Reminded Connor’s inquest finished 10 years ago tomorrow. I gave evidence yesterday in 2015. I rarely, can barely, bear to think back to those days. Even writing this first sentence fills me with an overwhelming sense of dread. Eased in part by remembering the unwavering support we received from so many people. Family, friends, friends of friends, colleagues, and countless others. The courtroom was full daily with people who cared. Who recognised Connor mattered. He matters. 

Memory tattery. The family room packed with fast food smells, intense ‘strategic’ discussions with our legal counsel held perching on the arms of the massive, dark blue settees or lost in the depth of these beasts where it was hard to know where limbs, bodies, warmth, love started or ended in the strangeness and sadness of that room. Its furnishings, safety and the cruelty of the courtroom a few steps beyond.

Looking back now, we collectively owned the space without recognising it. Not just the nosh wrappers. A bank of integrity, George Julian’s live tweeting at the frontline. Amplifying the unspeakable hostility and defensiveness the NHS leans into when it fails people so blinking badly. Rising above quibbles about tweeting interfering with the court recording devices to let people beyond know what unfolds in these processes.

Love, Nintendo distraction, waiting, exhaustion, so much sadness. Rage. Always rage. Dirty, grubby tricks. And love.

The #JusticeforLB collective standing firm against everything thrown at us. The coroner’s officer Beth checking we were ok, making sure Connor’s photos were prominently displayed. My Life My Choice members attending daily, negotiating the dated courtroom setting and rules, learning to stand (why?) when the coroner entered the room. 

The stuff of barrel scraping conducted by legal counsels was all the more remarkable because the death of someone with learning disabilities rarely led to an inquest hearing. Erasure mechanisms worked seamlessly until the likes of a pesky mother wrote a blog providing contemporaneous records that could not be ignored. Leading to intense efforts to discredit, destroy. Howlers and howlings around me daring to work full time and failing to inform health professionals about the very basics in basic health care.

The work of our legal team, Charlotte Haworth Hird, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC and Paul Bowen KC meant these efforts landed awkwardly, missed the mark. The jury were sharp, attentive and invested in justice. Their consistent questioning of each witness further highlighted the absurdity of the ‘defence’ of those responsible. 

It’s interesting that what I remember now is what was recorded at the time, words and photos. The big story. While so much else went on. Friends picking up dog walking, cooking, everyday life outside of walking into the Oxfordshire County Council building for two weeks. To listen to the unspeakable.

Now, I wonder how or why so much of what unfolded was allowed to go unchallenged by the coroner. Blame blasts fired without comment. At the time, I was focused on the endpoint. Of getting accountability for Connor’s death. That was what mattered. Answer, obey, don’t rise to provocation.

The proceedings were, with hindsight, grotesque. Two years later, at a GMC hearing run by the MPTS that dragged on for over a year, the brutality of the responsible clinician’s legal counsel cross-examination led to me becoming unwell. This was apparently fine. No one stepped up to say stop it at the time, or after. No one. A letter to the chair of the MPTS about the brutality of the questioning was knocked backed with a ‘tsk tsk, if you dare complain about a medic, you should be prepared to be robustly challenged’ answer.

I live with the experience of gripping a witness box edge to look at a jury and answer questions about my failings as a mother when my beautiful boy was left to drown in a hospital bath. I live with the experience of sitting in a room on the fifth floor of a building on the Oxford Road in Manchester, near where I now work, being told that the responsible clinician was upset by my witness statement about her ‘care’. In front of a GMC panel who after nearly two hours of cross examination didn’t ask if I wanted a break as my world visibly spun out of kilter. 

These processes (still) operate by allowing the brutalisation of bereaved families and protecting (certain) health and social care staff.

How is it possible to sit by and allow this to happen? What the hell do you suspend to allow yourself to simply. not. notice?

And what would it take to wake you from this?

PS. He wasn’t late.