Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) (19 page)

              M was desperate to have his membership as he was still spending most of his time playing computer games.

              I had given him a laptop for his birthday that I had bought in the US after he was taken.  I would not normally have given him something like this until he was considerably older, but it was something I felt that would help him in Foster Care, as he was so restricted in what he was allowed to do.

              M had been delighted with the present and on a whim I had registered a
Skype
address for him, giving him a user name that he would recognise but they would not.  I didn't know whether he would remember using
Skype
in America to communicate with his grandfather.  I trusted though that being a resourceful bright child, there was slim chance he would figure it out. 

              About a week after I had given him the laptop, I was on my father’s computer when a message popped up on
Skype
that I had two missed calls, both from M’s pseudonym.  He had tried to ring me and my heart leapt with joy that was quickly followed by fear that he would be discovered and us both be in trouble should I respond.  I was unsure what to do.  Responding was risky and certainly using the call aspect of
Skype
was too dangerous, but I sent a tentative message of love and the next day he responded.  I had to be very careful not to put anything in writing that may, if read, be incriminating. 

              I  always kept my messages to words of love and reassurance, but one evening we managed to both be online at the same time.  I needed to check that it was really M and not someone pretending to be him.  I asked him a question that only he would know the answer to and that was the name of the boy he had befriended in America who lived next door.  He confirmed the answer correctly, so I knew M had found a chink in the wall and had slipped through.

              We had a few conversations on
Skype
for a couple of evenings.  I had managed to discover that he was usually in his room at around seven O clock and I would wait patiently to see if he would come online, sometimes he did and sometimes not.  Often the messaging would end abruptly and I would guess that someone had come into his room.  He was careful and brave and I was proud of him for discovering a way of contacting me, but as quickly as this means of communication had begun, it ceased.  Whether he'd become afraid of discovery or whether discovery had already happened, I didn't know, but I then lived in fear of any consequences for M or indeed myself that may result.  None came and our small exercise in finding a chink of light in the chains that surrounded us, came to an end.

              It took many phone calls and emails to get
Moshi Monsters
up and running but in the end I managed to succeed.  I sent a couple of test messages to M to ensure it was now working – these were nothing more than a few X’s. Sadly as I had suspected, it was a trap and as soon as I had done that, I was in a great deal of trouble.  I was accused by the Department of breaching my bail conditions.  This came to nothing in the end but it caused me considerable anxiety and fear of re-arrest.  It also brought M’s account to an end and had him stopped from using it.  There was no limit to the ways that they would control and bully myself and my child.  It was a Fascist regime with government paid henchmen getting their kicks from destroying our lives.

              Whilst
Club Penguin
did not have the same level of communication as
Moshi Monsters
and the most it was possible to do was to send pre-written postcards which contained childish innocuous messages such as “Happy Puffles” or “You're my best friend,”  M was also prevented now from using that.  I guess they hoped that M would blame me for the new restrictions and at a time when they were promoting his father as hard as possible, it was all engineered to break the bond between us and cement one with his abuser.  They had not reckoned on the love that bound M and I together and which nothing could break.  M was bright and intuitive and I am sure he knew only too well their devious games, but he was as powerless as was I.

              The new Family Court barrister, Tom, flew over with Brian at the end of January to meet me for the first time.  I collected him from the airport with my father.  My first impressions were of a rather arrogant young man.  He was young, blunt, clearly had a very high opinion of himself and was not prepared to believe me without first putting me hard to the test.  I realised that unlike Gabby who needed no convincing of the reality of our situation, this man would need a lot of persuading.  I also got the impression that my slim, blonde looks were a problem to him.  It would be much easier to gain sympathy had I weighed a hundred and sixty pounds and been very unattractive.  One wondered what issues with women he may have had himself.  However, I couldn't change the way I looked and hoped he would not judge me on appearance but the sincerity of my love for my child.

              Tom, Brian, my father and my friend Jan who I had asked to come along, given that she had been supporting me at meetings with the Department, went for lunch at a local pub and opened talks about the way forward.  Tom  didn't  seem to have the fire or the promise of his earlier claim to Gabby that he could get the ICO revoked and bring M home to me.  I stood my ground, and made my points as clearly and reasonably as I could and hoped that I had got him to see past my outer appearance which I'm sure he'd stereotyped and into the truth and love in my heart. 

              Like so many who had come before, Tom's manner was that of Headmaster to child.  He talked to me as if I was a wayward school girl who had played truant.  I hated this, but trusted Gabby’s opinion enough to give him a fair chance.  After all we wanted a lion going into Court, not a pussy cat.  If he was condescending and intimidating towards me, I hoped he would equally be to those who were destroying our world.

              My first appearance with Tom came a few weeks later.  We had a Directions hearing and he flew over to accompany me, along with Brian.  Brian met us at the Court and I met Tom slightly earlier.  What struck me most was that he walked ahead of me and made little conversation when we got to the waiting room outside.  I didn't get the feeling of a united front.  There was a huge divide between us.  He was there to do a job, I was the client and a woman and he did not hide the fact that he clearly had contempt for me or maybe more than that, that I was irrelevant as a human being. 

              I had always found it difficult waiting to go into Court in close proximity to the very people who were hell bent on destroying and vilifying me.  The hostility that hung in the air was oppressive and harsh and yet I had to sit alone, faced with the firing squad of the lawyer for the Department, the Guardian’s lawyer, the Guardian himself and M’s father and his lawyer.   I would have been grateful for a sign of allegiance or support from my own barrister, but clearly he did not see this as part of his job description.

              The hearing passed uneventfully. Tom, at least had had a chance to view the opposition.  He was completely unimpressed with both R’s lawyer who he saw as a weak and silly woman and the Department’s lawyer for which he only had a few words – “what a total bitch."  As he came from the Court room, he announced,  “That is one of the most unpleasant women I have ever met.”  At least we were united in that opinion.  One thing I will say for Tom is that he shared my contempt for the other players, but that did not make us friends.  He appeared to have contempt for most people.

              I have to concede that Tom was much stronger in Court than the first barrister had been.  He opposed the signing of the second “Agreement” that the Department were trying to force on me, referring to it as "a decree" and a "an unreasonable straitjacket." He also achieved one other very positive thing, which was to get my psychiatric evaluation on record.  He did this very deftly by asking the current psychologist to comment on it.  Professional jealousy meant that having been criticised in it by the psychiatrist who had assessed me as mentally sound and rejecting his report as inaccurate, the psychologist felt compelled to defend their position in their next report. As soon as they made comment on the Psychiatrist’s report it became a matter of record.

              This had been a clever tactic on Tom’s part and was one of a few moves he made that were aggressive and inspired.  However, he wanted to totally control everything and my voice was silenced completely which I was not entirely happy with.  In hindsight perhaps I should have just stepped back and let him do things his way, but the niggling doubt that stayed with me were the words he then uttered when I took him back to the airport.  I had asked him whether he believed in the abuse, to which he had responded “I don’t have to believe you in order to represent you.” In my mind, he did.

              I needed someone in Court for me who was truly on board and on side and I needed to know that they trusted me.  This niggling doubt grew over the next few weeks and when we reached the Contact Hearing – the application that I had filed on my return from the US for more contact with M, I hoped that Tom's  rather aggressive approach may at least do us some good in Court.  He certainly didn't pull any punches and seemed to take delight in attacking Miss Whiplash in particular, who, dressed in her customary black attire and long black leather boots resembled a Storm Trooper.  She clearly hadn't come up against someone like Tom before and he not only made her look foolish, but a first class liar to boot.  She became increasingly sheepish and squirming as he fired questions at her designed to demonstrate just what a bully she was.  

              Naturally the whole
Moshi Monsters
incident was brought up by the Department, as was
Club Penguin
and a video I had made for M of his bedroom on his
I-pod Nano
when had given it to me to upload some music for him. I had taken the opportunity to make him a short film of his room with the painted lighthouses, dolphins and sailboats and his beloved rocking horses.  I felt this would bring him some comfort.  I had included a very brief commentary saying that I loved him and missed him and his room was waiting for him exactly as it had been.  Innocuous as it was, the Foster Carers who seemed to be hired spies for the Department, had found the I-pod and told them that I had tried to communicate with M.  To anyone outside it would seem absurd that these small expressions of love from a mother, separated from her child now for nearly a year, would be considered acts of subterfuge., but to anyone who has ever been put in this position by a Local Authority, it will come as no surprise.  

              The Judge supported the Department, unsurprisingly having formerly represented them on the case where two children on the Island had died. 

              This, at the time had been a horrific and terrible event that had led to a full public inquiry, but despite the recommendations made at the time that a more thorough form of monitoring be applied to the behaviour of the Department, none had yet been implemented now five years on.   MP’s were still pushing for this, but the Department remained seriously flawed and with no accountability.  The most difficult problem being that managers oversaw more managers and complaints were investigated by people who sought to protect each other and cover each other’s mistakes. 

              The Senior Social Worker in this case had then been promoted to the more senior position of Reviewing Manager, giving him even more power to destroy people’s lives.  This same Reviewing Manager was now heading up our case.  He was a weak, ineffectual man who looked like a throwback from the sixties.  However, weak men in positions of power have an even greater tendency to lie to cover their inadequacy.  This was a common theme throughout our case and I resented the fact that mostly I was dealing with very ill-educated people with no moral conscience and no ability to think beyond tick-boxes.

              Despite the robust efforts of Tom that day, it made little difference to anything.  The Judge did make a concession that there should be no reason why my recently purchased puppy, a gift for M, not attend contact and granted me one extra half hour a week’s contact.  However, the Department whilst agreeing to the half hour, largely ignored his recommendations over the dog and that was all we had gained for several thousand pounds of his time.   Whilst every extra minute with M was precious, it seemed a poor result.  

              Naturally the lawyers didn't see it that way and when I dared later to say that I was disappointed, they tried to pass it off as a huge victory and accused me of annoying the Department by writing too many emails.  I guess all bad workmen blame their tools, but the only way I had been able to get M to see the puppy at all had been in writing and rewriting to them – they usually ignored at least six emails before they bothered to reply to anything.

              It was soon after that that I decided to attend a meeting being held locally of an action group who were against the proposed Children’s Bill being introduced in the Island.  This Bill would allow all families to be put on a data base and children taken on virtually any pretext.  It had already been introduced by
Blair
in England but was not successful as the amount of Data needed took so long to accumulate and enter onto systems – it was, however, a move towards the
Big Brother Regime
that
Orwell
prophesied in his novel,
1984
.