid her hands on her lectern. ‘Your Honour, as my friend here has indicated, my client gave police a full and frank interview. The investigating detective has noted that my client expressed remorse. My client well understands that what she did was wrong.

  ‘The circumstances in which she made the decision to take Charlie Seybold should be understood. Not as an excuse, but as an explanation and as a mitigating factor in her moral culpability. In seeking to assist Charlie Seybold, my client initially made several attempts via legal channels, and only when in great fear for the child’s life did she take the unwise step of taking the child. Her actions were positive in motivation, but gravely misguided. I refer to already-tendered evidence, the transcript from Charlie Seybold’s interview with officers from the Child Abuse Squad, in which the child offered the information that her mother sometimes bit her. Your Honour, I propose to call the offender, Ms Pierce. She wishes to tell you first hand her observations of the risk of harm to the child, including her observations in respect of the bite injury. I call Anna Pierce.’

  A court officer materialised beside Anna and opened the low timber door of the dock. The woman guided Anna over the carpet towards the judge. Everyone was watching her. Her legs were stiff with cold and she had a horrible thought that she might trip on the steps leading to the witness box.

  The officer said, ‘Do you solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that the evidence that you shall give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? If so, please say “I do”.’

  ‘I do.’

  Anna could hear the judge as he shifted in his seat, the rustle of his black and purple robe. Was the witness box placed so close to the judge to put the witnesses on edge?

  Lindy gazed over at her. Could she see how rattled Anna was?

  ‘What is your full name?’

  ‘Anna Rose Pierce.’

  ‘Ms Pierce, what was the first thing you noticed about Charlie Seybold that caused you to be concerned for her safety and wellbeing?’

  Anna swallowed. ‘I saw a bite on her leg. It looked like a human bite.’

  Lindy nodded. ‘Could you please describe the bite?’

  ‘It was like . . . a very dark bruise in the shape of two half-circles . . . I could see the teeth marks, and there was a small amount of dried blood.’

  ‘Your Honour, I tender as evidence a photo my client took of the bite four days after she first saw it. The bruise had faded somewhat.’

  The judge took the photo and looked at it for a long moment.

>   Lindy asked Anna to describe the moment she first saw the bite on Charlie’s leg, and as Anna spoke, it was as if she was watching herself kneel on the floor beside the couch all those months ago, completely unaware of how that moment was going to change her life. Unaware that from then on, she would be attuned to Charlie. Even right now, while she was up in the witness box, she knew Charlie was at school, wearing her uniform with the baggy shorts, and that in the girl’s pink lunchbox was the corn-and-fetta slice that they’d made together on the weekend.

  When Anna described Harlan holding Charlie upside down in the backyard, she was surprised how shaken she felt conjuring him, even in the sterile courtroom. But she knew she had to recount it in detail, to convince the judge of the danger Charlie had faced.

  ‘And how did the girl react to what happened?’ asked Lindy.

  ‘She seemed very distressed. She crawled through a hole in the fence to my side and hid under a bush . . .’ Anna steadied her voice. ‘She was curled up in a tight ball, and when I could finally convince her to come out, I saw that she’d . . . wet her pants.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wait until the child’s mother got home and return the child to the mother’s care?’

  ‘Because once we got inside my house Charlie told me that her mother had stood by and watched as her stepfather put her head down the toilet and flushed it. After that I didn’t trust the mother’s ability to keep her child safe. And later, once we reached my friend Pat’s place, she told me that her mother hurt her arm.’

  ‘Your Honour, that’s the evidence in chief of Ms Pierce, but before Ms Carson cross-examines, may I please tender a photo taken by my client of the child’s arm, the evening before she took the child. In the transcript of the CAS interview with Charlie Seybold, she said that her arm had an injury at the time Anna Pierce took her, and that the injury occurred when her mother pushed her down some stairs at their home. Thank you.’ She sat down and shuffled her papers.

  Anna glanced at the judge and found that he was looking at her. He had a kindly face, despite the strange wig, and he looked tired.

  The crown prosecutor cleared her throat. ‘Ms Pierce, on the day you abducted Charlie Seybold, why did you not call the police, as the woman on the Child Protection Helpline suggested to you?’

  ‘Because the police had come before, and Charlie told me she got in a lot of trouble after their visit. I was afraid, given what had happened in her backyard just half an hour earlier, that if she got into trouble, she might be badly injured – or worse.’

  ‘Were you concerned that your actions in taking and detaining the child would be detrimental to her mental and emotional health?’

  Anna took a breath. She would tell the truth, as if that might make up for all the other lies that would be told here today, and that she’d been telling all along.

  ‘Not at first, but once we reached my friend Pat’s place, yes, I did worry. And then, as time passed, I became less worried about that.’

  ‘Why did you become less worried?’

  ‘Because she seemed happy and not very troubled being away from her mother.’

  ‘You say not very troubled. So she was still somewhat troubled?’

  ‘She talked about wishing her mother would come and live with us but she didn’t ask to go back to her mother.’

  ‘So she did ask you to take her back to her mother, in the beginning?”

  ‘She wanted to see her mother but she said she didn’t want to go back if he was there. Harlan, I mean.’

  ‘How many times did she say that she wanted to see her mother?’

  Anna thought back to the night that Charlie sprinted into the darkness. ‘Maybe three or four times.’

  ‘Did that concern you, her expressed desire to be with her mother rather than with you?’

  ‘Yes, I felt concerned, but I decided that taking her from her mother was the lesser of two evils.’

  The prosecutor paused and crossed her arms. ‘Would you have stayed indefinitely in the cottage near Patrick Fenlan’s property, if you hadn’t been arrested on the second of March?’

  ‘I knew we’d be caught eventually.’

  ‘Would you have stayed there indefinitely if you hadn’t been arrested?’

  ‘I would have thought about it. Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. No further questions.’

  •

  Anna felt drained and shaky. Had it been a mistake to say she would have stayed there indefinitely? That didn’t show much remorse, did it? She needed to wee and she needed a jacket. She tried to look like she was listening as Lindy tendered a report from the psychologist Anna had been to see, and a report on how under-resourced FACS was. Then Lindy was saying something about Dave and the courtroom door swung open and Dave bowed to the bench, then strode across the carpet in his dark suit. That lanky walk was so familiar to Anna, so dear. In their last phone conversation, a week before the trial, she’d asked him whether it was over and he said, ‘I just need to press pause until the trial.’

  In the witness box, he made an affirmation that he’d tell the truth, and looked expectantly at Lindy. Anna wished he’d look over to her, for even a moment.

  ‘You are Anna’s Pierce’s partner?’

  ‘Ah, yes. At that time, yes.’ So it was over. She had no claim on him anymore.

  Lindy gave small nod, and if she was surprised, didn’t show it. She led him through what happened the night they went over to Charlie’s house, then asked, ‘And did Ms Pierce tell you of other occasions when she was concerned for the child’s safety?’

  ‘Yes, there were several occasions. The night before she took the child she called me to say that Charlie was locked outside her own house at 11 pm. Anna texted me a photo of an injury to the child’s arm that she first saw that evening.’

  Dave looked over at Anna at last, with a fleeting, tender expression.

  ‘Mr Wilkins, when you spoke to Ms Pierce on the phone as she left Sydney with the child on the fifth of December 2015, you told her not to take the child and that child abduction was a very serious offence, is that right?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘During that phone call, what did Ms Pierce tell you about the assault she witnessed that day, on the morning of the fifth of December?’

  ‘She said,’ he cleared his throat, ‘she said that she saw the stepfather holding the child up in the air by the feet and shaking the girl violently back and forth, and that the girl’s head was snapping about. And that he was screaming at the child and only stopped when Anna shouted at him to stop.’

  ‘And when, in that phone call, you urged Ms Pierce to take the child back home, what did she say?’

  ‘She said she was afraid the child would be killed.’

  ‘Did you have any doubt she was genuine in her fear?’

  ‘No doubt whatsoever.’

  ‘Based on what you heard and saw on the evening of the first of December 2015, and on what Ms Pierce recounted to you subsequently, were you concerned for Charlie Seybold’s safety?’

  ‘I was.’

  As Dave left the court, he stopped in the public gallery and shook Anna’s dad’s hand. She’d told her dad that she went to visit Dave each Saturday. Now he’d heard Dave say that they weren’t together anymore.

  Anna was sick of all the lying. And soon Prue would stand up and perjure herself as well. What if Prue slipped up? It would be so easy for Prue to reveal that she knew Anna or mention something Anna had told her. Anna felt a dull sense of inevitability, as if the momentum had already built for a custodial sentence, and there was no way for her to change the course of things.

  Lindy gave the judge documents she’d subpoenaed from FACS then referred to Charlie’s police interview and the girl’s account of Harlan’s abuse. Anna tried not to listen. Charlie’s childish words describing the brutality were hard to hear in this place, where the decision might be made to prevent Anna from helping Charlie. Anna knew Prue was rough with the girl. What would happen without Anna ar
ound to mediate?

  Over in the public gallery were a couple of men who looked like they could be cops, and, at the back, the woman detective. Karen.

  Anna’s dad sat in the front row in his good suit, making notes. He and Anna had driven over from Orange the day before and were staying in a hotel at Darling Harbour. He looked small and frail, or maybe it was just how he seemed next to the fresh-faced, chunky guys in suits near him.

  She’d never doubted her dad’s love for her, but until Charlie, she’d not thought much about all the practical ways he had cared for her as a child: making her school lunches, buying her clothes, driving her to netball games. Anna watched him as he bent over his pad and scribbled intently.

  Anna crossed her legs. She was so cold that she’d lost sensation in her feet.

  •

  Lindy had found Nella, Charlie’s neighbour from the caravan park. She looked about seventy, and was thin and nuggetty with jet-black hair. Nella wrung her hands as she spoke.

  ‘Gabby yelled at her all the time. And I saw her smack her plenty.’

  ‘Did Gabby ever leave Charlie on her own?’ Lindy’s voice was kind.

  ‘Yes. Often. And I’d give the little one food and get her to come over to my van.’

  ‘How long did the mother leave the girl on her own for?’

  ‘The worst was two whole nights. That was when she was only just turned four.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Did you contact the Child Protection Helpline, Mrs Alberti?’

  ‘Yeah. My daughter helped me.’ She looked to the gallery and smiled at someone there.

  ‘How many times did you call the helpline with your concerns about Charlie?’

  ‘Once.’ Her voice was quiet.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Alberti.’

  •

  Anna was glad to get out of the dock at the tea-break; she let Lindy shepherd her out the doors to the waiting area. She spotted Prue, slumped in a seat, her walker in front of her. Lindy guided Anna into a small bare office near the waiting room.

  ‘You did well, Anna. And Nella was good, too,’ said Lindy as she removed her wig and laid it on the desk. ‘She was nervous but she did really well.’