Listen to thisAlmost from the very beginning we became Mike's world.
He had spent three nights in a police cell and that, combined with the traumatic, self destructive events of the weekend, meant he was more than ready for any refuge we might offer. He arrived at Bracken House one freezing morning in January, a very subdued and frightened young boy. Hand-cuffed to two burly policemen, eyes watery and unsure, he gazed around the building, terrified of what he might see.
Jack, the Deputy Principal, and I were waiting for them in the Secure Unit.
"In here," said Jack, motioning the little group into the office. “Could you take off the cuffs?" I asked. The policemen looked at me carefully and very surely, very slowly, removed the handcuffs.
"Thanks," I said.
While Jack went through the usual admission procedures, I read over the few bits and pieces of information we had on the boy. His name was Mike; he was fourteen years old and had been remanded to our care on a charge of murder. The previous Friday, on the way home from school, he had stabbed his best friend with a sheath knife. He then hid the body on some waste ground where it was not discovered until late the following day.
There was no reason, no rationale, just a clear, bald statement of fact.
"Should be a weekly remand for the next few months," said a policeman. “At least until committal for trial. We'll have someone here to pick him up for court each Thursday”.
I looked at Mike. Apart from the eyes, which were weak and dead, there was nothing to suggest or even hint at the brutal and callous crime of which he was accused.
Once the policemen had left, Mike began to relax. Nobody in their right mind could condone his actions but, at that stage, it was not our concern. We were to look after him, care for him, and, if necessary, protect him from the outside world. We could feel remorse or even disgust at what he had done, but our prime concern had to be for Mike. And there was no denying he had had a rough time of it.
"Three days," he told us. “Day and night they kept at me. I didn't get any sleep all weekend."
We introduced him to the Secure Unit staff and then left them to get to know each other. Slowly, we walked to the end of the corridor, opened and then locked the heavy security doors behind us. “That's a hell of a thing," commented Jack as we went down the stairs.
"What is?" I asked.
"That kid. OK, so he's committed a crime – the worst, most brutal crime you can imagine. But he's going to spend the rest of his life in institutions like this. From now on he'll get to need us like another lung. We're all he's got!" Jack was right.
Mike settled quickly to the routine of the Unit, hardly seeming to need parents, friends, anyone on the outside world. It was as if everything had ceased to exist except in fantasy, the little dreams he wove around his life. The very buildings and structure of Bracken House were exactly what he wanted, needed even. He was a nice enough lad and it was very easy for us to forget his crime.
"Come and see this," he called to me one day. “Look what I've done with the sitting room."
In one corner he had constructed a dais, and with pictures of pop and film stars, coloured lights and the unit stereo, he had made the whole place into the discotheque of his dreams. “I'm going to run my own disco when I get out of here," he said. I gazed at him. He was flushed, excited, eyes sparkling and aglow. Jack's words came suddenly, urgently, back to me “'We are all he's got!'"
After a while, however, even the dreams began to fade. Gradually, we became the centre of his whole universe, almost as if we were the only fantasy which really mattered to him. He persuaded his parents to bring him records and a guitar, tape recorder and books, anything which would help cement or prop up his brittle existence. He took over and organized the boys' rota duties for washing, cleaning and television viewing. Eagerly he seized on the gossip which always circulated in residential establishments and passed it on like an old washerwoman.
Yet, most worrying of all, was the total lack of remorse he showed. The offence and the weekly court appearance became events which had happened or would happen in the future – but always as if to someone else. Mike saw himself as one of us – we were his future, his family, his home. Life began and ended with us.
"It's nice to get back," he sighed, one evening as we returned to the unit after a walk. “Always better in here."
Eventually, the time came to hold a case conference in order to discuss his situation. We sat in the long, oak panelled conference room and pondered on his future.
"It was bound to happen," commented Jack. “Always does in cases like this."
Dave, the Group Leader in charge of the Secure Unit, raised his eyebrows. “Maybe. But when that door shuts behind him he does find it incredibly comforting. It seems to block out that great big, nasty world – he knows he's secure, knows we'll care for him. He's protected, sheltered. Safe, I suppose." We nodded, each of us knowing that Dave was right.
"Mind you," Jack shrugged, “he's going to move on after the trial. And not to anywhere quite as pleasant or as caring as this!" For a while none of us spoke. We had all considered it, known it was possible, but now Jack's words brought everything out into the open.
Mike was so obviously content, so happy in the tiny world he had constructed for himself, that the coming court trial loomed like freezing winter in his path.
"At the moment," sighed Dave, “he's forgotten all about the murder, the trial, everything. He used to have nightmares, used to keep calling out in his sleep, but even that's stopped now. It's as if he's shut everything away at the back of his mind and just refuses to let it out. Trouble is, when he gets to court, when he comes face to face with reality, it could damn well destroy him."
Yet things did not turn out that way. When he went into court he was like the calm at the centre of a storm. Around him, all over him, were weeping parents and relatives – his own and the murdered boy's – but Mike sat unperturbed and unmoved in the middle of it all.
For five days the trial lasted. When, each evening, he returned to the unit it was for all the world as if he was the happy family man coming home from a hard day's work. “The old pipe and slippers routine," he would say as he settled down in front of the television . “This is the life”.
When the jury brought in a verdict of guilty he was silent and, to all outward appearances, uncaring. He was to be detained at “Her Majesty's pleasure" and came back to us to await placement at a Youth Treatment Centre. Neither then nor at any stage in the future did he make any comment about what had happened to him.
Shortly afterwards I was due to go off on a month's Outward Bound course in North Wales. I made a point of going around the boys who would have left the Centre when I came back, wishing them all the best for the future.
When I came to Mike he was sitting in his room. We looked at each other and we both knew that any comment was not only ineffective but also a waste of time. With other boys there was a foreseeable future. In a few years they would be out of the system and would, hopefully, settle down to a relatively normal life. But for Mike, what was there to look forward to? He had nowhere to go apart from a succession of treatment centres and, eventually, the prison service for the rest of his life. And the thought was crippling.
"Cheerio, Mike," I said. “Look after yourself."
"See you around," he said.
When I thought about it, there was nothing else to say.
