Is this anyone you know?

Donna and Steve both grew up on a council housing estate somewhere in England. The place was rough and you had to be tough to survive there. Donna coped by making lots of friends and trying to be one of the ‘in crowd’. Steve made lots of friends too and, like many of his mates, he got into trouble with the police; nothing too serious: shoplifting as a kid, and taking part in a gang fight, the type of thing which is ‘usual’ in this type of area. He had stayed out of trouble for years, but, again like most of his mates, he had a healthy dislike of the local constabulary.

Donna and Steve started going out together. It wasn’t long before Donna got pregnant, despite being on the pill. The two of them loved each other by then, so when it was suggested they get married, they both said “why not?”

Donna had the baby, a little girl, and she was followed one year later by a little sister. Times were hard; they lived with Donna’s mum and she was able to mind the children while Donna did part-time work in the local bingo hall. Although jobs were very difficult to find, Steve managed to get himself a job in one of the local factories. The pay wasn’t that great, but it was better than ‘being on the social’. They still had money worries, but they survived and they were happy. They were eventually offered a council house on another estate nearby. The estate was newer, but even rougher they the one they lived on, but the offer of a house for themselves was something they couldn’t turn down, so they moved in.

Steve still saw his mates for the odd game of pool and made new ones down at the local pub. Donna met her workmates now and again when her mum could babysit, but most of the time they were happy to be at home together with their two kids. They got on okay with their neighbours and were an accepted and liked family in their community. Times weren’t perfect, but they were quite good.

One day Donna’s sister got married and the family went to her wedding reception. It was a good do and Steve had a fair bit to drink, but was happy and sociable as he always was on occasions like this. The couple left the reception before most of the others there, as they wanted to put the children to bed.

On the way home, Steve was bursting for a pee. He just couldn’t wait much longer, so he popped down a dark alleyway while Donna kept watch for passers by. But she didn’t notice the policeman until it was too late.

The policeman was not in a forgiving mood. He cautioned Steve and took him down to the local police station. An upset Donna ran home with the kids and rang her mum, who suggested a solicitor ‘just in case Steve needs one’. The solicitor was good; he went straight down to the police station. Within a couple of hours Steve was released to appear at the magistrate’s court in a few days time.

The charge was ‘public indecency’. At the court, Steve was given a conditional discharge and told that if he committed no other offence in the next six months, no further action would be taken against him. The solicitor asked for assurance that, when the six months was up, there would be no mention of this offence on public criminal records. He was given that assurance.

A chastened Steve went home with a very relieved Donna. And they got on with their lives. A few of Steve’s mates ribbed him about his ‘offence’, but the whole thing was soon forgotten.

Two years went by and Steve and Donna now had another little girl. Like her sisters, she was very well loved and cared for, but the couple decided that enough was definitely enough as times were harder now and it was a struggle to pay the bills. But they coped.

One day Donna came home from fetching her eldest daughter from pre-school. She was a bit concerned over something the mums had been discussing in the playground and later that night she told Steve.

It appeared that one of the women had found out from ’someone at the council’ that their estate had been chosen as an area to house sex offenders and that some of them had been living there for several years without anyone knowing about it. Donna was worried. Like many of the other mums she had begun to let her eldest daughter out to play in the communal area in the square right outside their house. It was a nice place for the kids to play, with swings and a slide, a high, see-through fence and in full view of all the houses in the square. Donna had thought it was safe… until now. She thought it would only take one glance away and “anyone could run off with one of our kids”.

Steve told Donna she was exaggerating; they knew all their neighbours and they knew that everyone looked out for everyone elses’ kids as well as their own, but if Donna felt she didn’t want their eldest daughter to play out there, then it was up to her. Donna agreed that he was probably right, but she would only let their daughters play outside from now on if she or her mum were right there by their sides.

The next evening, Donna had more news to tell Steve. The mums were forming an ‘action committee’ to force the council to name the sex offenders so that parents knew who they were and could keep their kids away from them. Steve suggested that this was unwise, as “the nutters on the estate will have a field day starting riots and beating up these guys and people will get hurt.” He told Donna she would be best to stay out of this committee and Donna agreed, but secretly she kept in touch with the women who had formed the group, just to keep informed of what was going on. She figured it would be safer for her kids that way and her mum agreed with her.

Over the next couple of weeks, the committee grew in size. Their ‘leader’ informed them she had found someone at social services who was going to try to give her some names, even though it would cost this person their job is they were found out. Donna said she wasn’t sure it was a good thing as “things could get out of hand”, but no one agreed with her, so she kept quiet and didn’t say any more.

Two weeks after this, Donna had problems getting her eldest daughter to go to her pre-school class. The little girl was sobbing and it took a lot for Donna to get her to explain what the problem was. Other children had been picking on her and saying “nasty things” about her dad. Donna took the kids round to her mums and then went to the pre-school to have a word with her daughter’s teacher.

The teacher told Donna it would be “best for everyone” if she kept her daughter home for a while. Donna asked why, but the teacher refused to give her any more information, except to ask her “is everything alright at home?”

Donna said, yes, of course, everything had been fine until this morning, when her daughter had become hysterical about being taken to pre-school. She asked again what the problem was, saying surely she had a right to know about anything concerning her daughter.

The teacher refused to give Donna any details, saying it was “against professional ethics” for her to do so, but she did suggest that Donna question her children very carefully to see if anything was troubling them. Then she told Donna that she really must end their meeting now as she had to be somewhere else very soon.

Donna was upset and confused. Her daughters were happy. Her and Steve cared for them well and they had a good relationship with their children. She was convinced there was more she should know. She waited outside the pre-school and cornered the teacher when she came out.

It took a lot of pleading on Donna’s part, but the teacher finally relented and told her. There was a rumour going around that her husband was a sex offender. She admitted to Donna that she had already contacted social services about her daughter, even though she had shown no evidence of being abused, “as she thought it was best to do so in the circumstances.”

Donna was horrified. It was almost too much for her to take in all at once. Not only was her eldest child being picked on and bullied at her pre-school, but now her husband was being tainted as a sex offender and the dreaded social services were going to get involved. She could lose her kids over this, and she knew the rumours about Steve were not true… or at least, she thought she did… She ran back to her mum’s in tears.

Donna’s mum had always been a woman with lots of common sense. She said that, in her opinion, there was no evidence in the slightest that Steve was a sex offender, but she did add that Donna would be well advised to talk to the kids about their dad “just in case”. She also suggested that Donna and the kids move in with her for a couple of weeks, “until this all blows over”, just in case “the social tries to get involved”.

Sadly, this did make sense.

Donna left the kids with her mum and went home to pack some things. It was getting quite late now and she guessed Steve would be home already. She didn’t know how the hell she was going to explain her actions to him, she would just have to try to get it through to him why she was doing this and explain that she still loved him and that this move would only be temporary.

But she didn’t get the chance.

As she turned onto the estate she heard shouting and the sound of sirens in the distance. She turned into their square and was met by a very large crowd of neighbours, shouting and cursing and throwing bricks and whatever else they could find… at her house.

Before she could do anything, a couple of women grabbed her. One spat in her face, the other punched her in her stomach. Luckily, her next door neighbour stepped in and dragged Donna away. He took her around the corner and checked if she was hurt, then he told her what was going on.

The ‘committee’ had published a list of sex offenders on the community centre door. Steve’s name was on that list. As they lived nearest to the community centre, their house had been the first target, but there were other houses in other streets begin attacked right now. As far as he knew, Steve was still inside and the police were on their way “to calm things down.” He suggested that Donna get out of the area as quickly as she could. He would have offered to drive her to her mum’s, but his car tires had been slashed by the mob, thinking it was Steve’s car.

As he was talking, the police arrived. It took them some time to ‘calm’ the crowd before they could get inside the house. They found Steve unconscious on the living room floor. He had been hit on the head by a well-aimed brick thrown through the living room window. They managed to bring him round before the ambulance arrived.

Steve was escorted to the ambulance by a large group of policemen. Donna was held back by their neighbour, who still feared for her safety. Then social services arrived.

They questioned Donna about their kids. Where were they? What had they told her about their father? Could she bring them in so that they could see the children for themselves? Donna thought quickly; she knew she was in danger of losing her children. She said her children were with a relative in Wales and that she was going there herself in a couple of days. ‘The social’ were not happy with this story. They said they would “leave things for now”, but that Donna “would be hearing from them again shortly”.

She then ran all the way back to her mum’s, tearful and frightened, for her kids, for Steve and for herself.

Donna’s mum was relieved to see her. The riots had made the early evening news and she had seen Steve taken away in the ambulance, but while Donna had been grilled by social services she had been doing some investigation of her own. She had found a women’s refuge where Donna and the kids would be safe. There was no way they could stay at her house. She was prepared to defend them in any way she could, and she did not care a bit about broken windows, but she knew that Donna lived for her kids, and if the social came to take them away, there would be no way she could prevent it. Reluctantly, Donna knew this made sense. While she packed what little stuff she had there for the kids, her mum called the refuge. Within a few minutes, a refuge worker arrived to pick them up. It was safer than risking a taxi.

The women at the refuge did not ask questions about Steve, they just welcomed Donna and tried to make her and her children as comfortable as they could. When the kids were finally settled down for the night, they sat with Donna and let her talk. It soon became obvious to all of them that Donna did not think Steve had harmed their kids in any way, but was now confused “in case she had missed something she should have picked up on.” They took stock of the situation.

Despite the late hour, they called their solicitor and set things in motion for the next day. They also called an independent child psychologist and, with Donna’s agreement, she was going to have a chat with the girls the next day. They all assured Donna they would not contact social services and neither would the psychologist unless she thought it was absolutely necessary, and even in this case, she would tell Donna what she was going to do first.

Nine a.m the next day the psychologist and the solicitor arrived at the refuge. The psychologist talked to the girls while the solicitor explained to Donna, and another refuge worker who was there as Donna’s advisor, exactly what was going on.

It transpired that Steve was on the sex offenders register. With a bit of ‘persuasion’ the solicitor had been able to find out that this dated back to the conditional discharge he had received for ‘public indecency’. It appears that, although the records had been taken off the criminal list, the original paperwork was still available. The zealous policeman who had arrested Steve had taken it upon himself to put the charge on record at the police station as a sex offence. Rightly or wrongly, all police records on sex offences were kept, even when a lesser charge was given and eventually taken off the court records, the original charge still remained on police records.

The solicitor said this was not ‘correct legal practice’ and also applied to cases which had been thrown out of court. He guessed there were many people on police records for ’sex offences’ who really should not be on there at all and most likely did not realise they were. It appeared that the ‘person who works at social services’, who had given a list to ‘the committee’ had found access to these records when they had been unable to find the real ones. That person had been fired and charged and would most likely be imprisoned for this offence and that, if Steve so wished, he could file a complaint and even make some money from this considering all the pain and anguish he and his family had been put through.

At this point, Donna’s refuge advisor suggested that this probably wouldn’t help Steve much at all, as there would always be some who believed him to be guilty of these offences, whatever evidence was produced to the contrary. She said that ‘mud sticks’ and Steve and Donna would never be able to feel safe living on that estate again. Being able to sue was all very well and the continuing problems the family were going to face would also aid them if they chose to do this, but there were some things which could never be undone, and she thought this was one of them. Donna had to agree.

There was also the point, the advisor informed her, that unless a case was made and won against the police and the person who ‘leaked’ this incorrect evidence, Steve would remain on those police records as a ’sex offender’ despite not having been charged for this offence. Social services could still take it upon themselves to take the children into care, especially if they thought that Steve could be guilty and that Donna was not accepting this fact. Basically, if Donna moved back in with Steve, or even if the family moved elsewhere, their children would not be safe from the clutches of social workers. Reluctantly, this time the Solicitor had to agree.

As they were finishing their rather inconclusive meeting, the child psychologist appeared on the scene. She said she had spoken to and played with the girls and in her opinion there was absolutely no evidence of any sexual abuse having happened to any of them. In fact, she added, they were the happiest and most well adjusted children she had seen for a long time. The only thing they were unhappy about was not having seen their daddy for what seemed to them to be a long time.

Although this was very reassuring news to Donna, it left her in a quandry. She desperately wanted to see Steve, to see if he was alright and she wanted him to cuddle her and tell her he loved her as much as she loved him. But she had to think about her kids. If she went anywhere near Steve she was in danger of being followed back to the refuge and discovered by social services. If she told Steve about suing the police to clear his name, he would most likely disagree, as the less he had to do with the police the better he liked it. Which, of course, left her in the position that if she returned to him under these circumstances she was in danger of losing her children.

The solicitor and the advisor offered a solution. The Solicitor would take her to see Steve (who was still in hospital with concussion). The advisor would follow in her own car. The solicitor would explain the situation to Steve and offer his advice. When it was time for Donna to leave, the advisor would bring her back to the refuge by a roundabout route. She was used to this, she told Donna with a smile.

The only stipulation was that the children remain at the refuge. It wasn’t wise to take them anywhere else at the moment. It was also suggested that, however much he pleaded, Steve should not be told where the children where, as he could ‘make things difficult without thinking’. Donna knew this made perfect sense. She also knew this would hurt Steve and the kids, but what else could she do? She agreed to these terms.

Steve was happy and relieved to see Donna. He had been worried for her and the kids, especially when the police had told him she was not at her mum’s house. He wanted to see the kids too, where were they? The solicitor was introduced and he tried to explain the situation. Steve was not impressed.

He was angry and hurt. His sense of injustice was overwhelming. All he wanted was to be with his wife and kids and get on with his life. He knew it probably wouldn’t be possible to live in their old house, and “why would I want to live anywhere near those bastards again anyway?”. But he wanted his wife and his kids back now!

But no, he had no intention of suing the police, “or the fucker who dropped me in it for no reason”. Like many people on that estate, Steve had a strong dislike of the police, but also a strong fear. As far as he was concerned, he would never get justice by suing them. “All that will do is drag my name and my wife and kids through even more mud and the bastards will still find a way to wriggle out of it.”

He pleaded with Donna. “We’ll go somewhere else, start afresh. Stay with your friends until I’m out of here, but then please come and meet me and come away with me. We’ll find ways around all this, I promise.”

But Donna knew that wasn’t going to work. She also knew that, once Steve was out of hospital, he would go on searching until he found her and the kids. He had the right. He had done nothing wrong. But she couldn’t lose her kids. She hugged him and kissed him and said it would be alright and she would be back there to see him tomorrow… and then she left.

She didn’t return.

Life was hard for Donna for a long time after that. The refuge helped her move quickly to another home at the other end of the country. The solicitor helped her change her and her children’s names, free of charge as she had no money. Her children were distraught for a long time and Donna herself ended up very depressed. But she refused to visit a doctor to get medication. She was too scared that social services would be informed and she would lose her kids.

The new refuge set her up with a false address so she could contact her mum, who missed her greatly but who also understood that, for Donna, this was the only way she could survive. Her mum also knew that this was the only way she could not be forced to give anyone details of where Donna really was. Donna’s mum kept in contact with Steve, who also moved away, but after one initial row, they never actually saw each other again.

Ten years have now passed since the ‘incident’. Donna has seen her mum quite a few times over the years at different locations. She has never seen Steve. Donna’s mum informs her that Steve has put divorce papers in action, as he wants to get married again. Donna is relieved to hear this, as she felt unable to do this herself for fear of Steve finding out where she lived. She is also very sad.

Nowadays Donna has a new family. She has been living with her new man for the last two years. He knows she has a secret in her past, but he also trusts Donna (although he doesn’t know this was once her name), so he tries not to pry into her past. He hopes that one day she will trust him enough to tell him her secret. But he is content with things as they are.

Donna and her new man have a daughter who is worshipped by her older sisters. The family is happy, the older girls are doing well at school and have lots of friends. They tell their friends that their mum is divorced, but they can’t remember why, and this is the truth. The eldest two daughters remember that they once had other first names, but they both prefer the ones they have now, so they never tell anyone what they used to be called.

Donna works for a firm of solicitors now. While she was at the refuge, she studied and got some qualifications specifically to work in law. She would study to become a solicitor, but she is afraid that too many questions would be asked about her past, so she has decided not to bother for now. She is content to study law in her free time and the partners at the firm are happy to encourage her. Of course, they do not know why she is so keen to do this.

One day, when her kids are grown, Donna will still be young enough to take a law degree and then she hopes to practice criminal law. You see, she felt the injustice of what happened just as keenly as Steve did and she intends to fight back.

It is unlikely that Donna and Steve will ever meet again and, if they did, it probably would not be a happy reunion. Steve has never forgiven Donna for deserting him in his hour of need and, to be honest, Donna has never forgiven herself for this either. One day she will encourage her daughters to meet their real dad, but only when they are old enough to be safe from the clutches of social services. So it will be a few more years yet before she gives them this advice.

As to the moral of this story? What can I say? Everyone did what they thought was right at the time. Wrong decisions were made causing a great deal of anguish and many regrets. Justice wasn’t served and, in circumstances like these, probably never would have been.

I suppose the only morals we can draw from a tale like this are “think before you act,” and “get your facts right first.” And I’ll leave it at that.

But if anyone chances by and reads this tale, just remember, this could have happened to someone you know. Just be grateful that someone wasn’t you.

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This is an addition. Please look at Rickys Life and again be grateful this hasn’t happened to you or someone you love.

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