I am a disabled mother (polio and post-polio syndrome) and I have a son (now 14) who has a diagnosis of ADHD and mild dyspraxia. In late 2002 I decided to refer him for music therapy while I concentrated on the last stages of our re-housing in accessible premises with a garden and an extra room for a live-in au pair/mother’s help.  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 that music therapy might develop a helpful connection between music and 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 physically violent towards me, hitting me daily and taunting me with challenges such as “What are you going to do about it? You are disabled, you are useless”. At the time, I imputed this change to the violent playground culture of his new school, which he had started shortly before the music therapy sessions.  However, I found out later that the music therapist believed that, as a disabled person, I must be an inadequate parent, and had been 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 This practitioners’ outdated agenda and prejudices - paired with an over-confident approach to matters about which she did not have the training nor the information necessary to form a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. This outcome illustrates the inherent dangers of inadequately-trained, misinformed 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. 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 (”Now now, not that again”).  She told him that the school in which he knew he was being bullied and in whose playground I had seen a child 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 conceived and insisted with Children’s Services - and the ensuing trauma and 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.

- Understandably, 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 flatly refused - unsurprisingly, as she had caused the loss of the desirable place - 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 Children’s 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, good 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 had abandoned him at some stage in his childhood. 

- If that were not enough, against available incontrovertible evidence of its impossibility (due to the strongest possible scientific and medical evidence), the music therapist insisted on imposing 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 what amounted to  malicious gossiping with the worker who drove my son to the music therapy sessions as  there was no guaranteed parking for me so I could not drive him there myself. This worker, though reliable, was untrained and undermining of my parenting. She was also in the habit of encouraging my son to talk about his bottom by always remarking on it rather than ignoring him when he mentioned the word (as an 8-year-old would). I did find her behaviour rude, unintelligent and counter-productive, but there was even worse to come:  she had been harbouring a paedophiliac interest in my child’s bottom. I had asked the agency to replace her as she had became very abusive towards my son.  She would have been aware of my complaint 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 or expertise that would have enabled them to identify their assumptions, distorted perceptions and sexualisation of my parenting as self-originated projections, and these went unchallenged.  Although lacking the training and authority to carry out such interviews (these interviews must 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 anxiety-generating, leading questioning.  She told him that what went on in their session should be “a secret” that he must “not tell his parents about”, and asked him questions of an intimate nature.  No other adult had ever expressed such brutally explicit and direct interest in particular 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 emerged 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 some of 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 trauma.

- 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 senior social work professional and child protection expert who knew us well that there had never been any concerns of the kind that she was  so stubbornly interested in, she still insisted on approaching Children’s Services suggesting that my son was being sexually abused. In her referral (later described by a chartered psychologist  as “laughable”,  and as containing an unprofessionally high level of speculation) no mention was made of the true nature of her traumatising communications with my son, her telephone dealings with me were misrepresented, the interference in the school transfer omitted, and she attributed to me statements that I demonstrably could not have made.  Despite the existence of plenty of evidence to indicate that this was completely impossible, Children Services staff’s ignorance of even the most basic ADHD and disability & parenting issues meant that we were very distressfully  hounded.  We were - of course - promptly and comprehensively cleared. Meeting me in our child-centred, arts-and-sciences-oriented home immediately clarified how preposterous the worker’s and the music therapist’s suggestions had been.  By sheer motherly determination I did manage to minimise the damage that the social worker charged with the anxiety-generating interviewing of my child was bound to inflict, 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  cleared of the music therapist’s and the agency workers’ sexualised and prurient interpretations and suggestions, I experienced the whole process as a form of sexual molestation from which I have yet to recover. 

I experienced this appalling false accusation as possibly the most perverse, cruel and cowardly form of psychological sexual abuse that could have been perpetrated on me as a mother, with all the usual sexual abuse corollaries of shame, guilt and self-blame. This has, of course, continued to have repercussions on my son. 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 - such as the music therapist and the sexually-disturbed agency worker - are capable of looking at young boys. I have to accept that I may never get over the shock of having come so close to some such individuals without being aware of it and therefore being unable to protect my child and myself: it has so far proven impossible to forgive myself for having failed to do so. 

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.

The abuse happened six 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 would have been 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 resents this 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: basic child protection and 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 sensible child protection practices. The HPC failed to  address many of the issues I raised in my complaint (see blog entries for copies of correspondence). 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. Kelly Johnson, the HPC’s director of Fitness to Practise, later clarified that: “Even if a registrant has made an error or has caused harm on a particular occastion or demonstrated a lack of competence, over a period of time, this may not necessarily results [sic] in the panel determining that there is ‘a case to answer’. 

This means that an HPC ‘no case to answer’ decision is virtually meaningless.  So much for the protection of the public.

WHAT HOPE IS THERE FOR CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES, FOR DISABLED CLIENTS AND FOR CHILDREN WITH ADHD IF WE ARE LET DOWN BY THE ORGANISATION WHICH SUPPOSEDLY EXISTS TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM PROFESSIONALS WHO DO NOT OPERATE WITHIN THE VERY GUIDELINES ESTABLISHED BY IT TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM ABUSE?

The role of the Health Professions Council has been throughout that of insulating the music therapist from the unnecessary devastation that she has wreaked on the lives of a beautiful, loving mother and her beautiful, precious child.  

For almost six years now 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: 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.

This site tells our story, and is an attempt to unpick how we came to fall through the net and be abused and traumatised, apportion responsibility for the abuse we suffered more realistically, so that I do not carry by myself the entire burden of guilt for having put my precious only child in the hands of the harmful music therapist, alert other parents (in particular disabled parents and parents of children with ADHD),  reach out for the support of new friends and, we hope, in time begin to reclaim some hope for the future and some of the truly special joy that my son and I had in our mother-child relationship, a sacred bond which our abuser the music therapist repeatedly violated and persuaded several other people to join her in violating.