In December 2013, a week or so before the serious case review was due to be published, I was invited to a meeting with Kevin Harrington and one of his colleagues. I asked for Paul and Gemma to be allowed to come along, too, and was so relieved when Gemma said that she would like to be there because it meant that she would be able to hear the information directly and there would be no doubt about what was said.
Previously, when I had relayed information from the police to Gemma before the trial, she had accused me of only telling her half the story, and it had caused a lot of heartache for the pair of us. I had learned that if there was anything significant regarding the case that she needed to be told about, it was better to get the person responsible to tell her directly rather than have me relay information. That way, she could be certain she got all the facts.
The meeting was taking place in order to inform us of the top-line messages that would be appearing in Kevin Harrington’s report, so that there would be no nasty shocks for us when it was officially published. On the morning we were due to meet, I was my usual nervous self.
Now, finally, I would be hearing the truth about what the school should have done to stop what happened.
As before, we all met up at the offices of the Department of Child Services in Eastbourne, and I could see straight away that Kevin Harrington was intrigued to meet Gemma. Given that he knew so much about her, it was only natural that he would be curious to meet her face to face. I suppose it was like fitting the final piece into a jigsaw puzzle – he knew so much about her before, but meeting her in person completed the picture.
We all sat down and eagerly awaited the findings. One by one, a damning list of failures was outlined to us.
In summary, the report found the following:
It was one disgraceful revelation after another. The report found that staff at the school had repeatedly dismissed evidence from pupils revealing that Forrest might be an abuser and adopted instead a ‘default position’ of ‘intuitively supporting him as a colleague’ and viewing him as ‘the victim’.
They had effectively put Forrest’s needs first and had completely failed to follow the correct procedures. Forrest had been spoken to on numerous occasions by various members of staff, and yet the situation had been allowed to continue.
Also – and this information was key to me – the report shed some light on the school’s claims that they had contacted me seven times. Forrest’s sister had also mentioned this when she had been interviewed on TV, but I knew this to be untrue.
The report revealed that, while the school claimed to have left me several messages, their phone logs proved that they didn’t stay on the line long enough to hear my answerphone message and leave their own details. The log showed that each of the calls was only 30 seconds long, yet my answerphone message at the time was 28 seconds long, so they would have needed to have talked pretty damn fast to have left a message.
Yes, they called me – and yes, I subsequently returned their calls – but I never ignored seven messages. Like any other person, I may miss calls or forget to return messages in the first instance, but I would never have ignored seven messages, especially when they were about one of my children.
If the school believed that there was something going on to be concerned about, they should have left full messages for me and notified the appropriate authorities as soon as the rumours started.
The whole time that we were hearing this information, Gemma just sat there in silence, nodding and taking it all in. I wouldn’t have wished the situation on my worst enemy, but I breathed a sigh of relief that finally we were getting the answers that we needed.
I had always assumed my daughter would be safe while she was at school. How wrong I was! As Kevin Harrington’s report showed, they had failed Gemma miserably. It was inexcusable.
Back at home after the meeting, I called my close family and friends to tell them about the report’s findings. Like me, they were all relieved to hear that everything was going to be out in the open, but they too were disgusted that the school hadn’t done a proper job of protecting Gemma. In a way, I suppose I had hoped that it wasn’t the school’s fault and that everything that had happened was down to Forrest and his twisted needs alone, but it turned out that the school was at the heart of the problem.
Gemma was very quiet and didn’t want to talk about it. She needed time to process the information. As hard as that was for me, I had to take a step back. She knew I would always be there for her if ever she wanted to talk about it.
A couple of days later, Douglas Sinclair, the head of child safeguarding in East Sussex, got in touch to see how we were all feeling about the report. He talked me through the process of how it would be released and how the press might pick up on it. Already he had some interview requests from some of the national newspapers, but I told him that I didn’t want to comment.
Douglas added that he would arrange for the report to be sent to me on the morning of its publication, so that I would have a chance to read all 46 pages of it in full in advance of its release.
Come the morning of Monday, 16 December, I was dreading looking out of the window and seeing hordes of reporters again. Thankfully, there was nobody there and everyone went off to school and work as normal. I had a day off in case there were any unexpected repercussions from the report and I kept an eye on the television for when it hit the local and national news.
Mr Worship, the executive head of Kennedy High School, appeared on the early evening news on ITV to talk about the report and it seemed to me as if he was just reading a script. After a blink-and-you’d-miss-it apology, he went on about how the school had made great steps to change its safeguarding policies. The whole thing was just pathetic and I was furious that he was allowed to use this damning serious case review as some kind of PR stunt for the school.
But the reporter on the local BBC News programme gave him a much harder time than her counterpart on ITV and didn’t allow him to stick to his script about how great the school was now. She asked him precisely the sort of questions that I wanted answers to. Why was it allowed to happen in the first place, and why was it permitted to go on for so long?
He grudgingly admitted the school’s failings, but was also quick to point out that the police and social services had also been criticised for their part in the whole sorry affair. This was true, but the report’s criticisms of them were far more minor, as he well knew.
A week or so later, I heard from Douglas Sinclair again, saying that Mr Worship wanted to write me a letter. When the letter arrived, once again he glossed over an apology and wrote about all the steps that the school had taken to improve their safeguarding policy. Like I was interested! Don’t get me wrong, I would never want what happened to Gemma to happen to anyone else, but I would have appreciated more than just a three-line apology. I wanted him to really focus on the damage that had been done and the failings of his school.
I discussed the contents of the letter with Douglas Sinclair, who told me that Mr Worship had been in touch with him again and would now like to write to Gemma. I said he could – on condition that he wasn’t to go on about how great the school was now. Gemma is not stupid, she would have known he had only made all of these improvements as a result of what had happened to her.
Luckily, when his letter arrived, Mr Worship had followed my request and Gemma received a full apology.