Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) by Jeanne D'Olivier Page A

police corruption - the stuff of conspiracy novels - inconceivable in Britain in the twenty first century - but reality is often stranger than fiction.
                  Dad believed that we would have been found anyway.  He may have been right, but as I lay on that floor unable to move and in the agony of despair, I only saw that he had given us up and that M was gone and suffering immeasurable anguish and fear.
                  We had been like Jews hiding in the attic, handed over to the Nazis and at that time I saw his betrayal as trying to protect his own life – a life that was almost at end, when my little boy’s life had barely begun.  If it had been anyone else who had shopped us, I could have borne it more easily, but I now had the added pain of knowing it was someone I truly loved and trusted and our relationship might never be the same again.  Another bereavement to bear and one I suspect shared with many across Britain today who find themselves in similar circumstances.  For those left behind are manipulated, promised, emotionally blackmailed and even threatened by the police and the social services.  Torturing elderly relatives into disclosing their own, is child's play to those who will protect the system at all costs.
                  Morning came at last and I tried again to contact the CAS for information.  I could get none.  It was Saturday – they didn’t even know who I was at first.   They told me my son was fine – but how could I know if that was true and did it really seem likely?   I needed proof.  I needed to see him and hold him.   “Ring back on Tuesday when we reopen.”  The slow American drawl said the words as if I had been asking for the opening hours of the local library – always polite – but without emotion.
                  I wrote to the lawyer, Martha-Jane by email.  I tried to put in fifty lines, the synopsis of our last three years.  My hands were still trembling – but at least it was something to do and I had to do something.  I explained to her why we had run – the abuse – the Courts, but how do you tell a lawyer in a westernised country that there is corruption in a small Scottish Island.  Are they likely to believe you?  Even as I wrote the words, I knew that it would sound “incredible”.  I knew she would not believe me and sure enough her response later that night, was to go back and face the music.  Offer to go back to the Island voluntarily, hands up guilty and eat humble pie.  Looking back, perhaps that was not bad advice, but I still believed I could save M.  I still believed that the American Courts would not send a child back to an abuser.  I still wanted to try and protect him from the terrible life he would face if he was sent back and given to his father as seemed even more likely now.  I thanked her for her advice but I decided to get at least one other opinion before I gave up.  Perhaps I could still salvage our dream of living free ?  I had to try.  M deserved that at least.
                  Tania, Larry's wife was deeply sympathetic and empathised with me as a mother and also as a woman who had faced a bitter divorce.  Her ex-husband had tried to say she was an unfit mother and had put her through something of hell, but I guess the fact she then married a lawyer must have been a help.   She had come through it scarred but with her family intact.  She told me that there would be a hearing within five days of taking M.  She said the CAS had to show cause as to why they had taken him and she offered to contact the Court and see when the hearing was set down for and let me know.  She was amazing.  She contacted Duty Counsel, a very nice female lawyer called Louise who advised that in the absence of securing my own lawyer in time for the hearing which was scheduled for the Wednesday of the following week, she would represent me and that I could meet her at the Court