Despite all of the traumas that she was going through, Gemma settled into her new FLESS school amazingly quickly. Initially, the manager of the school thought it would be a good idea for her to create a new identity for herself in order to avoid a hundred questions on her first day, but the pretence didn’t last long.
As soon as she said, ‘Hi, my name is Demi’, one of the other pupils said, ‘No, it’s not! I recognise you from your picture in the papers.’ So that was that. The school was quite strict about how it was up to the person how much they wanted to share about themselves, so Gemma decided to tell everyone a bit about who she was and why she was there, and very quickly the novelty wore off. It really wasn’t a big deal to everyone else there.
There were only about seven pupils at the school in total. I don’t suppose any of the others had been in the papers recently, but there was a reason why each of them needed to be there rather than a regular school. They, too, just wanted to catch up on their education.
The tutors there were so accommodating about Gemma’s situation. They understood that she was likely to need a lot of time off to attend court hearings and other meetings related to the case, and were happy for her to attend school for half-days or have work sent to her at home. There was also the Skype option; it really was flexible learning.
When Gemma settled in so quickly, we all agreed that she should stay on at FLESS until the end of her GCSE year. The only thing that put a spanner in the works was that she would have to take all her exams back at Kennedy High School because of the strict examination conditions. This wasn’t exactly ideal, but it was much better than having to return to the school full-time.
Little did we know how much the court case would take over, but for the moment Gemma was happy and settled. After weeks of stress, she could finally move on with her education.
Gemma quickly made new friends at FLESS and really enjoyed her coursework. She had GCSEs to study for, but she was determined to do her best, knuckling down to work and exceeding everybody’s expectations. The regular reports we got from the school said that she was responsible, articulate and mature, and she was very friendly with everyone.
There was a lovely atmosphere there. One particular teacher, Jess, formed a great bond with her and even brought Oreo biscuits into class when she heard that Gemma liked them, while the wife of another teacher would bake cakes for her husband to bring into his lessons. Gemma made some really strong friendships while she was there. All the pupils and teachers seemed to take everyone’s reasons for being there in their stride.
At home, though, things hadn’t got easier for any of us: there were still so many people coming to the house on an almost daily basis. There was meeting after meeting with the police and social services, not to mention extended family wanting to visit. Gemma didn’t want to see anyone. I don’t think she was being difficult, she was just embarrassed about all the fuss that she had caused.
She was hooked on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. She hated reading all the nasty things the trolls were saying about us, but she was also starting to get caught up with people who were trying to befriend her and manipulate her.
There were two women in their thirties who were particularly creepy – actually, to be honest, downright sick would be a better way to describe them. One of them was from the north of England and had created a ‘Gemma and Jeremy shrine’ on her Facebook page, complete with hearts, stars and flowers all around it. She had Photoshopped pictures of the two of them together in a heart shape and wrote: ‘This shrine will not be removed until Jeremy is free.’ Even though she had grown-up children of her own, she got unhealthily wrapped up in Gemma’s story.
I was also very worried about a woman from Hertfordshire who had got in contact with Gemma. She was even more disturbed than the ‘shrine woman’. It was almost as if she had made it her job to make herself part of Forrest and Gemma’s ‘love story’. She tried to befriend me, Gemma, Forrest’s family and our family and friends by pretending she had family connections to all of us.
This woman even created a Facebook account under a different identity in order to contact me and give me parenting advice, telling me how I couldn’t control Gemma’s feelings, and how she was able to totally sympathise with what Gemma was going through because she too had once had a relationship with her teacher.
And there was worse to come. The ‘parasite from Hertfordshire’, as I started to call her, started writing to Forrest in prison and even went to visit him. This would have meant a round trip of around four hours and yet, all the time she was visiting him, this wicked woman’s husband didn’t have a clue what was going on. She promised Forrest that she would support him and look after Gemma until he was freed, then they could be together again. How twisted is that?
Another day, I received an unusually large bill for Gemma’s phone, which was in my name. Concerned, I asked the phone company to provide me with an itemised list of the calls that had been made and, on checking it, noticed that almost every single one was to the same number. I didn’t recognise who the number belonged to and so, naturally, I called it. I now know that it was the parasite from Hertfordshire. I asked who she was and, cool as anything, she replied: ‘You should know, you called me.’ I told her I had found her number on my daughter’s phone bill and ended the conversation with a very forceful ‘Stay away from my daughter!’
I became aware of these two nutters very early on, but it was difficult to do anything about it. Of course I talked to Gemma about them and tried to impress upon her that they weren’t real friends, they were parasites who had nothing else in their lives and were feeding off the drama. To start off with, I think she just saw them as harmless spectators who shared her love story, but they became more dangerous as they reached out to her, offering her a link to Forrest.
But I was realistic about how much Gemma would tell me. I was a teenager once, too, and there were certain things I never told my mum. I knew she needed an outlet to share her feelings and get things off her chest, but I couldn’t bear the thought of these strange women having any kind of hold on my daughter.
I spoke to the police about taking further action against them, but they advised me against it. There was no doubt that these women were warped individuals, but they hadn’t actually committed a crime as such. The police were aware of what was being said on social media and had a team of officers monitoring sites such as Facebook and Twitter. They advised me to keep a close eye on the situation and to let them know if I ever suspected that a crime had been committed.
I later discovered that Forrest’s mother had joined a couple of the ‘Support Jeremy Forrest’ pages that had been put up on Facebook and had given the woman operating one of them permission to publish her home address so that people could write to her son. I was disgusted – she seemed to be oblivious to the fact that a lot of these so-called supporters were teenagers caught up in the love story and I felt she was condoning her son’s actions. The following Christmas, she even asked the ‘supporters’ to raise a glass to Forrest at 3pm on Christmas Day so he would know that he had support out there.
One day, I received a call from DI Neil Ralph to tell me that the police had reason to believe that Gemma’s email had been hacked. I remember thinking it was probably another of those parasites getting off on Gemma’s story, but it turned out to be some geeky nineteen-year-old from Liverpool who obviously just spent too much time online! His poor mum went absolutely mad with him. The boy claimed the reason he had hacked into her files was to help the police with their investigations, though Forrest was already in custody anyway by this time.
The police could have taken legal action, but they decided it wasn’t in the best interests of the case. Instead, they made him write a letter of apology to me and Gemma. Besides, as they said, his mother’s fury was probably punishment enough.
It chilled me to the bone how much these weird people wanted to be part of Gemma’s story. She was at a very impressionable age and yet strangers were grabbing at her like leeches and wouldn’t let go.
It was another situation that was out of my control. I kept trying to tell Gemma that these people weren’t real friends and didn’t care about her feelings, but I was mindful that I couldn’t run roughshod over how she was feeling. I knew that the more I pushed her, the more withdrawn she would become. She was incredibly vulnerable and I had to treat her with kid gloves.
Forrest had already damaged Gemma so much and now there was even more for her to deal with. We were all so angry about it and wanted it to stop. I wanted to pick her up and swathe her in bubble wrap. I didn’t want to lock her up and stop her having a life of her own, but I wanted Forrest and the parasites to stop getting to her. Like quicksand falling through my fingers, I couldn’t keep a hold on the situation and it scared me to death. They kept going on and on at her, and it was to eventually lead to the breakdown of our relationship.
I wasn’t the only one who saw how much Gemma’s personality had changed either: Sarah, our family social worker, also did. Gone was the sweet child that I used to know and before me stood a girl who was behaving like an adult. Now I’m not stupid, I never for one minute thought she would stay my little girl forever, but she had started acting like she had an autocue in front of her, telling her what to say when she was asked any questions. It hit me hard to realise that she really had been groomed by a sex offender; Forrest truly had got under her skin.
I knew it wasn’t something that I could change overnight. Forrest had known her since she was just thirteen and even if it had been completely innocent, their relationship had been evolving for several years so it wasn’t something that she would just forget overnight. I couldn’t miraculously undo whatever had been going on between them like a piece of bad knitting.
Gemma spent quite a lot of time with Sarah to begin with, but as time went on, she stopped opening up to her. Sarah arranged for her to continue to receive support from members of her team, but she wouldn’t trust anyone who said anything negative about Forrest. It was incredibly frustrating. I was desperate for Gemma to confide in a support worker rather than one of those evil parasites who had befriended her.
Meanwhile, she was turning into someone I didn’t recognise anymore. She was her usual self in front of other people, but behind closed doors she was breaking down. To be honest, I didn’t really know how to cope with it. I started doing some research on victims of abuse to find out how they coped with life after abusive relationships; I needed to know how to deal with the situation.
One of the people I got in contact with was Marilyn Woods, who had set up the child sexual abuse charity Enough Abuse. We exchanged a few emails, but we never got the chance to meet as every minute of my time seemed to be taken up, especially when I had to go back to work.
Another person whom I considered contacting was the child protection campaigner Lucy Duckworth, who founded the charity See Changes. When Gemma went missing, it was revealed that Lucy had previously contacted the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, and our local MP, Stephen Lloyd, about the fact that she had been unable to obtain a copy of the child protection policies at Kennedy High School. Her story was picked up by the press and Stephen Lloyd appeared on TV, talking about the school. I was incensed when I heard him describe Kennedy High as ‘exemplary’.
I wrote to him, saying how I angry I was that he seemed to be more interested in the school’s processes and procedures than the family of one of his own constituents, but I never heard back from him. Lloyd’s assistant, Jack Short, got in touch and told me that the media had taken his words out of context, and assured me that he had mentioned Gemma in his statement. Short sent me the statement so I could see for myself, but quite honestly it didn’t make up for the fact that the school once more got an easy ride.
Although I was interested to know more about Lucy Duckworth’s experiences with the school, I didn’t have the energy to fight even more battles at that point. I had enough on my plate at home, not least because my own obsession with Forrest was now starting to get out of hand, too.
When we had found Forrest’s house, Paul’s curiosity was sated; he knew what he needed to know. But it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to know every little detail about Forrest – what he did every day in prison, how he had become a teacher, what each and every one of his ex-girlfriends was like. I felt that if I could keep on top of the situation, we could move on with our lives.
It was going to be a long haul for Gemma to find a way through all of the emotional upheaval. Friends and family kept telling me that I was holding everything together really well, but it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. I was just trying to do the right thing.