The Runaway Schoolgirl (9 page)

A
week after that seven-hour interview at the police house in Hailsham, Gemma announced that she had more information that she wanted to share with the police. I didn’t press her about what this information was, I just duly went along with her.

It turned out that she was starting to get angry about what she was hearing about Forrest’s past. She wanted to tell the police that she wouldn’t have started any relationship had she known he was still having a relationship with his wife. She isn’t that type of person and she had believed everything he had told her. She didn’t add anything that would support the evidence the police already had, but she took the opportunity to express her feelings. The interview lasted five hours and I wouldn’t say she felt better afterwards by any means. She
was confused and hurt, and the one person she could ask for confirmation in all of this was in prison.

On one hand, social media was saying she was part of an amazing love story. On the other, she was being told ‘lies’ about her boyfriend. She wanted a chance to put the record straight about the love they had for each other. As before, she once again insisted it wasn’t an infatuation, it was real.

I had hoped the interview would reveal more information, but it didn’t. The police were very understanding, however. They wanted Gemma to feel comfortable to be able to speak to them.

At home, things were starting to be fractious between us. I was trying to monitor what Gemma was eating and drinking, and how much sleep she was getting, but I also had to give her plenty of space. She was very defensive if anyone was horrible about me on social media, but there was an increasingly bigger barrier growing between us. Quite honestly, I didn’t know how to deal with it.

Sarah, the family social worker, had been absolutely brilliant with all of us. Gemma was already having sessions with a therapist, and Sarah suggested that the rest of the family should get some counselling as well. It would be a safe, controlled environment allowing us all to speak freely about our feelings. This could only be positive, right?

It ended up backfiring really badly. We were only a couple of sessions into our therapy when Gemma and Lee took it upon themselves to annihilate me as a mother. It was just an onslaught of the most horrible things. They claimed that I had got together with Paul too quickly after splitting up with Max and that we had decided to have a baby together without
thinking it through. They also said I had been working so hard and didn’t have enough time for them.

It was all my fault.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We are the type of family that regularly has family conferences if any of us has something on our mind. When I first met Paul, I made sure that I told the children all about him before I allowed them to meet, and we talked about the two of us having a baby with the rest of the children, as a family.

All these allegations from Gemma and Lee were completely new to me. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. It was a completely venomous attack.

I remember leaving the session feeling totally shell-shocked. No one said a word in the car on the way home.

I was distraught. When I told Sarah about what had happened, she said she wasn’t surprised at all. She told me that they obviously had so much anger about the way their worlds had been torn apart that they had to deflect it on to someone – and I was a safe person for them to release their feelings on.

As their mother, there was no way that I was going to stop loving them for what they said to me. There would never be any consequences about what they said and I would never throw it back at them, so in a way I was the natural target. Sarah said it was part of the process that they were going through, but maybe it had been too soon to start counselling. It was still all just too raw.

And Sarah was right. When I speak to Gemma and Lee about those meetings now, they are full of remorse and find it extremely difficult to talk about what happened.

Meanwhile, the local education authority was concerned
about the amount of school that Gemma was missing – especially as it was her GCSE year – so it was arranged for Gemma, Sarah and me to meet someone from the East Sussex Department of Education. What they proposed astounded me.

They said that the best way forward for Gemma would be for her to return to Kennedy High School, arguing that she needed to reconnect with her old friends and teachers, and that it would be the easiest way for her to get back to her studies. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Over my dead body! If I allow her to go back to Kennedy High School, it would be like feeding her to a pack of wolves!’ I declared.

I hadn’t disagreed with anything the police or the Child Protection Services had suggested before this, but there was no way I was going to let that happen.

Amazingly, Gemma wanted to go back to Kennedy High School and said she would not be prepared to go to any other senior school in the area. As far as she was concerned, it would all blow over once the initial curiosity had worn off.

Luckily, there was another option – FLESS, which stands for Flexible Learning Educational Support Service. It is a stepping stone for secondary school children who have spent time out of school for one reason or another, and was perfectly suited to Gemma’s situation. The nearest centre to us was in Seaford, about an hour’s round trip away. Gemma would have to be taken and picked up from the school, as that was one of the conditions of attendance. It was quite limited in the amount of subjects it offered on its curriculum, but the school was happy to accommodate anything that she required. They offered Skype sessions, but we agreed that Gemma should go there three days a week from 9am until 3pm, starting in
November. Her attendance would be extended to a full week once she had settled in.

We knew we were in for a long stretch but, bit by bit, it felt like life was getting back on an even keel.

On Monday, 12 November, Forrest appeared in Hastings Magistrates’ Court via videolink from Lewes Prison and was given another chance to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. Once again, he refused. As before, we just couldn’t work out what was going on. I didn’t understand what he was playing at.

The ongoing complications regarding adding the additional charge of sexual activity with a minor meant there was a chance of there being two separate trials. If this second charge continued to go back and forth through the European appeal courts, as it appeared was going to be the case, it could be years before the nightmare was over for us. The plan was to proceed with the original abduction charge and do everything we could to get through the red tape in time to include the sexual activity with a minor charge at the same trial.

We could be facing years with this heavy burden upon us, but all the evidence I had seen had convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt that Forrest was a sex offender. He had to pay for his crime, and I had to find a way to get my family through all of this.

A
fter what Gemma had been through, I wanted answers.

Although the school had issued a statement to the press saying that they were supporting our family in every way they could, they barely got in touch with us.

Once we had been back from the safe house for about a week, I requested a meeting with Mr Worship, the executive head of Kennedy High School. Up until now, I had not heard a thing from the school. I went along with a long list of questions. I’d got my daughter back, and she was safe, but now I wanted answers: I needed to know how it had happened in the first place.

To this day, I have never had so much as a phone call from the school’s head, Simon Pearl. He answered a couple of my letters, but he has never picked up the phone to speak to me.

First of all, I wanted to know when Mr Worship discovered
what was going on between Gemma and Forrest. He told me he had first heard about the rumours a couple of weeks earlier. I was furious. Wasn’t he angry that none of his colleagues had raised the matter with him sooner? I sarcastically said I felt sorry for him that all this was going on under his nose, and asked if he felt bad that he didn’t have a good enough relationship with his colleagues for them to have shared what they knew.

I asked to see Gemma’s school file – I wanted to see if the information was documented in any way, but I was told I couldn’t because it was now part of a criminal investigation. Arguing that I felt it was my right as Gemma’s mother to see the file, I explained to him some of the things that my daughter had been coping with since her return. Subsequently, I did get to see some of it.

I also asked him what kind of safeguarding measures were in place for the pupils. I’d searched high and low through all the literature I could find about the school, but there was nothing available. Miraculously, within a day of our meeting, all the information appeared on the school website.

Even though I had previously told Sarah there was no way I was ever going to allow my daughter to go back to that school, she and Mr Worship then started talking about when Gemma should return to Kennedy High School. Over my dead body! I told them in no uncertain terms that the only thing Gemma would be coming back to the school for was her prom in the following June.

And with that, I stormed out.

I was angry with Sarah for siding with Mr Worship. She had got to know us all so well, and she knew the reasons why I felt the way I did about the issue, but she explained that
the guideline in cases where pupils had missed a part of their schooling was that they should return to the same school.

Next I went to see Matt Dunkley, the director of child services for East Sussex, and he immediately made me feel really welcome. He said he could totally sympathise with what we had been going through and promised he would do everything in his power to help us. Apparently, Mr Worship had also been in touch with him and had requested an independent review of Kennedy High School’s safeguarding policies. Hmm … I wonder what made him think about doing that?

I told Matt Dunkley that I had been alarmed by the suggestion that Gemma should go back to Kennedy High School and that I was interested in the FLESS option. He assured me that he totally understood how I felt about the situation and agreed with the decision that I had taken.

Matt also told me that a panel had been set up to see if the East Sussex Local Safeguarding Children Board should carry out a serious case review. He explained to me that such reviews normally only happen in cases involving a death, but the circumstances surrounding Gemma’s situation were so serious that he felt there was no option but to tackle it this way.

Sometimes you meet someone who is so genuinely on your side it takes the weight of the world off your shoulders while you are with them. Matt Dunkley was one of those people.

Following this we were put in touch with Matt’s colleague, Douglas Sinclair, the head of child safeguarding in East Sussex. I wanted to find out more about the training that teachers received – in particular, whether they received guidance about crossing the line with pupils – and he patiently explained to me the process regarding the serious case review.

Another day, another meeting. This time I met up with Iain
Luxford, East Sussex County Council’s head of media, who talked me through the implications of the press reporting. To be honest, I hadn’t taken a lot of interest in the Leveson Inquiry before that, and he explained to me how flimsy the laws were surrounding reporting.

As a result of all this, I have become very sussed about privacy laws. In the case of celebrities, they choose to have a public life; to some extent that is what they have signed up for. But for innocent people like the family of Milly Dowler, it is just disgusting. People have asked me if I was ever tempted to contact the Dowlers or the parents of Madeleine McCann, but I didn’t want to make things any more public. I wanted to contain our situation as best I could and keep a lid on the whole thing. If I could, I would have built a wall around my family and pulled a great big cover down over us.

What with all the meetings, sorting out somewhere new to live and trying to maintain some kind of normality for the children and get life back on track for the rest of the family, those first few weeks after Gemma’s return were challenging, to say the least.

Early in November, Gemma began at FLESS in Seaford. I remember her first day there so vividly; it was one of the saddest I had to deal with. It was almost like she was a little girl again, climbing the stairs up to ‘big school’. Whenever I have taken any of my children for their first day of school I have always felt a little bit sad, as it marks the end of a certain stage of their life. I know it might sound crazy, but as Gemma went up the stone steps at The Old School in Seaford, I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my face as I drove away. I knew in my heart it was all for the best, but I couldn’t help myself.

An hour after I dropped her off, I called the school to check
she was OK. I needn’t have worried, of course – she was fine – but, as always, she was still my little mermaid to me.

I was so angry that Forrest had put Gemma through all this. After all the stress she had endured, she not only had to come to terms with what had happened between them, but now she had to make new friends and adjust to a whole new way of working. I can never forgive him for that.

D
espite all of the traumas that she was going through, Gemma settled into her new FLESS school amazingly quickly. Initially, the manager of the school thought it would be a good idea for her to create a new identity for herself in order to avoid a hundred questions on her first day, but the pretence didn't last long.

As soon as she said, ‘Hi, my name is Demi', one of the other pupils said, ‘No, it's not! I recognise you from your picture in the papers.' So that was that. The school was quite strict about how it was up to the person how much they wanted to share about themselves, so Gemma decided to tell everyone a bit about who she was and why she was there, and very quickly the novelty wore off. It really wasn't a big deal to everyone else there.

There were only about seven pupils at the school in total.
I don't suppose any of the others had been in the papers recently, but there was a reason why each of them needed to be there rather than a regular school. They, too, just wanted to catch up on their education.

The tutors there were so accommodating about Gemma's situation. They understood that she was likely to need a lot of time off to attend court hearings and other meetings related to the case, and were happy for her to attend school for half-days or have work sent to her at home. There was also the Skype option; it really was flexible learning.

When Gemma settled in so quickly, we all agreed that she should stay on at FLESS until the end of her GCSE year. The only thing that put a spanner in the works was that she would have to take all her exams back at Kennedy High School because of the strict examination conditions. This wasn't exactly ideal, but it was much better than having to return to the school full-time.

Little did we know how much the court case would take over, but for the moment Gemma was happy and settled. After weeks of stress, she could finally move on with her education.

Gemma quickly made new friends at FLESS and really enjoyed her coursework. She had GCSEs to study for, but she was determined to do her best, knuckling down to work and exceeding everybody's expectations. The regular reports we got from the school said that she was responsible, articulate and mature, and she was very friendly with everyone.

There was a lovely atmosphere there. One particular teacher, Jess, formed a great bond with her and even brought Oreo biscuits into class when she heard that Gemma liked them, while the wife of another teacher would bake cakes for her husband to bring into his lessons. Gemma made some
really strong friendships while she was there. All the pupils and teachers seemed to take everyone's reasons for being there in their stride.

At home, though, things hadn't got easier for any of us: there were still so many people coming to the house on an almost daily basis. There was meeting after meeting with the police and social services, not to mention extended family wanting to visit. Gemma didn't want to see anyone. I don't think she was being difficult, she was just embarrassed about all the fuss that she had caused.

She was hooked on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. She hated reading all the nasty things the trolls were saying about us, but she was also starting to get caught up with people who were trying to befriend her and manipulate her.

There were two women in their thirties who were particularly creepy – actually, to be honest, downright sick would be a better way to describe them. One of them was from the north of England and had created a ‘Gemma and Jeremy shrine' on her Facebook page, complete with hearts, stars and flowers all around it. She had Photoshopped pictures of the two of them together in a heart shape and wrote: ‘This shrine will not be removed until Jeremy is free.' Even though she had grown-up children of her own, she got unhealthily wrapped up in Gemma's story.

I was also very worried about a woman from Hertfordshire who had got in contact with Gemma. She was even more disturbed than the ‘shrine woman'. It was almost as if she had made it her job to make herself part of Forrest and Gemma's ‘love story'. She tried to befriend me, Gemma, Forrest's family and our family and friends by pretending she had family connections to all of us.

This woman even created a Facebook account under a different identity in order to contact me and give me parenting advice, telling me how I couldn't control Gemma's feelings, and how she was able to totally sympathise with what Gemma was going through because she too had once had a relationship with her teacher.

And there was worse to come. The ‘parasite from Hertfordshire', as I started to call her, started writing to Forrest in prison and even went to visit him. This would have meant a round trip of around four hours and yet, all the time she was visiting him, this wicked woman's husband didn't have a clue what was going on. She promised Forrest that she would support him and look after Gemma until he was freed, then they could be together again. How twisted is that?

Another day, I received an unusually large bill for Gemma's phone, which was in my name. Concerned, I asked the phone company to provide me with an itemised list of the calls that had been made and, on checking it, noticed that almost every single one was to the same number. I didn't recognise who the number belonged to and so, naturally, I called it. I now know that it was the parasite from Hertfordshire. I asked who she was and, cool as anything, she replied: ‘You should know, you called me.' I told her I had found her number on my daughter's phone bill and ended the conversation with a very forceful ‘Stay away from my daughter!'

I became aware of these two nutters very early on, but it was difficult to do anything about it. Of course I talked to Gemma about them and tried to impress upon her that they weren't real friends, they were parasites who had nothing else in their lives and were feeding off the drama. To start off with, I think she just saw them as harmless spectators who shared her love
story, but they became more dangerous as they reached out to her, offering her a link to Forrest.

But I was realistic about how much Gemma would tell me. I was a teenager once, too, and there were certain things I never told my mum. I knew she needed an outlet to share her feelings and get things off her chest, but I couldn't bear the thought of these strange women having any kind of hold on my daughter.

I spoke to the police about taking further action against them, but they advised me against it. There was no doubt that these women were warped individuals, but they hadn't actually committed a crime as such. The police were aware of what was being said on social media and had a team of officers monitoring sites such as Facebook and Twitter. They advised me to keep a close eye on the situation and to let them know if I ever suspected that a crime had been committed.

I later discovered that Forrest's mother had joined a couple of the ‘Support Jeremy Forrest' pages that had been put up on Facebook and had given the woman operating one of them permission to publish her home address so that people could write to her son. I was disgusted – she seemed to be oblivious to the fact that a lot of these so-called supporters were teenagers caught up in the love story and I felt she was condoning her son's actions. The following Christmas, she even asked the ‘supporters' to raise a glass to Forrest at 3pm on Christmas Day so he would know that he had support out there.

One day, I received a call from DI Neil Ralph to tell me that the police had reason to believe that Gemma's email had been hacked. I remember thinking it was probably another of those parasites getting off on Gemma's story, but it turned
out to be some geeky nineteen-year-old from Liverpool who obviously just spent too much time online! His poor mum went absolutely mad with him. The boy claimed the reason he had hacked into her files was to help the police with their investigations, though Forrest was already in custody anyway by this time.

The police could have taken legal action, but they decided it wasn't in the best interests of the case. Instead, they made him write a letter of apology to me and Gemma. Besides, as they said, his mother's fury was probably punishment enough.

It chilled me to the bone how much these weird people wanted to be part of Gemma's story. She was at a very impressionable age and yet strangers were grabbing at her like leeches and wouldn't let go.

It was another situation that was out of my control. I kept trying to tell Gemma that these people weren't real friends and didn't care about her feelings, but I was mindful that I couldn't run roughshod over how she was feeling. I knew that the more I pushed her, the more withdrawn she would become. She was incredibly vulnerable and I had to treat her with kid gloves.

Forrest had already damaged Gemma so much and now there was even more for her to deal with. We were all so angry about it and wanted it to stop. I wanted to pick her up and swathe her in bubble wrap. I didn't want to lock her up and stop her having a life of her own, but I wanted Forrest and the parasites to stop getting to her. Like quicksand falling through my fingers, I couldn't keep a hold on the situation and it scared me to death. They kept going on and on at her, and it was to eventually lead to the breakdown of our relationship.

I wasn't the only one who saw how much Gemma's
personality had changed either: Sarah, our family social worker, also did. Gone was the sweet child that I used to know and before me stood a girl who was behaving like an adult. Now I'm not stupid, I never for one minute thought she would stay my little girl forever, but she had started acting like she had an autocue in front of her, telling her what to say when she was asked any questions. It hit me hard to realise that she really had been groomed by a sex offender; Forrest truly had got under her skin.

I knew it wasn't something that I could change overnight. Forrest had known her since she was just thirteen and even if it had been completely innocent, their relationship had been evolving for several years so it wasn't something that she would just forget overnight. I couldn't miraculously undo whatever had been going on between them like a piece of bad knitting.

Gemma spent quite a lot of time with Sarah to begin with, but as time went on, she stopped opening up to her. Sarah arranged for her to continue to receive support from members of her team, but she wouldn't trust anyone who said anything negative about Forrest. It was incredibly frustrating. I was desperate for Gemma to confide in a support worker rather than one of those evil parasites who had befriended her.

Meanwhile, she was turning into someone I didn't recognise anymore. She was her usual self in front of other people, but behind closed doors she was breaking down. To be honest, I didn't really know how to cope with it. I started doing some research on victims of abuse to find out how they coped with life after abusive relationships; I needed to know how to deal with the situation.

One of the people I got in contact with was Marilyn Woods, who had set up the child sexual abuse charity Enough Abuse.
We exchanged a few emails, but we never got the chance to meet as every minute of my time seemed to be taken up, especially when I had to go back to work.

Another person whom I considered contacting was the child protection campaigner Lucy Duckworth, who founded the charity See Changes. When Gemma went missing, it was revealed that Lucy had previously contacted the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, and our local MP, Stephen Lloyd, about the fact that she had been unable to obtain a copy of the child protection policies at Kennedy High School. Her story was picked up by the press and Stephen Lloyd appeared on TV, talking about the school. I was incensed when I heard him describe Kennedy High as ‘exemplary'.

I wrote to him, saying how I angry I was that he seemed to be more interested in the school's processes and procedures than the family of one of his own constituents, but I never heard back from him. Lloyd's assistant, Jack Short, got in touch and told me that the media had taken his words out of context, and assured me that he had mentioned Gemma in his statement. Short sent me the statement so I could see for myself, but quite honestly it didn't make up for the fact that the school once more got an easy ride.

Although I was interested to know more about Lucy Duckworth's experiences with the school, I didn't have the energy to fight even more battles at that point. I had enough on my plate at home, not least because my own obsession with Forrest was now starting to get out of hand, too.

When we had found Forrest's house, Paul's curiosity was sated; he knew what he needed to know. But it wasn't enough for me. I wanted to know every little detail about Forrest – what he did every day in prison, how he had become a teacher,
what each and every one of his ex-girlfriends was like. I felt that if I could keep on top of the situation, we could move on with our lives.

It was going to be a long haul for Gemma to find a way through all of the emotional upheaval. Friends and family kept telling me that I was holding everything together really well, but it certainly didn't feel like it at the time. I was just trying to do the right thing.