Latest / Sense Only / Armed Police Dragged My Barefoot 9-Year-Old Into a Cage No Grounds.No Apology | Kate Markland -Ep 19

Transcript

Armed Police Dragged My Barefoot 9-Year-Old Into a Cage No Grounds.No Apology | Kate Markland -Ep 19 · Sense Only

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your child can be taken by armed police on the false conjecture that you're an unfit parent and you can't get to see them again because you are at risk of being criminalized and your child is held with the threat and the consequence of you being criminalised.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I know.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that is our reality in the favour of institutions protecting themselves rather than the child.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is the pattern that consistently appears against harms report after harms report after harms report.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I've made all these publicly available on my website and LinkedIn profile.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a sickening bang at the door.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your neighbour coming for a cup of sugar, a really heavy bang at the door.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's two policemen all in their body gear.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Body cams are flashing.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of them's armed with tasers.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they've come for Gabriel.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them grabbed a ten-year-old.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was nice, a week before he turned 10.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them grabbed him and they dragged him out of the house.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the first of December.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: The drive was icy, he was barefoot, and they dragged him dry on the drive, and they've got a van block in the drive.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: They open the back of the van door at least, and it's a cage.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cage.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: A cage you'd think you'd put a terrorist in or a rot rider in.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm asking as they're doing this, what have I done wrong?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: They say nothing.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I asked, What's Gabriel done wrong?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: They say nothing.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they put Gabriel in the back of the cage, and he is screaming his head off, and the terror in his eyes, without even anybody talking to me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: My son is removed from my care violently by armed police, and the court order permission was given for the use of force.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can only be right because it's your story.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can't be wrong.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and the kids are just coming to life and loving it.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And like I say, their friend captures the ideas, helps them up-level it, and then before you know it, they're chomping it the bit, wanting to write it and asking, putting their hands up and asking for extra sheets of paper.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then of course now we're starting to be able to animate their children.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Also knowing children to be their own hero, to test philosophies.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: They can't be wrong because they can only be right, it's their story.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Determine what success looks like at the end.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Greetings and salutations.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Alicia Muddings, and this is the Sense Only Podcast.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast is for those who are tired of the noise, distraction, and disconnection in the world.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's for those who know that we need to be the change that we want to see in the world.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Today I have a wonderful guest who we have just connected on so many subjects in this world, and the main thing is injustice.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I really appreciate this lady reaching out to come and share her story because she's actually somebody who's taken action, and this is what we need on this podcast and in this world, and what I'm definitely encouraging.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I am totally happy and over the moon to introduce to you Kate Markland.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you so much, Alicia.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for welcoming me.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Kate.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Please tell us about you, what you do.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm mum to Gabriel, who's now 12.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Previously I was a physiotherapist and ran my own physioclinics for about 20 years.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: But now I'm full-time author of the Adventures of Gabriel series with my son and also advocate for helping other children be heroes of their own stories and find their voice and self-leadership because I've discovered that we live in a highly predatory environment, and I think we need to be teaching our little pups to swim.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Please tell us your story regarding your son Gabriel.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So Gabriel's 12 now.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um the week before his tenth birthday, so just over two and a half years ago, I simply couldn't take any more of the situation we were living in, and so went to stay in the north of the country with a friend and left letters.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: There was a nationwide manhunt for us.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I left correspondence letters, Alicia.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But Gabriel's photo, who was nine at the time, was given to every single police constabulary in the country.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a nationwide manhunt for us.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was not in hiding.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: That was on the Monday, and I didn't know that that had occurred.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: My car was tracked, and on the Tuesday we were found.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: But again, I wasn't in hiding.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was no it wasn't a so and uh police officers want to speak to Gabriel and they speak to him through a ground floor window.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: No concerns.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: And apparently that's reported back to Gloucestershire.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: On the Friday, it's about nine o'clock in the morning, and there's a sickening bang at the door.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your neighbour coming for a cup of sugar, but a really heavy bang at the door, and it's two policemen all in their body gear.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Body cams are flashing, one of them's armed with tasers.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they've come for Gabriel.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: They've come for him.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel's done martial arts since he was really little, and he used to go to a class with children his own age, but then he'd also go to a class with teenagers.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was with the teenagers, he'd have to level up.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: The teenagers were never gonna hurt him, but he'd have to, you know, hold his ground and step up.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he did the same with these police officers.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: He stepped up and he held his ground.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Louder and louder and louder, firmer and firmer and firmer.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was holding his ground with them, so he didn't want to go.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: They ask why, he gives his answer.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: They asked me if Gloucestershire police know, and I say yes, but nobody is listening to us.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: One of them grabs Gabriel.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's learnt in martial arts how to get free of one grown man's grip, so he gets free of one grown man's grip.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them grab him.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them grabbed a ten-year-old.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was nice, a week before he turned ten.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them grabbed him and they dragged him out of the house, and it was the first of December.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Dry was icy, he was barefoot, and they dragged him dry on the drive, and they've got a van block in the drive.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: They open the back of the van door and each drink's a cage.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a cage.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: A cage you'd think you'd put a terrorist in or a rock rider in.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm asking as they're doing this, what have I done wrong?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: They say nothing.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I asked, What's Gabriel done wrong?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: They say nothing.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they put Gabriel in the back of the cage and he is screaming his head off and the terror in his eyes.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'll ever that will that will ever sort of leave.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: And they drive off.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: Soulless.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were absolutely soulless.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean how much how much more can a nine-year-old do to communicate?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So what grounds, what reasoning do you that I'm mad?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not mad.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I never was mad.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I've made public my GP records that go back as long as digital records go.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: No history of depression, anxiety, any mental health history, no history of antidepressants, no history of antipsychotics, no history of alcoholism, drug use, anything.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the label mad though, where's that?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: So because there's so much paperwork that says you're not mad, where's the narrative of mad?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd also had a consult back in 21.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Gabriel was taken in 23.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Back in 21, it was it was sort of becoming evident that that was going to be that that narrative would be a gameplay.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I very, or could be, so as a defensive action, I'd taken myself to a consultant professor of psychology.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'd taken myself to the person I could find with the most letters after their name and asked him for the most rigorous screening possible.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to answer hundreds of it was, I don't know, several hours the screening took of interview with him and answering questions.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And of course I get a report back and I'd had to give him my medical record that I'm fit and well, and I am most definitely not um mad.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that was back in 21.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: I took just that as a defensive action, and again I've made his report or his conclusion of his report public as well.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that that that's public and that's out there as an official record, how was that allowed to happen if the paperwork the paper trail says that that's not the case?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: How is that justified?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's not either.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So then I'm expecting the Gabriel's going back with me in no time because it's not justified.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So based on completely false conjecture that I'm mad, without even anybody talking to me, my son is removed from my care violently by armed police, and the court order permission was given for the use of force.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: The police officers actually had permission to use force.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So my so what's the paperwork?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because there needs to be paperwork that can justify that, I guess.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: How what's the paperwork saying to be able to hold your son or keep him away from you then?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have to be really mindful, Alicia, of not overstepping the line with regards to protecting myself from slander or further attempts to criminalise this situation.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a court order.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: So after this nationwide manhunt, so we go north because I simply can't take any more of the situation we're in.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Nationwide manhunt.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of communicating with me, nationwide manhunt for us.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: My son's picture is given to every single police constabula in the country.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the uh we found Cumbria police have no concerns.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Report back to Gloucestershire.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever happened then is a mess.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't quite, I've still never quite unpicked all of that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then there was a court order application that was granted for the use of force to remove my son from me by police and with permission for use of force.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then when the police came, they just did not use any sense that Friday morning.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: They just acted like, oh, I can describe it like robo dogs.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like mechanical.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: They were just soulless.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you look in their eyes, they're soulless.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're choosing to earn a living doing this to a nine-year-old boy today.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're not even listening to him.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: The nine-year-old boy needs fighting finding it in himself to stand up to you, armed policemen, and fight you off and shout at you, and you're still not stopping to listen.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um we'll come on to it in a bit, but that that is how predatorial the environment is we're living in.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Sing into the choir.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because my people know this.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I get asked again and again.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: This happened to you in the UK.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then they're like, but you're a white middle class mother educated here.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it happened to me.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not mad, never was mad.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Paper trail that I'm not mad, that was all I've made it public now, but previously it was in court documents, uh, you know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, but there you go.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's it actually, I actually really appreciate that statement even more because me and you have had real conversations.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we all know how specifically people of colour, black people, people of colour, are treated in this country very much in line with everything you've just said, and it's it's very interesting that you've just kind of also presented that yourself is being treated like that as well.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, okay, okay, we stay saying that there's a problem with the system.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: That actually reinforces that there's a problem with the system.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's I'm really glad for uh being able to share that in conversation because it is a question I keep being asked.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of behind the scenes, I keep getting asked.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, again and again, this happened in the UK, yes.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I've done a few podcasts, I've done a few international podcasts.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I certainly know there was some somebody in Nigeria, in Lagos, and they were again again, this happened in the UK, yes.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and it's like, and I don't fit you're absolutely right, I don't fit the profile of who this is supposed to happen to.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a it's the system's broken, literally.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and as I I've said on this podcast before, the PR for the UK is beautiful.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: The reality of what we're living in is completely opposite, it's not beautiful.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And your I I highlight it, and um when when the news wants to be selective, they'll highlight it.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: But thank God for social media, when people are now loud and proud and shouting about the injustices and madness that's happened in the world, it's been called out.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, so therefore, in advance, I say thank you for you sharing your story as well to know that it's a hostile environment we're living in.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: It really is, and I think that's the thing.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've got to remember humans are predators, those policemen were predators, they were behaving like apex predators.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like we've got to remember humans are predators, and we live in a predatorial world.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, I keep having this idea that a mother seal doesn't try to plead to the orca to be kinder.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: That orca's hungry, because that's how those policemen behaved.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: They were soulless, they came for my boy and they took him.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the only option I see that we actually really have is to teach our pups to swim and make sure that they are as empowered as possible to self-determine their character.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: To self-determine because it's like so since that occur uh that occurred, there have been obviously further court hearings, but court hearings have occurred I haven't even been invited to.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So Gabriel's taken on the 1st of December 23, and then somewhere between then and Christmas, there's court hearings I wasn't even invited to.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: So Gabriel's birthday's in December.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas is of in it's all all just erased, his stockings dropped off on the doorstep, literally.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've missed his ninth birthday his tenth birthday, his 11th birthday, his twelfth birthday.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Every Christmas I just leave his stocking on the doorstep.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: We now have an hour a week on FaceTime.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where can you tell me where he is?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's in Cheltenham.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Gabriel lives with his father in Cheltenham.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, right, okay, so he's all the parent.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel lives with his father in Cheltenham and Gloucestershire, Cheltenham's in Gloucestershire, and Gloucestershire's my home county, and my mum and dad also live in Cheltenham, it's a mile, there's a mile between the two houses.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, Gabriel's 12, he's quite able to walk a mile.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: But we're the reason I again it's like people don't think this should have happened to me.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it has.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: After Gabriel was taken in the January, there was a court hearing I was invited to.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean I'm expecting this is just a gross miscarriage of justice.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm asking the I'm thinking the judge and the policeman need to apologize.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because if anything even slightly like this had happened in a playground, you would be having those children apologize to one another that they'd you know been too rough with each other.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And this was grown men choosing to earn a living, brutalizing a nine-year-old.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm expecting this is going to be an apology.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: The barrister that came with me that day to that court hearing said to me, and by now I've been trying to understand how my situation.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been finding endless, well not endless, but public harms reports after harms reports that are describing the institutional harms that are going on.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm presenting these to the barrister.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: The barrister tells me I'm a conspiracy theorist.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is a government white paper.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: That old chestnut.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a government white paper, mate, and I'm a conspiracy theorist.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I've started to discover bin literate, makes you highly dangerous as well.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want you to actually have found this stuff.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I can have an hour a week.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's the best he can get me.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what do you mean?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: My son was just violently, physically and emotionally harmed in such a way that that is going to define his life.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that based on completely false conjecture, his voice wasn't listened to.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was silenced.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it now me that's the guilty party?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you I'm like no I'm now the one that's and I really at that court hearing started to recognise, and I'd also telephoned the police after they'd taken Gabriel to find out what was going on, and what they read back to me was a complete falsification of what actually occurred.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Again, not supposed to happen to a white middle class mother, is it?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm given an hour a week on FaceTime with Gabriel.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I recognise at that court hearing we mentioned about it before, before, that sort of do or die moment.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: I really started to understand the level of evil I was up against.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't find another word, it's malevolent, um, malfeasance, what evil.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I really understood the level of evil I was up against.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: The only reason you're getting for a psychiatric assessment, because you want to find this is my view, a bent psychiatrist.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because you want to get me sectioned.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to get me sectioned because you want me absolutely discredited and erased.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this was also coming from the social services, too, because you start to think what you're wanting to do is cover your tracks because you've essentially supported this massive overreach of force against the little boy based on conjecture, based on a false narrative.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the only, surely, therefore, the only way out of this for you is to yeah, try and get the men in white coats to put me in a padded room so they can go, there you go, she's mad.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Have they have they sat down with Gabriel and got Gabriel won't speak to any of them now.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Did he initially did once upon a time he speak to them?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: He previously he well it was quite interesting because I mean we've been living in a difficult situation for a long, long time.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he would tell me not to trust the social workers.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: He would tell me don't trust them.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then after this had occurred, he had the I believe he had the opportunity to speak to the police and he wouldn't.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no wonder why he wouldn't.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: He did everything he could, you know, he stood his ground, shouted at them, released himself from his grip, and then you do that to him, he's not gonna speak, is he?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So when you when you get to speak to Gabriel for an hour a week, how's that?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: How is he?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um well it's getting it's it's it's getting the trust between us has got really strong.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when we first end up in this situation, I um I'm mocked in that court hearing where I realised the level of evil I'm up against.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm mocked that I could end for an hour a week with my son on FaceTime.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And how are you gonna speak to a his 10-mile?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: How are you gonna speak to a 10-year-old for an hour?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can speak to my son for an hour, thank you very much.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, and you have no idea how much he likes a story.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I was absolutely shell-shocked, battered, bruised.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I knew Gabriel would be as well.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I just went into his bedroom and picked up a very illustrated Michael Mapurgo book called Puffin Keeper.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we sort of start reading it like Jack and Ori.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I just literally reading it to him, and we're looking at the pictures.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we talked around it as well, but that went on for about, I don't know, four weeks or so, and then somebody had posted Gabriel a book, a boys' invention book, and he then wanted to read that to me.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I read to him Treasure Island.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Treasure Island, the little boy, the protagonist, is called Jim.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's called Jim.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: By the time we finished Treasure Island, we're a bit fed up of reading about Jim's adventures.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I just said to Gabriel on a whim, Should we make up a story where you're the hero?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Yes.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want to defeat a sea monster.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where we've now started to have fun, if you like.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I just started scribing down what he was saying.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea where this was going.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I write to him in the very beginning, I wrote to him every day until we got to the point when Gabriel said, Mum, I know you love me, you can write to me every week now.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good, okay.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I was writing, I still do write to him every week.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had the idea when we're making up these stories, you know, Gabe was telling me these stories, right?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll extend it, I'll type it up, and I'll post it to you in the week, and then you can build it out like a folder.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So thinking like Dickens will write this in installments, not thinking it's going to go anywhere, then it's a very private project keeping us connected and us communicating, and it kind of gives some structure to our weekly call.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So after about eight weeks or so of this, it was a mess on my desktop.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so I put it all into one word document just so I could see my desktop again.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got several short stories and pictures to go with them.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: I flip it around to show Gabriel.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mum, it's a book.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right, Gabriel.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: In my head, I'm like, yeah, right, mum, it's a book, it's a book.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: But because of the situation we were in, I couldn't say no to him, could I?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm still thinking about get two printed, one for you, one for Granny and Gandalf.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Mum, it's a book, it's a book.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I sound out a couple of people I know that know about children's literature, and one in the US, one in the UK, both come back to me saying, get this out now.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's nothing where it's children, it's only imagination inspiring other children.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we publish it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then Gabriel starts on the next, you know, book that we're gonna write.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, my background is a physio, physios, take notes.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: We don't write paragraphs even.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Never mind books.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this the by now, the second book, can we bring a dead dojo back to life?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna go visit all these endangered lands.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he's got really ambitious and confident with what, and it's a can, you know, he wants the second book to be a complete book rather than lots of short stories to the point.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, hang on a minute.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: If that's gonna occur, I'm not a trained author, so we need to plan it out so that I can we can do this.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we really plan book um two, and I was so glad we did, Alicia.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know when you get like a Like sense.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it stopped, it must have stopped the week before Gabriel's birthday, because Gabriel's birthday is the beginning of December.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't see him speak to him over his birthday over Christmas, and then it was, I think it was just after New Year that so I kept ringing, then the phone answered.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I just had this.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean if I sat down I could figure it out, but I've lost uh after 20 court hearings, I stopped counting how many times I've been to court, but it must be in the region of 30.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I've lost track of how many times I've been threatened with arrest.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I just had this sixth sense that December, so December 24, not to spend Christmas with my mum and dad.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So Gabriel's the phone's not been answered at Gabriel's Ender and I'm calling him on a Friday night.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I still keep calling, but I and I just sense I'm being provoked.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think, Kate, don't rise to it, don't rise to it, don't rise to it, don't rise to it.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And because we'd plotted the book, I just, you know, to do something proactive, I'm just then carrying on writing the plan, thinking one day that phone's going to answer.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: But also I start weaving into the book all the things as a mummy want to tell your child because I'm like, what if I never speak to you again?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: What if I never see you again?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we had gone through the, you know, I don't do much on YouTube at all, but right, Gabriel, there's a YouTube channel set up, there's a TikTok channel set up.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: If our phone contact ever gets cut, I will go onto TikTok on YouTube.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you start creating yourself a sort of a digital moat around you.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I and I just had this sense not to spend Christmas with my mum and dad that that winter as well.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: 23rd of December, they're driving to for where they're going to spend Christmas.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Three police cars pull my dad over.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Looking for who the woman in the car is.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: My elderly mother who's had a head injury that year.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Strange happenings.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking for me to arrest me.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this doesn't happen to white middle class mothers, at least you remember that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: So three police cars pull my dad over on the door carriageway looking for who the woman in in the car is because they want to arrest her.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um what was the account account of arrest?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, exactly.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I then telephone the police.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: I telephone them, right.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Kate.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's my son, this is my date of birth.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Three police cars just pulled my dad over looking for the woman in the car.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was my elderly mother with a head injury.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's me you're looking for, I understand.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: What for?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: No?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is my date of birth, and this is the location where the car was pulled over.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's military-grade psychological warfare I've been up against Alicia.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: All I can think of is that was done to instill fear.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I just had, you know, you just have this sixth sense sometimes.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew not to spend Christmas with my mum and dad, because if I was going to spend it with them, I'd have been in that car.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And having what they've done to Gabriel, I have no faith in the police at all.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'd been in that car, you probably would have taken me and I don't know what done to me.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and then another time I'm given a I go to collect Gabriel and I'm given a crime reference number as a rationale why I can't collect him.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I go to the police station.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's not a crime reference number, no, there's nothing.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then I've had police come to my parents' house in my face looking for me.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: What for?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Been threatened.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like I've been threatened with the threat of me being criminalized has been baseless, but persist I haven't had it recently, but persistent.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: To the extent I haven't had a car now for two and a half years.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I live with the fear that if somebody really if they really do want to find me, the car cornering a car is the easiest thing.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, once I went there as well.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that and cornering the car technically is the the least of your problems if you've got a car as well.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: If they're really nasty, they could do some other stuff.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and if I had been in that car that day, because I st and I even emailed a police officer because at one point, you know, I'd put everything into the co into the police station and I was on enhanced victim support, and then on election day that all got dropped.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly I was no longer on victim support, and also oh, it was just a mess, but it all got dropped on election day, and then it it was just like I think the solution to all of this has been because it this is my perspective, Alicia, that because there has been so much injustice and overreach of an overreach, the conclusion has been to silence me and try and silence Gabriel and to silence me they're gonna continually threaten that there's been a continual attack with a threat of criminalisation of me.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like the fact that they're using police resources like this is one thing.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like there's puppetry going on, and I'm like, who's the puppet master?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: And why who's pulling the strings?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Who's pulling the strings and why have they got so much power that they keep sending the police to you when there's technically there's more serious things happening in this country?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let's keep it real.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm honestly, I've been called highly dangerous.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, seriously, it was a sunny day, we're gonna go for a bike ride and have an ice cream.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've discovered what's highly dangerous is been literate.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is what's highly dangerous.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm like, it's the power of the person who keeps calling this.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: That these people are leaving police stations, getting in vehicles, using petrol, and coming to try and find you when there's actually real madness going on in the world.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I now email the police station after this the three police cars thing.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: What are you looking for me for?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even get reply.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: As a taxpayer, I'm offended to know if I want to keep wanting to keep it surface.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: How dare you use my taxpaying money for this?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um jest aside.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Jokes aside.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then you start to realise the thing you're up against is military-grade psychological warfare.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that the only thing that makes sense is the desire to have me silenced.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's this the silencing is is such a thing, and it's and it's a it's a rabbit, it it aligns with a rabbit hole I'm con currently in at the moment.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I don't think I had even mentioned this part to you that I'm currently making a documentary, and it's in a similar line to what you're saying.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't mentioned specifically the topic on the podcast yet, because obviously it's when it comes out, it comes out.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: However, within in line with what you're saying, in terms of how Constabular is specifically, works in this here country.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've got many stories where this be is true.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because in terms of my documentary I'm making, it's actually based before we were born.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: However, it's the same story, it's the same narrative, it's the same behaviour.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm calling it out.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, this is why I I have a resonance with what you're saying because I'm like, technically it's nothing new, this is what we're doing, but it's not publicised.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, Gloucestershire Police and Crime Commissioner live on the parallel road to Gabriel and his father, and the Gloucestershire Police and Crime Commissioner's wife is the counsellor for the ward that Gabriel lives in.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: That brings a lot more context to And in May 2025, Chris Nelson, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Gloucestershire, in his own words described that Gloucestershire Police had failed, were were failing, they'd been an audit, and they were specifically failing children.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my son is essentially being kept under house arrest on the parallel road.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Gabriel is held with the threat of seeing if he sees me, we have seen each other, which I can share, but we have seen each other twice in two and a half years.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's held with the threat of me being the consequence that I understand he's held with is of me being criminalized if we see each other.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is a little boy.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: So police aside, let's talk about social services.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: What's their angle and what's their contribution to this?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: Take your time.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Take your time, take your time.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have many conversations about social services in this country.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um currently an independent review into social work England at a national level.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in November I put a report in, which I'm sure you can imagine complained about their conduct.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh they accepted my report as evidence.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Last year, Parliament also had a request for uh evidence into the failings of the court system.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: They accepted my report as evidence.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Justice Committee accepted my report as evidence.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: So at a national level, my reports are consistently accepted as evidence towards investigations into harm was being done by the courts, by the judiciary, by social work England.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even though they're accepting it, it just is no accountability.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing after that.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing after that, and it gets even more ironic.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the Parliamentary Accounts Committee, the MP who led it, is the MP for Siren Sister, Geoffrey Clifton Brown.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I grew up.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was my MP in childhood.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: So at times I have been held in suspicion in terms of clearly how I'm literate.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Geoffrey Clifton Brown has been the MP for the Cotswolds and Cyrus Sister area since I was at school.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I was educated in his constituency at a state school.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: But now I'm a grown-up, it's inconvenient, but I obviously paid attention at school.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he, as the chair of the Parliamentary Accounts Committee, accepted my evidence toward his own conclusions that the courts are failing.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he was Min and Gabriel's MP when this all began back in 2019 as well.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's just you've just come to a dead end.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I have gone as far as I can in this country, and when Gabriel was taken from me, the MP in Cheltenham at the time before the elections was Alex Chalk, who was the Lord Chancellor, so the most senior lawyer in the whole country.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: I went and sat in his office.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: He saw the video of Gabriel being taken by those armed police.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: He saw what happened.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I've gone as high as I can.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've sat with the Lord Chancellor.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: The MP that was the chair of the Parliamentary Counts Committee accepted my evidence.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was my own MP.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: The Justice Committee have accepted my evidence.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Social Work England accept my evidence.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have gone as far as I can.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And there is absolutely zero accountability.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: I find report after report after report that acknowledges harm's being done.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the pattern is the same with regards to children, that children are silenced in the favour of institutions protecting themselves rather than the child.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is the pattern that consistently appears against harms report after harms report after harm's report.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I've made all these publicly available on my website and LinkedIn profile.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is essentially exactly what mine and Gabriel's experience has been.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: So massive injustice can be done, as has been in our case, but you have no mechanism for accountability.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we see it across the board.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you start speaking up, you risk being arrested.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: You risk you know this criminalization of us.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: My son being held under house arrest.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: The police can write reports that they're failing children and acknowledge it.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Parliament can write reports that they're failing children.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Social Work England haven't released their conclusion, but I think we can all imagine that it's not going to be positive.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: But there's no accountability.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: They'll just fight it away and move on with life.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Which is back to the fact we don't live.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we're living under feudalism.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's wild.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's just feudalism.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's feud very predatorial feudalism that we're living under.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the find out it's quite interesting because in the last two weeks, I was walking through the marketplace um two weeks ago on Sunday morning when the market stalls were just setting up, and heard overheard two gentlemen talk about on the street on a Sunday morning that social services are trafficking children.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're trading children.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big statement.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it was just a market stall, you know, m setting at the market store, two chaps that were saying this.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then last Sunday, the Financial Times put the figures behind it.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: £384,000 per child per year, the state are paying if your child is taken from you and put into the care system.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that was the figure.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: You take a child that's zero to 16, that's over six million.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this is how predatorial it is.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: The stakes are incredibly high.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, I have conversations off camera all the time, and I'm just like, I've there's so many breaks in the chain.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I was threatened with Gabriel being taken into the care system.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I had to ask her, yeah.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so the first thing you've got to do in my mind is stop that occurring.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: The longer this goes on, like I say, the trust and connection between Gabriel and I hasn't been broken.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I'm happy to share more about that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the you find a gratitude for what you've got, which sounds weird when it's so brutal, but I'm like, at least I know where Gabriel is, at least he knows his name.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: At least he's old enough that he knows this happened to him, at least he knows I'm his mother, at least he knows where granny and granddad are, because you find things like this have occurred where people do not know where their children are.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they occurred when the child was so much younger that the child wouldn't have a chance of stepping out the door to walk through his granny and granddad's house.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then I also started to realise look, Gabriel probably spent about an hour a week with his martial arts teacher.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I probably learned to swim in about an hour a week.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: You start to realise an hour a week, if you're very intentional with it, you can do good stuff.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because yes, the conduct of the social workers, like I say, I used to be a physio, and previously um social workers and physiotherapists had the same regulator.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just getting I was just appalled at how the social workers were treating me.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely appalled.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so you become very aware that you've simply got to stop your child being trafficked by them into the care system.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now you know there's a figure on their head of 384,000.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not believing there's not bonuses and backhanders going on when that kind of money's moving around.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: I can't comment.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, but you it's like common sense, isn't it?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: When you've only talked in that kind of money.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I hear you.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: So going forward, I guess, I guess once Gabriel's 16, is it 16 or 18, that he can you can be reunited, I guess.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping it occurs before that because we've now written two books that have been bestsellers.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Our third one's going to be out this September.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're obviously hoping that's going to be bestseller as well.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the impact of Gabriel's books are that they're inspiring many, many other children to create their own stories.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And our process that we've since called StoryQuest to do that is directly in line with Gloucestershire Police and Crime Commissioner's recommendations for how children should be treated and given a voice.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we got a contradiction there again.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been given a Women's Leadership Award in India.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm about to be an icon status in India.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've been on front covers of magazines in India, we've been in Pakistan's Education Press, we've been in Canada's Education Press, we've been in America's media, we've been in Australia's media, we've been in Nigeria's media, we've literally been on every single continent except Antarctica.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, well done.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm hoping I've had to go to this extent of creating what I call this digital defensive moat of making sure that all the public harms reports, articles I've read, are out there, that my own medical records are out there.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because the amount of times I've been asked, yeah, well, what's wrong with you?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or what did you do wrong?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because it seems far easier to continually go with that old chestnut of women being mad than it is that the state is harmful.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is and it's a predatory world we're living in.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Asking more questions.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, obviously hopeful.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel and I saw each other a couple of weeks ago for about 90 minutes, 60 minutes to 90 minutes.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And oh my god, I hugged him and hugged him and hugged him and hugged him, Alicia.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what had occurred behind the scenes to facilitate that.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: But that was certainly gave us both a sense of light and Gabriel's sort of parting words when you left.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't see why I can't come around anytime.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see why you can't come around anytime either, darling.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: We asked for half-term, which has been this week, and we got nothing.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm hoping that um the impact of our stories and the international impact of our stories, and the acceptance of all my reports by these public bodies, is going to start creating sufficient amount of pressure that somewhere somebody just has the honour and decency to say, okay, go pick your boy up from school.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's going to arrest you because they've not got any grounds for it.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's repeatedly, every time I've been threatened, there's been no grounds for it.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: But how the police have conducted themselves, I don't trust that I can go and kill Clett Gabriel and not be arrested.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then we don't stand a chance.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to stay, you know, keep out fighting for it.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's getting to the point that it's so ridiculous because in the lawyer's own literature, they have uh they discuss a mental health score, a world organized health organization mental health score of zero to a hundred.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in the lawyer's own literature, if you score less than 52 of that, you need a mental health assessment.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: By their own self-evaluation, lawyers are scoring on average 51.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, every lawyer needs a mental health assessment according to their own literature.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: And their own self-evaluation.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they are the asylum, Alicia.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think this song every day.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: But no, it's me that's mad, and me that's an unfit mother, despite having clean medical records, clear, you know, this mountain of evidence in my favour, it's me that's mad.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Which all leads to the fact I was inconvenient.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: I can't come up with any other conclusion that I was inconveniently competent.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, you're not falling in line with what they want you to fall in line with.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep thinking if Rome never really fell, I'll I'm the plebeian that did her homework.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a breath of fresh air to hit your plight aside.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I'm not celebrating that, but as as a black person living in the UK, there's this, as I say, keep it real.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: We go through so much, and there's there's so many every day is a fight, basically.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: We have to fight on all sorts of different levels beyond most people's comprehension.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: In the workplace, we have to fight and it's and it's this country's even so much more offensive because it's it's less in your face.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean in America it's more in your face.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Here it's just it's lovely, it's British, and it's just like we have so much undertones that we have to deal with all the time, and as you say, just institutionally all the time from just different levels.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the extent to which you have to prove yourself gets ridiculous.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and we uh uh we could get to a point where we may question if we because it's a it's a very unhealthy environment, it's obviously what's being expressed here.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're living in an unhealthy environment, unhealthy things happen, and then it's a case of well but it's your fault.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but what yeah, we're we're in a dirty like it's a dirty fish bowl.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like and the fish are trying to survive in the dirty fish bowl, but no one wants to just clean the fish bowl.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know exactly, exactly.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like you're I think you're you're so you then blame the healthy fish.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: The healthy fish.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is it.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: The healthy fish then must be the biohazard.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is it.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean it feels like you're you're you're semi understanding some of the stuff that we just have to go through being in this environment.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sorry, I'm sorry that that's your story, but I'm just trying to I'm trying to just highlight the connection, basically.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's time we cleaned up the fish bowl because it's honestly we do not need another white paper written about these harms.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: They are there and they are real and we've lived them.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And your child can be taken by armed police on the false conjecture that you're an unfit parent and you can't get to see them again because you are at risk of being criminalised and your child is held with the threat and the consequence of you being criminalised.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I know.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that is our reality.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm dumped the blame.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Dump for the blame.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I totally hear you.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, in terms of the on a lighter note, story quests.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about that.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so Gabriel's books are books, so we keep doing, we keep going with our stories, and we've animated some of the pictures in it, and they're inspiring lots of other children, and we've taken them to workshops, and Gabriel's recorded a video over FaceTime.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's doing his best.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, because I had this idea, once we'd got going with these stories, and uh it has been brutal, and never ever did I think this was gonna occur.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: But after we got that first book out, Gabriel said to me, Use all your skills, mum, use all your skills.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, right, okay, well, all my skills means go back to being an athlete.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to laser in and go.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll hurt, and it'll hurt like hell, but eventually, somewhere, there is a finish line.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: I just never expected the finish line to be, you know, the race to be this long.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think that that and at some point I had this sense of right, an hour a week that's intentional can be very impactful.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I still write to him, like I said, every week, and I had this sense that actually, Gabriel, you need to self determine your character because at some point one of the social workers writes that you know they're gonna tell Gabriel his life story or some such words.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, you're not telling Gabriel's life story.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: He can tell his own story, thank you very much, and self determine his own character and his own truth.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: His perspective's gonna change over the years, but he's to own that.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: But not realizing we're gonna end up with this.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mad world of fantasy fiction that we were going to be creating.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, we we created this world and I started talking about the books we'd written.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Again, a friend dragged me along to his networking thing and said, You're going to talk about those books.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: I barely got through the first talk without tears.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Now you keep talking.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I keep talking.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was a good friend I've known for a long time.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just like, you know, yes, I'll do what you say.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I kept getting asked the same question, Alicia.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: I kept getting asked, How did you extract your son's story?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm getting asked this, see again, it gets ironical.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting asked this by social workers, teachers, parents, grandparents.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's just a weird question though.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: To ask a patient.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how did you do it?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: How did you how did you do it?
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: How did you do this?
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or somehow some might have phrased it wrong, but basically, I'm getting asked, how did you do this?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: How did you get able to share his story?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: And exactly, I can't understand it to begin with.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot understand it.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then on about the fifth time of getting asked, I realised our normal of share uh, you know, we'd have audio books in the car, I'd still read some at bedtime, and he's quite able to read his own book, but I'd still read to him at bedtime a book that he might not choose, or and if I was too tired, we'd just make up a story, then he'd read his own book.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd had this shared connection of stories for a since he was a baby.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started to realise, well, our normals, not everybody else's normal.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like Gabriel will say to me sometimes, Mama, we've done these make stories.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I know Gabriel, but our normal clearly isn't everybody else's normal.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Which obviously it isn't now, but um, and um but it also dawned on me that people just weren't knowing how to strip away just play, let children play with their imagination, strip away all the barriers.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not homework.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Take away all the executive functions.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was literally one question I asked him in the beginning.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be here of your own story?
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course I do.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've since asked nearly 500 children, though, all between age nine and eleven.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of them says yeah.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: But they only have one executive function to do, and that's think about their imagination.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then when they're like I was Gabriel's scribe, when we do this in classrooms, the friend is the scribe.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're the storyteller, your friend, and they're not even writing paragraphs, they're just doing what I did with physio, capturing the bullets, capturing the ideas, so nothing gets lost.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're the storyteller, you don't have to do multiple things at once, because as soon as kids face that blank page, there's more opportunity to be wrong than right.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Writing wrong grammar, wrong content, wrong context, wrong, didn't put the date on, didn't underline.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: You've got so many chances to be wrong, so few to be right.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're the hero of your own story, you can only be right because it's your story.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can't be wrong.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the kids are just coming to life and loving it.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: And like I say, their friend captures the ideas, helps them up-level it, and then before you know it, they're chomping it the bit, wanting to write it and asking, putting their hands up and asking for extra sheets of paper.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: Love that.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, now we're starting to be able to animate their stories, and we've got a StoryQuatform that we've built out where the children can submit their stories to, schools can take part in our workshops, and you can get the resources at home to share with your children too.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Gabriel's stories are now empowering the voices of many, many other children.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Also knowing that all these harms reports continually report about children being silenced.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: So empowering the child's voice through fantasy fiction allows the children to be their own hero, to test philosophies.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: They can't be wrong because they can only be right, it's their story.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Determine what success looks like at the ends, decide how they're gonna overcome whatever beasts and monsters.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I've really discovered is how much in the classroom teachers can try to rescue the children.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the one example was there was a story where aliens had taken all the pets, and the teacher looked at me slightly panicked, like, well, how how are they gonna defeat the aliens to get all the pets back?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_03: Give it to the kids.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say ask the children.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then you can solve it, but they've got it all worked out, and it's like so if we empower the children's voices, just like I never knew this was gonna come about with Gabriel, and it was the children that actually had the idea of hang on a minute, celebrities write all our books.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we can share each other's stories, or hang on a minute, we want to solve international conflict across borders with our stories.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: So really, we've just become the facilitator of this, and it will be very curious in terms of if you just then take the role of being the facilitator rather than the manager or director of where does this go?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: What problems do the children actually start solving when they're empowered to have their own voice?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: I love that, and it's I love the encouragement of the imagination because it feels like the way the world's set up right now, that's getting lusts because if we're just on tablets and phones and blah blah blah all day, that we know that they're in a space now where they're just overly stimulated way too early.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Consumers, consumers, consumers, but actually, all that creativity is in them.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've just got to get out their way and allow them to express it.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, logic goes out the window.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's anything goes.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: Anything goes, you know, absolutely anything goes.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the stuff that they're sharing is absolutely brilliant.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there and there has this been this real joy of connection between Gabriel and those children.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he made like I say, he's made a video that he appears in their classroom, and sometimes they've wanted to make videos back to him.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they can see all the press we've been getting together, and they can't believe it.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: The children just don't know.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: But behind the scenes is a little boy that's essentially living under house arrest, and it they're spending more time with his mother than Gabriel is.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't actually imagine what those children's reaction would be.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect they'd be very, very angry.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I suspect they would find a solution.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect they would send those aliens in to do something.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a plot twist, isn't it?
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: So gosh.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we're inviting more schools in the UK to take part, families to take part, and also international schools to take part, so that we can empower children's voices through this.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm, like I say, continually hoping that somewhere somebody is going to have the decency and honour to say this is absolutely ridiculous.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let that little boy go and see his mum.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is it.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and as you said, you've got all the paperwork and all the rest of it to say that this shouldn't be a problem.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: So what's really nice is when we've done these workshops, the children have self-evaluated what it's meant to them to be the author of their own story.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they've come up with uh and then I've then evaluated the children's own words looking for themes.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the children have all said what the workshop's meant to them.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then I've taken all of that and evaluated it.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: They come up with seven sort of points of leadership, you know, joyful engagement, social connection, and you know, they've enjoyed the um creating creating their own character.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: Those seven leadership qualities align directly with what the real big developmental psychologists have to say about matters to children.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, yeah, narrative identity, empowerment, agency.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then a management consultant's very kind who looked at the Adventures of Cabriel book and found exactly the same leadership qualities appear in those.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we've now got three points of evidence to step through this cage these cages and cages of fear that they want to control us with, or we are controlled by.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: What are we living for and leaving behind and living in?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's this is it.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Not acceptable.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is it, and this is why we found synergy because it's like we as we said earlier, people need to now start stepping up.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we see there's a lot of problems in the world.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: We can't be just sitting down and waiting for somebody else to do it because we know they probably won't.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: We all have agency, we all have to step identify a problem, take action, do something, and that is literally the mission of this podcast.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, once again, thank you for well, you're you're living in the problem.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, but thank you for having the courage and just be brave to actually do something because so many people would just be like, blah, I'm not doing anything.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I I have no I have no strength, I have no I have no power, I can't do anything, just give up.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it takes a lot for people to push through, yeah, fight.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: And especially if you feel like it's the whole so many organized organizations within a piece of land that we're floating on, you know, it's so easy to feel alone, you know.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: We've all been there.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it takes a different type of person to be like, you know what, whatever.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna stand for something is the point I'm getting to.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like we're in such a weird world now where so many people are standing on fences or just being very wishy-washy.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I don't know what's happened where people don't have any morale, a drive, um, even courage to stand.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just like, stand for something.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: What's the saying?
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you don't if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it feels like we're in a world where people are just falling for anything.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as we've discussed before this episode, like, even the one thing I've said on this podcast so many times critical thinking, or just a simple thing of asking questions, don't just accept what somebody's told to you, and don't just accept what somebody's okay, what you're doing doing to you, yeah, you know, so and it's also it's like so much of this is what I've discovered is in the public domain.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's literally report after report, and it's like even if you don't want to say your opinion, what I've discovered is how much is already in the public domain.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can just start presenting public domain reports that are already communicating the harms, and all you're doing is bringing it forward, bringing it forward.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: We know this is going on, we know this is going on.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that stuff stops getting hidden under the carpet.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is why you're here, Co.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is why my podcast exists.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're fighting the power.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, we're doing things.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what else was gonna ask?
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, so you so you and Gabriel are getting awards now.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've just been awarded a leader a women's leadership award in India.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I was invited to apply for my professional physio or previous professional physiotherapist for sort of international icon status in India as a result of the um StoryQuest work.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we're getting recognition internationally for the impact of our work.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: And nationally, all my reports have been accepted.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: And are in line with a lot of the recommendations about giving children a voice.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: But locally in Gloucestershire, Gabriel still lives under house arrest.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: This this is actually a genuine question.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a power, like, because obviously we've we've left Europe, so is there a power bigger than like everybody who you've mentioned earlier?
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is there somebody who could kind of trump that?
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: If any of your listeners have ideas about what my next step should be, I would very much welcome them.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because that's that's yeah, that's what I'm looking at.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like Where do I go next?
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I've gone as far as I can.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody honestly, if anybody has ideas, I would really be grateful.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: You've kind of exhausted it a little bit.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: How much more evidence do I have to give?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Can you create a case against them in order to force them to have to now present evidence for all the behaviour?
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Would that be an angle?
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure because there's again so much just where the institution in this situation feels like it's protected itself.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: The institution's just repeatedly protected itself.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: And again, there are plenty of professional reports where that is what occurs in this country is the institutions just preserve themselves.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: So do I have it, do I have any faith in any of that?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, I just have more faith in somewhere, all it's gonna take is one person to find honour to say open the door and let that boy walk free.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: We need to find an ally then basically within, but it's like a needle in a haystack, and it's it's building up enough rapport with somebody to even learn that they're that kind of decent human.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is there no one here in London?
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: With higher courts?
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: Worth a try.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_03: Watch this space then, I guess it's to be continued then, okay?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna have the honour to open that door?
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's my question.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: We never know who sees this and who may step up and reach out, I guess.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: But um but but as a uh from a mum to a mum, d lost our children in different ways, but thankfully you you've technically he's still here.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank godness thank god, thank God, you know.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I guess that let's take our children at a distance in different ways, then shall we?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: In a different way.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I get the the fight to to push through, you know.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's still a beautiful light at the end of your tunnel, shall we say?
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: So everyone, Kate.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me, Alicia, and thank you for that's okay.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um understanding um that injustice does occur.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I I totally get it.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think um this is on a personal level, this has probably also helped me to that one day I will share, you know, my story.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: As much as I've done it before cam before the cameras turned on, I've shared the day that my son died, kind of thing.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think this has kind of gave me a little bit more strength to get to a point where I guess I share my story.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: It will happen eventually, and it's uh as we said, it's one day at a time with these things.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: But um now it's this is this has actually helped me to find my voice in terms of that specific subject of mums at a distance from their children.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: Where can people find you?
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Kate Markland, and you can find me on LinkedIn particularly, and then I am on the other channels, but LinkedIn's where I'm most.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the website is storyquestglobal.com.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Alicia, for having that.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for coming, Kate.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's been emotional, we didn't cry.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: No, we didn't.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: We got my anger out.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: We got my anger out.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's as we said, it's um it's it's a toxic fishbowl we're living in.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: We have to express ourselves, you know, and um it takes it takes certain people who are gonna make a contribution to help clean it up, you know.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've all got to a boiling point where we've heard up.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're over it, and we know that we've got the power to do stuff ourselves no matter whatever the whatever the specific thing is.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: We all have to just, as I say, take action, and I'm just encouraging that.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, I appreciate I appreciate your flight, um, your fight.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I trust that you'll be victorious.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: I see it, you know.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, just just don't give up.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: You have your truth, the universe is behind you, you know.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: What's right will always prevail, you know, and the the truth was the truth will set you free and set everybody else free.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know the timing of things.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um as I said, spiritual person, so I say it's in God's time, university time, whatever label people want to give, but it's not in our timing, and there's powerful things coming from your story and Gabriel's story.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right now it doesn't make sense.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: The beauty that's came from your already story quest, and I'm sure there's so much more beauty to come.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, right now he's a little boy.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: One day he's gonna be a man, and then we don't know the power that Gabriel's gonna come with, and the power that he's gonna come with in this world.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: I keep thinking more and more, I keep saying this, his name.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, his name.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, his name has got.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: I sometimes think my job is just to be his oboe right now, yeah, because I can speak and he can't so easily.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do keep thinking his name is gonna resonate.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: It will.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: And his name carries a lot of meaning.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is it.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: And as as mums, we we we set the we set the foundation, you know, as I shared with you, my inspiration to even do this podcast and everything else I've got going on was because of my little boy, as much as he's he's not here anymore in the physical, he's definitely my inspiration, and it's it's the power of us, not just mum's parents and whoever and caregivers to fight for our little people, um, and at least set a foundation for the legacy that they can then build upon.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, so yeah, thank you very much, Kate.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you, and um yeah, and I totally wish you well in all that you're doing.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Alice.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay, no problem.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: And another great episode.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Kate is here doing her work um for herself and her her son, and I I hope this inspires anybody else who's got challenges going on in terms of their family, their life, anything to not be a bystander, take action, do something.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: We we have power, we have agency.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say, once again, get in the comments, talk to me, contact Kate on the on the contact that she's already shared.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let's continue to talk, let's continue to build, let's continue to take action, and once again, stay blessed.