After what Gemma had been through, I wanted answers.
Although the school had issued a statement to the press saying that they were supporting our family in every way they could, they barely got in touch with us.
Once we had been back from the safe house for about a week, I requested a meeting with Mr Worship, the executive head of Kennedy High School. Up until now, I had not heard a thing from the school. I went along with a long list of questions. I’d got my daughter back, and she was safe, but now I wanted answers: I needed to know how it had happened in the first place.
To this day, I have never had so much as a phone call from the school’s head, Simon Pearl. He answered a couple of my letters, but he has never picked up the phone to speak to me.
First of all, I wanted to know when Mr Worship discovered what was going on between Gemma and Forrest. He told me he had first heard about the rumours a couple of weeks earlier. I was furious. Wasn’t he angry that none of his colleagues had raised the matter with him sooner? I sarcastically said I felt sorry for him that all this was going on under his nose, and asked if he felt bad that he didn’t have a good enough relationship with his colleagues for them to have shared what they knew.
I asked to see Gemma’s school file – I wanted to see if the information was documented in any way, but I was told I couldn’t because it was now part of a criminal investigation. Arguing that I felt it was my right as Gemma’s mother to see the file, I explained to him some of the things that my daughter had been coping with since her return. Subsequently, I did get to see some of it.
I also asked him what kind of safeguarding measures were in place for the pupils. I’d searched high and low through all the literature I could find about the school, but there was nothing available. Miraculously, within a day of our meeting, all the information appeared on the school website.
Even though I had previously told Sarah there was no way I was ever going to allow my daughter to go back to that school, she and Mr Worship then started talking about when Gemma should return to Kennedy High School. Over my dead body! I told them in no uncertain terms that the only thing Gemma would be coming back to the school for was her prom in the following June.
And with that, I stormed out.
I was angry with Sarah for siding with Mr Worship. She had got to know us all so well, and she knew the reasons why I felt the way I did about the issue, but she explained that the guideline in cases where pupils had missed a part of their schooling was that they should return to the same school.
Next I went to see Matt Dunkley, the director of child services for East Sussex, and he immediately made me feel really welcome. He said he could totally sympathise with what we had been going through and promised he would do everything in his power to help us. Apparently, Mr Worship had also been in touch with him and had requested an independent review of Kennedy High School’s safeguarding policies. Hmm … I wonder what made him think about doing that?
I told Matt Dunkley that I had been alarmed by the suggestion that Gemma should go back to Kennedy High School and that I was interested in the FLESS option. He assured me that he totally understood how I felt about the situation and agreed with the decision that I had taken.
Matt also told me that a panel had been set up to see if the East Sussex Local Safeguarding Children Board should carry out a serious case review. He explained to me that such reviews normally only happen in cases involving a death, but the circumstances surrounding Gemma’s situation were so serious that he felt there was no option but to tackle it this way.
Sometimes you meet someone who is so genuinely on your side it takes the weight of the world off your shoulders while you are with them. Matt Dunkley was one of those people.
Following this we were put in touch with Matt’s colleague, Douglas Sinclair, the head of child safeguarding in East Sussex. I wanted to find out more about the training that teachers received – in particular, whether they received guidance about crossing the line with pupils – and he patiently explained to me the process regarding the serious case review.
Another day, another meeting. This time I met up with Iain Luxford, East Sussex County Council’s head of media, who talked me through the implications of the press reporting. To be honest, I hadn’t taken a lot of interest in the Leveson Inquiry before that, and he explained to me how flimsy the laws were surrounding reporting.
As a result of all this, I have become very sussed about privacy laws. In the case of celebrities, they choose to have a public life; to some extent that is what they have signed up for. But for innocent people like the family of Milly Dowler, it is just disgusting. People have asked me if I was ever tempted to contact the Dowlers or the parents of Madeleine McCann, but I didn’t want to make things any more public. I wanted to contain our situation as best I could and keep a lid on the whole thing. If I could, I would have built a wall around my family and pulled a great big cover down over us.
What with all the meetings, sorting out somewhere new to live and trying to maintain some kind of normality for the children and get life back on track for the rest of the family, those first few weeks after Gemma’s return were challenging, to say the least.
Early in November, Gemma began at FLESS in Seaford. I remember her first day there so vividly; it was one of the saddest I had to deal with. It was almost like she was a little girl again, climbing the stairs up to ‘big school’. Whenever I have taken any of my children for their first day of school I have always felt a little bit sad, as it marks the end of a certain stage of their life. I know it might sound crazy, but as Gemma went up the stone steps at The Old School in Seaford, I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my face as I drove away. I knew in my heart it was all for the best, but I couldn’t help myself.
An hour after I dropped her off, I called the school to check she was OK. I needn’t have worried, of course – she was fine – but, as always, she was still my little mermaid to me.
I was so angry that Forrest had put Gemma through all this. After all the stress she had endured, she not only had to come to terms with what had happened between them, but now she had to make new friends and adjust to a whole new way of working. I can never forgive him for that.