Sat 19 May 2007
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Posted by admin
As I was aware that ADHD engenders high levels of frustration, and as he had chosen to learn to play the violin from the age of five-and-a-half, I thought and hoped that music therapy might help him to make the connection that music could help him with his feelings. I was also hoping in an additional opportunity for him to experience creative engagement with others in a sustained manner, rather than the frantic, flitting mode characteristic of ADHD. This turned out to be the worst decision I ever made as a mother.- After beginning his individual music therapy sessions, my son’s behaviour deteriorated; he also became increasingly physically violent towards me, hitting me daily and taunting me with words such as “What are you going to do about it? You are disabled, you are useless”. I found out later that the music therapist believed that, as a disabled person, I must be an inadequate parent, and had been (consciously or unconsciously - both equally alarming) de-valuing me and our lifestyle in my son’s eyes : no wonder he reacted in the way he did. This practitioners’ outdated agenda and prejudices - paired with an over-confident approach to matters about which she did not have the information necessary to form a sound professional judgement - triggered a series of mistakes that resulted in significant harm to my child and long-term trauma for me.That the undermining of my status and my authority in my son’s eyes resulted in my son’s violent and increasingly challenging behaviour illustrates the inherent dangers of inadequately-informed individuals tampering with complex dynamics that are beyond their comprehension and competence. It is alarming to realise that somebody whom the public is expected to trust as having at least some basic professional standards (according to the Health Professions Council’s advertised claims) would approach work where a disabled parent is part of the picture on the basis of personal prejudices and assumptions.
- Later on the music therapist sabotaged a transfer from a school where my son was being relentlessly bullied to a better one, which was also the only accessible one in the new neighbourhood. She telephoned the school without my knowledge and consent, and persuaded them that he must not be allowed the transfer. Following her disastrous interference, we lost the opportunity to make the best use of three whole academic years. When my son brought up in the sessions the matter of his being bullied, she ignored him and urged a change of subject, which distressed my child very much. She told him that the school in which he knew he was being bullied and in which I had seen a child in the playground with a replica gun was “a very fine school indeed”. To add to the fallout of the music therapist’s arrogant interference in my son’s education, the shock, disgust and anger (in that order) at finding out what she had done to him and what she had suggested to social services - and the ensuing preoccupation with this matter - prevented me for a long time from being able to organise the Statement of Special Educational Needs that my son would have needed to be in place as early as possible. This has burdened us both with many additional problems, their repercussions bound to reverberate throughout our lives.
- I became severely depressed when - after the stress of organising a house move, finding that the new neighbourhood frightened me, and struggling with the unforeseen and unforseeable practical problems associated with the new home - I could see no way of achieving what I had made my absolute priority despite all the other pressing practical difficulties and my utter exhaustion: helping my son out of his bullying school. I had telephoned the music therapist to ask for a few lines in support of the need for a transfer (after fruitless efforts trying to resolve this issue with the school and after the offer of a place in the non-bullying, accessible school that I had found for my child was withdrawn following the music therapist’s interference) so that an advocate could take up the matter with the Education department. The music therapist had flatly refused - unsurprisingly, as she had been the person to put a stop to the transfer - and I sank even more in my despair. At the time I did not know of her interference, and continued to confide in her about how I felt. It was then that - instead of helping with what had caused my despair (i.e. not being able to help my son escape the bullying) she irresponsibly suggested that somebody else take care of him, so that I could “have a break” from the desperately difficult situation that—unbeknown to me and concealed from Social services — she herself had created. Thankfully, despite being at one of the lowest points in my life and barely functioning when not putting up a facade for my son’s sake when he was around, I had the education, training, general intelligence, sense and instict to realise how big a mistake this would have been, and was able to avert this disastrous outcome: the music therapist did not succeed in breaking up our family and burdening my son for life with the notion that his mother (and primary carer) had abandoned him at some stage in his childhood. I dread to think what this would have done to me, with the exacting parenting standards I had set myself: I was “sent away” for three years as a child and I know what this does to children. Naturally I would have viewed this as the worst possible thing that I could have done to my child.
- If that were not enough, against available incontrovertible evidence to its impossibility (a fact that the music therapist deliberately ignored), the music therapist chose to impose a sexual interpretation on a clearly entirely innocent event which both my son and myself had candidly related to her. This after sending my son out of the room - without any explanation, either before or after, a fact that generated great anxiety in him - and having a conversation with the worker who drove my son to the sessions as there was no guaranteed parking for me so I could not drive him there myself. This worker was highly critical and undermining of my parenting and was being increasingly abusive to my child whilst he was in her charge. She was in the habit of encouraging my son to talk about his bottom by always remarking on it rather than ignoring him when he mentioned it (as an 8-year-old would). I did not think much of this apart from the fact that she cannot have been particularly good with children (and was certainly very abusive to disabled people) but I needed her practical assistance. I had asked the agency to replace her as her abusive behaviour towards my child had become very severe: she would have been aware of this and it is therefore not surprising that she would have happily entered into the folie a’ deux with the music therapist about my son being sexually abused. Neither woman had the particular training and experience that would have enabled them to identify their dangerous assumptions, distorted perceptions and paedophiliac inclinations as such, and these went unchallenged. Although lacking the training and authority to carry out such interviews (the London Child Protection Procedures are unequivocal about the need for these interviews to be carried out only by appropriately trained staff, in order to prevent traumatising a child and eliciting false information), the music therapist subjected my son to intimidating and leading questioning. She told him that what went on in their session was “a secret” that he must “not tell his parents about”, and asked him questions about his trousers, underpants and bottom. No other adult had ever expressed such brutally explicit and direct interest in these parts of his body conveying a sexual preoccupation with them (we had seen a consultant about his foreskin being too tight when he was about two, but it had been in a clearly medical context), and he was severely traumatised. For many months he remained over-anxious about his body, and even refused to change his wet swimming trunks in front of other children at school. It was heartbreaking for us to see him in this state. Staff at his new (though sadly not accessible) school - whom I had informed of what the music therapist had put him through - were very supportive and helped him towards recovering the sense of safety and innocence of which the music therapist had insensitively robbed him. I was not so lucky and/or resilient and am still struggling to recover from the shock four and a half years later.
- Lastly, having failed to extract from my son— despite her highly irregular and traumatising questioning—anything other than the innocent truth; despite her knowing that a medical professional had already established that no concerns existed; and despite having been assured by a social work senior professional and child protection expert who knew us well that there had never been any concerns of the kind that the music therapist was interested in, she still insisted on approaching social services suggesting that my son was being sexually abused. In her referral (later described by a chartered psychologist I know as “laughable” and as containing an unprofessionally high level of speculation) no mention was made of the true nature of her communications with my son, her telephone dealings with me were misrepresented, and she attributed to me statements that I did not make. Despite the existence of plenty of evidence to indicate that this was completely impossible, we were interviewed (after much, and very distressful, hounding) and - of course - immediately cleared. Meeting me in our child-centred, arts-and-sciences-oriented home immediately clarified how preposterous the music therapist’s suggestions had been: luckily the social worker did not even need an individual interview with our son about his body — with the possible further trauma that I feared so much for him after what he had suffered at the hands of the music therapist. Although, as I said, we were immediately cleared of the music therapist’s and the agency workers’ morbid interpretations and suggestions, I experienced the whole process as a form of sexual molestation from which I have yet to recover. A false accusation needs to be understood and treated as possibly the most perverse, cruel and cowardly form of sexual abuse that can be perpetrated on an adult/parent/carer, with all the usual sexual abuse corollaries of shame, guilt and self-blame. This has, of course, direct repercussions on the children/charges involved too.Having unnecessarily been put through this traumatising procedure also destroyed my - admittedly naïve - faith in the essential “goodness” and “safety” of women and my belief in women’s inability to take a sexual interest in children. I have become seriously frightened of the world in which we live, and of how some women are capable of lookig at young boys. I have to accept that I may never get over the shock and trauma of having come so close to some such individuals without being aware of it and therefore being unable to protect my child and myself, as it has so far proven impossible to forgive myself for having failed to protect my beautiful child from them.
It should be borne in mind that the music therapist had never met me, nor had she ever had a meaningful telephone conversation with me as she was unable to relate to me as an intelligent and competent adult. Yet, extraordinarily, in her letter to social services she claims that she had “got to know me”.
The abuse in question happened almost five years ago, and we are still suffering its effects. If anything, it is even worse now that we have daily evidence that my active involvement during the last three years of my son’s primary education was so essential for his educational prospects: he now needs to attend a specialist weekly boarding school and I have to deal with premature “empty nest syndrome”, as well as the fact that my son who often resents this regrettable arrangement.
Both the music therapist and the organisation employing her refused to acknowledge and apologise for what had been done to us, and to consider appropriate training in the areas in which the music therapist was clearly lacking it and had not kept up her professional standards (child protection and basic disability awareness requirements). The regulatory body for music therapists, the Health Professions Council — who are supposed to safeguard the public’s interests (including those of children and disabled people) - resolutely refused to hold the music therapist to account for her breaches of their own guidelines and of the London Child Protection Procedures. They did not address the issues I raised, nor did they answer any of the questions I put to them in my complaint. I was informed that there was “no case to answer” and that I had “no right of appeal”. Our fresh attempt - accompanied by plenty of supporting evidence after I had obtained access to part of my son’s social services file under the Freedom of Information Act - met with the same fate.
WHAT HOPE IS THERE FOR CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES, AND FOR DISABLED CLIENTS, IF WE ARE LET DOWN BY THE ORGANISATION WHICH SUPPOSEDLY EXISTS TO GUARD US AGAINST PROFESSIONALS WHO DO NOT OPERATE WITHIN THE VERY GUIDELINES ESTABLISHED BY IT TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM ABUSE?
For over four years I have cried most days and nights with guilt, sadness and anger because it was me who referred my precious child for music therapy. Every time I look at him I am reminded that I failed him in that I failed to keep him safe from the harm that the music therapist has done to his life and to us, and it breaks my heart. Ever since the abuse, my relationship with him has become tinged with all-pervading, deep, unshakeable regret. The most beautiful things in my life — my son, my motherhood and our beautiful, loving relationship - have been soiled in a manner that has always felt irreversible.