Saving Gary McKinnon (6 page)

When we got off at the bottom, my skin was raw and bleeding and layers of skin had been totally removed. I was in agony.

We went to first aid but because of health and safety they are no longer allowed to give any cream or medication to members of the public for burns or injuries, which seemed absurd – what’s the point of having a first aid centre when they can’t give first aid? We hurried straight home so I could put gel from our aloe vera plant onto the friction burn to relieve some of the pain, which it did almost immediately.

The phone rang and it was Family Placement to say that they had found potential adopters for the children. When we told the children they would be leaving us they were distraught. They cried all night and told each other that they were staying and that the others were going because they were naughty.

Mae was extremely rude to one of the adopters when she spoke to her on the phone. I had never heard Mae sound so rude and angry. We knew how much the children were hurting and tried to reassure them that they would be loved. All of the progress the children had made started to fade before our eyes as their survival mode kicked in.

The chosen couple visited the children at our home and I liked them immediately. Difficult though it was for us, I felt that the children really would be loved and that comforted me. We were raw but the woman planning to adopt seemed caring and sensitive to our feelings and during an official meeting without the children, we cried together.

The time was drawing closer for the children to move to their new home. Wilson and I took them on holiday and Gary and my sister came along too and we all had the best time ever. We swam, sang and cycled and Mae won a children’s dance competition.

‘Janis, let’s sing a song,’ said Jay.

‘I’d like that too,’ said Mae, holding the end of one of her pigtails to her mouth.

‘Which song shall we do?’

‘“You Are My Sunshine”,’ they said in unison.

I knew this was going to kill me. It was the song I sang to baby Charlotte and to Mae, and to Jay, Michael and Willie. Halfway through I had to stop and leave them to carry on singing. I told the children I had something in my eye but Mae followed me through to the other room and through tears, said that she didn’t want to leave and wanted us all to run away together so that no one could find us. It was heartbreaking.

We did our best to prepare the children for the move and told them how much we liked and trusted the people who were to become their parents. The day the children were leaving was one of the hardest days of our lives. The one consolation was that we liked the people who were adopting them, but saying goodbye and watching them drive away was devastating. The man was going to be the main stay-at-home carer as the woman worked and I knew that Mae was desperately keen for the woman to be at home with them.

Watching them drive away tore us apart and I knew that as well as being sad, Mae was angry with me for letting them go.

For the next few weeks Wilson and I would find ourselves beginning to cry when we were in the car or walking through the supermarket. We worried about the children constantly.

That’s the thing about fostering. When the children leave or are adopted, the chances are you might never see them again and it can feel almost like a bereavement. Foster carers aren’t officially allowed to grieve but of course they do. They are human beings and naturally worry about the future of the children they have cared for and who have lived with them as part of their family.

It is very difficult for foster carers to raise concerns about a child’s welfare after the child has left their care. Foster carers are
basically expected to know their place and rocking the boat is done at your peril.

Because of the secrecy of the family courts, even although many years have passed I could be prosecuted for voicing certain details of children we’ve cared for. However, I’m now going to raise some general points.

Although this does not relate to children we have fostered, children in the UK are allowed to be fostered and adopted by people who belong to cults, and apparently even by people who worship Satan, whether or not the birth parents object. Satanism is a long-established officially recognised religion in the UK and was recently upheld as such by our courts.

While watching the Nicky Campbell Sunday TV show
The Big Question
on BBC1, I was surprised to see a man who apparently performs in porn shows say he is also a foster carer. I doubt this would have been allowed in the past but times have changed.

I consider myself to be reasonably open minded and tolerant. However, when it comes to children I believe we should always err on the side of caution.

When situations arise where foster carers have what they regard as legitimate concerns about the welfare of children they have previously fostered, they should surely be allowed to spend a day with the children to speak to them on their own, or in the presence of an independent social worker, as it could put minds at ease and ensure the children’s safety.

No system is infallible. In one case a birth mother went to court to try and prevent the adoption of her children, when out of the blue an arrest warrant was issued for her. If she did not attend another court at exactly the same time as the adoption hearing was taking place in a different court, she was to be arrested. The young mother, although terrified, bravely
went to court on her own to fight for her children. At the very last minute someone managed to sort out the error that had occurred. The arrest warrant for the children’s mother was deemed to be a ‘mistake’. This happened to the same mother again some months later when she was again wrongly imprisoned for days while in the midst of fighting for her children. The secrecy of the family courts can make it almost impossible for genuine cases of injustice to come to light and it is inevitable that there will always be some such cases.

Ironically the insight we gained into the workings of the system was akin to a rehearsal for what was to come in Gary’s case, and was partly responsible for some of the decisions I took that I believe played a major part in saving Gary.

G
ary and Tamsin separated in 2003. Gary was living a hermit-like existence and rarely ventured out until he met Lucy from Leicester in late 2004. Lucy was down to earth, easygoing and attractive, with blondish hair and a ready smile. She put Gary at his ease. He was comfortable in Lucy’s company and it was good to see him looking relaxed for the first time in years.

Lucy lived in Leicester but worked in London for a charity five days a week. She and Gary started to see each other. They had a lot in common, including a love of children, cats, music and cooking. Eventually Gary told Lucy about the US indictment just in case it ever reared its head again, although by then more than three years had passed since Gary’s arrest in 2002, so we were sure it was going to be dropped. I mean, they couldn’t just decide to try to extradite him more than three years after his arrest, could they?

Suddenly, on 7 June 2005 the phone rang: it was Gary.

‘Mum, I’ve been arrested.’

‘Oh no, Gary, no!’ I screamed. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in Brixton Prison.’

I could hear the fear in his voice.

‘What’s wrong, Janis, what’s happened?’ said Wilson anxiously.

My voice was breaking and I could hardly speak. I was trying to hold it together as absolute terror struck my heart.

‘Gary’s been arrested, he’s in Brixton Prison.’

Saying the words out loud made it worse somehow, as though an invisible veil shielding me had been ripped away, forcing me into a stark reality I wasn’t ready to face.

It reminded me of when, months after my mum died, I had to fill out a form that involved writing down that my mum was ‘deceased’ and I couldn’t do it. I mean obviously I knew my mum was dead, but somehow having to write down that word was the most traumatic thing, as the finality of her death hit me and I was forced to accept the painful reality I thought I had faced but hadn’t.

Actually saying the words ‘he’s in Brixton Prison’ tore through my heart. I couldn’t even voice the thought of the word ‘extradition’ as that would make it real and my mind couldn’t deal with it right now.

I could hear Gary’s voice in the distance.

‘Two men jumped out of a car when I was walking along the road and asked if I was Gary McKinnon. When I said yes they arrested me and bundled me into a car. They said they were the extradition squad and brought me to Brixton Prison. The guards are taking me to court in the morning.’

Gary was trapped; I wanted him out. I wanted to run with him to safety but they had him, he wasn’t free anymore.

‘When the extradition squad stopped you, you should have said no you weren’t Gary McKinnon. Why didn’t you ring me? I could have done something!’ I screamed.

‘You couldn’t, Mum.’

‘Are you in a cell on your own?’

‘No, I’m with a Scottish man.’

‘What is he in prison for?’

Gary fell silent.

‘What is he in prison for, Gary?!’

‘He’s accused of murdering someone but I’ve told him my mum and dad are Scottish.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m being sarcastic, Gary, ignore me. How did they know your address? Surely they should have contacted Karen, your solicitor, first and arranged for you to go into the police station instead of pouncing on you in the street and bundling you into a car?’

‘I’m sorry, Mum.’

‘It’s not your fault. How can they be allowed to arrest you three and a half years after the fact? How can they?!’

Wilson took the phone.

‘It’ll be OK, Gary. We’ll see you in court tomorrow and your lawyer will sort it out.’

‘Someone else wants the phone. I have to go in a minute.’

‘OK. Take care, Gary, we love you.’

‘Love you too.’

I couldn’t move. This deep, dark, pervading fear was invading the hollow space in my heart at an unsafe speed, ruthlessly forcing happiness to eject without my heart having a chance to prepare for the effects of being plunged into darkness.

‘Oh Wilson, how will Gary survive in Brixton Prison? What if he’s extradited? This can’t be happening.’ I was stifling the sobs that were rising to my throat. ‘Are we suddenly living in Nazi Germany? He’s a computer geek, for God’s sake, a computer geek! If he’d rung us we could have done something.’

‘We couldn’t, Janis, what could we have done?’

‘We could have crashed into their car and got Gary away and I could have hidden him.’

‘We couldn’t, Janis, you’re not thinking logically.’

‘I am thinking logically, he can’t go there, he’d never survive, you know that!’

‘I know that but the Americans have sat on it for over three years and how are they going to explain that to the judge? The courts won’t extradite him and he’ll get bail until it’s sorted out, it’ll be OK.’

‘What if he doesn’t get bail? And even if he does it will probably be about £100,000 and we couldn’t afford anything like that in a million years.’

‘You’re panicking, Janis.’

‘I’m panicking, I am, I’m panicking. Will you go and see to the children, Wilson? I need to try and get myself together and I don’t want them to see me being upset.’

‘OK. Don’t worry, Janis, it’ll be OK.’

We were now caring for a group of five young siblings and I was fighting hard to remain calm.

Losing control was rare for me but this heart-stopping fear left me clutching at the air in desperation for something or someone to appear out of the blue and to make everything OK again.

‘I wish you were here, Mamma, I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.’

The 2003 extradition treaty wasn’t supposed to be used retrospectively, so how could our courts allow this? The US had been sitting on Gary’s case since 2002 when they issued an arrest warrant and announced their intention to extradite, yet the CPS hadn’t made them produce prima facie evidence as they were obliged to do at that time. Instead, the US had been permitted to wait until 2005 before getting a UK arrest warrant for
extradition, by which time the 2003 UK–US treaty was being used by the UK and evidence was no longer required to extradite any British citizen. However, the treaty was still not ratified by the US. How could this be allowed? They could never justify a three-year delay in court, surely?

I wasn’t able to see Gary until the next day, when he was brought to Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. We had never been there although we knew the area well.

We passed the beautiful sculpture of the ballet dancer glinting in the sunlight as she sat pensively, with head bowed, outside Bow Street Court, as though sensing the worry of the troubled people filing past her before they walked through the imposing courtroom doors into the dark and dismal foyer full of desperate people.

The contrast of walking from the light into the gloom and seeing unfortunates huddled with their lawyers in darkened corners of this Dickensian scene was chilling. It’s one of those places you don’t want to go into and can’t wait to get out of.

The inside had panelled wooden walls and smelled old and musty, the way those historic buildings do. It was a place of wigs and hierarchy and sombreness. I wore a long black unbuttoned coat dress, with black trousers and top underneath and I was now feeling the heat on this hot June day. Presumably because of my black clothes, I was mistaken for a barrister when I was in the foyer and security allowed me to go through first.

Old school friends of Gary’s were there and journalists were everywhere. This was the first time I had met Lucy and it was under the darkest of circumstances. I removed my long black coat as I walked into the courtroom, and could feel the eyes of the journalists on us.

Gary hadn’t arrived and I was worried. Had something happened to him that they hadn’t told us? Had he been attacked by the man sharing the cell?

Eventually Gary arrived very late because the prison guards had forgotten about him. It was unbelievable: they had actually forgotten about him and had to get another van to collect him from Brixton Prison to bring him to the court.

I had visions of hijacking the van and rescuing Gary and getting him to a place of safety. You have an absolute duty to protect your child and if you leave it too late and they are carted off to a land that has a judicial system that thinks Guantanamo prison camp is acceptable, or that locking a prisoner up in solitary confinement for up to forty years is not torture, or that putting a man to death after decades on death row is not barbaric, and where male rape in prisons is so endemic that suicide becomes the only option for some – then what does that say about you as a parent or as a human being?

Would anyone simply allow their child to be extradited without putting up the fight of their lives, if they realised for just one second what was at the other end? Of course they wouldn’t.

Gary walked into the court and slouched forward as he stood in the dock, the way you do when you’re wishing the ground would open up and swallow you.

‘Stand up straight, Mr McKinnon,’ the judge ordered in sergeant-major-style voice.

Gary stood to attention as instructed. It was hard sitting there watching, as he looked so vulnerable.

The journalists all laughed when they heard that Gary’s passport was years out of date and had been issued to him when he was at school, as he never travelled. The judge banned Gary from using the internet, which seemed crazy as the US and the CPS had left Gary on the internet for three and a half years after his arrest in 2002, proving that they regarded him as no threat whatsoever, and Gary had not abused that trust.

I was convinced bail was going to be £100,000 or more, which
we could never afford. Gary was chewing his nails and staring down at the floor.

His barrister asked for bail and explained we were not wealthy and, unbelievably, the prosecutor, a kind woman, didn’t object and the magistrate set bail at £5,000.

She didn’t object! This was the best news I’d heard since Gary was arrested. He was going to be bailed, he’d be free again and as long as he was free he’d be OK. I just had to fight to get the truth out and to keep him free. I could do that.

The judge ordered the next court hearing to take place on 27 July 2005.

I was ecstatic and so relieved I almost ran out of the courtroom.

Outside in the sunshine I could breathe again. Looking up at the sky I wanted to spin round with my arms outstretched and get lost in the dizziness, the way you do when you’re a child and you and the sky become one.

The bail money had to be paid in cash and we only had a few hours left to raise it. We ran around using cash cards and credit cards but daily limits on bank cards meant we were still well short of what we needed and the banks were closed. We drove to Enfield and borrowed money from close friends who don’t trust banks. Cash is king, they said, and that day it was.

I could barely believe that at virtually the last minute we had managed to get the whole amount together, but the bail office at Bow Street Magistrates’ was closing so we had to run to have any chance of making it in time.

We got there too late and my heart sank as I realised it was past closing time. We walked up to the door anyway and were taken aback when it suddenly opened. The young women who worked there had waited for us to arrive with the money so that we could collect Gary from Brixton Prison and take him home.

This was the start of people we didn’t know going out of their way to help us and I was so grateful to them as I didn’t want Gary to have to spend another night in a prison cell.

We drove to Brixton. They had already released Gary, who was waiting outside the prison for us when we arrived. He was free, they didn’t have him, and he was on his way home.

Next day we were sitting at the kitchen table looking through the newspapers and there was a horrendous photo of Gary on the front pages. Media headlines shouted
CYBERTERRORIST
and
CRIMINAL MASTERMIND
, which anyone who had met Gary knew was the furthest thing from the truth.

‘That photo doesn’t look anything like you, what have they done?’ I was looking at one of the worst photos of Gary I’d ever seen.

‘I was in the police van and the photographers were pressing their cameras against the high blacked-out windows and flashbulbs were going off non-stop. They were banging against the van and shouting “Gary! Gary!” I was low down on the floor of the van and I realised the photos would be in all the papers and I didn’t want to look like a criminal, so I looked up and I tried to smile. Huge mistake, eh?’

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Wilson as he looked at the papers.

‘The photos were taken with wide-angled lens through tinted windows and it’s the fish-eye distortion that’s made you look odd, that photo looks nothing like you. It might have been designed to make you look sinister to make the story seem more dramatic.’

‘Please don’t get involved, Mum, or I’ll look silly, needing my mum to speak up for me when I’m thirty-nine years old,’ said Gary worriedly.

I decided that if it all went smoothly I’d keep a very low profile but if things looked as though they were going to go badly, I would step in.

Gary was articulate, of that there was no doubt, but he was vulnerable and young for his age and could easily misjudge the mood or motives of others. He tended to get the wrong end of the stick, causing him to respond in a way that could be misinterpreted. Many people thought Gary was aloof, when in fact he was quiet and lacked confidence.

I was hugely relieved that Gary was free again and I knew I had to keep him free. To do that I had to learn everything about the extradition treaty and about how everything works inside and outside the courts. I initially stayed away from the meetings he had with his legal team as he wanted to prove he could do this on his own and I didn’t want to embarrass him.

Gary started giving interviews and every time I read them I would want to curl up and die. He was being asked by journalists to tell them what he had done and how he had done it. They understandably wanted a story but Gary’s freedom and very life was on the line and I don’t think he realised that he might be making things worse for himself. However, I quickly discovered that people liked Gary. From young guys and girls to old white-haired ladies and men, who invariably described Gary as that lovely young man.