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So much love, so much pain

Jeanette Roberts has adopted many abused and damaged children over the years and now has a large extended family. But, four years ago, she and the family faced allegations of abuse resulting in the longest case ever heard in the family court in London. Now cleared of all charges, they tell PATRICK BAKER their story

The last thing Jeanette Roberts wanted in life was a family. That’s what she thought, 35 years ago. Now, still single, she is 'Mum' to a unique, extended family, many of whom still live with her. How this happened is a remarkable story of love and pain, of friends and enemies, of God and grace.

God didn’t seem to be around when Jeanette grew up. How often, while her father was sexually abusing her, she cried out: "If you’re God, show me!" But he never came, so she turned to hate instead. "So much for you God!" she said, as she robbed churches and set fire to them. By the time she was in her mid-20s, she had escaped the hell of family life by becoming a nurse. The suffering she witnessed only fuelled her anger. How she pitied the Christian nurses who kept talking to her about God. They were stupid and weak, couldn’t take life as it was.

So why, one summer, did she agree to go on holiday with them to Cornwall? Because anything was better than spending her leave on her own. But watching the others enjoying themselves, having prayer meetings, talking about God, only sharpened her pain.

One night, unable to stand it any longer, she went down to the beach alone, tossed to and fro by her thoughts about God. Was he there, or wasn’t he? No answer came and, in despair, Jeanette walked, fully dressed, into the rough sea. She swam and swam until, exhausted, she cried out once more, "If you’re God, show me!"

How she ever got back to the beach, she never knew. But one thing she did know within herself from that moment on was that God was God. Next morning, the first nurse who saw her said: "You’re a Christian now, aren’t you?" She was, but she soon wondered why. Life hadn’t been easy before; now it got worse. She lost her job and her accommodation – for being a Christian – and was reduced to walking the streets of the East End of London. "Are you going to show me what this is all about, God?" she asked.

The answer was right in front of her the moment she entered a shop. "I saw this boy," she told me, "just putting everything he could into his pockets and I knew I couldn’t ignore it." She followed him out of the shop and asked him what he thought he was doing. "F ... off!" he replied. Instead, she insisted on going home with him to talk to his Mum. She had a long wait: his mother didn’t get back from the club until the early hours.

That incident led Jeanette into a Dickensian world of unwanted kids, uncaring parents and families living in squalor. Her response was to start a club for 'unclubbable' kids, so she could teach them about God and help them avoid getting into the sort of mess she knew only too well. The first night, 78 kids came through the doors. "Come on God, is this a joke?" she said. "I can’t do this by myself." Then she thought: "Well, I haven’t got to. He has."

It was a valuable lesson to learn, for God had much more in store for Jeanette. When she had her own flat, kids came knocking on her door and soon began staying overnight with their parents' consent. As her special affinity with disturbed kids became known, Social Services asked her to foster children. Then adopt. And so the family grew and she had to move houses several times to keep up.

Living with disturbed kids wasn't easy – they smashed things, stole things – and it was often a hand-to-mouth existence. "From God's hand to our mouths," was how Jeanette explained it to her kids.

Soon Jeanette needed another helper and, in 1970, her friend Joyce Nash, a district nursing tutor, came to live with her. Later, other adults joined the family too. Karen came from prison, and stayed. Sheila got to know the family when she visited as a home tutor. "So much love; so much pain," was what she observed. When she decided to join the family, her grown-up-daughter, Heather, came too.

Children came to Jeanette in many different ways and at different ages. She was asked to adopt Rachel before she was even born. "At my age?” she argued with God. "How will a baby affect the rest of the family? Surely she’d be better off with a couple?” God won the argument, not without a struggle, but when Rachel was born, the hospital phoned Jeanette with bad news. Rachel had been born without an oesophagus, something they discovered only after they’d tried to feed her, resulting in irreparable damage to her lungs.

"Come on God," Jeanette said as she drove to the hospital, "I can’t do this. This baby is not going to live, I’m going to have her for a while and then ..." But when she saw Rachel, her heart melted. "God you must weep with me. This is why this baby’s here. I am a trained nurse, I can nurse her, her mother can’t. I’m sorry, I’ve done it again, thought about myself first, not the baby."

She loved Rachel from that minute, and prayed that she would live. She did, for 24 years – although only able to be fed through a tube for the last eight of them. Now she is a greatly missed daughter, sister, and inspiration to her many Christian friends.

Before, and after Rachel, Jeanette has loved and adopted many other children, sometimes taking on three, four, six from the same family. Children no-one else could handle, abused children, violent children, children who had been taken beyond the bounds of childhood. Could Jeanette give them the childhood they’d never had? That was her goal, and to teach them about God. Some of them are still living at home. Others have gone on to live independently, single or married. Some have become Christians; others not.

Jack tested Jeanette and the family to the limit. He arrived, aged 10, from one of only two places in the country for uncontrolled teenagers. The first thing he did was threaten to kill Jeanette. The only way she could manage children like him was to keep them on a one-to-one basis, otherwise someone was going to get badly hurt.

Jack was hurting badly too, as a result of abuse and rejection. Jeanette kept telling the authorities that he was mentally ill, but it was five years before a doctor came to assess him. After talking to Jack, the doctor turned to Jeanette: "How on earth have you managed all this time?” "With difficulty," she replied. Jack was sectioned and committed to a psychiatric unit, where his schizophrenia was diagnosed and treated with appropriate medication.

Typically, Jeanette stood by him and, at his request, adopted him when he was 17. Jack was discharged after some years and now, aged 27, he lives nearby and visits ‘Mum’ and his family regularly. He has no regrets about what Jeanette did. "She had me assessed," he told me, "because I needed appropriate medication and hospitalisation."

Others, however, after leaving Jeanette, have turned on her. She’s got used to that over the years, knowing that abused children can find themselves torn between their birth parents and her. So who’s to blame for their troubles? Jeanette of course.

And when some of the parents – from whom they were removed because of abuse – see their children doing well with Jeanette, establishing relationships, they resent it. Jeanette ‘stole’ their children, she must be punished, and the best way to do that is to make allegations. They don’t have to be true; someone will always believe them.

In January 1985, Jeanette and her family had moved out of London to the Old Convent, Bicknacre, Essex. And it was here, early on the morning of 26 November 1998, that a combined force of 100 police and social services personnel mounted a devastating raid on the family.

For months, they had been investigating allegations of abuse from former members of Jeanette’s family and trawling for evidence. Convinced they were onto something big, they had armed officers and a helicopter in support. You couldn’t take chances with OAPs – all women, true, but what was in those handbags? – and 35 vulnerable adults and children.

Jeanette, Joyce, Sheila, and Karen, who is physically disabled, were arrested. Social services loaded the rest of the family into vans and removed them into ‘care’. The police then conducted an exhaustive search of the abandoned house and grounds; they found nothing.

Many members of the shattered family fought their way back home in the following days and weeks, but the nightmare continues today. Jeanette and her helpers were hit with mountains of allegations and dragged through the courts. The police and social services kept the pressure on and the local authority, Essex, overspent millions of pounds of public money in pursuing the case against Jeanette.

For what? All criminal charges against Jeanette and others were dropped. The children and vulnerable adults were allowed to return home in 2001 after judgement was given in the Family Court in the Strand, London. It was the longest case in its history.

Reflecting on the trauma, Joyce Nash said, "We would never have got through without the overwhelming support of friends and the church. I was shattered by the allegations because they were totally contrary to what went on here. We always had an open house with visitors, friends, students, so many people coming in and out. The authorities could have checked these allegations with teachers and doctors who knew the family well and I’m angry that no-one saw fit to do this before taking action."

Jack is angry too, not only with those who made the allegations – "Mum treated them just like anyone else” – but also with the police – "they visited me when I was in hospital, told me not to have any contact with the family, and offered me money and publicity but I didn’t want it." (Home Affairs Select Committee began an investigation into police trawling in May 2002.)

As for Rachel, her intense grief at the long absence of the children broke her fragile heart. She died on 22 February 2000.

What now? "We don’t want the children to live in a burdened atmosphere," Joyce told me, "so as well as searching for justice, we’re getting on with life. To me what’s come out is, if you commit yourself to caring – and Jeanette always committed herself to the children – it can be very costly."

If Jeanette had known where her commitment to love and care would lead her, would she have turned a blind eye to that pilfering lad who started it all? I could ask her, I suppose, but I think you and I know the answer already.

Patrick Baker is a freelance writer based in Essex
This article first appeared in Christian Herald

© Christian Family Network
is run by CPO, supported by
Care for the Family, Marriage Resource, Positive Parenting,
Care, Women Alive, Christian Herald and many others.


		So much love, so much pain Jeanette Roberts has adopted many abused and damaged children over the years and now has a large extended family. But, four years ago, she and the family faced allegations of abuse resulting in the longest case ever heard in the family court in London. Now cleared of all charges, they tell PATRICK BAKER their story The last thing Jeanette Roberts wanted in life was a family. That’s what she thought, 35 years ago. Now, still single, she is 'Mum' to a unique, extended family, many of whom still live with her. How this happened is a remarkable story of love and pain, of friends and enemies, of God and grace. God didn’t seem to be around when Jeanette grew up. How often, while her father was sexually abusing her, she cried out: "If you’re God, show me!" But he never came, so she turned to hate instead. "So much for you God!" she said, as she robbed churches and set fire to them. By the time she was in her mid-20s, she had escaped the hell of family life by becoming a nurse. The suffering she witnessed only fuelled her anger. How she pitied the Christian nurses who kept talking to her about God. They were stupid and weak, couldn’t take life as it was. So why, one summer, did she agree to go on holiday with them to Cornwall? Because anything was better than spending her leave on her own. But watching the others enjoying themselves, having prayer meetings, talking about God, only sharpened her pain. One night, unable to stand it any longer, she went down to the beach alone, tossed to and fro by her thoughts about God. Was he there, or wasn’t he? No answer came and, in despair, Jeanette walked, fully dressed, into the rough sea. She swam and swam until, exhausted, she cried out once more, "If you’re God, show me!" How she ever got back to the beach, she never knew. But one thing she did know within herself from that moment on was that God was God. Next morning, the first nurse who saw her said: "You’re a Christian now, aren’t you?" She was, but she soon wondered why. Life hadn’t been easy before; now it got worse. She lost her job and her accommodation – for being a Christian – and was reduced to walking the streets of the East End of London. "Are you going to show me what this is all about, God?" she asked. The answer was right in front of her the moment she entered a shop. "I saw this boy," she told me, "just putting everything he could into his pockets and I knew I couldn’t ignore it." She followed him out of the shop and asked him what he thought he was doing. "F ... off!" he replied. Instead, she insisted on going home with him to talk to his Mum. She had a long wait: his mother didn’t get back from the club until the early hours. That incident led Jeanette into a Dickensian world of unwanted kids, uncaring parents and families living in squalor. Her response was to start a club for 'unclubbable' kids, so she could teach them about God and help them avoid getting into the sort of mess she knew only too well. The first night, 78 kids came through the doors. "Come on God, is this a joke?" she said. "I can’t do this by myself." Then she thought: "Well, I haven’t got to. He has." It was a valuable lesson to learn, for God had much more in store for Jeanette. When she had her own flat, kids came knocking on her door and soon began staying overnight with their parents' consent. As her special affinity with disturbed kids became known, Social Services asked her to foster children. Then adopt. And so the family grew and she had to move houses several times to keep up. Living with disturbed kids wasn't easy – they smashed things, stole things – and it was often a hand-to-mouth existence. "From God's hand to our mouths," was how Jeanette explained it to her kids. Soon Jeanette needed another helper and, in 1970, her friend Joyce Nash, a district nursing tutor, came to live with her. Later, other adults joined the family too. Karen came from prison, and stayed. Sheila got to know the family when she visited as a home tutor. "So much love; so much pain," was what she observed. When she decided to join the family, her grown-up-daughter, Heather, came too. Children came to Jeanette in many different ways and at different ages. She was asked to adopt Rachel before she was even born. "At my age?” she argued with God. "How will a baby affect the rest of the family? Surely she’d be better off with a couple?” God won the argument, not without a struggle, but when Rachel was born, the hospital phoned Jeanette with bad news. Rachel had been born without an oesophagus, something they discovered only after they’d tried to feed her, resulting in irreparable damage to her lungs. "Come on God," Jeanette said as she drove to the hospital, "I can’t do this. This baby is not going to live, I’m going to have her for a while and then ..." But when she saw Rachel, her heart melted. "God you must weep with me. This is why this baby’s here. I am a trained nurse, I can nurse her, her mother can’t. I’m sorry, I’ve done it again, thought about myself first, not the baby." She loved Rachel from that minute, and prayed that she would live. She did, for 24 years – although only able to be fed through a tube for the last eight of them. Now she is a greatly missed daughter, sister, and inspiration to her many Christian friends. Before, and after Rachel, Jeanette has loved and adopted many other children, sometimes taking on three, four, six from the same family. Children no-one else could handle, abused children, violent children, children who had been taken beyond the bounds of childhood. Could Jeanette give them the childhood they’d never had? That was her goal, and to teach them about God. Some of them are still living at home. Others have gone on to live independently, single or married. Some have become Christians; others not. Jack tested Jeanette and the family to the limit. He arrived, aged 10, from one of only two places in the country for uncontrolled teenagers. The first thing he did was threaten to kill Jeanette. The only way she could manage children like him was to keep them on a one-to-one basis, otherwise someone was going to get badly hurt. Jack was hurting badly too, as a result of abuse and rejection. Jeanette kept telling the authorities that he was mentally ill, but it was five years before a doctor came to assess him. After talking to Jack, the doctor turned to Jeanette: "How on earth have you managed all this time?” "With difficulty," she replied. Jack was sectioned and committed to a psychiatric unit, where his schizophrenia was diagnosed and treated with appropriate medication. Typically, Jeanette stood by him and, at his request, adopted him when he was 17. Jack was discharged after some years and now, aged 27, he lives nearby and visits ‘Mum’ and his family regularly. He has no regrets about what Jeanette did. "She had me assessed," he told me, "because I needed appropriate medication and hospitalisation." Others, however, after leaving Jeanette, have turned on her. She’s got used to that over the years, knowing that abused children can find themselves torn between their birth parents and her. So who’s to blame for their troubles? Jeanette of course. And when some of the parents – from whom they were removed because of abuse – see their children doing well with Jeanette, establishing relationships, they resent it. Jeanette ‘stole’ their children, she must be punished, and the best way to do that is to make allegations. They don’t have to be true; someone will always believe them. In January 1985, Jeanette and her family had moved out of London to the Old Convent, Bicknacre, Essex. And it was here, early on the morning of 26 November 1998, that a combined force of 100 police and social services personnel mounted a devastating raid on the family. For months, they had been investigating allegations of abuse from former members of Jeanette’s family and trawling for evidence. Convinced they were onto something big, they had armed officers and a helicopter in support. You couldn’t take chances with OAPs – all women, true, but what was in those handbags? – and 35 vulnerable adults and children. Jeanette, Joyce, Sheila, and Karen, who is physically disabled, were arrested. Social services loaded the rest of the family into vans and removed them into ‘care’. The police then conducted an exhaustive search of the abandoned house and grounds; they found nothing. Many members of the shattered family fought their way back home in the following days and weeks, but the nightmare continues today. Jeanette and her helpers were hit with mountains of allegations and dragged through the courts. The police and social services kept the pressure on and the local authority, Essex, overspent millions of pounds of public money in pursuing the case against Jeanette. For what? All criminal charges against Jeanette and others were dropped. The children and vulnerable adults were allowed to return home in 2001 after judgement was given in the Family Court in the Strand, London. It was the longest case in its history. Reflecting on the trauma, Joyce Nash said, "We would never have got through without the overwhelming support of friends and the church. I was shattered by the allegations because they were totally contrary to what went on here. We always had an open house with visitors, friends, students, so many people coming in and out. The authorities could have checked these allegations with teachers and doctors who knew the family well and I’m angry that no-one saw fit to do this before taking action." Jack is angry too, not only with those who made the allegations – "Mum treated them just like anyone else” – but also with the police – "they visited me when I was in hospital, told me not to have any contact with the family, and offered me money and publicity but I didn’t want it." (Home Affairs Select Committee began an investigation into police trawling in May 2002.) As for Rachel, her intense grief at the long absence of the children broke her fragile heart. She died on 22 February 2000. What now? "We don’t want the children to live in a burdened atmosphere," Joyce told me, "so as well as searching for justice, we’re getting on with life. To me what’s come out is, if you commit yourself to caring – and Jeanette always committed herself to the children – it can be very costly." If Jeanette had known where her commitment to love and care would lead her, would she have turned a blind eye to that pilfering lad who started it all? I could ask her, I suppose, but I think you and I know the answer already. Patrick Baker is a freelance writer based in Essex This article first appeared in Christian Herald © Christian Family Network is run by CPO, supported by Care for the Family, Marriage Resource, Positive Parenting, Care, Women Alive, Christian Herald and many others.