fire & rescue / 3 Jul
The day they found me, the first thing they asked was, how old are you?
I appreciate that it all must have looked more than a bit weird. I was sitting there on the ground, cross-legged and with hands in my lap. The flames I caused were raging behind me and I was covered in blood, but I did not care about any of this. I was just sitting there with that solemn face people have while meditating, and I was not responding to any verbal commands.
Someone was probably thinking about shooting me down right away; that was a risk I had been well aware of even before I set the flames. Unfortunately, I could not really surrender without meditating first, so my hope was that someone would notice my age and all the clues that not everything was as it seemed. Luckily for me, when it came to it, they did.
“Jesus Christ, how old are you, girl?” asked the police officer who was the first one to get to me.
I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was an average-looking woman in an average-looking police uniform, speaking and moving in an average speed. Yes.
“Fifteen and a half,” I replied.
“I see.” Then, she remembered the protocol. She ordered me to show her my hands and asked me if I had any weapons or sharps on me.
I held my hands so that she could see them, and I denied having any dangerous objects.
She asked me if I was injured, and I said I wasn’t.
She asked me what the hell was I doing there and why the hell was I covered in blood, whose blood it was and what the hell was going on. Instead of answering these questions, I told her I had been kidnapped a year and a half ago and I was trying to escape, and I repeated several times that I surrendered.
Somewhere around that point, I started to cry and beg the police officer not to kill me. I kept saying stuff like ‘nothing of this is my fault’, ‘I do not want to die’, ‘I am scared’ and ‘I won’t hurt anyone, but please don’t shoot me, officer’.
She said nobody was going to shoot me, but I had to follow the officers’ instructions and not threaten anyone.
Soon, her colleagues came, loud, shouting at me, giving me orders. They forced me to the ground, holding my head down, putting my face in the dirt. They handcuffed me behind my back and searched me, big hands touching my back and my legs. I did not resist, I just reminded myself repeatedly of my new mantra: let them do their thing, this is all part of the plan, it will be fine soon.
They lifted me from the ground and dragged me into their car. By that point, I was crying like mad; I was crying so hard I could not even breathe.
Don’t do anything. Don’t. Don’t. Wait for it to pass.
For some reason, my tears seemed to make them tiny little bit softer. The female officer who first found me sat with me in the back of the car, talking to me in a soft, comforting voice.
To this day, I don’t remember a word from what she said, but I remember she was suddenly very kind to me. After the experience with her colleagues (and everything before that, obviously), this made me cry even more.
police station
When we arrived to the police station, the first question they asked was my name.
“Franka,” I said. They were not entirely happy with this answer: Franka who?
I told them all my surnames I’d ever been known under (White, Leonard, Brown, Aristidou, Johnson, Kowalski, Ayé). They wrote all this down; nobody wondered or questioned why had I just given them seven different surnames.
They told me they needed to take my clothes as evidence. They also said they needed samples from my hands, hair and face, and a blood sample for a drug test. Two guys in latex gloves and paper jumpsuits came forward, and while they kept explaining to me what they were doing as they went, I was still scared speechless by the procedure.
I was not a criminal, I was the victim, so why did they do this to me?
As soon as the two guys were done, all the male officers left the room. The female officers who were left there with me gave me grey sweatpants, a white T-shirt and slip-on shoes, and they ordered me to change into those clothes and leave my own clothes on the table.
They were women, but that was little consolation: they were neither nice nor compassionate, and I was still scared of them and felt embarrassed at the very thought of removing my clothes in front of them. I did what I was told, but I still cried silently all the way through.
They packed all my stuff in plastic bags, and then they took me to an interview. There, more officers appeared, asking the same questions as the policewoman who found me a few hours ago (what were you doing there, why did we find you covered in blood, whose blood it was, did you start the fire, and so on).
Instead of answering, I said I had been taken by force from my carers a year and a half ago, but they did not understand. My carers? What did that have to do with the questions at hand?
I tried to explain: a year and a half ago, I lived with my soon-to-be adoptive parents, Mr and Mrs Ayé, of 26 Margarita Close, Aldcott, Sussex, but one day I was kidnapped on my way from school, and after that, I spent one year and one hundred and fifty-one days in captivity. I was forced into doing things I did not want to do; one of those things was connected to the fire and the blood all over me, but it was neither the only bad thing I’d ever done nor the worst one.
What, they said. What is this? What else have you done? What do you mean?
The looks in their faces were all grave and formal, and I panicked. I suddenly got this funny feeling in my head that I absolutely needed to explain everything at once, because failing this would land me in jail for the rest of my life. Under this impression, I began explaining frantically, trying to give them all the facts and context and endless details and people’s names and relationships and locations, all in one chaotic bunch. Unfortunately, it was too much.
The officers interviewing me repeatedly tried to bring some structure into the situation, asking me to slow down and focus on only one thing at a time and start by telling them what had happened on that day, but I could not do it.
Back then, I thought they were not even trying to engage. I thought they only wanted to ask about the last, least important event in the whole sequence. Later, I realized it was most likely only because they wanted to understand the immediate situation and take it from there, but at that time, this was beyond my comprehension, and soon, I was absolutely hysterical. I was crying, struggling to breathe, forcing the words out of me in bursts. I was a mess.
The reason behind my emotional breakdown was this: I was sure I could never, ever break away from my captors without help from the outside, but any help seemed to be beyond my reach. This was nothing like I’d imagined it. It was supposed to be the day of my liberation, but it did not look like that. It looked like getting into even more trouble.
Everyone around me was speaking to me in the sort of assertive tone and clear, short sentences that people use when they want to make someone comply. The police officers finally reverted to refusing to hear anything but the answers to their questions, stopping me and repeating these questions whenever I strayed into trying to say or explain something else, and this made me want to resist them just to show that I was a person and I had my own free will.
Finally, they gave up trying to obtain any more information from me, because I was not giving them anything useful, and because I was underage, they called a social worker.
The social worker, who introduced herself as Nina, spent some time trying to calm me down and making me feel like a human again. That helped. I managed to go from my hysterical, desperate crying to normal crying, which was a progress.
Nina told me she was not police; she said I did not have to be scared of her, because she was there to help me. She looked like she meant what she was saying, and she somehow managed to convince me she was being honest with me.
She asked me about the reasons behind my distress, and I told her how I had unsuccessfully tried to explain my situation to the police. She asked what did I mean, and I did the same thing as before, trying to explain it all at once.
Needless to say, this approach once again failed.
Nina approached the situation differently than the police. She was okay with starting from the beginning, jumping in the middle, going back to the beginning to provide more facts, and then going back and forth, as the facts and connections suddenly occurred to me. She just let me get it all out, my way.
When I was done, the last thing I said was how much I did not want a life doing endless crime. I urged her to believe me that I didn’t want to be a career criminal.
Nina said she would arrange for a lawyer to check on me as soon as possible.
I asked what she meant, and she said I needed someone who knew the law and would be there to help me with the legal aspects of my situation. Nina thought there would be trial almost for sure, because arson was super serious, and those people whose blood had been all over my face… Anyway, whatever happened, there were crimes committed by me, and whatever reason I had and however much I claimed self-defence and being made to do it and everything else, this was no laughing matter.
I panicked and immediately went back to hysterical crying, but Nina assured me that help was available and she would get it for me, for free. Then she told me not to tell anything to the police without my lawyer by my side.
She very politely asked one police officer to check the missing persons database and the crime reports from about one to two years ago; he did it, and some thirty minutes later, the police officers were around with a DNA kit to confirm my identity. At that moment, I felt massive relief: finally, someone believed me, and surely everything would be fine once my identity was confirmed?
When the officers left with the swab, Nina explained to me I would have to stay there, in police custody, overnight. She described how everything would look like and she assured me I was in no danger and I didn’t have to worry; she said that in the morning, someone would be back to further support me.
I must have looked desperate, because she asked me what was the matter. I described the interactions I had with the police so far, and she, in turn, tried to explain to me a little bit about why the police officers treated me the way they did. That was helpful: she managed to make me believe that everything was a misunderstanding rather than the officers being evil bastards.
When we came to this conclusion, Nina reassured me once again that I had nothing to fear. She urged me to be polite to the police officers and follow their instructions, and I said I would.
When Nina left, the police officers took me to a bathroom, where I was allowed to finally wash away all the blood and dirt, and then I was taken to a cell. I begged them not to leave me with those people who were shouting vulgarities from the holding cells, but they said this was not going to happen: I was underage and I was a girl, and leaving me in such an environment, with drunk rowdy males and all that around, that was just not an option. No, they would put me in a cell on my own, so that nobody could get me.
I was infinitely relieved.
The officers definitely were nicer to me after Nina’s visit. Much nicer in fact. They made sure I had everything I needed (water, a toilet roll, blanket and pillow, enough clothes to keep me warm) and I knew how to call someone in case I needed any help or any additional supplies, and only then they left me alone.
It’s fine. Whatever happens next, you successfully overcame the first hurdle. You are no longer with those people, you are safe here, and whatever happens, it’s better than what you had until this morning. Right? Right.
I curled up in a ball in my bed and started to cry again. Surprisingly, I soon fell asleep, missing the evening meal.
bad lawyer
During the proceedings that followed, my luck decided to take a long break.
The lawyer that was sent to help me made it clear that he was paid by the state, and since the state did not exactly pay premium, he was only going to work this much.
He listened to my story, indifferently, and then told me he would have enormous trouble proving any of it. He told me the money he received for helping me was not enough for even a mild attempt, let alone a decent attempt, because my case was too complex; million tiny details to prove, million accusations against me to challenge, million little things to get right.
Basically, I saw that for him, I was absolutely not worth it, and this sent my mood and my self-esteem spiralling down.
I remember asking my lawyer about the advice Nina the social worker gave me earlier (‘keep quiet and don’t tell the police anything unless there’s your lawyer with you’), and I remember his answer (‘whatever, it don’t really matter to me’).
In the end, I ended up so depressed by this indifference that I decided it really didn’t matter. I could do or not do what the police asked me for, and the path of least resistance was to do it.
I answered every question they had. They wanted me to undergo a lengthy medical exam, and I didn’t object. They wanted me to talk to two different psychologists and complete some tests with each of them, and I did, never questioning why they both asked me basically the same questions. They wanted me to answer questions from six different specialist detectives, about various aspects of what happened to me, and I did, not withholding anything despite the fact that I hated talking about the stuff; I wanted to forget, not remember to the tiniest details. In total, the various police officers, detectives and investigators spent more than a week interviewing me, and I answered every single one of their questions.
During the one and a half year of my captivity, I dreamed about being returned to my soon-to-be adoptive parents right after being rescued from the hands of those people, and I still held my hopes that I would soon be allowed to get my life back, but no such luck. The Ayés had moved on in the meantime; they already had other kids in their care, and that meant they could not take me back even if they wanted.
They even visited me during the week I was in police custody. They hugged me and apologized to me over and over, saying how much they regretted not being able to have me back and how they hoped I understood the reasons. I was pretty sure I would never see them again, so I lied and said I did understand, and I only cried later, back in my cell.
Instead of being returned to them, I was sent to a YOI. I was told that I was only there temporarily, pending the investigation and my trial; I was told that I was there only because there were no places anywhere else. Neither of these reasons made me feel any better about the place. Saying that I hated it there, in every possible way, would be an understatement: the food was crap and there was not enough of it, the beds were creaky and even less comfortable than what I used to have with those people, everything felt cheap, worn and dirty, the place was overcrowded, there was a lot of aggression between the inmates (both passive-aggressive behaviour and open fights), we were made to spend long periods of time locked in our cells, with no possibility to go anywhere or do anything meaningful, and it just generally sucked there. I shared a room with three girls: a very aggressive and dirty drug addict and two quiet murderers. I was locked up in that room for a minimum of twelve hours a day; of the other twelve hours, I usually spent eight hours in school where I understood nothing of what they tried to teach me, and only thirty minutes outside of the building.
Thirty minutes outside – on weekdays. During the weekends, it was either that, or nothing, because there were often not enough staff during the weekends to let anyone go anywhere.
I usually spent my thirty minutes outside running around, because running was one of only two activities during which I could go into my not-thinking-about-the-past mode. The other activity was reading, and I kept requesting permission to go to the library every day. I was reading at least one book a day, losing myself mostly in science fiction novels, with an occasional mystery or thriller thrown in just for a little variety.
Still, being held in custody was a combination of being scared for my life, anxious about the future, traumatized by the past and bored to death. I felt abandoned and I saw no point in continuing my existence. I tried to kill myself six times before I had my first hearing before the judge.
Each one of my suicide attempts was genuine: I really did want to die. It was no cry for help, as they called it; it certainly wasn’t manipulation, as one of the wardens accused me. I really, genuinely, truly wanted to end it all because everything was unbearable. I could not go back to those people because would mean a punishment amounting to torture. Going on the run on my own would mean them hunting me down and either killing me, or worse, so that was also not an option. And with the YOI, I saw no way forward either. In this situation, death was the logical choice; the only choice left.
Each time, they found me in time to rescue me, and each time, as a consequence, they made the conditions I was held in even more oppressive: I was not allowed to go outside; I was not allowed to read or go to the library; I had to be accompanied by someone at all times; I was moved to a single room where I was observed 24 hours a day and had no privacy; I had to sleep on my back only, with my hands clearly visible on top of my blanket; I was only allowed to shower with someone watching me; I was not allowed proper shoes and proper clothes, just a paper version of everything.
I couldn’t comprehend why the staff hated me so much and yet didn’t let me die. Why didn’t they allow me to just remove myself from the list of their problems?
good judge
Before I managed to either kill myself or totally destroy my future, I was taken to my court hearing.
On my way to the judge, I was accompanied by two wardens from the YOI. The journey was unpleasant: I was terrified of the proceedings and I didn’t understand a thing about it, but instead of any support, I was told to be quiet, stop kicking off and follow the instructions. When I was reluctant to do so, I was handcuffed, dragged outside of the building and forced unceremoniously into the waiting car.
The only reason why this didn’t make me feel worthless was that I was feeling worthless already, and all it achieved was reinforcing my resolution to try to kill myself for the seventh time as soon as we’d get back ‘home’.
After our arrival to the court, I was no longer resisting, I was just considering throwing up, because I felt physically sick from the nerves. I asked to be taken to the loo, but the wardens said no and took me straight to the judge.
There was no public, but the room in which I was to meet the judge was far from empty. There was my lawyer, three people who represented the state and the social services (I thought about these people as the ‘prosecution’, and I was scared of them, because all of them looked much more engaged than my lawyer), two police officers next to the door and a guy in civilian clothes who seemed to act as some sort of assistant to the judge. And, obviously, there was the judge.
The judge looked much less scary than I had imagined him. He looked almost like someone’s lovely grandpa, with kind eyes, vintage glasses, funny grey hair and those wrinkles one gets from smiling often. I immediately felt some connection to him, much more than to my lawyer, or anyone else so far for that matter.
The first thing the judge did when he saw me being led to my lawyer’s desk was ordering the wardens to remove my handcuffs. The wardens objected that this was according to the rules and they were not allowed to remove the restraints. They said I was a young offender and an arsonist and I was violent, because I’d been kicking off since the morning. The judge was not having it, though. He looked at them as if they were idiots and said, “My proceedings, my rules. Get moving.”
That impressed me big time. It might be seen as a relatively insignificant thing, but for me, it was anything but, because after a relatively long time, someone showed me kindness – and trust. Someone believed that I was not a violent freak or an instant runaway. Someone didn’t want me to spend hours sitting there like that, unable to even dry my tears or scratch my nose.
At that time, it usually took much less to make me cry.
Before asking me what was the matter and why was I crying, the judge waited for me to get seated. My lawyer handed me a tissue, which I used to make an honest but unsuccessful attempt at drying my eyes.
I did not answer the judge’s question at first. I thought the answer was obvious, so how could he ask like that? After all, he looked neither stupid nor cruel.
“Whenever the judge asks a question, he expects an answer, Franka,” my lawyer told me in a low voice after a few moments of silence. “Go on. Answer.”
This was probably the first piece of solid, unambiguous advice I’d ever received from him, so I decided to do what he said, and I answered. Sobbing, I told the judge my usual thing: it was not my fault. I was forced to do it by those people, so it was not my choice, and I didn’t deserve to spend the rest of my life in prison.
The judge looked unhappy for a moment. He asked my lawyer whether he had explained everything to me, and my lawyer said yes. This, as far as I was concerned, was a lie, but I didn’t say it aloud at that moment, mostly because I didn’t see the point. My lawyer, sounding oily, added something about me not really being in my understanding mode, which the judge acknowledged.
The judge himself spent about five minutes explaining to me that after extensive police investigation, the prosecutor decided not to charge me. It was accepted that I had indeed been kidnapped and held captive, and there was some evidence showing that I had been forced into wrongdoing, beaten, starved and abused; this was enough for the prosecutor to conclude that there was no realistic prospect of conviction and drop the charges against me.
The judge reminded me of when, still in police custody, I spoke to a psychologist about how those people had treated me, how they had punished me for the slightest disobedience and so on; given that I was fourteen when I was kidnapped and thus effectively still a child, it was considered that this treatment was enough to exonerate me. (After I looked at him blankly, he sighed, smiled and explained the meaning of that word to me.)
He also mentioned how I consented to give video-evidence for several cases with ongoing investigation and even for two trials. He told me that this, i.e. my willingness to cooperate and my openness with the police, had been very helpful. He actually thanked me, saying that knowing the truth was very important not just for the law enforcement officers but also for the victims, their wellbeing and their insurance. I didn’t follow, and in particular I had no idea why this should be important for the victims, but despite that, I experienced a brief moment of happiness when the judge said I’d done well.
Then he said that my version of the events was accepted to be accurate and nobody wanted to punish me for anything. In other words, I was definitely not going to jail.
Perplexed, I asked why was I there in the court if he didn’t want to put me in jail.
The purpose of the hearing, the judge said, was not to decide my guilt or my sentence, but to provide the judge with enough information for him to be able to decide what to do next, because, given my recent traumatic experience and undeniably criminal past, nobody was sure another ordinary foster family was the best option for me.
Oh. I was absolutely taken aback. So I was not going to spend the rest of my life in a place that in my mind was even worse than the YOI. This was such a huge relief, nobody can even imagine.
I think I reacted in a very emotional way, placing my hands over my face and just rejoicing, quietly but intensely.
Then, when the first shock and elation went away, I got a bit angry. Then I got very angry. Why didn’t someone tell me all this earlier? Why was I left fearing for my life for so long?
I turned to the lawyer who was supposed to be my lawyer, and I asked exactly this question. Loud and clear.
“Look,” he told me quietly but with visible discomfort, “can we discuss this later. Now that you got away with all your crap, you don’t want to go to jail for contempt of court, do you.”
No, I did not. But, come on. “Gimme a break,” I said angrily; loudly. “Why the hell did no-one tell me earlier? Why the hell didn’t you tell me earlier? I was so scared! I could not eat, I could not sleep, I could not do bloody anything! I tried to kill myself six bloody times because of this!” I wanted to continue my rant, but I couldn’t, because my voice failed.
“Watch your language, young lady,” my lawyer said, looking at me with that sort of strict face people usually reserve for a misbehaving ten-year-old. “You don’t want to be heard talking like this in the presence of the judge!”
The judge, bless him, did not take the offence. No, he basically told my lawyer to shut up and asked me what was the matter and why was I shouting in his meeting. His voice, surprisingly, was not that sort of voice one uses when unhappy with a child. It was more like patient and lightly amused, but not in a bad way. Like he really wanted to know. Like he had already figured oud most of it.
My lawyer started answering before I could even take a breath in, let alone speak, but the judge stopped him, looking slightly irritated. “I think Miss Ayé is old enough to be able to answer my question herself,” he said, pointing towards me. He then instructed me, and me only, to explain to him why was I suddenly so angry, using a lot of language bordering on unacceptable and so on.
He was the first person in a very long time who treated me as someone who was able to control their own behaviour and take responsibility for themselves. His attitude was so different from anyone else’s so far that I actually apologized to him for offending him.
He thanked me for that; he said it was fine, but he gently reminded me he still wanted to hear my explanation about what had made me so angry.
I explained it to him, surprisingly clearly: it was as if the judge’s kindness lifted that cloud of panic that obscured my thinking. The judge listened and did not interrupt me.
When I finished, he said something along the lines that my anger was understandable, but in the future, he would prefer me to refrain from further outbursts in the court if at all possible. He said it with so much kindness that I apologized to him once again for my behaviour.
The judge once again said he got it: after all, I was not even sixteen, I had seen things, and the pressure I faced was enormous. I had the right to feel strong emotions – and it was okay not to be totally able to control them as long as I managed to stop myself from losing it completely, like I stopped myself a minute ago. He said I was actually doing all right.
I felt encouraged by that.
The judge asked me if I wanted to tell him more about what made me attempt suicide.
I said so and explained why I decided not to continue living. I was crying a lot during my little speech, but the judge was patient. He kept nodding and making a humming sound of acknowledging what he was hearing, occasionally saying something like “I am sorry to hear that” or “I am sorry this happened to you”. I could also see he was taking extensive notes. When I finished speaking, he thanked me for the explanation and for being honest and open with him.
Unbelievable. He was so nice it made me cry even more.
He asked me if I needed a break before we continued, but I did not think that would help, so I said I was okay.
As the next question, he asked me what I wanted to do with my life, and I told him: I wanted ordinary life. A job doing only legal things, a husband, two or three kids, a dog, a little house somewhere in a nice neighbourhood, ideally with a little garden to grow flowers. That sort of stuff.
He asked me how did I want to achieve this. Did I have a plan on how to make this happen?
I said the right first step appeared to be getting education: A-levels, then hopefully a degree, then everything else. I said I was not sure about the details yet, but I was hopeful I would figure things out on the go.
I was a bit embarrassed when I was saying this, but the judge encouraged me, saying that he had no doubt I would be able to find out all the necessary details once I got into it.
I secretly thanked him for his trust: a little bit of trust from someone in a position of authority was all I needed to believe that whatever I wanted to do, it was not just a pure fantasy.
Aloud, I added that because my formal education effectively stopped two years ago, I had a lot of catching up to do, and the sooner I started, the sooner I would finish.
The judge was once again very kind to me. He acknowledged all I said as reasonable, and he said I was wiser than expected – wiser, perhaps, than many other people of my age.
I think I blushed at that moment. I was not used to being praised, and I did not know what to say or do. Suddenly, I had no idea where to look.
The judge probably noticed and decided not to embarrass me any further. Instead, he asked me about the fire. Did I regret starting the fire?
God, yes. Yes, I did. I couldn’t even express how much I regretted everything: doing it, putting people’s lives in danger, being too weak to resist my captors, being too cowardly to choose death or suffering over doing what I was told, and only managing to get away from them after I started the fire and not before.
After a short hesitation, I also told him about the bad dreams I had every other night, of the burning inferno as well as five or six other particularly bad incidents that haunted me.
The judge was still taking a lot of notes.
When I finished, he asked me a few more questions about my past, my former foster parents, my opinion on what kind of education I was hoping to get and whether I had any clearer picture of what I wanted to study or what sort of job I wanted to do.
I answered the questions as best I could. I used ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I am not sure’ a lot, but once again the judge showed his understanding, saying that I would get some counselling to help me figure everything out.
His last question was a bit unexpected: given the fact that some of my captors were still at large, did I fear them coming to get me?
“Yes,” I said simply and started to cry again, because this was the one thing that I was pushing away, the one thing I was too scared to even think about. Suddenly, I realized that maybe spending the rest of my life in Cat A prison was not such a bad prospect after all. Yes, maybe I would be jailed, no freedom, no dignity and all that, but on the flip side, while I would not be able to get out, nobody would be able to get in.
“I see,” the judge said, finishing his notes, and I saw that he understood well what was going through my mind.
Towards the end of the hearing, the judge said two things.
First: there was a lot to consider for him, because my situation was far from standard, and he couldn’t decide immediately. He effectively apologized to me for leaving me in limbo for some more time; he said he did not want to rush this as it was my life and my future at stake.
Second: to do the right thing and decide in my best interest, he needed to have more information about me, my personality, my abilities and the exact level of my education. Thus, he needed me to undergo another series of tests before making the final decision. He said he would order someone to visit me in the YOI in the next few days to administer the tests, and he asked me to cooperate with that person or persons. He emphasized that he needed to have the full picture, so that he could make a sensible decision – decision that would hopefully bring me closer to my dream.
He actually made me promise I would do my best in the tests, and once I promised it, I knew I would do it. It had to do with trust and being treated like a human once again.
good judge, six days later
Six days later, I was back in the court.
There were the same three people representing the state and the social services, but my lawyer was replaced by someone else, a lady called Natalie who seemed to be much more interested and engaged. Before this hearing, she visited me in the YOI three times and she talked me through everything (my results in the tests, the options available to the judge and their meaning for my future, the police investigation and its results, the way the next hearing was likely to be conducted and so on).
I was much better informed than last time, I knew what was going on and what was expected of me, and I was surprised how much better that made me feel.
The judge was as nice to me as the last time, treating me with the same respect, and once again I could feel the effects: because he treated me like an adult, I started behaving like an adult. Compared to the YOI, I approached everything in a more constructive way, and I was more willing to engage and discuss stuff without the need to disagree all the time and dispute everything.
The judge asked me if someone had explained the possible solutions to my situation to me, and I said yes. The judge asked which of the options sounded the most appealing to me, and I said I did not know. I said I had no real preference, and I meant it.
He asked why, and I told him how I wanted to go back to my foster parents, the Ayés. I also told him I had been told this was not an option.
The judge asked me how did I feel about that, and I was honest with him. Yes, I did understand why me returning to the Ayés was not possible, and in a sense, I acknowledged the reasons because on the surface of it, they were sound reasons. But at the same time, I refused to understand any of it. I felt betrayed and hard done by, because nothing of this was my fault and I still lost literally everything. My stuff, my little room in the Ayés’ house, my school mates and my friends from the neighbourhood, and, most importantly, the love and affection of people whom I used to consider my parents, so much so that I even decided to take their surname.
“Everyone tells me that I have to be sensible and act like an adult, but… I don’t feel like it,” I said. The fact was that I felt like screaming and banging my head against the wall; really the last thing I wanted to do was being sensible.
“Yes,” the judge observed rather pragmatically, “I would be surprised if it were otherwise. Of course you don’t want to be ‘sensible’ when it comes to losing someone or something you deeply cared about.”
I nodded and lowered my gaze, because he got it. Why couldn’t the others be like this bloke? Why was everyone else telling me all this stuff about how I had to understand, and why was this man the only person who got it that understanding was bloody impossible?
Finally, the moment came for me to learn about my short- and mid-term future. Before announcing his decision, though, the judge asked me to trust him.
“I know that this will be difficult for you, but please do trust me that I have only your best interests in mind. I want you to have the future you told me about a week ago.” Then he said he knew I would hate certain aspects of his decision, but hopefully, after some time, I would appreciate the benefits. He emphasized that he was going to send me somewhere safe: given some of my captors were still at large, I needed someone to look out for me. In addition to being safe, I was going to get good education and probably also find friends for a lifetime.
Yes, and now tell me about the downside, I thought, and three seconds later, I knew.