Out of the Darkness
Lynne Barrett-Lee, Casey Watson

It’s May when Casey receives a disturbing phone call from Christine, asking if she can take 11 year old Esme urgently. The girl has been accused by her mum and stepdad of trying to drown her baby sister and, after months of worrying and increasingly violent behaviour, which school have also witnessed, they are at the end of their tether.

Having looked after other children in similar circumstances over the years, Casey’s heart goes out to this obviously troubled child, and she and Mike agree to take her in.

Esme's background, however, makes for depressing reading. Her biological father, a soldier, died when she was a baby, killed in action in Afghanistan by an undetected Improvised Explosive Device whilst on his second tour during the clean-up operation. After her husband’s death, Mum Chloe really struggled to cope mentally, and accessed mental health services on several occasions. That all changed, however, when Esme was 8; Chloe met Jake and, within a year, Chloe was pregnant with the couple’s daughter. They were married shortly after, with Chloe as bridesmaid.

Baby Rene was born when Esme was 9, but already Esme was proving to be difficult. She struggled with the transition from it being just her and her mum and, though Jake tried his best to make friends with her, she became sullen and withdrawn. She started acting up at school as well – somewhere she’d previously been happy - and despite the family thinking that things might change for the better once baby was born, they didn't. In fact, they escalated.

Anxious that Esme’s mental health was deteriorating fast, and concerned that she had not accepted her new reality, mum, supported by the school and her new husband, sought urgent help from CAMHS. Esme was a closed book, however. She refused to engage, let alone give any kind of explanation for her behaviour, only reiterating that she hated her life. Jake also reported that Esme often told lies, and tried to cause problems between him and Chloe. The couple were now at their wits end.

The straw that broke the camel's back for the family happened one evening while the baby was down for a nap before her last feed.  Jake and Chloe were watching TV when they suddenly realised that Esme, who’d said she was going to use the toilet, had been out of the room for some time.  Jake went up to check and was horrified by what he found. Esme had taken the baby from her cot into the bathroom, and placed her in a bath full of water. He said the baby looked lifeless and that, chillingly, Esme seemed to be holding her down. He immediately called an ambulance and though it turned out that the baby was, thankfully, okay, by this point Chloe couldn’t live with the anxiety and stress any longer. How soon would it be before something really tragic happened?

True to form, though, Esme told a different story. She insisted that she’d only been trying to help out. That she’d been bathing her little sister. That the soap had made her slippery and she’d fallen out of her hands and banged her head. This didn’t, however, fit with what her stepdad had seen and, in conjunction with all Esme’s previous episodes of violence, this proved to be the last straw for her mother – hard though it was, they simply couldn’t risk the baby’s safety. Despite Jake trying to talk her out of it, she said she wanted to put Esme into care.

It’s a wretched situation, and Casey and Mike can only do their best. But is there any chance, with their support, that this distressed and angry child can ever be reunited with her family?