I write this to the two men in ill fitting suits and without your shirts buttoned up, one of you dirty looking with bad skin, who sat and giggled at the back of court throughout my trial. While the most intrusive and sensitive details about my children were openly discussed, you two thought it was a game. You giggled, smirked and scribbled down comments that you rushed to the prosecutor.
I had to watch as you revelled in inviting the press into the prosecutor's office each morning, where you leaked info to them that not even I or the court had seen or heard yet. You encouraged the media to exaggerate information and your prosecuting barrister manipulated and exaggerated information; ironic really when you were prosecuting me for exaggerating my children's needs......
You delighted in my discomfort, it was your mission to have me convicted even though you knew all the details of my children's hospital visits and diagnosis. You had ripped my life apart, ripped my children's lives apart and all for political gain and a determination to win.
And the reason I write today?
I watched my son today. He is 21. He is autistic. Your conviction changed nothing, in fact it made life harder for him as you took away his support for two years and the only adult he really had a relationship with. He then started to fail, failed the college course we had worked so hard to get him onto and went backwards socially.
I don't understand how you think he can be two different people.You turn down his PIP because he can sing! You seem to believe he is "acting" the part..... that he is pretending to be autistic.
Come and live with him. Stay for a week, a month. I really don't mind. He is 21, he has no friends, he does not socialise. He does not use his facebook..... (it's me who logs in to check it and help him appear capable enough to be asked to do the theatre he loves to do). He does not check his emails.... (yep that's me too). I have to remind him to change his clothes, to wash, I have to unblock the toilet, filled up to the brim every time he has a poo as he cannot deal with toileting very well.
Still think he is acting?
He calls men 'sir' and women 'ma'am' (rhymes with ham lol), because he doesn't recognise people or remember their names, and he thinks this is normal polite behaviour. When you talk to him he has learnt responses, mainly 'point', which he has derived from people saying 'that's a good point', and 'sure'.
He loves trains, he has always been good with trains as you will remember, as you had me convicted over the fact that he took a train to stage school in London every day. He memorised the tube map aged 9. However, he doesn't sit down on trains. He wanders. He roams.
But when we moved recently and there was only a bus we had to do travel training with him. I had to print out colourful easy to read maps of exactly where the bus stops are that he needs. I had to take him to the stop, help him with the bus times, make sure I was there to collect him. 21 remember....Still think he is "normal" and just acting autistic?
He stays in his room probably 95% of the time, coming out for food when he remembers to eat. He's 21 now remember, you can't just call him a normal teenager anymore. The only food he eats is bread and cheese, pasta bolognaise made with exactly the same pasta and mincemeat and a selection of junk food. He drinks endless bottles of diet coke. the bottles and wrappers are discarded in his room. He doesn't just eat one he eats the whole pack. a whole box of jam tarts, a whole box of french fancies.
His only interest is fan fiction which he reads from his phone out loud, using different voices. He reads it very loudly, day and night. He giggles and laughs out loud at it. Still normal and acting? An unsafe witness you called him in your response to his PIP form......
When he is anxious he curls up in a ball, he shakes. He really cannot cope with changes. He shuts himself away. He can explode at the slightest thing.
You claimed he couldn't have become autistic as an adult as it is present from birth. Well yes, I know this as he was diagnosed at 3 and then again at 5 by Linda Souter and Gillian Baird's clinic at Guys. He was statemented from age 4 to 18. Yet you accused me of "conning" these leading experts, conning the education department who statemented him....
The saddest thing is that the jury fell for it. And my defence team was rubbish. TBH at the end of a 6 week trial I was in no fit state to make any decisions, and when the judge wanted it wrapped up so he could go on holiday and my barrister pulled my witnesses I figured he knew what he was doing......I was wrong.
My son is amazing. He can sing like no other, he is truly talented, but that doesn't take away his autism, anxiety, depression, lack of social and language skills. Yes he performs with local am dram, as you quoted in your refusal to award PIP, but go and watch him there. Go and talk to the directors. He doesn't socialise, he doesn't talk, he reads his fan fiction on his phone throughout the rehearsals and shows, but he adores performing as he is good at it and it makes him feel good. So I will NEVER stop him performing just to keep the DWP happy. I see disabled actors and performers every day in the news and on tv. They have not been hounded by false accusations, so why me? Why my son?
He has a lifetime ahead of him where he is really going to struggle. The positive side from you taking me away for two years is that he now has a social worker, an ASD support worker and a psychiatrist who all KNOW he is autistic, support him and are APPALLED at what you put me through, but more at what you put MY SON through.
I will never forgive you. Not for what you did to me, but for the damage you have done to my children.
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