It is nearly 18 months now since Tina Sampson was famous. In the early days of 1994, she was one of the notorious “Home Alone” mothers, who was said to have left her five small boys alone in a house so foul with dog mess and general filth that police officers were physically sick and social workers described it as a toilet. To a national chorus of approval, all five of her boys, aged between six months and six years, were taken away from her.
It seemed that she deserved no better. She had produced a baby every year since she was 16, but she relied on her mother to look after them. She was entangled with two boyfriends, both of whom were suspected of sexually abusing children, each of whom was bringing trouble and stress into the home. She sometimes drank. Habitually, she slashed her arms. And she was living in a state of chaos in a council house with broken windows, damp walls, bare boards and next to no furniture.
But even then, as the social workers and the reporters filled their files with the details of her failure, there was something about her which refused to fit this portrait of a neglectful mother. Simply, she wanted her children back. And when the headlines had faded and she was left alone in her home, she signalled her despair in graffiti on the bare plaster walls of her front room, where she laboriously scratched the names of her five boys over and over again along with her message to the world: “I love my kids. I want my kids.”
Ever since those days in January 1994, she has been fighting for the return of her children. After nearly 18 months of investing all her courage and energy, she has been rewarded with moments of victory but, along the way, it has become clear that she is fighting an opponent of monsterous size – not the Leeds City social workers who took her children away but who have since become very close to her, but the years of poverty which have corrupted her whole life.
To begin with, she tried to fight through the courts and she found herself a young lawyer in Leeds, Mark Burns, who was willing to help her. From the outset, she had a little of the truth on her side. She knew, if no-one else did, that she had never left her children home alone at all. That was an idea that was dreamed up by one of her boyfriends, who was waging war on her. Over the weeks, he had broken her front windows, burned out a couple of stolen cars in her back garden, tried to persuade the police that she was handling stolen goods and then, following a fashion of the moment, accused her of leaving her children home alone. The rest of the stories about her were exaggerated but still, the truth was bad enough.
Mark Burns agreed to fight for the children in court, but Tina soon discovered that if she wanted to win with the judge, she would have to turn her whole life into a kind of test. She would be allowed to see her youngest child, Jason, during the day but her every move would be watched and assessed by a worker from the NSPCC, who would file a formal report on her skills as a parent. More than that, in order to prove her right to motherhood, she would have to rid her life of all the chaos that had invaded it: no drinking, no arm-slashing, no crazy boyfriends, no sign of any instability at all. Life would become an obstacle course, to be surmounted each day. She agreed.
She set out to rid herself of all the mess that surrounded her. She dragged out of the house anything that was dirty or broken – or that anyone might even think might be dirty – and she burned the lot in the back garden. She started saving £5 a week to buy herself new furniture. She kicked out both boyfriends and she tried to close the door on all the wandering friends and neighbours who were in the habit of haunting her like bad dreams.
It wasn’t easy. She was living on an estate which had been reduced to social rubble by a bombardment of crack, smack, crime and aggravation. Just about everyone she knew was in some kind of trouble. In fact, her best friend had had both her kids taken away from her, too. Then, she had a stroke of pauper’s luck – the kind that would be bad for anyone who had anything that was worth a bean in their lives. While she was up at her mother’s one night, some youths from the estate broke into her house to sniff gas and accidentally started a fire, which whipped through the building and left it in ruins. She was forced to move on and, although at first she had to sleep on the floors of friends, she was eventually given a new flat in another part of Leeds that was poor but not yet deadly.
The legal wheels turned slowly, and it was September before the courts were finally ready to consider her case. By that time, she had been monitored under the microscope of the NSPCC, who concluded, to her great joy, that she had done well in her trial sessions with her young son, Jason. They reported that the boy, who had just passed his first birthday, was “bright, alert and happy”, that Tina had “shown great affection towards him and they have both always been pleased to see each other” and that she now showed good parenting skills and was able to care for Jason’s physical and emotional needs.
In court, however, the past caught up with her. Everyone agreed that she had done well and that there was a real prospect that she might be re-united with Jason, but no-one could imagine that she would be able to care for all five of her children. The problem was beyond her reach, back in her own childhood.
She had been born in poverty and her whole childhood had been wrecked by the stress which it inflicted: her mother shuffling partners, her father disappearing before she even knew him, her step-father bashing her and wanting to be rid of her, her mother finally agreeing and putting her into care when she was only six, the authorities passing her through the hands of seven different foster parents until finally at the age of 13, she had been sent back to her mother.
She still remembered the day that she got home, how her mother had laid on a party for her and invited all the neighbours and spent all of her week’s money on food, and how when her mother had come up to her and put her arm around her, she had wriggled away and told her to leave her alone. The poverty had got inside her and damaged her at the core. She had no faith in anyone any more, least of all herself, and it was in this state of wounded confusion that she had resumed her childhood, on an estate on the edge of Leeds City Centre that was now riddled with even more poverty than when she had gone into care, along with drugs and drink and debt and violence. Within two years, she had become pregnant with the first of her boys. She had wanted to be a good mother, to be a better one than her own, but she had never found a way to repair the damage inside her. And so she had drunk and cut herself and slid down into the chaos.
Now, reviewing this history of inadequacy, the court ruled that she was incapable ever of becoming a mother again to her four oldest boys, who would stay with their foster parents while the social workers decided whether they should be split up and where they should all live. Tina would see them every six weeks for a day. She was profoundly depressed to lose them and still wanted to believe that she could cope with them all if only she was helped, but, in amongst her sadness, she had one bright hope – that she would have Jason back. The court and the social workers all agreed that if she continued to do well, she should have a chance.
By now, she had moved into her new flat and, laboriously, she set about making it a home. She was living on £67 a fortnight in income support. She applied for a loan and was told she could have £110 but she would have to pay it back at the rate of £10 a fortnight. It left her desperately short of cash, but she agreed. She bought a little bed for Jason and a square of carpet for his room, covered with pictures of cars and planes. She went round the whole house scraping the ugly old paper off the walls. She had managed to save £50 and she used it to buy some cheap, pale paper for the front room and the bathroom and some childrens paper with bright-coloured clowns dancing around for Jason’s room. She hung it herself.
Her social worker found her a sofa for the front room, the nursery gave her some curtains, and she scrounged a cooker from a local church. She had no table but someone had once given her an old spin-dryer and, since she couldn’t afford the electricity to run it, she put that in the corner of the front room with a cloth over it. She had no pictures for the walls, but the foster parents who were looking after her four oldest boys had given her some photographs of them, and the boys had done splashy paintings for her, so she stuck them all up in one corner, like a kind of shrine. On the window sill, she put a ball of putty with a dozen matchsticks in it, the ‘hedgehog’ that her second son had made for her.
The walls of the hall and of her room were still bare plaster and there was no heat in the house, because she could not afford the gas, but she was proud of what she had done. It was a home, the first she had ever really made. She had found a new boyfriend, Darren, and in order to be sure that there was no trouble with him, she had told the social workers all about him and they had carried out an assessment of him, to make sure he had no criminal record and that he was the kind of person who was suitable to be around children. They came back and said he was fine, and he moved in. It felt a bit like an arranged marriage but, if it meant she could have Jason back, she didn’t mind.
It was on December 19 last year that Jason finally came home. She was happy, he was happy, the social workers were happy. After nearly a year, Tina had a family again. There were all kinds of rules attached, which the social workers drew up in the form of a contract for Tina and Darren to sign. It spelled out everybody’s role and listed some of the things which would persuade the social workers to take Jason back into care – if she took up with any of her former boyfriends or anyone else with a criminal record, if she let any other person take care of Jason, or if he suffered any serious injury that was not an accident.
All went well. Or, if it didn’t, Tina did her best to make it. It was true that Darren started to be a bit violent with her. Once he threw an ashtray that left a black bruise on her leg. Another time, he kicked her in the arm with steel-capped shoes. But she forgave him and wrapped the bruises up in bandages so that no-one would know. After a while, she did tell her social workers but she promised that Darren would be OK. There was trouble with Jason’s weight – he just wouldn’t eat. It had been the same when he was in care. Tina gave him sweets and crisps because that was all he seemed to want, but the social workers didn’t think that was such a good idea and they arranged for him to go a nursery each day where they would help with meals, and Tina carried on mothering, growing in confidence as she saw herself succeed.
For two months, they all survived. With a child to care for, Tina had a little extra benefit which she used to buy clothes and toys for Jason. He seemed happy. Then one morning in February, as she was getting him out of his bed, Tina noticed that Jason had a red rash around his neck. She took him to see the GP, who said he wasn’t too sure what it was. He agreed it might be some kind of rash, but he would like the paediatricians at St James’ Hospital to take a look. And when they saw Jason, they worried that this might be an injury, possibly caused by strangulation. They informed the police and, suddenly, Tina was in a crisis.
She told them she had not touched the child, and they accepted her word. But they were worried, and they asked about Darren. She said she was sure he would never hurt the boy, he had never lifted a finger against him, and social services had checked him out and said he was OK. But it was true that he had taken Jason out on his own the other day. She still insisted Darren would never hurt a child, but she couldn’t prove it. The doctors and the social workers agreed that Jason should stay in hospital while the police found a second opinion, and they went to the most knowledgeable source in Leeds, Professor Michael Green, a Home Office consultant pathologist.
Professor Green reported that this kind of petechial haemorrhage around the neck could be caused naturally but only in rather unusual circumstances – blood clotting, for example, or meningitis – but in this case, he said, with a child who was remarkably healthy he found the marks “very suspicious”. It was impossible to prove, he said, but he suspected that the marks could have been produced by compression to the neck. Someone should keep a very close eye on this family, he recommended.
The social workers pointed to the contract which they had with Tina and Darren, to the clause which warned that Jason would be taken back into care if he suffered any serious non-accidental injury. Tina pleaded that she had never touched him, that she really didn’t understand it, and even if Darren had done it – which she didn’t believe – it was wrong to punish her. The social workers said they were sorry, because they knew she had tried, but the law insisted that they should protect the child and, on the best evidence in the city, this child appeared to have been the victim of a serious attack. Five days after he woke up with the red marks on his neck, Jason was taken from St James’ Hospital and returned to care.
Tina felt as though she had lost everything and, for the first time in a year, she sat down in her flat with a razor blade and screwed it into her wrist and then sat quietly alone on the sofa, bleeding into her lap. Her sister came and found her and cleaned her up and told her not to be so silly, not to give up, and persuaded Tina to try once more to bring Jason home.
She went back to her lawyer, Mark Burns, who said he would do his best for her, though it was not easy without any money to pay for a second opinion on the marks on Jason’s neck. Once more, she tried to clean out her life. She got rid of Darren, just in case it was his fault, and, although she had been thinking of marrying him, she told him never to come back. She tried to make sure the house was clean and neat, in case anyone official came to visit. Social Security heard that she had lost her child, so they cut off her Child Benefit and reduced her income support, but she still wanted to be a mother and so she carried on buying clothes for Jason, which left her with no cash for any kind of fuel and no way of even leaving the house. She simply sat on the sofa and hoped.
Two months later, in April, the social workers held a case conference when they sat down with Tina and with everyone who had been involved and considered the future for Jason. It was not such an unusual case. They were dealing with more and more child protection work – in fact, the number of cases had doubled in the last four years. They were now investigating 60 cases a week – physical abuse, sexual abuse, simple neglect – and the more they saw, the more they understood its roots.
They had just completed a survey of all their child protection cases, and the chairman of the working party, Bernard Atha, had been forthright in his judgement – child abuse was directly linked to poverty: “Affluence is no guarantee that abuse will not occurr. In fact, abuse in the more affluent families may be much more difficult to identify and investigate. However, poverty and deprivation appear to guarantee increased levels of child abuse of all kinds. Abuse abounds where family stress increases.
“Only society as a whole can reverse the trend of the increasing numbers of people living in poor housing, with below the European Union income subsistence levels, and suffering from chronic unemployment. Social services and the other agencies can only apply sticking plaster and splints to the damage done by these evils.”
But if it was easy to understand the roots of Tina’s trouble, it was much harder for the case conference to find ways to help her. The law demanded that, above all else, Jason should be protected. There was still no explanation for the marks on his neck, and Tina had a history of mixing with the wrong men. If they put Jason back with her, they reasoned, they might be exposing him to more risk. If he was to have any chance of a reasonable life, he had to be given stability as soon as possible and so, reluctantly, they told Tina that they believed he should never go back to her again. He should be freed for permanent adoption and, if she ever became pregnant again, it was likely that they would ask to have any new baby adopted as well.
Now, Tina is home alone again. She refuses to stop hoping and is relying on Mark Burns to go to court and win Jason back. She says she knows she made mistakes: “I have realised what I have done wrong in the past. I know I wasn’t a fit enough mother in the past. But I’ve changed a lot. I have grown up a lot. I used to be with lads, drinking and slashing up. I don’t do that no more.”
She has found a kitten for company and spends a lot of time sitting alone with it, wrapped up in blankets when the weather is cold, dreaming of motherhood. She is trying to save up for a present for her oldest boy. It’s a toy motor bike which she saw in a catalogue and it costs £290. “Ages ago, I told him I’d get it for him, but I’ve not managed to save anything yet. I’ve got nout. Just to get in to the solicitors, I have to save up for the bus fares. I do feel badly done by, but I’m not as bad off as the ones on the streets. I’m pretty lucky really. At least I’ve got a roof over my head and furniture. If I had the chance, I’d like to be happy. I’d like to have all five of me kids, but I know that’s impossible. Even to have my youngest back would be great. It would be great to have him back and go for a bit of a holiday, to Whitby or Scarborough. I always used to go to Whitby when I was in care.”
What hurts her most is that she can see her own children being thrown into the same trap which has damaged her. “With my mam, I don’t class her as my mam. I class her as a friend. I can’t go up to her and give her a kiss, like some children can. I can’t. I don’t know. There’s a brick wall between us. Because of me being in care and everything. And I can see mine – they are going to come back to me and say ‘You didn’t love us, you put us away, you must have hated us’. I can see it. I think that’s what I’m most scared of. That’s why I want them home. I don’t want them to think that I neglected them.”
She still keeps her house as clean as a new pin, in case anyone comes round to look, though the damp has sprouted black spots on the paper she stuck on the bathroom walls. She still sees Jason. She is allowed to visit him at the nursery three days a week and she is happy that he still calls her mam, though she finds it quite painful to see him go, and she usually leaves before his van comes so that she’s not there to upset him . At home, she keeps his room ready, with the bed neatly made, in case they win the court case, whenever that happens. And, in the meantime, she has taken the one decent photograph she has of her boy and slipped it onto the pillow and pulled the blankets up around its chin in the room with the bright-coloured clowns on the wall.
* In order to conceal the identity of the children in this story, the names of Tina, Jason and Darren have been invented.
