Saving Gary McKinnon (4 page)

It was Easter Saturday. The Queen Mother had died just seven weeks after her daughter Princess Margaret. Her body lay in state in the Palace of Westminster, a grand and opulent building that, unbeknown to us, would soon become an all-too-familiar part of our lives.

O
ne day the phone rang and we were asked to foster five young siblings. It was an emergency. The youngest was a tiny baby and as well as all the uncertainty in our lives about what was going to happen to Gary, I was doubtful about caring for an infant, as it had been so long since Gary was a baby that I’d almost forgotten what to do.

The social worker said, ‘It’s like riding a bike, you never forget.’ We agreed to take all the children, as they would have been split up otherwise and we didn’t want that to happen.

The social workers arrived with five small children, all aged under six years old. They looked pale and tired, and Mae, the eldest, looked up at Wilson and said, ‘You’ll have to go.’

It was quite late at night, so after giving them something to eat I took them up to their bedrooms. Jay repeatedly dug his nails into my arms, rhythmically, the way a cat does when it’s purring. Jay was anxious and, struggling with speech that was almost impossible to understand, asked me, ‘Will you look after us?’ I reassured him that I would.

Mae was bright and chatty and wanted to help look after her younger siblings. She told me I wasn’t putting the baby’s nappy on properly and insisted on showing me how it was done.
Despite her liveliness, Mae’s eyes had a sadness in them that touched my heart. Our world was rocked and another unforgettable parallel journey began in our upturned lives.

The next day we all went to the supermarket and after getting all the shopping Mae put her hands on her hips and said, ‘You’ve forgotten something.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Wilson.

‘The beer,’ said Mae with a small voice of authority and still with hands on hips.

‘We don’t drink beer,’ said Wilson.

‘You liar,’ said Mae, with a cheeky glint in her eye.

Life was even more of a rollercoaster from that day on. Suddenly we had to get up through the night to feed the baby and then again at 6 a.m. and I would bath the children and change their nappies. Wilson made us all breakfast and later we’d take them out for a walk in the park or to the heath along with our dogs. Gary was brilliant with children and used to come along with us on some of the outings, which the children loved. Walking on the heath also gave Gary a change of scene while he was waiting for news from the CPS on whether or not they intended to charge him. However, there is no doubt that Gary underestimated the gravity of his situation at that point in time.

We took the children on long walks and to wildlife parks, danced with them and painted with them. Mae was the most amazing little girl. She was clever and articulate and always wanted to help. Wilson and I were run into the ground for the first six weeks but as time went on we lost weight and fortunately became fitter than ever.

After they were settled in, I searched the house for musical
instruments for them to have fun with. Five little faces gathered around, eagerly looking up at me to see what I had found for them to play.

‘OK, Jay, I’ve got some maracas for you to shake when we sing.’ Jay took the maracas and beamed.

‘Mae, you can play the keyboard, just hit this key in time with the song, or both of these keys together if you can manage it.’

‘Like this,’ said Mae as she flicked her dark hair back and gave us a demonstration.

‘Yes, just like that,’ I smiled.

‘And Willie, you can bang on the drum and we’ll all play a song for little Michael and baby Charlotte. Now which song shall we play?’

‘“Old MacDonald”,’ said Jay excitedly.

‘I know: we can sing “Wheels on the Bus”. I’ll teach it to you, Jay,’ said Mae, scratching the side of her nose with her head tilted to one side.

Willie smiled and was happy just banging his drum.

‘Stop, Willie, we haven’t started yet,’ said Mae.

I picked up my guitar and started playing and singing ‘Wheels on the Bus’ and Jay shook his maracas while Mae repeatedly played her note in time to the rhythm and sang along with me at the top of her voice. Willie banged on the drum while Michael beamed and Charlotte’s eyes danced as she bounced up and down in her baby walker.

‘Too loud, Willie, too loud,’ said Jay, as he suddenly smacked Willie hard on the front of his head with a maraca.

‘Jay, hitting is not allowed. If someone hits someone else, then the music has to stop, OK?’ Jay’s face fell.

‘Willie, you’ve got a huge bump on your head. Come with me and we’ll get some ice for it. Doesn’t it hurt?’ I said, surprised that Willie wasn’t crying.

‘That’s nothing,’ said Mae. ‘He’s been hit much harder than that.’

One of the reasons I thought it would be good to get the children involved with music is that it’s a powerful tool in helping damaged children to overcome trauma. I’ve since learned that when you make music it lights up the medial prefrontal cortex, which is just behind the eyes and which links music, memory and emotion, and engages many different areas of the brain, including visual, auditory and motor areas. While still in the womb babies are able to respond to music, and learning to play an instrument at a young age has been shown to have a significant effect on the brain. So even something as simple as singing, dancing, shaking maracas, banging on a drum or clapping along to music is beneficial to a child’s well-being. It just takes time – but watch out for those maracas.

I used to lie awake at night to make sure the baby was breathing properly; she was so tiny.

Whenever I couldn’t hear her breathe I’d get up and go over to her cot just to make sure she was OK. Charlotte was a quiet baby, slept well and was easy to care for.

I’d look in on her brother Willie and he’d be asleep with one arm behind his head, which was so cute.

The children all caught measles and the doctors were worried about baby Charlotte and admitted her to hospital. I stayed there with her. Charlotte kept slipping and falling when she stood up in the metal hospital cot as it seemed to slope for some reason, so I took her into the bed on the floor that I was sleeping in. Fortunately she recovered but we both left hospital with a horrendous gastric flu we had caught there and which we passed on to almost everyone else when we got home.

When Jay’s speech improved he told me about the bad man who had hurt him.

The horrific abuse inflicted on young children, often by their own families, never ceases to shock me. I’m just glad that this little family was brought to us in time to stop it escalating and damaging them even more.

Later discovering that one abuser had put a gun to another young child’s head while forcing them to submit to sickening abuse made me overwhelmingly grateful that social services had got these five children to safety. Yet that abuser was never prosecuted. Due to the difficulty of young children giving evidence in court, people all too often get away with crimes against them and are left free to continue with their abuse.

Mae, Jay, Willie, Michael and Charlotte had more energy than any children we had known. Many might have classed them as hyperactive; we saw them as lively, energetic and mischievous. Our love of the outdoors gave the children an outlet for their energy. They loved life but not boundaries and initially swung on and pulled down curtains, pushed earth from plant pots into DVD slots, and Jay once pooed in the book of
Pooh
.

Gary used to play guitar and sing to the children. Baby Charlotte loved this and used to try to jump and dance in her baby walker.

Once, after coming home from a long day at the fair I told the children that they couldn’t take the life-size blow-up aliens that we’d won into their bedrooms but in the morning the aliens were there large as life in their bedrooms and Jay said, ‘Janis, the aliens just walked up the stairs all by themselves and when we told them they had to go back downstairs, they wouldn’t; they just stood there.’

‘Of course they did, Jay,’ I smiled.

Looking after the children was physically hard, but emotionally
rewarding. There were many happy and many sad times, always interspersed with the worry of what might happen to Gary.

The night five-year-old Mae told me she had been abused in her home, I had to fight back the tears as I held her in my arms and tried to help her to make some sense of what had happened to her. This little girl felt guilty and confused because although she hated the man who had hurt her, she liked this same man when he was being kind to her. She also constantly worried about her mummy, whom she loved, and was frightened because mummy was left with ‘the monster’.

Mae asked me, ‘Are people here good?’

I said, ‘Well, lots of people who live in this area are really nice and are good people but you always have to be careful when you don’t know someone, as it takes time to get to know and trust people.’

She looked up at me with big blue eyes filled with tears and said, ‘Where we lived, the people were mostly bad but Mummy was good.’

Jay had no sympathy for the ‘bad man’ and wanted to become a superhero so that he could save his mummy and have the bad man locked up in prison forever.

These tiny children had more resilience than many adults. Despite all that they had gone through they started to blossom before our eyes – although only time will tell just how much emotional damage has been done.

Mae went to school and became one of the most popular girls in her class, and even directed her own plays. Because we had made an independent film she came to believe that she could do anything, and belief is everything.

As we were in a state of limbo, waiting to find out what was going to happen with Gary, having the children to care for helped me to stop permanently dwelling on the various scenarios that frequently popped into my head regarding Gary’s situation.

Gary was interviewed by the police for a second time on 8 August 2002. This time he had a lawyer representing him. Tamsin had researched various lawyers and told Gary that Kaim Todner seemed the best bet. Gary rang Karen Todner, the managing director, and said, ‘Do you do computer crime?’ ‘I could do,’ answered Karen, who from that day on represented Gary with a passion and perspicacity rarely seen in legal circles. However, at that point we were still hoping that this police interview would be the end of the matter, but instead he was bailed until 9 October 2002.

Between those dates I suddenly got another call I didn’t want to hear. The Crown Prosecution Service had told Karen that Gary didn’t have to answer bail in October after all, as the CPS no longer intended to prosecute him – but that America might be seeking to extradite.

‘Extradite!’ At that moment I was plunged into a state of terror. Real heart-stopping terror, the kind that makes you want to grab your possessions and bundle your family into the car and head for the hills.

The Hi-Tech Crime Unit, who had been monitoring his internet activity, had told Gary that he was looking at a UK sentence of six months’ community service for accessing Pentagon computers as he hadn’t damaged anything and hadn’t sent any malicious code, but now they were suddenly talking about America wanting to extradite! It didn’t make sense. Gary was confident that they wouldn’t be able to extradite him as he hadn’t caused any damage. I wasn’t. This was America we were dealing with.

In 2002, without prima facie evidence, i.e. evidence that can be contested in a UK court – and without proof of financial damage of at least $5,000 on each machine – extradition could not take place.
As confirmed by the Crown Prosecution Service, no evidence was ever presented by the US to the CPS to support their allegations of damage. Hearsay does not constitute evidence and is inadmissible as such in British courts.

In November 2002 our worst fears were realised when the US called a worldwide press conference to announce their indictment of Gary and their intention to request extradition to the US, where Gary would face a maximum sentence of ten years per count.

Suddenly six months in the UK had become sixty years in an American prison.

This was crazy. Gary hadn’t murdered anyone; he’d tapped on a keyboard from his bedroom in north London. Why would anyone want to extradite him? Surely extradition was for fugitives who had fled from another country and the scene of a heinous crime?

Gary wasn’t a fugitive, had never left the UK and had not committed a heinous crime. What was going on?

Everything was becoming more terrifyingly surreal by the second. I needed to wake up from this nightmare and find a way out; my mind was racing in search of ideas to save Gary. I also had to lose this fear that was taking hold of me. I needed to think straight. I missed my mum and was beginning to feel little in this big world, but I wasn’t little anymore and couldn’t allow myself to feel that way.

I remember dreaming in detail about my mum’s funeral before she died. In the dream, the sun was shining and my mum was smiling at me and wanted me to speak to her friends. She died one year later and my world was shattered. Despite the dream,
her death was an absolute shock and I just wasn’t ready to lose her.

On the day of the funeral I watched my dream play out in front of my eyes. My brother Ian was standing in the doorway of the church, speaking to our mum’s friends as they filed outside. I’m normally shy but because in my dream my mum had wanted me to speak to her friends, I made a point of doing so, and I believe that my mum was there somewhere watching me, just as she had in my dream.

As the funeral car we were in passed Gary’s dad Charlie, without being touched the horn on the car sounded ‘peep peep’ twice, in a friendly way. The horn then peeped twice again as we passed the house Charlie, Gary and I used to live in. It was a friendly peep, the way people do when they pass someone they know. The chauffeur was very apologetic and said he couldn’t understand how the horn could have peeped twice in succession without being touched, and my sister Lorna said, ‘Don’t worry; it was our mum letting us know that she’s OK.’

The minister looked around at us as though we were crazy, which made me wonder about his beliefs. I mean, surely he believed in miracles?