Hope to Die

By March 2002, Camilla Rowan seemed to have put her old life and its troubles behind her. She’d left school with good A levels, done a course in physiotherapy, and then got a job working at a private clinic in Cheltenham. People who knew her back then describe her as ‘looking like she didn’t have a care in the world’. To those observing from outside, her future certainly looked bright. She had a new flat, a Yorkshire terrier, and a new boyfriend. She was also – unbeknownst to her colleagues, employers, friends or family – once again heavily pregnant.

Intercut: RECONSTRUCTION. Sequence of images: young woman walking small dog, working with patient, arranging flowers, drinking wine with man in restaurant.

Her boyfriend’s identity has been protected by the courts, but the investigation subsequently carried out by South Mercia Police quickly established that he was not the father of the child she was then carrying. Indeed this man has always claimed he had no idea that she was pregnant. Moreover, that she deliberately concealed this from him, in part by dictating the sexual positions they adopted in the later months of the pregnancy. It seems hard to believe, and there are many people who don’t believe it, even now.

But whatever the truth of it, the fact remains that he was not the father of that child, and – since he only met Camilla Rowan in the summer of 2001 – he could not have fathered the baby boy she gave birth to in Birmingham either.

That baby had last been seen on 23rd December 1997, being carried out of hospital in his mother’s arms. But it wasn’t until March 2002, nearly five years later, that anyone realised he was missing.

Indeed, it’s one of the most troubling and, frankly, horrifying aspects of this case that it only came to light through a combination of luck, happy accident and the sheer determination of a single council employee.

TITLE APPEARS OVER, TYPEWRITER STYLE:

Part three

“I’m a man who doesn’t know”

Interior, sitting room. Urban landscape visible through window. SMwalks into shot and sits down, camera team adjust his mic, check he’s correctly in shot etc.

TITLE OVER: Steve McIlvanney, Manager, Gloucestershire Adoption & Fostering Service, 1993-2006

VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE

This episode is all about Steve. About his perseverance and his commitment, and the sort of professional instinct that ‘something isn’t right’ that only comes with 15 years’ experience in child services.

Because without Steve, there would have been no case. Without Steve we may never have known baby Rowan had existed at all.

STEVE McILVANNEY

First time I heard the name Camilla Rowan was when I got passed the case by my line manager in March 2002. All I knew then was that this woman had presented herself at the maternity suite of the Princess Alice Hospital, Gloucester, on 2nd March, and given birth to a baby girl the following day. According to the nurses she’d breastfed the child as normal. Everything seemed absolutely fine. Then later the same day she suddenly told the staff nurse she wanted to have her daughter adopted, and they got in touch with us to handle the case. When my manager gave me the file she said it was a straightforward case – ’you’ll be in and out in a couple of days’.

(laughs)

Yeah, right.

Intercut: RECONSTRUCTION: Young woman in hospital bed with baby in her arms; man in chair at her side filling in form on a clipboard.

STEVE McILVANNEY

I went in to see her the first time the day after the birth and she seemed fine – there were no red flags at that stage, that’s for sure. She seemed to have thought everything through very clearly.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

What reason did she give for wanting to have the baby adopted?

STEVE McILVANNEY

She said she wasn’t in any position to look after a baby. I asked her if she’d been the victim of abuse or assault but she was very insistent that that wasn’t the case. She said it was just a one-night stand and she didn’t know where the father was. She said she was in a different relationship now so there was no question of keeping the baby, but she wanted to ‘do the right thing’ for it. She was very insistent about that too. So I gave her all the paperwork, and explained what the process would be.

JOHN’S VOICE (off)

Did she give any indication that she’d been through the same thing once before?

STEVE McILVANNEY