Read Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) Online
Authors: Jeanne D'Olivier
My father and I would often go there for dinner – neither of us felt much like cooking or eating, but we had to keep body and soul together and stay strong to fight this. There was still hope if we could convince the American Courts that M would be in danger, as we fully believed he would be, if we were sent back. But we only had a few weeks to accumulate papers and Dan said the seventy testimonials to my good parenting that had been written to the Department by family and friends were of no use, unless they were in sworn affidavit form. We were under pressure to get things done quickly and people who had been supportive, were now less so. Friends were turning their backs on us, as is often the case when your life hits a wall and smashes you to bits. The car crash we were in, had another element – it was almost although we were now infected with the disease of having a child removed. People seemed nervous – afraid they might catch it. One by one good friends turned their back – but at least my closest friend Sarah was still in touch. We spoke for hours on the phone – often through the night when I could not sleep. I wished she could be with me – I felt so desperately alone.
In the evenings I would go up to the
Travel Lodge
and eat a solitary bowl of French Onion Soup, and drink a half carafe of wine – sometimes I would stay at the bar chatting to the waitresses as they came back and forth or whoever was seated at the bar. There were rarely any customers, other than perhaps the odd travelling salesman, but that suited me. Whilst I was totally isolated and overwhelmingly lonely, it was not a pain that could be shared with anyone else. I didn't want to talk about why I was in Florida – now that our hopes had been dashed – I didn't want to tell people my child had gone into foster care – I felt I would be judged even though I was innocent of any crime other than wanting to protect him. There were too many awkward questions should I hold a conversation, so I stayed in my bubble of pain, drifting through each day as best I could and spending most of my time searching for the best things to take M on our contacts.
I had come up with the idea of us both working on a scrapbook between our sessions. I would fill one for him and he for me and then we would share them at contact. It seemed to work well and helped us feel closer. I put photographs of myself, M and my mother that I had brought with me, in the one for M. I printed off what I could from my laptop of our holidays and other happy times and I found a wonderful Arts and Crafts shop called
Michaels
, which was packed with all kinds of stickers, painting materials, glitters and scrapbooking items. I spent a fortune on things to bring for a our scrapbooks, but it was worthwhile as M would wait excitedly to see what new decorative item I had found and we would sometimes work on these both when together and apart. They were much treasured by both of us.
M seemed to have got used to the family he was now with. I knew very little about them and was not at liberty to ask too many questions with our supervisors sitting behind the two-way mirror. I knew there were other children and that M was sharing a room with another boy. I also knew that there was an older girl and M liked her best. They played together on their
DS Lites
and swapped games. I was glad that he had someone to help him through this, but it angered me terribly that he was even in foster care. It was wickedly cruel and unnecessary. He needed to be with his mum.
M told me he was praying to his Nanny to help him get home to me. He had been very close to my mother and we had spent a lot of time with her even though she had lived across the water in the UK. We went to see her most school holidays and we went abroad with her at least once a year. We had some wonderful memories of times together. I so much wished I could talk to her. There is something special about a mother/daughter relationship that is not possible to substitute. The comfort provided by that, is irreplaceable and I still felt the loss very deeply.
I could not believe that the Courts had only allowed us two days to go to her memorial service in England and see family and friends, before ordering us back to the Island for forced contact with his father - a contact where M would shake, wet himself and sob for an hour. How could any father put his own flesh and blood through that? He appeared totally unaffected by it. Whilst I had empathised with M and longed to protect him from his pain, it was nothing to the pain we were enduring now. We had almost found our pot of gold – our Rainbow’s end, only to end up in the middle of a thunderous storm. Our tears were endless torrential rain, our wounds and scars deepening and engraved forever on our hearts.
They moved our contact slots to lunchtimes and asked me to bring food to share with M. I felt it was rather unfair to do this when it encroached on our precious time together and neither of us wanted to waste it eating. Also there was a limit to what we could eat – given that there were no cooking facilities. I felt, however, that there would be some kind of black mark placed on me if I did not do this, so I tried to come up with healthy tasty meals in
Tupperware
boxes once more - cold pasta dishes in Mayo, trays of Sushi, fruits of every kind and different kinds of salads. Sometimes we ate and sometimes neither of us could get past our pain enough to swallow it, but I came prepared each time nonetheless. I was under scrutiny for my every move, word and thought. They recorded everything I said and did and interpreted it in any way they saw fit. But when I saw the reports – which I did weekly – they were all positive.
I had passed the tests, week in and week out and they really couldn’t say anything bad about my relationship with my son or my care of him – a care I had to try and demonstrate in the two hours in this small room. I had to show them I was a good mother and that M should be with me. I did all I could to show them that, but it angered me that I had to. I knew I was a good mother and one had only to look at the testimonials of people who knew me and knew my parenting – to know that, but I had no idea what had been said to these people about who I was, but I was very soon to find out.
“Some papers arrived today from the Island. Maam." Dan informed me in his polite drawl. “I think you should read them and give me your comments. I am going to courier them up to you.” I was out with Miriam, the realtor, at the time having lunch as we did from time to time now. As I headed back to the house, I wondered what I was about to find and was unprepared for the shock that awaited me.
A large envelope was delivered later that afternoon. I signed for it and was almost too afraid to open it. Would it contain more reports filled with lies? Would it give me answers as to why this barbaric separation had occurred? I had no idea and to start with I just lay it on the side and decided not to look at it. I would leave it until after supper at least and then face whatever I needed to. As was now, an almost daily occurrence, I headed to the
Travel Lodge
for my evening bowl of French Onion Soup and glass of wine and then went back to face the bundle of papers I must unleash and face whatever horrors lay within.
For indeed there were monsters, demons from my past – ghosts of my teenage years when I had had a brief spell of depression when I was seventeen – nearly thirty years ago. The envelope was filled with my medical notes from this period – random pages from an archaic file that dealt with some of the more dysfunctional aspects of our family’s growing up. Private and confidential conversations held between me and the doctor who had treated me. It was a period that had held a lot of unhappiness, but I had long since buried it and moved on. After all, I had been a teenager and I was now in my mid-forties. How on earth could adolescent depression so long ago, matter now? But it seemed it did. My medical notes had been accessed by the social worker, against my human rights, against medical ethics and totally without my consent. Yet, it seemed that these notes had been presented to the American authorities as if they were evidence of current mental health problems when I had had no treatment for anything even remotely related to this ever since.
I was horrified and even more so when I read some of the drivel contained within. But in those days , prior to the Mental Health Act 2004, depression was treated very differently than it would be today. Drugs had been administered freely, often with terrible side effects and were highly addictive. In my case the prescription drugs I had been forced to take, had caused me far more problems than the depression and this had led to the vicious cycle of taking myself off them and then the withdrawal that follows – drugs that are not even legal now, were prescribed by doctors to children and teenagers, throughout the late seventies and early eighties. This period had hurt and angered me as I felt it had damaged my chances of a normal adolescence and I resented the sledgehammer treatment and blamed my parents for allowing it. However, they at the time had merely followed the current advice and way of thinking. But to use it against me thirty years later as a reason to take my son away, was ludicrous and yet it seemed that that was exactly what Social Services had used to persuade the CAS to take M – suggesting I was some kind of dangerous psychotic - a threat to my child. It was outrageous. I was angry and in despair all at once. If a Judge read these notes and believed this to be my current state of mind, I was doomed.
I rang Miriam, telling her what had happened. She told me I shouldn't worry that if they were going to such ridiculous lengths to try to justify their actions, that any Judge would see it as desperation and highly vindictive. She said it would work against the Authorities rather than for them and that they would look aggressive and completely unreasonable. She tried to reassure me – but given how this case had gone all along – I was unconvinced. Panic filled my heart, would I ever get M back? I knew I had to stay positive. I tried to push my feelings of anger and emotion to the side, as I carefully went through the notes – trying to be objective – highlighting salient points and explaining things where necessary. I was forced to examine and revisit the ghosts of an unhappy adolescence and the pain that had been my parents marital problems at the time and to justify why I had felt so sad about this. It was cruel and affected me deeply to re-open such an old wound, but I knew it was important to tell my side of this story too and I did so, working through the night for Dan, annotating, correcting, explaining away my teenage depression.
I spent a fitful night reliving the unhappy memories of those teenage years which had been brought to the fore by this most recent onslaught by the Department. I could not believe the lengths to which they would stoop to justify their actions in taking my child from his loving, nurturing home and sending him to strangers in a foreign land. Would either of us ever get over this experience? I somehow doubted it. My fear for the damage they had done to my little boy was immense and yet there was worse yet to come.
Dan was concerned about the contents of what they had been sent. I went to see him the following day. Whilst he agreed that something in the distant past should not be a factor in any of this, he knew the Courts well enough to know that they can hone in on any piece of evidence and that the CAS would do all in their power to make it seem relevant by suggesting whatever problems I had had thirty years ago, remained to this day. I was apparently now being described to the CAS by the Department as “a danger to my son.” This was particularly horrifying and upsetting as I had never harmed a hair on his head and never would. But it suited them well to cover the abuse for if they demonstrated that I was mentally ill, they could then say I had imagined the abuse. Dan obviously agreed that this was outrageous and advised that we get a current psychological or psychiatric assessment done for me and for M too if possible. This was going to prove harder to achieve than we imagined.
I did as asked and went through the phone book ringing psychiatrists and psychologists to no avail. Most didn’t have slots for months, even privately and those that did had the wrong qualifications or speciality. It was hopeless with only three weeks to go before the Show Cause Hearing. There just wasn’t sufficient time and there was the added difficulty of trying to get papers out to Florida in time. It seemed everything was against us and meanwhile twice a week, I saw M and tried to reassure him that I was doing all I could and would soon have him back with me.
Dan assured me that no Judge was going to see M’s evidence and take the risk of sending him back to the Island and his father. However, we only had a small part of the transcript with us. We didn’t have the recording of the ABE interview that M had given to the police and what was more the transcript that had been prepared by the Court transcription service was not accurate. It contained a fatal error which we did not notice at the time, but was picked up by counsel later on when comparing it to the original police transcript. M had told the police “I always tell the truth.” The Court transcriber had changed this to “I don’t always tell the truth.” One word changed the meaning altogether and it was contained in the copy we had. Whether it made a huge difference, we will never know - nor will we ever know if this was an accidental or deliberate error but it was very worrying nonetheless.
Inn cases such as this, where hearsay evidence is allowed, and things are interpreted to
fit
a particular picture they are trying to create – chance comments, remarks made years ago can all be used against you. This was the case with my archaic notes. I had told a psychiatrist many years earlier, of a time when I was about fifteen that I had babysat for my niece who was then a few months old. My sister lived in a house with thick pile carpets – the shaggy variety that were in fashion at the time – my niece had rolled off her changing mat onto the floor when I reached for the talc. She had been fine, had not hurt herself at all, but as a conscientious fifteen year old, I duly told my sister who laughed and said “the nannies tell me she is always doing that. Don’t worry, she's fine.” With the anxiety of a teenager, I had told the doctor who was counselling me about my parent’s marital problems, that this had happened and had caused me worry. I said “I was afraid my niece might have hurt herself.” In shock horror I noticed in my psychiatric notes of thirty years earlier, this had been changed to “she was worried she would hurt her niece.” Innocuous if put into context, but highly dangerous semantics when taken in isolation. It was that one sentence that had been lifted by the Social Worker, taken out of context and used to say I was a danger to my son – even though I was now forty-six years old and this had happened decades ago and despite it being nothing more than an anxious teenager seeking reassurance.