The blog, The Eye of a Needle, aims to raise awareness of the stigma, plight and sufferings of the very poor in Brighton and to raise awareness, in particular, of their extortion by private companies who are aided and abetted by the local authority.
I am a qualified journalist, having obtained the NCTJ in Magazine Journalism at City College Brighton and Hove in 2001. I am available for work and am happy to write for Catholic publications on any range of matters related to the Catholic Faith.
If you would like me to write an article for you, please contact me at englandsgardens@googlemail.com
Below is an article I wrote for The Catholic Herald in 2010.
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The Eye of a Needle
Sitting in the bus shelter waiting for the number 1a to Whitehawk in St James’ Street, Brighton, I began making notes of questions to ask Diane Brennan, a friend with a history of drug abuse, concerning ‘Project Prevention’. The US charity, founded by Barbara Harris, has been at the centre of a national storm of controversy for offering drug addicts £200 to be voluntarily sterilised.
“Are you writing an essay?” asked a young man in a strong Liverpool accent, as I waited. I replied that I was preparing questions for an interview with a friend for The Catholic Herald. He asked what the article was about, so I told him about ‘Project Prevention’, the news of which caused him astonishment. On the bus on the way to Whitehawk, then, Tom, aged 35, told me his thoughts on the matter.
“Prejudice is something I’ve known ever since I moved from Liverpool. If you go to a pub in London, as soon as you start talking, people start hiding their wallets and handbags. It’s like that when you’re a drug user. I am scripted for methadone and I’ve got a history of heroin addiction. I’ve been on it for 10 years. In Whitehawk, it feels like everyone is having their children taken away, whether the parents are on drugs or not. You hear all about it in passing conversations with people. I think that it’s bad, in a way, for heroin addicts to have children, because they might not be able to look after them properly,” says Tom, “but at the end of the day you can change your whole life around. In five years time, you don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, can you get this procedure reversed?”
It is a good question left unanswered in the ‘frequently asked questions’ page of Project Prevention’s website, leading visitors to conclude that the decision is final.
On Monday nights, the poor are fed at a local evangelical Church. There, I talked to Beccy, 46, originally from Oxford, but now living in Brighton for her view. Clean for two years, she spoke of her experience.
“I had two sons when I was 17 and got married, hoping that would sort it all out, but I got back on gear again. The children were taken into care when I was sent to prison for drugs offences. Even if I had got them back, I think it still would have happened. I have another two children, one in prison and one with my mum in Oxford.”
“In some cases,” she said, “it could be a good idea. I know someone, aged 29, who has had 10 children. She has been pregnant three times recently and all three babies have been taken away. When you’re on heroin, you don’t care about anything, getting pregnant, having babies, having terminations. I don’t think heroin users should have children, but some can change. My sister was in a series of bad relationships and had her fallopian tubes tied. Ten years later, she found someone special, had them untied and had a child. Now she’s a nurse. That seems to me to be a far better option, rather than being sterilised, because that is so final.”
In his address to the Queen, Pope Benedict XVI said, “As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a "reductive vision of the person and his destiny".
While some will argue that ‘Project Prevention’ is well-intentioned, it is undeniable that the US charity’s ethos upholds a ‘reductive vision of the person and his destiny’, since sterilisation, voluntary or not, excludes the possibility of maternal redemption for those struggling with drug addiction. Furthermore, the initiative places grave temptation, at a moment of weakness, in the way of those who may one day to regret it.
When the media reported on ‘Project Prevention’, quite naturally the opinions of charities that work with drug addicts were sought. Leading charities in the field, Drugscope and Addaction both condemned the initiative, the latter describing the move as “morally reprehensible”, yet the only opinion of a drug addict that the public received in the media was that of a man, who we know only as “John”, who became the first person in the UK to accept money for sterilisation.
The real experts of drug addiction are those with direct experience of it. There is no serious reason why they should not speak for themselves and for others who have experience of their situation. In Whitehawk, I asked Diane Brennan, 46, a woman with a history of drug addiction, for her opinion. Diane was talkative and spoke passionately against the idea of offering addicts cash for sterilisation.
“I think it’s a disgusting idea because drug addicts might be taking drugs for a time in their lives, but if they’re sterilised it means they can never have babies again. It doesn’t have to lead to sterilisation because that is barbaric! Giving someone £200 for sterilisation is too tempting for some drug addicts if they’re on drugs at the time. It is not until it is done that they might think twice and think, ‘What have I done? I can never have children, even if I come off drugs!”
There is a subtle prejudice against drug addicts that pervades British society, not helped by a popular school of thought, often couched in the language of genetics, that places emphasis on discouraging those with drug addiction from having children, if need be, by force.
Referring to the babies of mothers addicted to drugs, the founder of ‘Project Prevention’ who has, herself, adopted the children of drug addicts made a striking statement in defence of her charity, suggesting that if people didn’t like her idea then they should ‘step up, get in line, and adopt the next.’
Diane, in contrast, says that “drug mothers don’t have to be bad mothers” and that above all these mothers need real help in coming off drugs and good quality family support. The removal of children, she says, should always be a last resort.
In an economic climate in which cuts will be made in funding for front line services tackling drug addiction, the temptation for the Government will be to find the ‘cheapest option’ for these mothers. Yet, Diane maintains that children can actually be a healthy motivation for coming off drugs and she is currently in touch with someone who is stopping heroin in the hope that social services will allow her to keep her baby. As for the idea that the babies of addicts will grow up to be addicts, she claims that this is false.
“I know people who’ve had babies removed and those babies have grown up not on drugs. So, it’s not genetic. That’s balls! It’s environmental.”
So, is there any justification whatsoever, I asked her, for Project Prevention’s intiative?
“No. They’re feeding the drug habit by giving them £200 and they’re killing the opportunity for them to have the children they might want in the future when they have got off drugs and it needs to be said: a lot of people do get off drugs!”
Diane was keen to talk about her experiences with social services as a young mother with mental health problems.
“I can speak from experience. I wasn’t a drug taker but social services still took me away from my baby. I wasn’t on drugs or even drink. I just happened to be honest and say that I was worried that I would abuse or hurt my daughter. I wanted help. I had a mental obsession about it driven by fear. It was part of my illness, but I would never have hurt my daughter! Instead of supporting me and giving me a chance to raise my child, they ripped me away from my baby and gave her to the father and his sister who had been told she could not have kids of her own. I felt like I had been used as a surrogate mother! Nobody was on my side - no solicitor, no social worker, nobody.”
The relationship between social services and families is one dominated largely by fear and suspicion. Beccy Chandler agreed that there needs to be a culture change within those employed by the State with the duty to both protect children and preserve families.
“Mothers should be given a chance. I’ve been clean for 2 years now. While I was pregnant, I never used, nor drank alcohol, just a prescription for methadone for coming off heroin.”
“Social services tend not to help people up. It is a lot easier for them to just move in and get the baby to be adopted out. That seems to be their main motivation. A lot of people who can’t have children themselves want a new born child and mothers addicted to heroin aren’t given much of a chance to prove themselves to be capable, which they should be.”
According to Diane, the pain and loss of having her child taken away from her was, in fact, a contributing factor in her path to using heroin.
“I’d recently had my baby taken off me. A friend came over and I was having psychotic thoughts. I was depressed. I was meant to be able to see my baby at a family centre every 2 weeks, but the father kept making excuses. Either he was ‘poorly’ or my daughter was ‘poorly’ and it drove me mad not being able to see her. When a man came into the living room on heroin and sat on the sofa, I could tell that he was in better place and I wanted to be where he was. If I had never seen him in Bradford, I’d never have taken drugs.”
Successive governments have tried to tackle drugs in different ways with varying degrees of success, yet the appeal of heroin and cocaine persist. What is the attraction of heroin, a substance that still carries so much social stigma?
“It takes all of your problems away, all your pain, problems go, it makes you feel relaxed and I had a lot of problems. I’d have to give you a shot of heroin for you to know. It helps you to feel at peace. I wanted to stop three or four years into my habit and that was when I went onto a programme of methadone. I was on heroin for 6 years in Bradford and Brighton until I got onto methadone. They’re knocking my prescription down from the initial 100 ml to 20 ml. Perhaps soon I’ll even be off methadone.”
There is a great deal of public animosity towards drug addicts, especially if they are on state benefits. Often addicts are perceived as people who are a drain on the taxpayer’s money. I asked Diane what she would say to those people.
“When the drugs get hold of you, believe me, you will use any money you can to get hold of them. When state benefits run out you will beg, borrow or even steal. I stole three or four times, videos from a shop to fund the habit. It’s wrong, but you can’t understand what it is like unless you have been there.”
Diane is under instruction to become a Catholic and readers will want to know why.
“It is because I’m more towards the Catholic way of life. I’ve prayed since I was 5. I always believed in God. God has helped me and rescued me so many times! At times in my life when I have been at my lowest He has saved me from death. I have been suicidal for a long time. I’ve taken 150 tablet overdoses in my life and so I think there must be somebody up there if I haven’t died yet! I actually did die once and the medics brought me back to life! Since I was a little girl, I have always prayed because I knew someone was there and, to me, He was God.”
Diane, Tom and Beccy speak eloquently not only for themselves but for countless others who struggle with drug addiction in the UK and who, more importantly, struggle to be understood. They are, because of their experience, important spokesmen and women for a generation. Their words serve to humanise a group of people that society too often views as ‘sub-human’. It is possible that if individuals with their courage speak up in defence of those who society often has little sympathy, then attitudes towards drug addicts and their human potential could yet change for the better.
