I have steered clear from posting here for the post four months for a variety of reasons. With the year almost at a close I will be posting one more time tomoorow with a summary of the past few months. I am feeling positive for the new year despite the sadness of the past year. It’s time for me to move on with a clean break from the past.
One thing I am determined to do this coming year is to eat healthier not just to lose weight. After having a health scare this year I want to do something about that as I don’t like taking tablets. At times I feel like if some one shakes I will rattle.
‘Secret agenda to score adoptions’
A judge has condemned the “disgraceful” conduct of social workers over an adoption case, says Christopher Booker.
Published: 7:01PM BST 22 Aug 2009
The chief reason offered by the social workers for abducting the girl two years ago was that her home had been left in an appalling mess after a raid by RSPCA officials and 18 policemen. They ransacked the premises looking for non-existent guns, and released into the house a pack of dogs kept in kennels outside by her father, a professional dog-breeder. The parents were arrested for protesting at what was happening (the mother suffering a miscarriage while in police custody) and the social workers were summoned to remove their daughter.
Everything about this case is bizarre, not least the apparent complicity of social workers, lawyers and the courts in determining that the child should not be returned to her parents, as she wishes, but rather, after two years in foster care, sent for adoption.
I have now been able to read through many papers relating to the case, including the judgments resulting from the 74 hearings in which the parents attempted to get their daughter back. What stands out is the startling contrast between the two totally different versions of the case given by the social workers and the courts on one hand and, on the other, that presented by the parents themselves and by many who knew them. The latter include their GP, who recently wrote that he had never “encountered such a case of appalling injustice”.
The most impressive document was a report by an independent social worker, based on many interviews with those involved, including the child herself and the chief social worker in charge of her. In measured terms, this made mincemeat of the council’s case. Nothing about it is more suspicious than the contrast between descriptions of the “clean and tidy” home reported by those who knew the family well and the mess allegedly found by the policemen who burst into it mob-handed on the day in question.
The report found an equally glaring contrast between the social workers’ insistence that the child was quite happy to have been removed from her parents, and the abundant evidence, observed at first-hand, that the little girl had an extremely good relationship with her parents and wants nothing more than to be reunited with them. The courts seem to have totally ignored this report, whose author last month expressed astonishment that the child had not been returned home.
What has also come to light is a remarkable judgment by Lord Justice Thorpe and Lord Justice Wall in the Appeal Court last year, in another case which also involved the apparently ruthless determination of East Sussex social workers to send a child for adoption. The judges were fiercely critical. The social workers’ conduct, said Lord Justice Thorpe, could only reinforce the suspicions of those who believe “councils have a secret agenda to establish a high score of children they have placed for adoption”.
Lord Justice Wall described East Sussex’s conduct as “disgraceful – not a word I use lightly” and also as “about the worst I have ever encountered in a career now spanning nearly 40 years”. “The social workers in question,” he said, appeared “not only to have been inadequately managed, they do not appear to have been properly trained”. As for the barrister who represented East Sussex (and who also appeared in most of the hearings in the “dog-breeder” case), Lord Justice Wall said “her attitude came across, to me at least, as – in effect – so what?” She had demonstrated, he said, “profound misunderstanding” of the council’s legal position vis à vis adoption. He ordered his comments to be circulated to family courts and adoption agencies across the land.
Though the circumstances are different, anyone reading the documents could not fail to be struck by how many of the judges’ comments are relevant to the case I reported. The same council’s social workers have again pushed for a child to be adopted in a way which prompts the family’s GP to say “the destruction of this once happy family is, in my opinion, evil”. And that barrister who was involved in both cases is now – a family court judge.
Fraudsters pull off £38m heist from taxpayer’s pocket
There has been great excitement over the theft of £40 million-worth of jewellery from a Mayfair shop – and rather less at the arrest of seven people for an alleged fraud involving false VAT claims of £38 million on buying and selling carbon credits. This racket, whereby people buy carbon credits from abroad, free of VAT, then claim the VAT they haven’t paid from the Treasury, is now said to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds a year.
Until recently this type of “carousel fraud” was centred on electronic equipment, such as mobile phones, and EU-wide was estimated to have netted some £10 billion. The European Commission said it was powerless to act, but since various national authorities found ways to clamp down on that scam, the crooks have learned to work the same racket on the fast-burgeoning worldwide market in buying and selling the right to emit CO2.
What is not generally appreciated about these VAT frauds is that they involve real money, handed over to the crooks by the tax authorities. At least with a theft of gems, the only losers are the policy holders of an insurance company. On VAT, however, we all pay.
It seems wondrously apt that two absurd systems cooked up by the EU – one being VAT, the other an “emissions trading system” designed to save the planet from non-existent global warming – are being exploited together, to rob us all of hundreds of millions of pounds a year.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1094490/Social-Services-chiefs-husband-drug-addicted-violent-terrorist.html
Social Services chief’s husband was drug-addicted violent terrorist
By Martin Delgado and Andrew Young
Last updated at 2:58 AM on 14th December 2008
Boss: Lisa Christensen, head of Norfolk children’s services
A Social Services chief who played a key role in the forcible adoption of three children is married to a convicted terrorist with a history of drink and drug abuse.
Lisa Christensen, director of children’s services in Norfolk, is the wife of Jack Prescott, who was given a 15-year prison sentence for involvement in a bomb attack on the home of a Tory Cabinet Minister.
Prescott, 64 – a self-confessed former heroin addict and thief – was a founder member of the Angry Brigade, Britain’s only home-grown urban terrorist group, which carried out 25 attacks on Government buildings, embassies and corporations.
His past has come to light because he was recently convicted of assaulting Ms Christensen.
She failed to tell Norfolk County Council about her husband’s violent past when she was appointed head of Social Services in 2002.
Two years later, she became the authority’s £120,000-a-year director of children’s services with responsibility for schools, child protection and young people in care.
In that role, she approved the forced removal of Mark and Nicky Webster’s three children, all then under five – a decision condemned by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb as ‘an appalling miscarriage of justice’ and which has been highlighted by The Mail on Sunday.
The Websters fought a long battle to prove they had not harmed their children. Last year, experts agreed that leg injuries suffered by one youngster were due not to physical abuse but to a disorder that stopped him eating anything other than soya milk.
Husband: Jack Prescott under arrest in 1971.
The couple, who have since had another child, are now making legal history by trying to reverse the adoption of their three older children.
Mr Prescott’s past was revealed last week when he made a series of drunken phone calls to his wife’s office, following a court case in which he admitted assaulting her during a row at the family home.
In one call, he told Ms Christensen’s secretary that he had computer memory sticks and confidential files relating to scandals about children in care in the county.
Although a police investigation concluded that he held no such information, Ms Christensen, 52, was embarrassed and upset by the calls. She is understood to have felt obliged at this point to tell town hall chiefs about her husband’s criminal record.
The couple, who married in 1992, are now separated, although they are still listed at the same address on the electoral roll. Neighbours in the Norfolk village of Mattishall, where the couple have a £350,000 detached Victorian cottage, said they were living together until just a few weeks ago.
Angry Brigade attack on the Minister’s house
One woman, who declined to be named, said: ‘Those of us who knew him fairly well were aware he has a problem with alcohol. It was something he’s quite open about. But it’s a real shock to hear he’s been violent as well.’
Another friend said: ‘He was certainly living with Lisa until the incident when the police were called. I think she threw him out after that, but whether permanently or not
I don’t know.’
Prescott was considered highly dangerous as a result of his terrorist exploits and when he was sentenced at the Old Bailey in 1971 the judge, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, told the painter and decorator he had been convicted of complicity ‘in the most evil conspiracy I have ever had to deal with’.
When he was arrested over the bomb plot, Prescott was on parole from prison, where he had been serving five years for firearms offences.
Then 27, he already had convictions for theft, housebreaking and assault but his sentence on the terrorism charges was later cut from 15 years to ten by the Court of Appeal.
Unlike other members of the Angry Brigade, most of whom were middle-class and university-educated, Prescott came from a staunchly working-class Scottish background.
Born in Dunfermline, he was brought up in an orphanage after the death of
his mother. He committed his first offence, the theft of a bicycle, at 14 and became a heroin addict.
He told the jury at his terrorism trial: ‘I was taking eight grains of heroin and other drugs every day and I sold all my personal possessions to buy drugs.’
In November 1970, the Angry Brigade, which embraced an anarchistic, anti-capitalist ideology, exploded a device under a BBC van at the Miss World contest. Shortly afterwards, a document was delivered to a London newspaper. Headed ‘Communique No1’, it claimed responsibility for the outrage.
Two more bombs were detonated outside the North London home of Employment Secretary Robert Carr and this was followed by further attacks on political targets. No one was killed in the campaign but one person was injured.
The cell was broken up when detectives raided a rented flat in Stoke Newington, North London.
Five of the group were convicted of conspiracy but no one was ever found guilty of planting the bombs.
After serving his sentence, however, Prescott wrote to Carr and his family to apologise for his role in leaving the bombs at his home.
Mr Prescott is now in custody after Thetford magistrates heard he slapped his wife several times on the nose and cheeks, leaving her uninjured but with a tingling feeling in her face. The court was told he had alcohol and mental health problems and should be given credit for pleading guilty. He will be sentenced on December 22.
Last night, Norfolk County Council chief executive David White said: ‘Lisa Christensen was still a schoolgirl when the man who later became her husband was arrested in 1971 and the couple didn’t meet until long after he had served his sentence.
‘We rightly require job candidates to supply information about any criminal convictions they may hold but that does not apply to their partners and Lisa did not share that information with us when she was appointed, probably because it is something that happened more than 35 years ago.
‘I am sad for her and her family that Jack’s personal demons should now be a source of such trauma.’
A council spokesman added: ‘We only became aware of Jack Prescott’s past last week following the domestic assault which led to him being arrested and appearing in court.’
Ms Christensen said: ‘This is a very sad matter for me and my family and we sincerely hope that expert treatment will be offered to Jack and taken up by him.’
Other members of the Angry Brigade have disappeared from view over the years.
But Angela Mason, who was tried and acquitted of planting bombs, is a former leader of gay rights group Stonewall and now works for the Government as national adviser at the Improvement and Development Agency for local government.
Chris Bott, who was also acquitted, was marketing manager of the ill-fated Left-wing newspaper News on Sunday, which closed after a few months in 1987. He lives in France.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1085555/Why-waiting-years-baby-I-gave-adopted-son-back.html
Why after waiting years for a baby, I gave my adopted son back
She had years of fertility treatment. When that failed she went through endless vetting for adoption. Finally, Yvette and her husband were given the baby of their
dreams. So why, after just two weeks, did it go so wrong?
Last updated at 8:58 AM on 14th November 2008
Grief: Yvette Maguire gave up her adopted son, for fear she couldn’t love him properly
The beautifully decorated nursery has long since been wallpapered over and turned back into an office.
The baby clothes and toys have been given away, and the cheerful family photographs which dotted the room have been placed at the bottom of a drawer.
There is nothing at all to suggest this was once a child’s bedroom. But a little boy did, for a time, sleep in this room.
He was a cheeky two-year- old called Ben, and his arrival two years ago into the life of Yvette Maguire and her husband Mark had initially been joyful, marking an end to years of infertility.
The couple had endured nearly two years of a protracted adoption process to find him and had believed fervently that he was the son they had always dreamed of.
But just two weeks after his arrival, 39-year-old Yvette made the astonishing decision to return him to foster care. Instead of fulfilling her maternal instincts, Yvette found herself facing a terrible conflict: her smiling new arrival reminded her only of her own biological failings.
She realised she would never be able to love Ben properly, and made the devastating choice to give him back. It was a decision she acknowledges that some people will never understand or approve of.
Even some of her own friends do not feel she gave herself a chance to bond with her adoptive son.
But Yvette stands by her decision, insisting that, far from being selfish, she was simply doing the best thing by her little boy. ‘I’m not an ogre. I know some people will think I should have given it longer, that I was selfish and that I couldn’t cope so I did the easiest thing. But it wasn’t like that,’ she says.
‘Not a day goes by when I don’t think about him and I still feel empty inside. Every day I torture myself over whether I let him down. But deep down I know I did the right thing.
‘Ben did absolutely nothing wrong. It wasn’t about him, it was about me. You hear so many different stories about adoption being difficult, but they are always centred on the children.
‘No one looks at it from the point of view of a woman who has not been able to have a child of her own and the effect that can have. I simply wasn’t prepared for it emotionally.’
Her story is certainly an antidote to the usual happy-ever-after tales of adoption. And Yvette admits that it never occurred to her that she might reject her son.
But then she had always assumed she would be able to have children. The youngest of three sisters from a loving family, Yvette, a fine art student, had spent most of her early years dreaming of the time she would become a mother.
‘I wanted the fairytale - the husband, the lovely home, and the babies.’
IVF proved fruitless
After meeting her future husband Mark, now 37, at the age of 23, she seemed set to achieve her dream. Fixed up on a blind date by her sister, the couple hit it off immediately, eventually settling into a comfortable family home in Horley, Surrey.
Mark worked as a project manager in the City, while Yvette was a florist. They spent their 20s in a whirl of foreign holidays and spirited nights out. Having married in 2001, they started trying for children but were not unduly concerned when it did not happen immediately.
Subsequent tests, however, revealed that Yvette carried a high level of the hormone FSH, which can impede conception, as well as suffering mild endometriosis, which required surgery.
‘I was very stressed,’ says Yvette, ‘I felt the pressure acutely. Everyone around me was having children.’
After 18 months, Yvette was referred to a specialist, who suggested the couple try IUI, a less invasive form of infertility treatment in which the ovaries are stimulated but the eggs are not harvested.
No bond: Yvette couldn’t connect with her adoptive son because he wasn’t her own (pictured posed by model)
But after three unsuccessful attempts, the couple decided to embark on IVF. The couple told themselves they would only undergo one round, but ended up paying for three cycles, all of which proved fruitless.
‘I didn’t ever fall pregnant and after the third attempt the doctor as good as told me, very politely, that I shouldn’t waste my money any more,’ Yvette says. ‘It was a hugely emotional time.’
There were, of course, still options, but one of them at least neither Yvette nor Mark would countenance.
‘Some friends suggested we consider surrogacy, but we knew it wasn’t right for us. We’d always had this thing that it was either both of us or none of us.’
So did warning bells not ring when they decided to embark on the adoption process?
‘If I put my hand on my heart, I think I pushed my husband into adoption,’ Yvette confesses. ‘We had talked about it in the past and he had said he didn’t feel he wanted to go down that road.
‘I think he had reconciled himself to a life without children. But he knew how desperate I was and agreed to come with me to a meeting.’
And so, three years ago, Yvette and Mark embarked on another emotionally exhausting journey, that of the adoption process with its meetings and assessments and form-filling and classes.
‘The entire process is designed to put you off, to frighten you to see if you’re 100 per cent committed,’ Yvette says.
‘But it didn’t deter either of us. I was so blinkered that all I could think was: “I want a baby, I want a baby.”
‘Mark had decided he was doing it for me and that was enough for him. And while you hear lots of horror stories of difficult children taking months and months to settle, you never hear about a total breakdown where it doesn’t work at all. Whatever we were prepared for, it wasn’t that.
‘Our families wanted a happy ending. too. It had been tough for them, particularly for Mark’s parents as he was an only child and they were desperate for a grandchild.’
Finally, 18 months later, in early 2006, the couple were formally approved for adoption.
‘It was a wonderful moment, the moment you believe you are finally going to be a family,’
Yvette recalls . ‘But it’s also frustrating as you are literally waiting for the phone to ring to tell you there has been a match.’
He was a lovely little boy
Six months later that call came, giving the couple the news they had longed for: they had been matched with a two-year-old boy called Ben.
‘I was overwhelmed and so was Mark,’ says Yvette. ‘I was thrilled to get a boy. I had this picture in my mind of my husband and son together tinkering with the cars in the garage. Mark was thrilled, too.’
The couple were not initially aware of Ben’s background, informed only that he came from a troubled family. Only after giving their full agreement to the adoption process were they allowed to see the full paperwork. It made for upsetting reading.
One of eight brothers and sisters who were all in care, Ben had been terribly neglected as a baby, and taken into foster care at just a few months old.
He was fostered alongside two older siblings. ‘It did scare us a little,’ Yvette admits. ‘When you see this immense family backdrop you start to think about who you are inviting into your life.
‘We already had our own family, but by taking Ben in we were also opening ourselves up to his family too. But we knew we could give this little boy a wonderful life and that overruled any fears we might have had.’
Within a week, Yvette and Mark set eyes on their son in the flesh for the first time, watching from a distance as he played in a local park.
‘It was wonderful, but very emotional. I just wanted to give him a hug, but we had to stay away.’
A few days later they were shown a video of Ben at play with his elder siblings, aged four and eight, at his foster home. ‘It showed that he was a little bit bullied by them and I found that very difficult to watch,’ she says. ‘By then I really felt he was my baby - so I felt very protective.’
After final approval from the county adoption panel, Yvette and Mark embarked on a two-week ‘handover’ period before being allowed to take Ben home.
‘We met Ben every day for two weeks, initially at his foster carer’s home. Later we were allowed to take him out on our own. It’s not easy at first because you are having to get to know someone in a slightly artificial environment, but as the days went on and we got to spend longer and longer with him, it got easier.
‘He was a lovely little boy, very happy-go-lucky and cheeky. We took him to the park, played games and started to bond. I felt very happy and optimistic.’
Handover day, however, was not quite so simple. ‘Mark and I had been given the impression that Ben would have said his goodbyes to his siblings before we picked him up, but they were there. They were both distraught, sobbing their heart out, which meant Ben was sobbing too.
‘It was terrible, and I felt I was wrenching him away from his family.’
I felt no bond with him
But, once at their home, Ben seemed to settle in quickly, delighted by his cheerfully-decorated nursery crammed with toys and clothes. But within hours of welcoming their son into his new home, Yvette admits she was overcome with waves of anxiety about what she had done.
‘I was completely overwhelmed,’ she admits. ‘On the outside I was doing all the right things - looking after him, playing with him, hugging him - but inside I felt only turmoil.
‘I have a very strong memory of looking at him in the first couple of days that he was with us, and thinking: “He didn’t come from me.” I felt no bond with him whatsoever.
‘I loved him in the abstract, but not inside. Clearly I hadn’t expected this to happen, or I wouldn’t have spent two years struggling to reach that point. But whenever I looked at him I was reminded only of my own failure to be a biological mother.
‘I don’t think I had grieved properly for the fact that I would never have my own children, and now it was coming back to haunt me. But at the same time it was the most horrible feeling - how could I not love this adorable boy I had waited for for so long?’
Ironically her husband, who had been so wary about adoption in the beginning, had no such qualms, immediately bonding with the toddler.
‘Mark loved him to bits. Luckily I was able to confide in him about how I was feeling. He was worried, but I think he thought it would settle down.’ It didn’t.
With each passing day, Yvette says, she felt increasingly alienated. ‘I wasn’t sleeping, I had lost weight and I was as white as a sheet,’ she says.
‘As the days went by, I did everything I could to bond with Ben. At night I would kiss his forehead and read him a bedtime story before tucking him in. We’d go to the park and play with his toys - he loved trains and trucks, like any little boy - but try as I might, I couldn’t connect with him.
‘I would look at him drinking or eating and be painfully aware that I hadn’t been able to nurture him from my own breast, or feel the kick of his foot inside my tummy.
‘One evening, I sat down to complete some adoption paperwork and had to write his surname as our own. Seeing it on the page just didn’t feel right.
I couldn’t love him the way he deserved
‘I looked after him perfectly well, but I was just going through the motions. At night I would tuck him up in his Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas, saying to myself: “I am going to love you, I am going to love you.”‘
Matters came to a head just two weeks after Ben arrived, when a health visitor arrived for a routine check.
‘She instantly knew something was wrong,’ Yvette says. ‘We started talking and I burst into floods of tears. It all came flooding out.’
Events moved rapidly: Yvette was referred the same day to a doctor, then a social worker, who said she should not be left alone with Ben.
‘That was very difficult to hear,’ she says. ‘I knew they were only protecting the child, but I would never ever have hurt him.’ Yvette was referred to The Priory, where a psychiatrist suggested that her inability to grieve over her infertility lay at the root of her feelings.
Both felt that keeping Ben was not to be recommended, and Yvette’s social worker even said that she believed Yvette had post-natal depression, which, extraordinarily, can be diagnosed after adoption as well as natural childbirth.
‘That made me want to scream,’ she says. ‘I knew what the problem was - while I loved Ben, I couldn’t really love him in the way he deserved or needed from a mother.’
So, after a number of emotional discussions between husband, wife and social worker, the decision was made to return Ben to foster care. He had been with them for just two weeks.
‘Mark had wanted to give things more time and I thought to myself: “I could lose my husband over this, I could lose my family.” All of them felt that in time I would change, but I had to trust my instincts.
‘In the end, Mark said he had married me for me, not for a child, and he would stand by me whatever I decided.’
Yvette adds: ‘I know people will struggle to understand why I reacted so strongly to having Ben in the house, but I knew it wasn’t just a case of him settling in.
‘I knew that it just wouldn’t work out with him. I felt he deserved to be with someone who could truly love him, and that I couldn’t give him that.
‘I have written him a long letter to be put in his file explaining everything that happened and how I felt.’
It was never going to work
One can only imagine, however, the bewilderment felt by the little boy as he was taken to his fourth home in two years, to a new set of foster carers.
Mark and Yvette accompanied him on the journey, taking with them the clothes and toys they had bought for him. ‘We didn’t explain what was happening to Ben as the social workers had told us not to, so on the day all we could do was take him to his new family.
‘It was left to them to explain the situation, although at the time he would have been too young to understand. We stayed for three hours to make sure he was settled and then all we could do was leave,’ say Yvette.
‘Watching him in his new home was incredibly emotional. I consoled myself with the fact that I knew he would be loved. But when we went back to his nursery we both broke down. We were grieving for him, but also for the end of our dreams of having a baby.
‘We both knew that if it wasn’t going to work with Ben it was never going to work.’
Today, Yvette has, to a degree, reconciled herself with remaining childless. ‘Sometimes I feel vulnerable because I look at Mark and think he could find someone who would provide him with children. But he has been a rock and our relationship is stronger than ever,’ she says.
Some consolation has come, too, with the knowledge that Ben is flourishing, having been adopted by his new foster family.
‘They have a little girl who he loves and they are devoted to him, so that has made it all worthwhile,’ says Yvette.
It is a happy ending of sorts, but it’s hard not to think that Yvette’s struggle for motherhood came at a high price, not only for her, but the little boy she so longed to love.
- Ben’s name has been changed
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1082379/You-son–organs–social-workers-left-man-terrible-moral-dilemma.html
‘You can’t see your son - but can he have one of your organs?’: how social workers left one man with a terrible moral dilemma
By Alison Smith Squire
Last updated at 9:40 AM on 02nd November 2008
The letter from Hampshire Social Services was as brief as it was bewildering. ‘Please ring me on the above number,’ it said. ‘I have some information that might be of interest to you.’ This was quite an understatement, as Michael Shergold soon found.
A quietly spoken father of three, he finds that his life rarely gets more exciting than his weekly game of golf. But when he called the social workers as requested, he was confronted with a series of astonishing facts.
They said he was the father of another child - a five-year-old son from a previous, short-lived relationship. A former girlfriend, unable to cope with the demands of motherhood, had handed the boy over to foster parents.
Bewildered: Michael and Alex Shergold with his sons Peter and David last week. ‘Our family seems incomplete’, says Michael
A meeting with this new-found son was out of the question, he was told, let alone any sort of relationship. He was also informed that the boy was to be formally adopted and that the council was ringing merely to let him know.
His shock slowly turned to anger and then determination. Hurt to have been kept in the dark for so many years, Michael still believed he was responsible for the child - whom we shall call Andrew - and launched a legal fight to secure custody.
But there were extraordinary surprises in store for Michael and his wife, Alex. Hampshire Social Services wanted more than just his acquiescence.
Andrew, it emerged, had been diagnosed with a severe problem in one of his organs. For legal reasons, it is not possible to be more specific.
But the boy stands little chance of living beyond his teenage years without a transplant - from a blood relative if at all possible. The most suitable blood relative, it was explained by social workers, was Michael himself.
Illness: Michael Shergold’s son, whose identity we have concealed
In a disturbing saga, this was perhaps the most unpleasant twist of all. It brought him to a damning conclusion - that Hampshire Social Services had made him aware of Andrew’s existence only to provide the child with a body part.
Michael tried to adopt his son but last year he lost the battle and was refused even occasional visiting rights, which were deemed too upsetting for the boy.
Like almost all cases that go through the family court system, the details were not made public.
Michael now has to decide whether to risk his own life with a dangerous operation for a son who, as things stand, he will never see.
‘Words cannot express the anger and bewilderment I feel,’ says Michael. ‘I simply cannot believe how Social Services can be so cruel.
To track me down, tell me I have a son I knew nothing about, throw my life into chaos and then tell me I will never be able to see him is nothing short of disgraceful.’
The Mail on Sunday asked Hampshire County Council two months ago about its handling of the case.
It responded by obtaining a legal injunction to prevent us printing Michael’s story, claiming that to do so might damage his son’s chances of settling down.
Determined that Michael should get the chance to speak, The Mail on Sunday has pursued a lengthy legal fight to lift the injunction, and last week we succeeded. Today, in this exclusive interview, Michael is able to talk about his ordeal for the first time.
‘To know my son has been adopted against my consent by strangers rather than his blood family, where he would have had a loving home, has been bad enough,’ he says.
‘But to know that, if I don’t donate an organ, my son might not live long enough to know me has put me in the worst situation of all. I’m in a dilemma about what to do. I feel I am being asked to make a decision in a vacuum. If I could just see my son and maintain some sort of contact, I would have absolutely no hesitation about doing it.’
Michael, 55, was speaking at his spacious three-bedroom house in Southampton, the city where he was born and where he has spent his whole life. Sitting by his side is Alex. Originally from Los Angeles, she moved to Britain in 2002, the same year the couple married, and she became a pastor with a Pentecostal church in Portsmouth.
This is not the first time that Michael, who works as a school caretaker, has suffered domestic drama. His 16-year marriage ended in 1996 when he discovered that his first wife had been unfaithful. He was given custody of the children - Peter, now 17, David, 20, and Susanna, 30 - and brought them up single-handedly.
As Alex serves home-made carrot cake and their cuckoo clock announces the time, the Shergolds seem every inch a loving family. Their attitude to their predicament is one of quiet anger and grief rather than unfettered fury.
‘We have a wonderful, close-knit family,’ says Michael. Peter and David, who still live at home, flit in and out as the couple talk. Susanna lives close by.
It is a particular irony that Michael has been employed by Hampshire County Council for the past 35 years, overseeing the repairs, cleaning and maintenance of a local primary school. As it happens, the job requires him to undergo criminal record checks every year and neither he nor Alex, who was also checked, has any convictions.
The letter that shattered Michael’s life came in January 2007, but the origins of the trauma lay five years earlier, when he had embarked on a difficult relationship with a much younger woman.
Despite their age difference, things went well at first after they were introduced through friends. ‘She was the first woman I’d dated since splitting up with my wife,’ he recalls.
‘At first I didn’t think of having a relationship with her because, at 29, she was much younger than me. But she was bubbly and got on well with the boys. It was only after a few months that I realised she was unstable and had a drink problem. She would swear in front of the boys and I ended the relationship.’
He had no inkling that she might be pregnant and that, he thought, was the end of the matter. Indeed, it was not long before he met Alex through a friendship website.
Like Michael, she has three grown-up children and, again like Michael, she had spent years bringing them up single-handedly. She worked for US military intelligence, where she studied for degrees in psychology and theology.
Michael and Alex married a few months after meeting and settled down to a domestic routine, enjoying rounds of golf, games of bowls, trips to the cinema and regular visits to church.
That all changed with Hampshire County Council’s bombshell. ‘It was a terrible shock,’ recalls Alex. ‘Michael was told by a social worker that his child had been put into foster care.’
At 53, Alex thought she had said goodbye to bringing up a child, but she was as determined as her husband to welcome Andrew into the family. ‘That was where he belonged,’ she says. ‘Not with strangers to whom he is not related.’
The couple, whose children had also come round to the idea of embracing a new sibling into their lives, visited Hampshire Social Services’ headquarters in Winchester, where they were shown Andrew’s picture.
With hindsight, they were naively optimistic. Immediately infatuated, they dug out Scalextric and Lego sets, embarked on plans to turn their loft into a fourth bedroom and even researched school places.
‘He looked just like his daddy,’ says Alex. ‘We were determined that although he’d had such a dreadful start in life, we’d soon make it all up to him.’
When, two weeks later, DNA tests confirmed that Michael was the father, the couple instructed a solicitor to stop the adoption order and begin their own custody proceedings. ‘I thought that once Social Services saw our happy family home and how much we wanted Andrew to be a part of it, it would only be a matter of weeks before he would come to live with us,’ says Michael.
But then came the breathtaking twist. ‘At our second meeting with Social Services a social worker told us, “Andrew needs an organ transplant and, as you know, an organ is best donated from a blood relative.” ’
The couple were left in no doubt that Michael’s co-operation was essential if his son was to stand a good chance of surviving. His mother, they learned, had initially agreed to be the donor but changed her mind on the grounds that it would hinder her chances of having another child.
Social workers told Michael that he, and his children, were the ‘next choice’. He admits: ‘I was taken aback but, of course, desperately worried and keen to help my son.’
Meanwhile, two independent social workers were assigned to assess Michael and Alex as potential parents for Andrew. It was, by all accounts, a rigorous process. ‘I was surprised to be interrogated by a total stranger,’ he says, ‘but I hid nothing.’ Yet, over a dozen visits, the questions became increasingly invasive.
‘The worst questions were about our sex life,’ he says. ‘They kept asking how “healthy” it was - we took it to mean how many times a week we made love - and if we indulged in ‘normal’ sex.’
Alex, who admits she didn’t take kindly to the intrusion, adds: ‘I felt that side of our marriage was private and we didn’t see how it could be relevant. In the end I replied, “None of your business and I am not happy to elaborate further.” Perhaps it is because I’m an American and a Christian, but I found the Social Services’ attitude difficult to understand.’
Meanwhile, the truth about Andrew’s situation gradually emerged. Finding a permanent home was not easy, however. The boy’s illness demanded a special diet and regular hospital visits.
After his rejection by one set of foster parents, his photograph had to be posted on an adoption website before finally, in 2006, the couple who were eventually to adopt him came forward. ‘I couldn’t believe this could have happened to my son,’ says Michael. ‘I found it incredible.
‘Social Services told me in our first phone conversation that Andrew’s mother had named me as the father. Yet, as far as I can see, they made no effort to find me. I have lived in the same house for 11 years. I am on the electoral roll and in the phone book.’
Hampshire County Council says it did its best to locate Michael. ‘A care order would not have been made had the court not been satisfied that every effort had been made to locate Mr Shergold,’ says council leader Ken Thornber. ‘We have apologised to Mr Shergold for our failure to find him during care proceedings.
‘All circumstances leading to a child coming into care involve a degree of human tragedy and require very finely balanced judgments to be made. The needs of the child must always be the paramount concern and the judge did conclude that the local authority did its best, when it discovered the difficult situation that had arisen, to communicate with Mr Shergold and establish what contribution he could make to his son’s life.’
Michael believes he was eventually traced only because doctors said Andrew would need a transplant. Indeed, he now believes that even his attempt to adopt Andrew was something of a charade. ‘We began to feel that Social Services had let us go through the custody proceedings for nothing - that the adoption was arranged and they had no intention of placing Andrew with us,’ he says.
The Shergolds were refused custody at Portsmouth County Court last November. The judge admitted the background had been ‘difficult and somewhat unsatisfactory’ but ruled that moving Andrew in with the Shergolds would cause him unnecessary ‘difficulty and disruption’.
Just two days later - suspiciously quickly in the view of the Shergolds - he had been formally adopted, leaving the Shergolds in the cold.
Even their request that Michael should be able to see him for visits was turned down on the grounds that it would be ‘unsettling for Andrew’, who was ‘bonding’ with his new family. Yet Andrew’s mother, who was judged unfit, is still allowed to visit Andrew twice a year.
Meanwhile, Hampshire Social Services are still pressing Michael to donate an organ. Even if Michael decides to do so, it will make no difference. ‘I was stunned,’ he says. ‘I asked them what would happen if I gave him a part of my body. They said that even then, I wouldn’t be allowed contact. Andrew would not even be told who donated the organ as this would be ‘too unsettling’.’
The dilemma has had damaging repercussions for the Shergold family. Michael says his children are wounded and that even his marriage has suffered.
The criticism they endured during the adoption process hardly helped. ‘Social Services accused me of being unco-operative,’ explains Alex. ‘They made it plain they didn’t like me. It seems being American was a problem and so too, I think, was the colour of my skin.’ Alex is mixed-race.
One official report on the couple expressed concern that Andrew would be brought up in a dual-ethnicity family. ‘They made out I was a foreigner who had no idea how to look after a child,’ she says. ‘I’ve raised three children. Despite the fact that they live in the States, we are incredibly close. I also think of Michael’s sons as my own.
‘I began to think that if I wasn’t around, Michael would have got custody. One night I suggested to Michael and his sons that I leave. Thankfully, they wouldn’t hear of it. But the stress has been unbearable. Undoubtedly, Michael and I would have split up if our relationship wasn’t so strong.’
And Michael adds: ‘Social Services have never given me a concrete reason why my wife and I are not suitable. That is because there is no reason.’
The couple did not qualify for legal aid and have spent £4,000 on solicitors. Now they have been told there is no further action they can take.
Overshadowing everything, however, is the decision to donate an organ. ‘If I don’t donate an organ, Andrew might not live long enough to meet me and the guilt would probably be too much to live with,’ he says. ‘If I do, it will be as if I am donating to someone who I don’t really know exists.
‘How can social workers sleep at night, knowing they have separated a boy from his real father, a good father who has already successfully raised three children? They won’t even pass on birthday cards.
‘They have stormed in and left us to pick up the pieces. I cannot believe that in this country someone can stop you seeing your own child when you have done nothing wrong.
‘Our family seems incomplete. If I see a boy in the street, I wonder if it’s him. I dream of him meeting his brothers and sister and joining us when we have big birthday celebrations. My only hope is that he can choose to trace me when he is 18.
‘But what if he doesn’t live that long or is told lies about me – that his father is dead or didn’t want him? It breaks my heart to think we may never meet.’
By PAUL SIMS
Last updated at 21:53 05 September 2007
A homosexual foster couple were left free to sexually abuse vulnerable boys in their care because social workers feared being accused of discrimination if they investigated complaints, an inquiry concluded yesterday.
Craig Faunch and Ian Wathey were one of the first homosexual couples in the country to be officially approved as foster parents.
They looked after 18 children in only 15 months.
Ian Wathey (left) and Craig Faunch were jailed last year for sexually abusing young boys
With no previous convictions, they came across as respectable men who simply wanted to help boys with a variety of problems.
In reality, they were paedophiles, who repeatedly abused the children in their care.
Even when the mother of two of the children reported her suspicions to the council, officials accepted the men’s explanations and did nothing.
Instead of banning children from staying with Faunch and Wathey, they sent youngsters with more serious problems to them. Between them, the couple abused four boys aged between eight and 14.
In a scathing report published yesterday, Wakefield Metropolitan District Council was condemned for treating the men as “trophy carers”.
The children’s charity Kidscape said those in charge of overseeing the safety of children in the care of Faunch and Wathey had allowed political correctness to override common sense.
The report, following an independent review of the case, said: “One manager described the couple as ‘trophy carers’ which led to ’slack arrangements’ over placement.
“Another said that by virtue of their sexuality they had a ‘badge’ which made things less questionable.
“The sexual orientation of the men was a significant cause of people not ‘thinking the unthinkable’.
“It was clear that a number of staff were afraid of being thought homophobic.
“The fear of being discriminatory led them to fail to discriminate between the appropriate and the abusive.”
The report also accused the council of failing to carry out proper assessments before and after the children were placed with Faunch and Wathey.
“Issues arose in the first longer-term placement of two children, including potential indicators of child sexual abuse, which were inadequately investigated, understood or acted upon,” it said.
“More children were then placed with Faunch and Wathey, some successfully, some with concerns which were again inadequately investigated, understood or acted upon.
“The practice of some social workers in this case was deficient.”
The report’s authors, led by former Surrey social services chief Brian Parrott, said they could not be sure that Faunch and Wathey were “predatory paedophiles” who became foster carers in order to have access to children.
They added: “Our criticisms are much more of those in middle management whose job it was to piece together what was really happening, to ask the right questions and to be critical and probing.”
Wathey, 42, was jailed for five years in June last year after being convicted of four counts of sexual activity with a child and one offence of causing a child to watch sexual activity.
Faunch, 33, received a six-year jail sentence after he was found guilty of five charges of engaging in sexual activity with a child and two of taking indecent photographs of a child.
The couple, who lived together in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, were approved as foster carers by the council in August 2003.
Their victims included a 14-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism,who had a mental age of seven and was forced by Wathey to watch gay pornography.
Another youngster with a “very troubled background” was only in their care for a few weeks before being abused by Faunch.
But social workers had been aware of “inappropriate” behaviour long before then.
Just eight months after they started as professional foster carers a mother of eight-year-old twins, who couldn’t cope with raising them on her own, voiced concerns about them with social services.
While visiting the twins, the 34-yearold single mother was shown a picture taken by Faunch showing one of the boys going to the lavatory during a visit to Butlin’s holiday camp in Skegness and discovered a similar snap had been taken of the other twin.
A social worker took the photograph and promised a full investigation.
But the court heard that not only did social services staff lose the photo, they decided against contacting police after accepting Faunch’s explanation that he was trying to embarrass the boys into shutting the lavatory door.
Police later discovered that, days after the photos were taken, Faunch recorded an indecent video of the twins taking a shower. They began abusing the boys three months later.
Undetected, the offences continued over an 11-month period, Leeds Crown Court was told last year.
Police were called in to investigate the couple only after one of the abused boys told a woman he had been touched by one of the men.
Faunch abused all four boys and Wathey targeted one of them.
Judge Sally Cahill, QC, said neither had shown “empathy, remorse or any responsibility for their actions”.
Yesterday’s report said that the fostering panel which approved Faunch and Wathey accepted without hesitation their request to look after only boys on the basis that they didn’t feel equipped to look after girls.
The report made 41 recommendations for overhauling the council’s fostering process.
Last night, Michelle Elliott, a director of Kidscape, said: “Common sense went out of the window when they allowed political correctness to take over in this case.
“I don’t care if you are homosexual or bisexual - if you are taking care of children you need to be vetted and subjected to the same investigation as anyone else.
“Child abuse knows no gender boundaries.”
Elaine McHale, the council’s corporate director of family services, said it would be “inappropriate” to comment on the report until after a meeting of the full council on September 12.
Mum on the run: Pregnant teen flees to Ireland to escape social workers she fears will take her baby
By Neil Sears
Last updated at 8:12 AM on 01st September 2008
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Far from home: Sam Thomas has fled to Ireland to have her baby
A mother-to-be has fled to Ireland because she fears social services are planning to seize her newborn child and have it adopted.
Sam Thomas, 19, left Britain alone, despite being heavily pregnant.
She discovered that her social worker had told the local hospital not to let her leave the maternity ward with her child - a girl - without social services being involved.
The county council has not obtained a court order giving it authority to keep Miss Thomas in the hospital, and she has no history of being a danger to children - yet social workers appear convinced she is unfit to care for her baby.
Last night an MP who is campaigning against local authorities’ power to remove children from their parents and have them adopted said he was aware of the case.
Liberal Democrat John Hemming claimed that the local authority had been heavy-handed.
In some cases, he said, fearful parents feel they have no option other than to flee to Ireland or Sweden, where it is difficult for councils to take children away from them.
‘Miss Thomas is right to worry that if the new baby is taken into care after birth she might end up getting adopted,’ he said.
Miss Thomas, staying in bed and breakfast accommodation in Ireland, said: ‘All I want is the opportunity to prove I can be a fit mother - but I feel like I’m on the run.
‘It’s the only way to make sure I can have my baby girl and be with her in peace.’
She had been living in Yeovil, Somerset, with her mother Carol Hughes and looking forward to the birth of her first child.
She became concerned, however, at Somerset County Council’s growing interest in the birth, due in early October - and says it soon became clear that there was a risk she would not be able to keep her child.
Miss Thomas accepts that she has harmed herself and taken an overdose in the past, but insists she has not been troubled by problems related to depression for two years.
Yet council documents show her past difficulties are still considered serious.
There is a further issue surrounding claims that she has failed to take medication for a health condition related to blood-clotting.
She feared a child protection conference arranged for today would result in her child being taken from her.
A letter sent by Somerset County Council social worker Carly Barrett to Yeovil District Hospital earlier this month instructed that after the birth ‘under no circumstances must Miss Thomas be discharged without Children’s Social Care involvement’.
Miss Thomas fled to Wexford last week, where she is signed up with a GP and is in contact with Irish social services. She plans to name her daughter Ellie-Jay.
She said: ‘I don’t want to be here - but I feel I have no choice.
‘Social services have made me out to be an unfit mother but everything in their reports is either wrong, or out of context. They’re not listening to anything I’ve got to say.’
Miss Thomas’s mother Carol is supporting her emotionally and financially from back home in Yeovil.
Somerset County Council said it could not discuss individual cases.
Meet Clair: The beautiful little timebomb who nearly killed me
Last updated at 1:37 AM on 22nd August 2008
When Wendy adopted a troubled eight-year-old she believed love would conquer all. How wrong she was!
After suffering fertility problems, Wendy Whiting and her husband Peter were overjoyed when told they could adopt eight-year-old Clair and her two younger brothers. She looked forward to giving the children - who had been dreadfully neglected by their alcoholic mother and abusive father - a decent, middle-class upbringing in her five-bedroom, £1 million house in Thames Ditton, Surrey.
But she never dreamed of the havoc it would wreak on her own family. Here Wendy, now 62, and Clair, 29, give a heartbreaking insight into the hidden pitfalls of adoption.
Wendy says:
Face of an angel: Clair as an eight-year-old but she was a timebomb
When I adopted Clair 21 years ago, I was deliriously happy. With her dark, wavy hair, brown eyes and gap-toothed smile, she was beautiful. As I watched her laughing on the slide in our huge back garden I almost burst with happiness.
I’ll never forget the first day she came to our home. My husband Peter and I had been taking Clair and her two brothers on outings to get to know them before the adoption was finalised. Now the three of them were walking around our Edwardian house, marvelling at the plush carpets and high ceilings.
Clair was just eight and her brothers were six and four. Social workers told us they had all endured terrible neglect. As well as receiving regular beatings, they’d grown up in an environment where the only conversation consisted of swearing.
They arrived with one small carrier bag of belongings each. We were told they had been sleeping in urine-soaked beds in a filthy house, were sent to school stinking and unwashed, and often went days without proper food.
They arrived dressed in rags and were incredibly disruptive, running wild and not taking any notice when we tried to discipline them. Their manners were shocking and they constantly used sexual expressions. Mealtimes were mayhem, with the children eating with their hands. Now we were going to change all that. We knew they would have problems, but never in our wildest dreams did we expect the troubles that lay in store.
Somewhat naively, we thought love, cuddles and a privileged upbringing would conquer all.
Perhaps the children were too old when they came to us - too set in their ways. They had terrible tantrums and were constantly in trouble at school. Nevertheless, Peter - an accountant - and I were determined to undo the horrors they had suffered. We lavished on them all the things they had never had. We had wanted a family for so long that we were simply delighted to have our huge house filled with children’s voices.
The adoption
We had been trying for a baby for five years before fertility tests identified that Peter had a low sperm count. I did not want to get pregnant by a sperm donor so we decided to adopt. After several interviews with social workers, we were approved as adoptive parents. And yes, when Clair and her brothers finally came to live with us, we knew things would be tough. We didn’t expect them to fall in love with us straightaway - but we rose to the challenge.
I gave up my management job to be at home. I revelled in my new role as ‘Mummy’, splashing out on new toys, slides and swings for the garden. I put bunk beds in the boys’ room and created a girly, pink bedroom for Clair.
We gave them extra help with their schooling, took them on holidays abroad and out to restaurants. We spent hours reading to them.
Gradually, all that hard work seemed to pay off. The children appeared to settle at school, the swear words disappeared from their vocabulary and they would sit at the table enjoying a family meal, chatting about their day.
Yet for Clair, all this clearly wasn’t enough. She would often talk wistfully about tracing her mother. As the eldest, she had the most vivid memories of her mum - looking back, perhaps I was naive to think she could just forget her.
I tried gently to remind her how much her mother had hurt and neglected her and her brothers. To this day, I will never understand how children can feel such ferocious loyalty to a parent who has treated them so cruelly.
Clair’s father was brutally violent to their mother. But apparently he did not want the children adopted - even writing them a letter saying he would never let them go.
So while the children called us Mummy and Daddy, it was unsettling that in the back of their minds they were still half expecting their real parents to turn up.
By the time she was 14, Clair was still determined to trace her real mother. She wouldn’t let it go.
Leaving home
Like all adopted children she had a social worker responsible for her case and, reluctantly, I agreed Clair should talk to her to discuss the possibility of finding her mother. When the social worker said she may be able to meet her mother, Clair suddenly backed down. I think the reality hit home. She said she would find her mum when she was older.
I was relieved about this, but also terribly hurt. Didn’t she consider us - the people who’d given her everything - her parents? We felt she was ungrateful.
Peter and Clair began disagreeing over small things - her homework, or what time she came home. She wasn’t a bad girl; she had good friends and never got into drink and drugs. But she did become harder to discipline.
Even something as simple as, ‘Could you tidy your room?’ could end up with her screaming: ‘But you’re not my real mum and mum and dad!’
Then, when she was 15, Peter asked her to lay the table. This sparked an almighty row. She packed her bag and walked out.
We thought she would come back, but we were wrong. After a frantic few hours when we had no idea where she was, her social worker called to say she had chosen to go back into care.
Peter and I were bereft, convinced we had failed her. Meanwhile, our marriage was under incredible strain.
A week after Clair left home, Peter and I went to see her at the social worker’s offices and begged her to come back. But she said she ‘needed time on her own’ and, to our horror, actually chose to live with new foster parents rather than return to us. Over the next couple of years, I received only a few brief phone calls from Clair. With the help of Social Services, she got herself a flat at 17 and married at 19. I was invited to the wedding, but our relationship was still strained. I never stopped calling, but it would sometimes be months before she called me back.
The next generation
Then, in 1998, she rang me to say she was having a baby. Ben was born, followed by Katie and then Harry, in 2003. And slowly, through the grandchildren, our relationship was rekindled. I would visit the children and babysit for them and Clair would come over for Sunday lunch.
By now my own marriage had permanently failed and Peter and I divorced, so I was thrilled to be finally having the mother-daughter relationship I’d always yearned for. When Clair was expecting Harry, I went to scans with her, and we regularly went shopping or visited one another for a chat and a coffee.
But then, last September, came a bombshell. Clair told me she’d traced her real mother and was about to meet her. I should have been happy, but I was horrified.
It may be selfish, but I was convinced this ‘real’ mother was going to swan in and take my daughter from me. I was so angry at this woman I had never met - for the misery she’d inflicted on Clair and her siblings. It was she who’d damaged them, and we’d spent years picking up the pieces.
I told Clair I felt she was making a mistake. I made it clear I never wanted to meet her mother.
In October 2007, Clair went to meet her mum at a ‘family’ barbecue on her 58th birthday.
Reunion
Since then, Clair’s real mum, who lives on benefits and has never worked (but managed to have more children) - has wreaked havoc on all of us. She is even worse than I feared. She is an ex-alcoholic, a selfish and thoroughly unpleasant woman who thought she could walk straight back into my daughter’s life.
She took one look at Clair, my well-brought-up daughter, and said: ‘God you’re posh!’ as if being well-educated and well-spoken were things to be ashamed of.
She insisted on being called Granny by Clair’s children - even though she had deserted their mother.
She would ring Clair most days as if the past never happened and e-mailed her constantly. But I feared she would break Clair’s heart again.
Sadly, I was right. Because, for the past month she has suddenly stopped calling - leaving Clair to feel rejected all over again. Once more I have picked up the pieces. But I am plagued by the worry that she will always be there, lurking in the background, ready to interfere with our lives.
My greatest fear is that one day my darling Clair will decide she prefers her real mum to me.
Clair says:
I’ll never forget the first day I walked into Wendy’s house. To me, it was like Buckingham Palace. The clean bed with its linen sheets and garden full of toys were a world away from the cramped children’s home and, before that, the stinking council house where we lived with our parents.
Dad was a bully and Mum’s idea of a decent meal was a slice of bread. But we’d never known anything different from rows and poverty, so we weren’t unhappy.
There were six of us - three girls and three boys aged from one to 11.
While we regularly hid from my dad, who would beat my mum and us with a belt, we thought our childhood was normal. Then one day the police came to the door and took the six of us into care.
I later learned our neighbour had called social services and the police to say my 11-year-old sister was looking after five children.
I was six when we were taken into the children’s home. I was bewildered, but even at that young age it was good to sleep in a clean bed and wear clean clothes. Yet even though I was with my brothers and sisters, I missed Mum terribly.
Then, when I was almost eight, myself and my two younger brothers were told we were going to live with Wendy and Peter. The others were too old to be adopted and had stayed behind.
As I left my older siblings in the home, I remember feeling incredibly confused and scared about going to live with strangers. But Wendy and Peter gave us everything we’d always wanted - a stable home, holidays abroad and education at good local schools. Yet I could somehow never forget my birth mum. I worried she missed us and had given us up only because my dad had forced her to.
Leaving home
I called Wendy and Peter ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, but in truth I never really felt settled. They had an alien lifestyle full of garden parties and well-spoken friends coming over for dinner.
Wendy and I got on, but I felt Peter was too strict, and, as I reached my teens, we used to argue. All the while I was dreaming of my birth mum, who I’d placed on some kind of a pedestal.
At 15, after that row, I was determined to leave. I was so mixed up that going into care seemed easier than staying with Wendy and Peter, who were always worrying about me. Looking back, I can see how selfish I was.
I ended up in a hostel. When I was 16, friends introduced me to John, now 42 and a sales manager. He was the man I was later to fall in love with and marry.
All the while I kept trying to find my mum, imagining she was yearning to see me. Yet, every trail I found - even going back to the children’s home - came to a dead end.
In 1997, John and I married and the following year I gave birth to Ben. It was only once a mum myself that I began to think how cruelly I’d treated Wendy.
I felt ashamed and was determined to put things right. She had never given up on me. She had always rung and, now I had Ben, she was there offering support.
When I had my second child, Katie, and then Harry, we grew even closer. I saw her as my mum, but I still wanted my birth mother in my life. I couldn’t tell Wendy because I knew she’d be upset.
Tracing mum
Yet, I wanted to find out where I’d come from and why my mum gave me up. I went back to Social Services and got hold of my birth records, but I still had no joy finding her.
Then, last October, John was looking on the Friends Reunited website, when he found my big sister’s entry.
We contacted her and I was thrilled to learn she was still in touch with Mum. I told Wendy who was devastated and said she didn’t even want to know about her.
I felt bad, but just had to meet my birth mum. A few weeks later, on my real mum’s 58th birthday, we met for the first time.
The first shock was that she had remarried and that, despite giving up six children, she’d met someone else and had gone on to have two more. One had since died and the other, a son, was 22.
Meanwhile, my father, some 20 years older than my mum, had died the year before. Apparently, he had fought for years to get us back before passing away in a nursing home aged 76. I still feel nothing but hate for him.
Reunion
My mum was much smaller than I remembered. Her long red hair was now short, but she looked much better than I expected her to. Yet when I asked her why she had put us in a children’s home, the first thing she said was that she had never wanted me. She said she’d been an alcoholic and that she had certainly never wanted so many children.
Although she was teetotal now, she showed no remorse whatsoever. It was hardly the joyful meeting I had expected and I felt stunned by her callousness, but I still hoped to build some sort of relationship with her.
After our meeting she rang and it was clear she thought the past could just be erased. When I asked about her neglect of us, she made me feel guilty for asking, crying and saying I should move on. She seemingly had no idea of the damage she’d done. And she didn’t appear to care.
Her irresponsible behaviour made me feel incredibly angry. But I stayed in touch - even then, I longed for the happy ending. At first she saw herself as my children’s rightful granny and wanted to play Happy Families, regularly ringing and e-mailing, and visiting six times in three months. But soon, the novelty of us meeting wore off and I haven’t heard from her for weeks. She has clearly rejected me again.
Yet despite this, and whatever Wendy says, I am so pleased that I traced my birth mum. I now know the truth - that she wasn’t the mum I thought she’d be and, in fact, she never was. I was naive to think that after such neglect, there would be a happy ending.
Wendy’s fears that I will reject her for my birth mother are unfounded. I don’t believe what my birth mum says and I will never rekindle any sort of mother/daughter relationship, even if we still stay in touch.
I’m sorry if I’ve hurt Wendy’s feelings, but I now no longer believe that my real mum did not love me because of something I did. Now I know the problem was with her.
I can now see I was lucky to be adopted. Wendy and Peter took on an almighty task, rescuing me and my siblings from a childhood hell. And now, not only do I appreciate what they did, I feel eternally grateful.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1046000/Baby-joy-couple-children-stolen-social-workers.html
Baby joy for couple whose children were stolen by social workers
By Laura Collins
Last updated at 2:26 AM on 17th August 2008
They fought a landmark legal case for the right to keep their youngest child after the forcible adoption of their first three children in what has been described as ‘an appalling miscarriage of justice.’
Now Mark and Nicky Webster are celebrating learning that Nicky is pregnant once more.
The news comes as the couple prepare to launch their Appeal Court bid to be reunited with their three oldest children, who were all under the age of five when they were removed from their care by Norfolk County Council four years ago.
Mark and Nicky Webster with son Brandon
The children, who can only be referred to as Child A, B and C for legal reasons, were adopted in 2004, following a Family Court hearing that lasted just one day and relied almost entirely on now discredited medical evidence that a fracture sustained by Child B could only have been caused by violent abuse.
The Websters have since been granted legal aid to appeal against the original care order, the freeing order that followed and the adoption order that led to the devastating loss of all three of their children.
Speaking last night at their home in Cromer, Nicky said: ‘We’re thrilled and excited about the new baby. This is something we’ve been hoping for since January.
‘We never intended our son Brandon to be an only child. I’m one of five and I don’t want to deny Brandon that joy of growing up as part of a larger family.
‘He has a sister and two brothers but they’re strangers to him and he’s too little to understand what happened.’
It is now two years since Nicky, 28, and Mark, 35, fearful that they would lose their fourth child in a similar fashion, fled to Ireland, where Brandon was born.
Now the couple are once again considering travelling to Ireland, for the birth of Brandon’s younger sibling, due in April.
Nicky explained: ‘Our experiences here in Norfolk have been so difficult, I would love to give birth in Ireland again.
‘It was very traumatic in so many ways. But the Irish have a way of making you welcome and we felt that in spite of everything. That’s where Brandon was born, so it has good associations.’
In the meantime, they are still working to bring their other children – now eight, six and five – home. Nicky said: ‘We are just waiting for our Appeal Court date now. I’m being as positive as possible about it. Nobody has tried to reverse an adoption in a situation like ours.
‘There is no precedent, so it’s not as if anybody has tried and failed – it just hasn’t been done. Of course, we’re very conscious that if we are successful and the children are reintroduced into the family it will be hard for Brandon if he suddenly has to share us with three other children.
‘He’s very much a mummy’s boy and I think it would be easier for him to get used to the idea of sharing us if it starts with a baby.’
But, however delighted the couple are with the prospect of another baby, it has meant making a painful decision. Mark and Nicky had left their daughter’s room untouched since the moment she was taken from them.
In her darkest hours, Nicky would retreat into the room and lie on the bed that, she said, still smelled of her little girl.
Nicky and Brandon celebrate the good news
Now, with the prospect of another arrival, practicalities have had to take precedence.
Nicky explained: ‘We moved Brandon into our daughter’s room a few weeks ago. I have to admit it was really, really hard. We painted the pink walls blue for him and moved out her toys and put them into the smallest room, which will be the baby’s.
‘She’ll be quite a big girl now, really, and I don’t suppose she’d still want her room that way any more, anyway. But it doesn’t mean we’ve moved on or don’t believe we’ll get her back.
‘We’ll fight to get all our children back. We owe it to them and to Brandon and to the little one on the way to do everything we can.’