Authors: John Marsden
Oh yes, certainly. I just can’t recall right now if he . . .
What steps did you take to establish whether he in fact does have serious psychological damage?
Well, we had him assessed by the experts at Holy Cross Children’s Services, and they agree that he is a child in need of . . .
Was that before or after you took him from his home?
Well it was after, but a very short time after.
So at the time you took him you had no way of knowing whether he had any psychological condition which would require treatment or justify your removing him. And I might mention, and I’ll come back to this later Your Honour, the Department took no steps to ascertain whether Gavin was in better mental health or worse than he was say three months earlier or six or nine. There is no benchmark. He may well have been improving dramatically under the care of Ms Linton.
There are his school reports.
If misbehaviour at school was a reason for taking a child away from his family environment then your department would be busy indeed Ms Randall. Now, let us go through your report in a little more detail, if I could trouble the Court to look at page 3. You say there were dog faeces near the house. How many piles of dog droppings were there?
Just the one. Well, I only saw the one.
Which could have been deposited two minutes before your arrival?
I didn’t take a close look. (laughter)
‘Inappropriate proximity of dog to sleeping area.’ What does that mean exactly?
A dog was asleep on the boy’s bed when I went into the bedroom.
Do you think that’s a common scenario in family life?
I don’t know about that but it’s certainly an unhealthy one.
You don’t know whether dogs sleeping on beds is common or uncommon, is that what you are asking us to believe?
I haven’t done a survey on it, no. All I know is that it’s unhealthy. I’m not required to make a personal judgement on these things, just to report what I see.
Well, we shall come to that presently. ‘Unmade beds and general unkempt conditions in bedrooms. No fruit was observed. A tin of Milo was open on the bench. A wet load of laundry in the washing machine.’ This might be my house on a busy day Ms Randall. It might be anybody’s house. Are you proposing to come and take my children from me because we had a mouse in the kitchen last night?
It’s the totality we look at.
Because you don’t like the number of cans of Pepsi we have in the fridge? Because I’m in the process of fixing the radiator and I’ve got the safety guard off it while I do so?
No, of course not. But when the overall picture is one of . . .
‘Lavatory appeared to be clean but bath and shower area has been neglected for some time.’ ‘Appeared to be’, it’s like the rest of your report, ‘it is possible that’, ‘it is more than probable’, ‘it seems reasonable to suppose’ . . . your report is nothing more than a collection of guesses and hypotheses, and I put it to you, a mirror of your own prejudices.
It’s not meant to be . . . it’s not produced to be analysed in this amount of detail by a barrister, let alone one of your . . . it’s just for the use of the Department, as a guide to us. We, they, don’t normally get the kind of elaborate scrutiny that you’re . . .
(His Honour) Come now Ms Randall, that won’t do. I think you know better than that.
I’m sorry Your Honour, it’s just that we see so many cases, and not every report has the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed perhaps. I know Mr Blaine’s very good at his job but to my mind the child’s circumstances, living with someone who’s still a child herself, legally speaking, really, it speaks for itself, and so this report is possibly not as detailed as some that we do . . .
(His Honour) When we are dealing with the intervention of the State in a child’s life, when we are taking a child out of the conditions to which he has become accustomed and in which he may feel secure and comfortable, I say no more at this stage than that we should be very sure indeed that our i’s are dotted and our t’s crossed, yes, and every other letter carefully formed as well.
(Mr Blaine) I won’t keep you much longer Ms Randall but if you’d like a glass of water . . . ?
No, no it’s all right, go on.
Well, let me put this to you. The Act requires you, does it not, to respond to cases of abuse, it speaks of immediate danger to children, it talks about emotional and physical health and so on . . .
Yes, that’s correct.
Yet according to your report, and I can see by your face that you know where I’m going with this, Gavin’s situation was merely one of a child whose ‘best interests are clearly not being served by his present circumstances’. That falls quite a long way short of abuse and neglect and danger does it not?
Yes, I must admit that my supervisor did point out last week that it wasn’t very well worded. I’d word that differently if I was doing it now. I’ve been told not to use expressions like that any more.
Because if you concerned yourself with children whose best interests are not being served by their present circumstances you would need a hundred thousand extra staff, would you not?
Well, the fact remains that he is a child who needs to be in a very different environment.
You state that as a fact, but it is not a fact, it is an opinion, and it’s because you hold that opinion but are not able to support it with facts that this child’s life has been disrupted yet again and we are here today. Now let me put a few questions to you and then I’ll be finished. Has Gavin ever committed an act of delinquency?
Not so far as I’m aware, not to my knowledge, no.
So your answer is ‘no’ then?
That’s correct, yes, as far as I know.
Has he a criminal record?
I don’t think so, no, no we checked that of course, no he doesn’t.
Has he ever used drugs?
I’m not aware of that, no.
So I’ll put that down as a ‘no’ again shall I? Has he ever made any call upon the State for assistance of any kind?
Not that I’m aware of, no. Except with the kidnapping of course.
But this orphaned child, profoundly deaf, since he has been living with Ms Linton, has made no application for special assistance of any kind to be provided by the government? No demands upon the State, no request for aid? Under the care of Ms Linton he has been completely self-sufficient?
I don’t know of any requests like the ones you’re talking about. He may have done of course.
My instructions are that he has not. And there have been no previous complaints about him to your department?
We don’t have anything on our files, not so far as I know.
In short, apart from the usual truancies and scuffles that boys get into, it seems that he has led a thoroughly blameless life. All right Ms Randall, if my learned friend has no further questions for you, you can step down thank you.
(Mr Short) No further questions Your Honour.
(His Honour) All right thank you Ms Randall, you may step down now.
A
FTER THE SPECTACULAR
destruction of Ms Randall in the witness box I felt a whole lot better, but I knew it was only one battle in the war. I almost felt sorry for her as she scurried out of court. She looked shell-shocked. I would have offered her a tissue but I didn’t feel quite sorry enough to do that. The moment Court adjourned for lunch I rushed up to Mr Blaine, but he wouldn’t talk to me. He was as rude as he had been the first time we met. He was a funny guy. I never figured him out. He was like an actor in many ways I think.
It took me a while, though, to recover from his comment that Gavin had led a thoroughly blameless life. Sheez. If anyone ever found out about the terrible thing he and Mark had done to the kitten, that’d be the end of my court application.
In the afternoon a parade through the witness box began and I spent a lot of the time with my head in my hands. I guess it’s only at a funeral that most people hear what others think of them, all the good things anyway.
I’ve always thought it was a shame, and when I read in the paper the other day about a guy who only had a couple of months to live so he organised a kind of funeral party where he could hear all the speeches people were going to make, I gave him a big silent cheer.
But here I was, still young and healthy, and I was getting to hear all this stuff, and it wasn’t exactly a funeral although it would be close enough to one if we lost the case. The idea was that if enough people who knew me stood up in court and said that I was a halfway decent human being, my chances of getting Gavin back would be a lot better. So I sat there and listened to Homer’s mum and dad, to Fi’s mum, to Kevin’s dad, to Mrs Goh and Mrs Barlow from school, Mr Young, and Mrs Salter from down the road, who was looking a lot more confident now that she’d left her husband, all telling the judge how I was possibly the finest human being on the whole planet, I should have my name in that footpath in Hollywood, get an Oscar, a Logie, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Nobel Prize. And why the Pope hadn’t called me into the Vatican for a quick canonisation was a mystery. Oh yes, that’s right, you have to be dead before that can happen; still, you’d think, after listening to these people, that they should have made an exception for me.
My head’s big enough already, I really didn’t need to hear this stuff. But on the other hand I wasn’t going to miss a word of it.
Gavin’s teacher, Mrs Rosedale, stood up and said that Gavin was a good kid, sure he was mischievous and at times he could be a little unruly, but that was understandable what with one thing and another. I sat there listening and being amazed. It wasn’t like she was there to help me, she didn’t care whether I had Gavin or someone else had him, or at least that was the impression she gave me. Had the nicotine gone to her brain? But it wasn’t just Mrs Rosedale. Why do adults change so much in situations like that? It’s like school reports. Why do they give an A for Always for stuff like ‘Helping Other Class Members’ when you know the kid spends most of his time slumped at his desk dreaming of the good old days in Nazi Germany when people like him were in charge and he had the key to the gun safe? Weird.
Maybe the one who made the biggest impact, though, was General Finley. He came all the way from New Zealand to do it. And to see Jeremy I guess, to be fair. I couldn’t help thinking when I saw him walk in that this guy could have become my father-in-law.
Lee sat next to me, holding my hand when I wasn’t needing it to bury my head in it. I was using both hands quite a lot as the character witnesses came and had their say and left again. Lee kept whispering rude comments about the things they were saying, until Mr Blaine passed a note back saying
Don’t talk, don’t show affection for boyfriend, no contact
, which was a joke. Lee my boyfriend again? No way thanks. Mr Blaine’s note almost sounded like the rules at Wirrawee High. But I realised what he meant: it was not a good look for the judge to see us acting like teenagers in love. Anyway, God forbid I should be in a relationship. You wouldn’t want to entrust a kid to someone who can feel love, would you?
Anyway, General Finley. He was in full military uniform. He looked pretty damn impressive. Jeremy had told me he was retiring from the Army soon, to go into business, and I figured he’d do well. He was a classy guy.
He took the Bible and said the words that I was becoming very familiar with, after two days in court, about not telling any big fat greasy lies, and then went ahead and told them I was responsible, mature, sensible, brave, etc etc etc. So I figured he’d probably burn in hell for those porkers. He didn’t mention the fact that I’d just broken up with his son, and that might have caused his son to break up completely, but he actually apologised to me afterwards for Jeremy, and said he was taking him back to New Zealand to see a psychiatrist. But I’ll always remember him for his loyalty, in coming all that way.
‘The only true test of friendship is the time your friend spends on you.’ I just made that up. Cos nothing else matters really. People can spend time with you, but that isn’t the same thing. You can spend an awful lot of time with someone and not spend any time on them at all. And for that matter people can spend money on you or give you stuff, but when they actually hand you half an hour or an hour or a whole afternoon of their time and it’s all yours, then, well, that’s some gift.
Meanwhile the case went on and on. And on. I gave evidence, and was glad I’d had the experience of doing it in the trial of Mr Manning, because it did help a bit. Gavin gave evidence but I wasn’t allowed to be in court when he was there, in case I put him off. He had to be free to say whatever horrible, mean and nasty things he wanted about me. I was really regretting the number of times I’d bashed him, and hoping he could still remember the difference between play fighting and real fighting. And that he didn’t hold a grudge for all the times I’d pulled him away from
Battle of Titans
on the computer.
Then it was all over. Mr Blaine asked the judge if we could have a quick decision as ‘these two young people have been through a great deal in their short lives Your Honour and it would seem cruel to keep them waiting any longer than strictly necessary’. The judge looked irritated and snapped, ‘I’m quite aware that a good deal rides upon this case for them, Mr Blaine, as it does for everyone else who has applications before this court.’
He looked at his calendar and then announced that he’d give his verdict on Monday, which Mr Blaine told me afterwards was very good and unusually quick, and then I went home to wait.
O
NE THING ABOUT
school, when your life’s going badly you can always hang out there, because so much is happening around you that you can forget your own troubles. Not that it’s my way, to spend all day wallowing in my problems, but there was a lot to worry about. So it was kind of refreshing to arrive at school on Friday and hear a Year 7 girl walking up to her friend and saying in one breath, ‘We get no lunch and we have to pick up papers all lunchtime how badly does that suck?’ which for some reason struck me as very funny.