Initially Jodie found the move very difficult. She had two full-time carers, Clare and Val, who were allocated solely to her, working in shifts. I wasn’t told very much about her progress, as I no longer had an official role; I wasn’t a relative, or her carer, I was just a visitor. Nonetheless I gathered that she had often been violent and disruptive, and had continued with roughly the same patterns of behaviour as during her last months with me.
In those first few months she would phone regularly. Clare or Val would make the call, we’d have a brief chat, and then they’d hand the phone over to Jodie. Usually she was calling to complain about Clare or Val, because they weren’t letting her do exactly as she wanted. I would listen patiently as that familiar voice shouted, ‘I’m bleedin’ going to kick ’em!’, and then I’d try to reason with her, to get her to understand that her carers’ requests were for her own good, just as mine had been.
Although we were frequently in touch, Jodie rarely gave us any sign of affection. I could tell she felt rejected and upset about the move, and she made this clear every time we visited. As we prepared to leave I would try to hug her, but instead of returning the affection she would wallop me on the arm or, worse, stand sullen and silent.
What we did during our visits varied, depending on Jodie’s mood. If she was reasonably stable we might go bowling, or to the park, or some local site of interest, usually followed by lunch at Pizza Hut, which had become her favourite. If she was having a bad day we’d stay in the house, playing in the home corner, with Jodie making dinner on the toy oven or remonstrating with her baby doll.
But however hostile she’d been she would always ask when our next visit was going to be, and phone within the week. After about six months she managed to say goodbye properly at the end of a visit, without thumping me, and it felt like a breakthrough. We praised her immensely. Jodie never spoke of her feelings, except of the hatred she still felt for her father, so all we could do was to try and interpret the few clues she gave. She never told me she resented me or felt rejected. Equally, she never said she missed us or looked forward to seeing us. I felt that her finally being able to say goodbye was a good sign, as it suggested she was reconciled to being at High Oaks, if nothing else.
During this time there was some discussion about whether to start contact between Jodie and her brother and sister, who had been found an adoptive family. In the end the decision was made to leave things as they were. Jodie hardly ever mentioned her siblings, except during therapy, and the general feeling was that they weren’t close, so it would be best to allow Ben and Chelsea to have a fresh start. In many respects Jodie had lost her childhood, but they still had theirs, having been taken into care that much younger and, it was thought, having escaped the kind of abuse Jodie had suffered.
Jodie did make progress at High Oaks, but her therapy and recovery were hampered by her learning difficulties. A CAT scan revealed brain damage, which had probably been caused by repeated blows to the head when she was an infant. Perhaps as a result of this, there was little progress in Jodie’s education, speech or motor skills, even though her behaviour did show some improvement.
Jodie put on a lot of weight at High Oaks, and quickly. She had been overweight when she had come to me, but I had managed to stabilize it. At High Oaks, however, some of the children were anorexic, so the house policy was to allow the children to eat pretty much what they liked. Jodie, given a free rein, had two helpings of everything, and within months the rolls of fat had reappeared round her middle and thighs.
In the months after Jodie left, the two court cases took place: the final care hearing, and the criminal prosecution of the abusers. The care hearing came first, and resulted in Full Care Orders for Jodie, Ben and Chelsea, which in practice meant that they all remained where they were.
During the care hearing my logs were requested by the judge to be used as evidence, but I didn’t have to attend in person.
A few months later the criminal case was heard. The crimes against Jodie weren’t actually included in the charges, as there was felt to be insufficient evidence. Instead, Jodie’s father and the other men were charged in respect of another child, and the possession and making of indecent photographs. Again, I had no involvement in the court case, and I only found out the outcome from Jill. Jodie’s father and two other men were found guilty on all charges. Jodie’s mother, and two other defendants, were acquitted. The three convicted men were all given custodial sentences.
Jodie had been on the at-risk register since birth, and by the time she was taken into care she’d had more than fifty visits to casualty, with injuries including broken bones, burns, scalds and cuts. Jodie’s Social Services file was apparently so large that it filled two suitcases.
Jodie’s case history was a catalogue of errors, and a shameful indictment of the failings of the Social Services. For Jodie to have been on the at-risk register for eight years was bad practice in itself. Children are placed on the register to allow Social Services to monitor and investigate; either an investigation should take place, or Social Services should satisfy themselves that everything is in order, with the child then being removed from the register. In Jodie’s case, neither course was followed.
One reason for this appears to have been the high turnover of social workers: there had been over twenty involved in Jodie’s case. It appears that Jodie’s social workers had avoided making visits to the house, or had allowed themselves to be intimidated into not asking the proper questions. As a result of this intimidation, the family were frequently passed on to new social workers.
As bad as this sounds, I did have some sympathy. The majority of social workers are women, and they are expected to visit violent households on their own. They are frequently attacked, but they hardly ever press charges, because their job requires them to try to build a relationship with these parents. As a result, parents who know the system know that they can treat social workers with impunity. In this context it’s no wonder that some social workers avoid visiting aggressive families, or accept unconvincing excuses.
As the Brown family were passed from one weary social worker to the next, their file at Social Services quickly expanded – social workers are plagued by paperwork. The file soon became prohibitively large, in that its sheer size meant that no one involved in the case seemed to have time to read the whole thing. If anyone had seen the overall picture, including all of Jodie’s hospital visits, they would surely have acted sooner. However, Jodie’s case isn’t the first to be overlooked in this way, and, sadly, I doubt it will be the last.
Today, three years on, Jodie continues to make slow, limited progress. Much of her anxiety has gone, and she’s probably as happy as she’s ever going to be. The intensive therapy has helped her to bring the various parts of her personality together, and Amy and Reg now make only rare appearances. She feels safe at High Oaks, and knows that the protection of those identities is no longer needed.
Jodie is now in a special school. As she has grown older her learning difficulties have become increasingly apparent. When I take her out, people now treat her like a disabled child, going out of their way to speak to her, behaving with exaggerated kindness. She’s very overweight, and this makes her even more cumbersome and accident-prone. Her delayed development and poor speech are also obvious, and every year she falls further behind her peers. At some point, perhaps quite soon, she will reach her ceiling in terms of what she can learn, and her disability will become even more pronounced in contrast to her peers.
She rarely mentions her parents now, other than in the context of her ongoing therapy. She does exchange birthday and Christmas cards with Ben and Chelsea, and she has spoken to them on the phone once. This phone call, however, was not a success, and is unlikely to be repeated, as she became very confused and hostile. Much of what happened to Jodie remains deeply buried, and will probably stay buried indefinitely. Only time will tell.
The children and I still visit Jodie, making the return trip of two hundred miles every four to six weeks. We also speak to her on the phone most weeks. On our most recent visit, Paula and I took her to a steak house (as a change from pizza) and while we waited for our order to arrive Jodie suddenly looked directly at Paula and said, ‘I like your top. It’s very pretty.’ We were delighted. It was the first compliment we’d ever heard Jodie offer, and it suggested real progress, as it showed the beginnings of empathy: Jodie had complimented Paula because she wanted to make her feel good, and because she wanted us to like her.
I still find it hard to understand what happened to Jodie. I can somehow accept that there are parents who neglect their children, through drink or drugs or mental illness, and whose cruelty is a side-effect of other problems. But the dreadful abyss that Jodie lived in is a mystery of such darkness and evil that it beggars belief. When I look at my own children and, thank goodness, the majority of children, who are loved and cared for and nurtured, it is hard to comprehend the mindset of parents who seem to care nothing for their child, and do not simply neglect her but actively set about destroying her for their own perverted gratification.
Jodie is a damaged child. She has been vandalized. Her mental processes and her emotions have been destroyed. I doubt she will ever recover sufficiently to lead a normal life, and she will never get the pleasure from life that should have been hers. She has been condemned to an endless punishment by the very people who should have cared for her the most. To me, that is the worst crime imaginable.
I still visit Jodie at High Oaks. Many of the children who were there when Jodie arrived have now left, having recovered enough to move on to long-term foster families. Whether Jodie will ever be able to do the same remains to be seen, but if ever she can, and I’m not too old, my offer stands. And I am still fostering. There’s always another child out there who needs help.