Sarah was thrilled to hear from us and M showed his friend the house carrying my laptop around using the webcam on my Skype. There was much laughter as we planned for them to come out later in the year to visit us. We talked of the boys playing football together in the yard and exploring the surrounding area - perhaps a trip to Disney World.
There was a knock on the door and the boy from next door arrived to ask M to come and play again at the nearby park. The neighbourhood was quiet and safe and I agreed that M could go. The fourteen year old was a sensible lad and promised to return him in an hour. I carried on building furniture and then Bill and James arrived to put my bed together. It turned out to be a much bigger job than anticipated. Bill had to leave at lunchtime to go to a Church meeting, but promised to return later leaving James and I to carry on.
M returned soon afterwards for lunch and was full of the fun he had had playing basketball. The parks were well equipped with nets and there was a good neighbourhood watch scheme in place, as well as a regular police patrol according to my neighbours who I had met the previous evening as they had set out with their children to go for a swim at the local pool. They had a Labrador and M looked expectantly at me, I smiled back and nodded knowing his wish for a puppy and determined to fulfil it once we were settled. Life was idyllic and we were happier than we had ever been. I knew I had made the right decision. It had to be right – one only had to look at the joy in M’s face to see that.
After a light lunch, we all got stuck into more furniture assembly. Even M helped with what he could and Bill was due back late afternoon to finish off my bed so that I could sleep in it that night. We were making good headway. Our little home was coming together. Then at about four O clock there was another knock at the door – this time the knock was loud, insistent and urgent.
Chapter 5
Things happened so quickly. It was all a blur. Three armed police officers pushed their way into the house. M ran to me screaming and clung hard to my leg. A female social worker followed me as we ran into the bedroom where James was now standing alarmed and shocked as I blurted out, “please help us – we're on the run.” James tried to protest as the police threatened to take M. M carried on screaming and sobbing uncontrollably as James was taken at gunpoint to our basement, threatened with being arrested if he tried to intercede. I tried to keep my head and asked for papers. I was terrified but couldn't let M see this. “You can’t take him. You don’t know why we had to do this. Please let me explain. Please let me talk to you….Please don’t take my son….Please, please don’t take him….I begged," tears pouring down my cheeks.
“We're under orders. You can hand him over or we'll just remove him.” They showed no emotion. They showed no compassion, they didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. The social worker waved a piece of paper in my face, but I couldn’t read it without my glasses and M was clinging to my leg, I couldn't move, paralysed by fear. She said that a Care Order had been passed in our absence. She accused me of knowing this. I told her I knew nothing about it. I didn’t know that they had had an ex-parte hearing after I left. The Courts had ordered M to be apprehended under the Care Order - the American authorities were carrying out orders from home.
I protested hard, pleading with them to let me explain why we had had to run, but they threatened to say I was crazy and throw me in jail if I tried to prevent them taking M. Somewhere deep inside me I knew I must try and stay calm. I couldn't help M if I lost my freedom. I could do nothing as they pulled him from my body and carried him out by his little arms whilst he screamed, “Please don’t send me to Daddy he hurts me,” all witnessed by James who could hear it from the basement, but like me was powerless to anything at all. Within minutes the police car drew away. The social worker said, “we’ll be in touch.” She walked out behind them. I could do nothing. I had no idea where they had even taken M. It was the worst moment of my life and I am sure will stay with M forever, as it will me. It was barbaric, cruel and inhumane and as quickly as we had found paradise, in that moment, we lost it.
James came up from the basement after they left and I told him the whole story, in between sobbing and shaking. I could barely think, but there was no judgement from the friends we'd made. He called Bill, Miriam, Julia and Hillary and one by one they arrived, the women offering hugs, tea and sympathy, whilst the men tried to think what we could practically do. It was nearly five o’clock on a Civil Holiday weekend, but having abandoned lawyers, there was nothing we needed more right now.
James began frantically searching through the phone directory and ringing round, but it was a Friday afternoon and he drew blank after blank. Miriam suggested we try my conveyancing lawyers who may know someone. James rang Lenny and he said he would contact his ex-wife who was a family law lawyer. This was particularly kind as the two had barely spoken for years and had a healthy disrespect for each other. However, Lenny put his own feelings aside and made the call. Martha-Jane Barry was a piranha in the business and she promised to email me her advice once she had a chance to consider the case from the limited facts I gave her in the terrible state I was in.
Our next task was to contact the CAS. The Children’s Aid Society and try to ascertain where M had been taken. The CAS is the equivalent of the British Social Services and equally responsible for the child-knapping that seems to go on without rhyme or reason now all over the world.
Long gone are the days when taking children from homes legitimately where they are abused, have parents with drug or alcohol problems, or are seriously neglected are the only reasons– the trend now seemingly was to force children to live with fathers to redress the balance of the mother always getting custody. Children, like M, who are loved, cared for, come from good homes, private education, supported and nurtured in every way, can be the target of the crimes of social workers, trying to hit their targets. I am sure there are many good social workers, good departments and professionals with integrity, as much as there are excellent loving good fathers – but sadly there are also those whose only ambition is to the hit their quota, take innocent children from good homes, often to force them to live elsewhere often with people who see them as possessions to be gained, not spirits to be loved, and thus destroy the children as well as the loving parents who are left bereft and unsupported.
The Duty Workers at the CAS could not give us any information. They could only say that M had been taken to temporary foster care. I could only imagine how frightened he would be. He had barely been away from my side for a day since he was born and we had the closest and most loving of bonds. I begged them for information, but they could give me none. However, the social worker who had been with the police arrived soon after to collect some of M’s clothes and his hay fever medication – she was shaking uncontrollably – perhaps she had a heart somewhere after all. I asked her if I could write M a note and hurriedly scribbled:-
Be Brave my Darling, I will get you back, I love you the world and back, Mummy xxx
I sprayed some of my perfume onto one of his teddy bears and handed it to her. “Please,” I begged; "look after my little boy, he is the most precious thing in the world to me. You have this all wrong. This is a much loved, well cared for child. I don’t know what lies you have been told, but I ran here to keep him safe from a child abuser, you have to believe me.”
“I am not able to discuss it. We’ll be in touch.” She said without emotion, but I could see a glimmer of fear in her eyes, perhaps somewhere deep in her soul, she knew this was wrong.
I don’t know how long I lay on the floor after they had gone. Even my aunt and uncle had shown their faces but given how they had treated us, I didn’t want them near me – especially when I knew they had given up our address to the police. My aunt had tried to persuade me to pray, but how could I pray? What God could allow this to happen to my beautiful innocent M? What punishment for a child who had never done anything wrong, had already experienced abuse, and now was being abused by the system, wrenched from his mother in a for
eign country and taken to God knew where? No - no God could allow this. Whatever faith I may still have had flickering inside me was extinguished in that moment. The pieces of the puzzle of how I lost M, were about to come together and cause me the deepest pain and sense of betrayal. My American relatives were only the first piece, sadly there were more shocks to come.
Chapter 6
I couldn't move. I was cold, even though it was ninety degrees outside. I howled like a wild animal caught in a trap from the very depths of my soul for hours. I was frantic with worry for M, how he was feeling, was anyone holding him through his tears? Were the people he had gone to kind? I felt totally powerless – I knew my precious child was somewhere out there in the dark lonely night, probably only a few miles away and yet I had no idea where to look or how to find him. I had never experienced the intensity of the pain I felt that night – they may as well have cut out my heart and left me for dead. It would have been kinder.
I had rung my father and told him what had happened. He was now on his way. He had been reticent about coming – typically Dad, not sure it was the right thing to do. The right thing to do? That he even had to consider it was a mystery to me. But then, I was to understand why he was nervous – it was Dad who had given us up. The worst betrayal of my life and of M’s – my father, his beloved grandfather had weakened under the police pressure and disclosed that we had gone to America, and from there it had been easy. They had only to see who I knew in the area and given that my uncle and aunt had been over to the Island for my mother’s funeral only months earlier – their identity whilst not the most obvious people they'd think of, was no mystery.
I had known a couple of weeks earlier that Dad had been ordered by the Court to give a statement by way of an affidavit. I did not see the contents of this for a long time. He only had to say he didn’t know where we were but Dad is a man who cannot lie, even to protect his own. He was frightened, old and had always lived an honest life. In hindsight we asked too much of him to go against his character and in many ways he was very naive as the police persuaded him that things would be worse for us if he did not give us up and we were found. He didn't have the courage that my seven year old had shown but he had never needed it and this was way beyond what he could handle. At the time he had told them we had gone to the States, he had assured me that they still wouldn't find us.. He did not tell me he had actually told them where we had flown to – but as soon as he did that, we were sitting ducks. The knock on the door had been inevitable from that moment.
It is conceivable that they may have already known our whereabouts before they got Dad's written statement. In fact, it is probable as Interpol were already alerted from when we left the UK but it was a clever move on the part of the Island's authorities to use Dad in this way - they hoped to sever our relationship in doing so and thus further isolate me from both emotional and financial support when we came to fight to get M back. It is perhaps a testament of how strong our relationship is, that whilst we came close to breaking, I learned to forgive and to understand over time. But at that moment when M was taken, all I could see was my pain and M's and the injustice of it all raged like a red angry monster inside me. Sadly Dad paid a high price for his actions, both financially and emotionally. For whilst we had been persuaded by our lawyer that running would bring an end to the stresses and financial demands of litigation, the money we had spent already was nothing to what we would face from this moment on.
Our legal counsel had advised that even if we were found, it would take years to bring us back. He had not warned us that M could be apprehended if we were. He had not advised us correctly and the dominoes began tumbling down as one piece of bad advice and each betrayal had a knock on effect on the rest.
My hurt and anger towards Dad were an unbearable burden. I blamed him entirely for what had happened to M in being taken and that anger burned furiously within me as the consequences of losing M became worse and worse over the next months. For this was only the beginning of what was to become a living bereavement – a bereavement that keeps you in a state of hell, where you can never reach a point of acceptance or move on.
I had watched my sister die at a relatively early age on a life-support machine - a once vital, radiant soul, full of life, cut off in her prime. I had thought then that nature could never be this cruel again but what I hadn't bargained for was the cruelty of things that go against nature.
This was different to when my sister died, painful and tragic as that had been but it did not compare to what I was enduring now because what had happened to my beautiful sister was as a result of a biological problem, a defect from birth that had lain in her brain waiting to explode at a given moment and whilst that grief and loss remains with me, I had no option but to come to terms with what had happened as a quirk of nature, not due to the evil of man's inhumanity to man.
My longing for the child I had carried within me through pregnancy, given birth to, raised alone, adored, cherished and the centre of my universe was all-consuming. I had not minded the lack of a man in my life, other than my precious little boy. I had everything I wanted in the immense love I felt for M and the fun we shared together - The cycling out to the lighthouse on our bikes in summer – the picnics on the beach – the horse riding lessons we shared – swimming, basketball, even football and snooker – I learned to do boy things and even enjoy them.
I stood freezing, clutching a coffee with the other parents on Saturdays on the Tag Rugby field. I moaned at the time, as they did, but I would have given anything in that moment to be right back there with M safe with his friends – if only the abuse hadn’t happened.
For my son had dared to tell me. He had dared to ask Mummy to help him to escape from the hell he was experiencing every time he stayed with his father. He had expected Mummy to save him, but right now we had just swapped one hell for another. I will never forget that night and I don’t expect M will either. I can only imagine the damage it has caused him. For me, I will never be the same – the person I was is long gone – all that is left is a shell of unhappiness and grief and longing. I have faded into this black and white movie that refuses to end and plays continuously day and night through my mind. Does it play through M’s? I may never know.
My anger at Dad was almost as crippling as my anger at the system that had done this. The far-reaching evil hands of Social Services – the cruel manipulations of a Court determined to punish us for daring to thwart their orders, a Court that would hurt an innocent child to punish his mother and make her an example should others decide to take their lives into their own hands and seek freedom. For we were not alone, there were others in the same situation – I did not know just how many then.
I was now caught in between my need for the comfort of having Dad with me, and my desire to never set eyes on him again. But part of me wanted to understand what had made him give us up – what was it he was thinking as he signed over our lives to the cruel hands from which we had run – even after the night before he had gone to Court my son had begged him on Skype – “Please Grandad – be strong – I love you. I know you can be strong.” A little boy of seven with his life still to live – a life that had been damaged and full of fear so far – a little boy who was begging his Grandad to protect him from his abuser – to let him live free with the Mummy he loved. The Grandad he looked up to and adored, had given him up in a moment – a moment of human weakness and fear. It was one of my greatest challenges to overcome this but over time I did and over time I tried to understand - that journey may never end too.
I was to later learn that Dad had also not admitted his part in the abduction and that was another test on my love for him - but he had taken the advice of a lawyer that had a vested interest in helping to protect the system she herself benefitted from in every relationship break-up that walked through her door. Sadly there are few lawyers out there who really do fight for their clients in the family court system. It is a combination of two things, one that they need to keep in
favour with the Court and the system if they are to maintain their livelihoods and secondly they are powerless against a juggernaut that has so much force it crushes everything in its wake. So long as the Courts go on allowing hearsay evidence behind a wall of secrecy, injustice will be common in an environment that hides behind a mantra of "best interests of the child." What that means in reality is the power of the system to act in its own best interest.
Despite everything Dad was still my father and I loved him and I have had to forgive his weakness as it was borne not out of a deliberate wish to harm us, but out a lack of understanding of how this would end - if it ever did. At that time I firmly believe he thought that the truth would out and justice would be done. He could not grasp just how corrupt the system was and what sinister groups may lie within it - paedophile rings - freemasonry - police corruption - the stuff of conspiracy novels - inconceivable in Britain in the twenty first century - but reality is often stranger than fiction.
Dad believed that we would have been found anyway. He may have been right, but as I lay on that floor unable to move and in the agony of despair, I only saw that he had given us up and that M was gone and suffering immeasurable anguish and fear.
We had been like Jews hiding in the attic, handed over to the Nazis and at that time I saw his betrayal as trying to protect his own life – a life that was almost at end, when my little boy’s life had barely begun. If it had been anyone else who had shopped us, I could have borne it more easily, but I now had the added pain of knowing it was someone I truly loved and trusted and our relationship might never be the same again. Another bereavement to bear and one I suspect shared with many across Britain today who find themselves in similar circumstances. For those left behind are manipulated, promised, emotionally blackmailed and even threatened by the police and the social services. Torturing elderly relatives into disclosing their own, is child's play to those who will protect the system at all costs.
Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) Page 4
