Introduction

What you are about to read may sound impossible. Yet I can assure you — it happened. Every event, every conversation, every decision described here unfolded within the very systems meant to protect vulnerable children.

This is our story — my partner’s and mine — of how a simple wish to become adoptive parents led us into a world we could never have imagined. A world where “who you know” often outweighs “what’s right”, and where silence, favouritism, and fear of responsibility can blur the line between duty and wrongdoing.

As our journey unfolded, we began to see how minor oversights and bureaucratic indifference could snowball into something much darker. What started as delays and excuses within Kent’s adoption system soon began to resemble a pattern — one that hinted at deeper failures, and possibly, deliberate manipulation.

If the whistleblowing now coming to light is true, it suggests that members of the Kent Adoption Board may have fast-tracked applications from individuals with known criminal histories — including those with recent records of substance abuse. In some cases, we were told, these adoptions were approved mere months after the individuals supposedly “turned their lives around.”

It’s hard not to ask: who authorised this? Were those in power misled, or were they turning a blind eye? Could senior figures — even those close to the Prime Minister — have been misinformed or deliberately shielded from the truth?

These questions aren’t political. They’re moral. Because when a system designed to protect children fails, the consequences are measured not in statistics, but in lives.

As you follow our story, you’ll see how this small corner of Kent’s adoption world connects to broader issues — from political appointments in the House of Lords to inquiries into adult social care and organised exploitation. What might look like separate strands could, in fact, reveal a troubling tapestry of neglect and misplaced power.

By the end, I ask only one thing: keep an open mind. Ask the same questions we asked. Because what happened to us could happen to anyone who dares to trust a broken system.

#WeAreWatching #AdopterOne

How Our Journey Began (2005–2007)

Our story truly begins in 2005.

At the time, my wife was receiving treatment for a medical condition that, while not life-limiting, required ongoing specialist care. The medication prescribed was part of an experimental blind trial — a drug already widely used in the United States for over a decade but still awaiting NICE approval in the UK. Ironically, it was manufactured just a few miles from our home before being shipped overseas for American patients.

Because of the trial, we were advised not to try for a family until more was known about the drug’s long-term effects. However, once the trial concluded successfully, her specialist told us she had effectively “bought us” a year — perhaps more — to try naturally before the treatment was permanently reinstated under the NHS.

Despite not being married yet, we were both serving in the Armed Forces and had built a stable life together. Our families and close friends — many with children of their own — were supportive. After much thought, we decided the time was right to try. Marriage could wait; the opportunity to start a family might not.

For six months, we tried naturally. We married, honeymooned, returned to work — and still, nothing happened.

By late 2006, we approached the Senior Medical Officer (SMO) at our Military base for assessment. As is so often the case within both military and NHS practice, the initial assumption was that the woman must be the cause. Tests were arranged for my wife first. Every result came back clear.

When we returned to the doctor, his surprise was evident. I was only twenty-five — physically fit, having just completed “The Strike Command Leadership Course,” which included escape and evasion exercises designed for Special Forces selection. On paper, I was in peak condition. There was no reason to suspect anything was wrong.

Still, the team decided to investigate further. Over twelve weeks, I produced three sperm samples for testing. All three came back negative.

The entire medical team was stunned. Between them, they had over three centuries of combined experience, and none had ever seen a man my age who was completely sterile. The revelation quickly grew more complicated when my line of work came under review. I was part of a small, highly specialised section maintaining classified British and American defence equipment — a role requiring more than seven hundred man-hours of close exposure to certain materials and systems.

Before long, whispers began circulating within the Ministry of Defence. I was not the only technician affected. Several others in our section were experiencing similar fertility issues. The MOD launched an internal investigation, but true to form, the moment questions got uncomfortable, doors began to close. Access to information became restricted, and communication slowed to a crawl.

Then, in 2007, we were abruptly posted to Scotland. It was not unusual for service personnel to be moved — but in my experience, such sudden postings often came when the MOD preferred certain people and stories to be quietly moved out of the spotlight. It was not the first time I had seen this happen.

A few years earlier, I’d been involved in evidence-handling for the RAF Tornado ZG710 incident — a tragic blue-on-blue in Iraq, where a Patriot missile battery mistakenly shot down one of our own aircraft. That case later drew civil action against the MOD, with my name surfacing in the early documentation. (That story deserves its own article — but it provides important context for how institutions can manage inconvenient truths.)

When we settled at the northern base in Scotland, I met with the local medical staff. They suggested a final test — to see whether a specific gland was firing correctly. If so, there was a faint possibility that sperm were still being produced, but trapped by a blockage. If confirmed, we might qualify for IVF treatment.

We were warned not to raise our hopes. After three consecutive negative samples, it seemed unlikely. Still, we agreed to the referral to the Aberdeen Fertility Clinic, where the specialists proposed a bilateral testicular biopsy — in their words, a double extraction to determine once and for all whether sperm could be found.

For anyone unfamiliar with the procedure, let’s just say it’s not something you volunteer for lightly.

And that’s where our next chapter begins — with hope balanced precariously against fear, bureaucracy, and the quiet realisation that sometimes the system doesn’t have your best interests at heart.

The Operation That Never Was (2008–2009)

After months of testing, the next step in our journey took a turn few could have predicted.

Following consultations between the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), the United States Department of Defense (DoD), and the surgical team at the Aberdeen Fertility Clinic, our case grew increasingly complex. The MOD had effectively closed ranks, refusing to disclose any technical information about the classified equipment I had been working on — information that could have helped the surgeons understand possible causes of my infertility.

The Aberdeen team, frustrated but determined, requested access to data on potential energy exposure levels — the kind that could affect fertility through radiation or electromagnetic fields. After repeated refusals from the MOD, the US DoD unexpectedly stepped in. They arranged for the surgeon and select members of the Aberdeen team to be security-cleared directly through American channels, bypassing the British authorities altogether.

For the first time, the MOD was cut out of the loop. Their only role was to provide maintenance paperwork so exposure levels could be calculated — something they did reluctantly, and only after repeated demands and threats of escalation. They even tried to force me to sign a non-disclosure agreement before releasing the documents.

The Americans, meanwhile, sent a small inspection team to the UK laboratory where the classified system was housed. Their findings were startling. According to the technical logs, some of the radiation filters had been removed, allowing uncontrolled emissions from a high-energy plasma tube. The equipment, originally designed to emit within a fixed and safe light spectrum, was now producing variable pulses of heat and radiation that were super-heating the surrounding air molecules.

In essence, anyone entering that room was being bombarded by unknown radiation frequencies, rebounding chaotically within metal-lined walls. Even through heavy welding goggles — the strongest available — we had noticed our eyes pulsing whenever the frequency shifted. The Americans later measured power readings at a long distance, through reinforced glass and a screened window, that were alarmingly high.

Their conclusion was blunt:

“There is a high probability that you and your team have exceeded safe exposure limits.”

The Surgical Gamble

With those findings on record, the decision was made to proceed with surgical exploration. The operation was scheduled for April 2008 at the Aberdeen Fertility Clinic.

We were told that if sperm could be recovered, we could begin IVF treatment within six months. If not, we would be placed on the UK sperm donor waiting list, which at that time stretched between two and five years. The plan made sense — a small procedure could change everything. And for my wife, whose illness was still in remission, pregnancy itself could help stabilise her condition. It was, in many ways, a two-birds-one-stone moment.

Military protocol required that I be medically downgraded for six months post-surgery — standard practice for any elective operation. All necessary notifications were made. Everything was set.

Then, the unexpected happened.

In February 2008, barely eight weeks before the operation, I was placed on notice for deployment to support Iraq and Afghanistan. My deployment date was set for June 2009 — sixteen months away. In military circles, this kind of extended notice was virtually unheard-of. It was, quite clearly, a bureaucratic move to block my surgery.

The operation was cancelled. Rescheduled for March 2010.

The clinic tried to soften the blow, explaining that if the surgery failed, by then we’d be near the top of the donor waiting list anyway. It was a small comfort, but it couldn’t disguise the truth: the MOD had once again placed its own interests before ours.

Considering Adoption

By February 2009, with deployment preparations complete, we began discussing alternatives with our families. Adoption entered the conversation for the first time.

We reached out to SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity, for advice. At the time, there was only one private adoption agency in the UK willing to work with serving military personnel. The process required a minimum of three years in one location, something impossible given that I was posted every two years.

To qualify, you essentially had to be a senior NCO or officer with a stable, long-term posting. For the rest of us — the ranks who made up the backbone of the military — it was a closed door.

When I contacted Medway and Kent Adoption Services, their response was candid but crushing. Because of the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing awareness of PTSD among serving and former personnel, most UK agencies — including Kent and Medway — had a clear policy:

“We cannot accept adoption applications from serving members of the Armed Forces. If we wanted to be considered as adopters, both of us would have to leave the military entirely”

A Question That Still Echoes

That was the moment it began to dawn on me — not just the personal cost of military service, but the institutional cost of silence.

How could a nation so proud of its Armed Forces turn away those very people when they sought to build families of their own?
How could loyalty to one’s country come at the expense of the right to become a parent?

It was a painful lesson, but one that would come to define everything that followed.

So, the plan was set. If the IVF process failed, we would leave the military and return home to Kent — to the friends, family, and community that had always been our anchor. There, we would offer a child in need of stability and love the future they deserved: a safe home, a nurturing family, and a promise of lifelong support.

My deployment orders came soon after. I was assigned to Oman, supporting Operations Herrick and Telic. Our mission was to maintain aircraft for all NATO nations — ensuring that the wounded were evacuated from the theatre of war as quickly as possible.

Picture the most graphic war film you’ve ever seen. Then multiply that by ten. That’s the reality we faced daily — the aftermath of destruction, the human cost of conflict. For four relentless months, every evening brought the same grim routine: stretchers, silence, and the smell of antiseptic mixed with aviation fuel.

For many, those scenes would break something inside. But I had been conditioned for it — through years of specialist training in interrogation, NLP, CBT, and hypnosis. The uninitiated might find that combination unusual, but within certain military circles, it wasn’t unheard of. Those methods were designed to harden the mind, to compartmentalise trauma. They worked — perhaps too well. I learned to observe without feeling, to function in chaos. The only thing that still made me wince was the memory of breaking my own arm as a boy. Everything else became background noise.

During that deployment, I met several figures who shaped British politics — Liam Fox, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron among them. Their visits were carefully timed, of course. They came through when there were no medevac flights, when the beds were empty and the optics were right.

When asked what I planned to do after deployment, I told them the truth:
“I’ll finish my service. Then, if my operation fails and we can’t have children, I’ll leave the military. We’ve been trapped for years between the red tape of IVF and the dead ends of adoption. If you want my vote, fix that.”

It wasn’t rehearsed — it was the frustration of five years boiling over. My wife had already left the service to prepare for treatment. I was close behind.

A few weeks later, David Cameron addressed the press. He announced that the Conservative Party would pledge to reduce the red tape around IVF and adoption if elected. For the first time, I felt heard. He seemed genuine — a politician who actually listened. But how wrong I was. Behind those promises, others in the shadows had very different priorities for how that funding would be “allocated.”

When I returned from deployment in October 2009, the pace was relentless. Within days — after six sleepless nights transiting through bases that didn’t officially exist — I was sitting across from the surgeon at Aberdeen Fertility Clinic. His security clearance from the US Department of Defense had finally come through.

He raised a concern we hadn’t considered: exposure risk. Because I’d worked within medical evacuation flights, there was a small chance I’d come into contact with blood or biological materials. Before I could be cleared for surgery, I needed full screening for hepatitis, HIV, and a host of other infections. We were right on the edge of the time window, but we made it.

Then came the psychological check. Normally, troops returning from war zones decompress in Cyprus. I wasn’t given that luxury. My Chief Technician ordered me straight back to the UK — “urgent duties,” he said. Within weeks, rumours started circulating: nearly half the personnel who’d skipped decompression were showing severe PTSD symptoms.

Soon, I was summoned to a house on the married quarters patch for assessment. The process was eerily familiar — the anonymous officials, the unmarked uniforms, the mix of military and civilian psych professionals with no names on their badges. I’d sat on the other side of those interviews before, as part of my secondary duties in interrogation and conflict arbitration.

When I saw two colleagues who had been posted in to unit and sourced me out for support — strong, capable men and women I respected and served with on my deployment day in and out seeing all kinds of trauma — reduced to shells of their former themselves, I realised this was serious.

The sessions were intense. Mornings blurred into afternoons, day after day. They wanted to ensure I was “fit for duty” — that I wasn’t slipping into the same darkness. By Christmas, I had their verdict: certified sane.

Certified Sane.

It wasn’t the first time. Once for my work as an advanced field interrogator. Once for joining the Nuclear Accident Response Organisation. And now, again — for surviving a deployment that broke so many others.

I was fine, they said. No trace of PTSD. Just another soldier stamped, cleared, and sent on his way.

Following promising results from the secondary tests, the Aberdeen Fertility Clinic moved my operation up to February 2010. They issued all the necessary paperwork, fully aware of the previous complications and delays. Nearly two years had passed, and it was clear to me that someone—somewhere—did not want this operation to happen. To pre-empt any interference, I ensured that every member of my management chain in the RAF, all the way up the ladder, had copies of the hospital letter. I also lodged copies with the medical records office, the medical centre administration, and the Personal Services Flight. Following legal advice, I made sure there was no wriggle room for the establishment to try and derail the procedure.

I arrived at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary the afternoon before the operation, given the travel distance and the early start the following day. The surgeon, already holding his cards close to his chest, had arranged for me to stay in my own room—on the female ward, for reasons unknown. Two hours into settling in, someone entered the room. Not part of the US DOD–cleared team, they looked the part of a doctor, authoritative and official, and told me to pack my things—the operation had been cancelled. I was to leave the hospital under my own steam and wait to be contacted for a new date.

Smelling a rat—and having reached my limit—I asked for a reason. The “doctor” claimed the cancellation was due to my BMI being over 33%, which, under the rules, automatically disqualified me from any IVF-related procedures.

Calm as I could manage, I looked him squarely in the eye. I’d never seen this man before, and it was obvious he was talking nonsense. At the time, I was training alongside some of the fittest RAF personnel in preparation for ultra-marathons. One of my training partners had beaten Mo Farah in the London Marathon by three places—and had been ordered by the RAF not to run to avoid embarrassing a national hero. My weekly routine included gym sessions Monday through Thursday, cardio and weights, two sessions on Friday, and half-marathons on Sunday. My BMI was around 23–24, far from the 33% he claimed.

I gave him an ultimatum: either show me his identity and the official paperwork cancelling the operation—or admit he was mistaken. I had the surgeon on speed dial and had already started calling to verify. The man stammered out some excuse about a “mistake” and promised to check. He never returned to the ward. He vanished.

The rest of the afternoon and night passed without incident. It was the following morning when I was informed the operation would be delayed by a few hours — the theatre was tied up with an emergency. No problem, I thought. The prep continued. The nurses applied the pre-op creams, one hand at a time, but my body — as ever — refused to play by the rules. I’d had a resistance to this cream since childhood, and now was no exception. The staff were baffled as the cream failed to start to put me under. They tried again, both hands this time. Nothing. Eventually, the doctor came in and injected a low-dose solution mixed with the cream to “give it a kick.” Finally, it started to take effect — that light-headed, tipsy sensation, as if I’d had a couple of pints.

But something wasn’t right. The person who’d administered the injection quietly left the room. Moments later, in walked a uniformed RAF scripture reader — followed by a military padre. That’s when I knew this wasn’t coincidence.

The padre was unfamiliar. He wasn’t the Roman Catholic padre my wife and I knew — the one who’d followed us from our old unit in Wiltshire, now serving in Scotland and soon to be made a bishop. This man was different, detached. But the scripture reader — him I recognised instantly. I’d seen him too many times over the years, popping up like a ghost across various units during my RAF career. Always the same soft push — “Come along to the Alpha Course, son, open up your spiritual side.” Always probing, always watching.

He’d been following me for a decade, trying to “help” me open up, convinced I was hiding something. And yes — I was. Because that was my job.

“Yes, Father,” I wanted to say, “I am holding something back. I’m a military interrogator in my secondary duty. I’m NARO — Nuclear Accident Response Organisation. My work keeps a finger on the pulse for the next Chernobyl. I’ve been ordered to let a Scottish coup d’état play out to maintain stability. So yes, Father, there are things I keep behind locked doors — things that are none of your concern.”

But what truly raised alarm bells was their presence here, in a civilian hospital, on the morning of my operation. This wasn’t a pastoral visit. This was an intervention.

They asked me plainly, “Do you really need this operation? What will it tell you that you don’t already know?”

That’s when it hit me — this wasn’t about faith or concern. The UKMOD and RAF had sent the “God squad” to stop the operation. They wanted me to walk away from it, to doubt, to surrender. Drugged and vulnerable, I was being manipulated at the eleventh hour.

I told them, in no uncertain terms, that if they didn’t leave immediately, I would bring fire and brimstone down on their heads. “What exactly is MOD so afraid of?” I demanded. The truth was obvious — they feared that the operation might confirm what I already suspected: that they had caused this.

Instead of leaving, the two men sat down at the foot of the bed, side by side — as if to physically block the bed’s movement. They kept their voices low, soft, insidious, still trying to talk me around. Then my phone rang.

The scripture reader smiled faintly. “You might want to take that call,” he said. “It’s important.”

The number was unfamiliar, but the voice on the other end was unmistakable — Chief Technician, “You’ve been posted as Absent Without Leave,” he said coldly. “RAF Police are on their way to collect you. Pack your things and surrender yourself immediately. The padres are there to support your transition and make this easy.”

“You’ve been posted as Absent Without Leave,” he said coldly. “RAF Police are on their way to collect you. Pack your things and surrender yourself immediately. The padres are there to support your transition and make this easy.”

I couldn’t believe it. “I informed every link in the chain of command, including you,” I said, “that I was having an operation. Don’t play games with me, Call off your dogs. I’m not leaving. This operation is happening.”

“It’s not your decision,” he replied. “It’s theirs.”

Then came the real punch. He claimed that no one — not him, not anyone on the unit — had any paperwork showing I was scheduled for surgery at all.

I pointed out to him that, for a man claiming there was no paperwork for my operation — not one single record — he seemed remarkably skilled at knowing exactly where I was at that precise moment. He’d somehow managed to send both the padre and the RAF Police straight to my hospital room. Impressive logistics for a paperless operation.

Of course, I’d expected something like this might happen. My military instincts hadn’t dulled. I’d left my ID card — complete with RFID chip — safely at home. (For those less familiar with the system, there are certain classified facilities around the world that can trace any serving military personnel’s card to within one square metre. If you’re in uniform, get yourself an RFID‑shielded wallet.)

So Mark couldn’t have tracked me by my ID. That meant he’d gone another route — one only a few select members me one of them on even knew existed. Someone had gone to the operations building, approached a certain facility, and asked a certain technician to input my mobile number into the system. Within seconds, they had my live coordinates — down to the square metre.

And now that he’d called me, he was confirming and recording everything.

“Pretty good trick, Mark,” I said evenly. “But you just confirmed my suspicion. You’re using an intelligence asset — PRISM, or one of its cousins — to track me down. So here’s what’s going to happen. After this call, I’m hanging up, removing the battery, and pulling the SIM. You’ve got two choices: put up or shut up. If you push this, I’ll blow the lid on who you really are and how you’re doing this. Or you can stay on the line and listen to what I have to say.”

By now, the temperature in the room had shifted. The surgeon and his team appeared at the door, reading the situation immediately — two military visitors, me half‑sedated, fighting the drugs, the tension crackling. The porters instinctively placed themselves between me and the padre, adopting a quiet defensive posture.

The surgeon stepped in. “We’ve been informed RAF Police are on their way up to the ward,” he said carefully.

Through the fog of anaesthetic, I told him that these two men — the padre and the scripture reader — should not be there. “They’ve been sent by UKMOD to stop this operation,” I said. “I’ve been intelligence‑traced. RAF Police have no jurisdiction in this hospital. It’s civilian territory. If they get through those doors, they’ll remove me by force and prevent the operation.”

I added, “You need to relay this to the U.S. Department of Defense — they cleared this procedure when the UKMOD wouldn’t. They even offered me a transfer to the U.S. Military to protect me. If I’m taken, I can’t guarantee my safety — and I can’t guarantee they’ll ever bring me back.”

The surgeon’s expression changed — not surprise, but understanding. I’d just handed him the legal tools to shield me under the hospital’s Duty of Care policy. He nodded once. “Understood.”

Moments later, the call came from reception: the RAF Police had arrived. They were demanding entry. Security was already on its way. The air beyond the ward doors was thick with shouting. The police were trying to blag their way in — first politely, then forcefully, frustration mounting as security refused to yield.

Inside, the padre — calm until now — suddenly snapped. His accent sharpened into fury. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he roared, losing his composure entirely.

It was a rare sight. Padres don’t lose their tempers. Not like that.

The surgeon’s voice cut through. “Remove them. All of them.”

Hospital security entered with reinforcements. The padre, the scripture reader, and the RAF Police were escorted off the ward and out of the building.

I turned back to my phone. Mark was still on the line, listening to everything.

“Now listen carefully,” I said. “Never underestimate me again. If I don’t come off this slab alive, UKMOD will wake up Monday morning to headlines they’ll never recover from. And when I see you Tuesday, you’d better have a damn good explanation — and a name. Because it’s clear now the order didn’t come from the U.S. DOD.”

Then I ended the call, removed the battery, and let the silence settle.

“Fallout, Fertility, and the Fork in the Road”

The next morning, after the operation, the specialist came in — the same one who had not only performed the procedure but had also been studying the system I’d been working on. His expression told me everything before he spoke.

He explained that my body was no longer producing sperm. Whatever power levels I had been exposed to had caused a complete chemical collapse. Under normal conditions, the body relies on three key compounds that work in perfect balance to maintain fertility. In my case, that balance had been obliterated: 99.9% of one compound dominated my system, while the other two were present only in trace amounts — 0.05%. The imbalance was catastrophic, and irreversible.

There was no known treatment. No experimental fix. Nothing.

It wasn’t the news I’d hoped for, but at least it was closure. We finally had an answer — a grim one — about what the exposure had done. My reaction to the radiation levels had been faster and more severe than anyone had seen.

Still, there was one question that haunted the lab team. In that same workspace, a mother‑in‑law’s tongue — a tough old plant that had sat unwatered for years in front of one of the emitters — was thriving. The plant flourished. Humans, on the other hand, were being quietly poisoned.

It was an irony worthy of its own classified report.

As a couple, we took the news better than most might imagine. We’d already been near the top of the donor list at the Aberdeen Fertility Clinic, and we had prepared ourselves for this possibility. In our hearts, we knew there was a 50‑50 chance we’d have to go down the donor route.

Two weeks later, we returned to Aberdeen to discuss next steps. We sat across from the specialist — polite, clinical, detached — as he delivered another blow. Despite previous assurances, we were being placed back at the bottom of the donor list. Our prior treatment didn’t count; by their rules, we had to start again from scratch.

Then came the options:

1. Move to Denmark for four months, pay around £5,000 per treatment, and join what’s now called the Viking Generation.
2. Apply to adopt, joining the thousands of couples waiting to offer a future to one of the 20,000 children currently in care across the UK.

We discussed Denmark seriously. The numbers almost worked. I’d be receiving a payout from the Ministry of Defence at the end of my service — giving us about £25,000 in savings— enough to cover a few rounds of treatment. But what would we do for work? We didn’t speak Danish, and as we dug deeper, the realities piled up.

Reports suggested the Danish system was facing the same donor shortages as the UK. Success rates were sliding, and costs were climbing fast. What had started as a £5,000 treatment could easily double by the time we were through. Add rent, living expenses, and travel, and £25,000 wouldn’t last long. The odds, quite frankly, weren’t in our favour. So, we asked ourselves a harder question:

Why bring another child into the world when so many already need love and stability?

We chose adoption.

We had the means, the stability, and the kind of lived experience that few could match. Between us, we could offer:

• A loving, caring family environment.
• Understanding of trauma and complex emotional needs.
• A wealth of life experience (if there is one thing the military gives you, it is perspective).
• A grounded, structured environment for growth and healing.

By then, I was preparing to leave the military, with everything signed off. We had done our homework — online research, training guides, forums, support networks — and we knew what adoption agencies looked for: a close family network, a stable home, steady income, and normality. We had all that.

Or so we thought.

The next challenge, we discovered, was not emotional readiness — it was bureaucracy and bias.

While serving, my annual income — with deployments and allowances — sat at around £33,000 in 2010–2011. My council tax was automatically deducted, water rates covered by the unit, and rent on my military quarter was just £99 a month, inclusive of utilities. A three‑bedroom home, newly refitted to standard, with a garage.

Yes — £99 a month.

That meant we were cash‑rich by civilian standards. Yet, despite financial stability, structure, and a proven record of responsibility, the adoption agency — as we would soon learn — saw our military background not as an asset, but as a liability.

 “Civilian Costs, Civilian Chaos”

Moving out into civilian life was a shock. Even though I was transitioning directly from the military into another job, the cost of living hit like a brick wall. Everything was dramatically more expensive.

Mortgages? Forget it. Technically, we were unemployed during the probation period for my new role. Renting a property? Nope — same issue. The system simply would not accommodate our situation.

To move into a house comparable to our three-bedroom married quarter, with its modest rent of £99 per month, we were looking at £4,700 per quarter just to cover rent. That was before deposits, water rates, council tax, or utilities. Suddenly, the financial ease of military life was gone.

In 2011, we were living in Chatham, Kent. My new role in Edenbridge paid £17,100 a year. Recession economics had squeezed the market; despite my skills as an aircraft avionics and electrical technician, opportunities were few. Companies either couldn’t afford my wage, or they refused to pay a competitive civilian rate.

With both of us working, we were barely keeping our heads above water — rent, bills, groceries — every penny earned was going straight out the door. At least the basics, like food, remained affordable. But financially, we were simply surviving.

And yet, despite the pressures, we kept moving forward. Our dream of becoming parents wasn’t derailed by spreadsheets or deposits. We were determined to enter the adoption program and give a child the life we could provide — stable, loving, and structured, even if the system seemed determined to make the path as steep as possible.

What the Adoption Manager Won’t Tell You at the Induction Event

The stage was set in late 2010.

Now that my treatment at the Aberdeen Fertility Clinic was over, we decided adoption was our way forward. We held another round of calls with both adoption agencies. SSAFA was still a dead end — military personnel might defend the nation, but not adopt within it.

Around the same time, the RAF offered me an extension of service — from twelve years to fifteen, possibly eighteen. That sort of offer wasn’t common. Only those with specialist skill sets — the ones the MOD didn’t want to lose — ever saw beyond twelve years as an SAC According to my Flight Lieutenant, the path ahead looked set.

Word on the grapevine, confirmed by my old Flight Sergeant and even my next‑door neighbour (who if I took the posting would be my future Sergeant), was that if I signed, I’d be deployed for six months in early 2011, then follow the boss to another unit afterwards. Translation: another deep‑dive into the classified rabbit hole. In twelve years, I’d only ever seen one SAC extended to eighteen — and he was a top coder on the counter‑force intelligence team. It was flattering to be in that league, but I’d had enough of being dictated to by the state. This time, my life — and our family’s future — came first.

So, we presented ourselves to both agencies, fully transparent about our situation. Their responses were near‑identical:

1. “You need to live in the country.”
   Out‑of‑country adoptions were out of the question. Scotland might be part of the UK on paper, but in adoption terms, it’s treated like a foreign country. If we were serious, we’d have to move back to England.
2. “You’ll need to leave the military.”
   They still refused to place a child with any family where one or both parents were serving.

That last point hit a nerve. Under the Human Rights Act, our right to family life is supposed to be absolute. Yet Medway Adoption told me — proudly — that they were putting two fingers up to that right.

This was going to be interesting. Only a year earlier, I’d spoken to David Cameron, alerting him to this very issue before he had even made it a manifesto pledge to cut adoption red tape. I knew that reform was coming — and when it did, it would expose how deep the old, draconian thinking ran.

On that call, I made my decision. I wasn’t signing on with the military for another three years. We calculated the earliest we could move to the Medway / Kent area: January 2011.

Their response? Bureaucracy at its finest:

• We’d have to wait six months before progressing, because I was undergoing a “substantial life change.”
• We could attend an Induction event in February 2011, but no home visits until June.

And that was our welcome to the adoption system — rules, delays, and the faint whiff of hypocrisy wrapped in official stationery.

2011 – The Induction Event

What the smiles and biscuits don’t tell you…

We turned up at the Medway Adoption Agency’s induction event early that year. It was all very casual — tea, biscuits, polite small talk — the kind of calm façade designed to settle nerves. A couple who had just been approved shared their story, the sort of showcase every new applicant gets to see to make the process look attainable. There were eight couples in total, and at that point, I believed we had just as fair a chance as anyone else in the room.

The explanation was straightforward: out of the eight, six couples would go forward. There were only six social workers on adoption cases at the time, and only in rare circumstances — when everything lined up perfectly — would one social worker take on two cases at once.

We’d been studying the system for years by then — following every change, every update, every new rule that trickled through social and government media. In fairness, Medway Adoption were transparent about their limits. They were under‑resourced, well before everything was merged into the wider Kent Adoption Team (KAT). Even so, they claimed a decent rate: around 75% of couples who attended inductions were processed. Military logic told me those were solid odds — evens or better.

That was, until I met the head of Medway Adoption — the woman who would soon rise to run KAT.
Let’s call her “Penny.”

The name hit me like a cold wind. I’d met her before — about eight years earlier — when I was engaged to her niece. To say that engagement didn’t end smoothly would be an understatement.

Back then, I owned a house with a fair bit of equity. My would‑be father‑in‑law, recently out of the military, was £20,000 deep in debt after a couple of failed business ventures. He’d been trying to reinvent himself in the Middle East, where ex‑military engineers were cashing in, but the opportunity collapsed, leaving him broke and desperate.

While his daughter and I were drifting apart, he was busy engineering his own plan — get us married, live under my roof for a while, pay a couple of bills then pull the plug. Divorce, take half the equity, clear his debts, and walk away from the military quarter he and his family were still illegally occupying a year after discharge. It all unravelled the day we split, and I never spoke to the niece again.

So seeing Penny — her aunt — running the very agency that held our family future in its hands, let’s just say I knew the next chapter wasn’t going to be simple. The question was whether she’d stay professional or become a thorn in our side.

What came next gave me a lifelong distrust of double‑barrelled surnames.

I’d known Penny during a particularly dark patch — 2003, the day Tornado ZG710 came down. It was my first weekend off in weeks, after months of war prep. Back then, she was already surrounded by turmoil. Even as a newcomer to the family, I could sense it — tension thick enough to slice through.

But here’s the real crux: how does someone climb to the top of adoption services while, at the same time, being open about financial chaos at home? Her husband back in 2003 had just been dismissed for gross misconduct, the family had taken out a second mortgage to stay afloat, and they were teetering on the brink of losing their home. Any ordinary civil servant would have seen their career implode right there. Yet Penny seemed untouchable — bulletproof — protected.

Corruption? Connections? Or something deeper embedded in the system?

Whatever it was, I was about to find out just how far that protection extended — and how easily honesty could be buried under layers of bureaucracy and influence.

The Home Visit

We’d done everything by the book — met every guideline on every social and state media checklist we could find. The house was spotless, risk‑assessed to the last socket. We made the tea, set out the biscuits, and waited.

From the very start, though, something felt off. The social worker — sent, of course, under Penny’s authority — opened with,

“You’re a very young couple to adopt. Normally, we see people ten years older than you.”

That was her opening line.

We politely reminded her that, under UK law, at the time any person over eighteen can legally adopt, and a couple can adopt if at least one partner is eighteen and the other is over twenty‑one. In 2011, that was the statute, clear as day. My wife — finishing her law degree with honours and a 2:1, eligible for the New York Bar Exam — quoted the legislation word for word. We wanted to make it known, from the start, that we weren’t naïve or easily intimidated.

Still, the tone was set. The visit continued politely enough, but you could sense the quiet judgments being formed behind every nod and every note.

Then came the question — the one that’s stuck with me ever since:

“We pulled your military personnel files. Your wife’s file is straightforward, but yours is… thin for twelve years’ service. The team noticed that. Would you care to expand on the reasoning?”

That’s when the hairs went up on the back of my neck.

It was a weighted question, and they knew it. My file was redacted for good reason — as any military veteran would understand. There were two possible answers: tell the truth and risk breaching the Official Secrets Act, or lie and compromise my integrity.

I asked, calmly, what her vetting level was.
She hesitated — didn’t know.
Probably had none.

That told me everything I needed to know. She was sniffing where she shouldn’t have been.

Yes, compared to my wife’s file, mine would seem thin — deliberately so. That’s what happens when you’ve held classified duties, when parts of your record are weeded annually, sometimes twice a year, by order of security policy.

My personnel file was exactly twelve pages long — one for each year of service — because everything else was need‑to‑know, and she didn’t need to know.

She was out of her depth, asking questions she didn’t have clearance to ask and when she did ask them and she was not getting the answer she wanted rather than back tracking she kept on trying to get the answer that she was not going to get on that day. And that, in many ways, summed up the entire system:

unqualified people prying into places they shouldn’t — with the power to decide who is “fit” to parent.

The social worker quickly found her rhythm — or, more accurately, her stick between her teeth. She pressed further, testing the edges of what she could pry from us.

“When did you finish with the RAF?”

I answered truthfully: end of January 2011. But with the continuity rules, accrued leave, and some resettlement arrangements, I was technically employed by the RAF until the end of April, even as I began a new civilian role in February.

Her first move: claim we were out of scope because of the six-month rule following a major life change. I corrected her: senior levels at Medway Adoption had already confirmed there was no conflict — my major change had concluded in early January.

Undeterred, she tried a new angle. She clearly had spoken with someone cleared to know the background — perhaps a family member or a military colleague — and asked:

“You haven’t stopped working for the RAF — would you clarify your last physical working day, when you had no further contact or duties?”

At the time, the answer was still classified. I told her:

“In March, there was a possibility I could have been deployed to a high-risk zone for operations related to my specialist field.”

She pressed: “But now, there’s no possibility, correct?”

I said no and tried to move past it. But she attempted to imply that my “major change” was incomplete — that my RAF connection could still affect my ability to adopt. I explained that as an engineer with multiple specialities, we could have been stuck in an endless loop of hypotheticals.

The matter was eventually escalated to her bosses and senior levels — far more experienced and better compensated — who drew a firm line under it. She had to deal with it.

The Context They Could Not Know

To understand why this line of questioning was so sensitive, a bit of background is necessary:

On 11 March 2011, a catastrophic earthquake struck Japan, triggering a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. For six years leading up to my RAF retirement, I had been trained as part of the Nuclear Accident Rescue Team (NARO), on 24/7 standby to respond to any incident involving nuclear-capable aircraft or nuclear crises, anywhere in the world.

This meant that on the morning of the Fukushima incident, while social work assessments were happening in the background, in a quite home in Chatham, I was in my second bedroom, actively monitoring the situation through a secure portal connecting:

• US Department of Defense
• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
• UK Ministry of Defence
• TEPCO and Japanese government officials
• The UK COBRA team advising then-Prime Minister David Cameron

I was receiving real-time data feeds — far ahead of the public media loop — and coordinating with potential contingency plans with international teams from the UK, US, Russia, France, and Israel, and all of the departments listed above who were providing a real time briefing of what was happening on the ground so if I was to deploy then on landing in Japan I would have been fully briefed on the situation.

Had the situation escalated further, I would have deployed internationally. Instead, I was in a quiet English home, simultaneously navigating a classified nuclear incident just a couple of months before the social worker interview.

This context made the line of questioning not just inappropriate, but impossible to answer fully, and it illustrates how out-of-step adoption bureaucracy can be when it clashes with real-world operations.

The Waiting Game and the First Setback

The social worker could have kept probing endlessly, sending prying messages and trying to find a way out. She was not cleared to know certain details, and I was not cleared to discuss them. Some things could only be referenced through media already available publicly in the UK — anything beyond that was off-limits, especially to a low-level civil servant who thought she had the right to pry everywhere.

The focus shifted to my wife. There were some questions about her health, but nothing major — her answers satisfied the social worker. We gave her a tour of the house: the bedrooms, the large backyard (no grass in sight — an important detail for the next interview), and all the other areas she needed to see. The house met all requirements, something we had studied and prepared for over months. By the end of the visit, we were told a decision would be made in six weeks, and all we had to do was wait.

Six Weeks Later – The Blow

When the social worker returned, she informed us that we had not progressed to the next stage. She explained that we were number seven on the list, and although she had escalated a request to take on a second case, Penny — the head of Medway Adoption — had refused.

Apparently, Penny had also decided that the other candidates should start the process two weeks before the decision was communicated to us, effectively blocking any possibility of recourse. The social worker conveyed Penny’s reasoning for rejecting our application:

1. Family network too close: We were told we needed to move closer to a wider friend network. But our family network was a clear advantage, and our friends were just as accessible from Medway as anywhere else. This argument was flatly weak, and I warned the social worker that a better reason was expected, or I would escalate.
2. Not known to the agency long enough: Despite being in contact since 2009 and having provided full information since mid-2010, we were told we had not been known long enough. By then, we had been known to the agency for over two years — clearly meeting any reasonable criteria. Again, no valid argument was presented.
3. Too young to adopt: At ages 30 and 32, we were apparently considered too young, even though the law clearly allows adoption if one person is over 18 and the other over 21. This was blatant overreach.

It became obvious that Penny was playing hardball. I was not about to let it slide. I informed the social worker that I would be pursuing recourse against Medway Adoption and Penny, as their decision violated both the law and social services regulations.

Recourse and Its Implications

The social worker advised that if we pursued recourse:

• The other six adoption processes would pause while our case was investigated.
• Any favouritism shown to other couples would require one of them to be dropped to accommodate our application.

My response was simple:

“Forget the other couples.”

Curious, I asked about the likelihood of all six current candidates successfully completing the process. She revealed that historically, 33% of couples failed, and already two of the six had cracks in their cases. The eighth couple was being considered as a potential replacement if needed.

It was clear: if I pushed back, the system could not ignore us. And I was prepared to make sure it didn’t.

Wait a goddamn minute — we were just told we were being bypassed, even though we had finished above the couple ahead of us. There was potentially a space coming up for the couple who scored lower than us, yet the social worker simply said she had already said too much.

She advised that if we wanted any chance of success, we would need to move to Kent County Council. Our case could then be transferred, and the social worker would make inroads with the Kent Adoption Team, who would take over our application — but only if we physically relocated out of the Medway area.

In other words, in public sector speak: Penny, who was manager / director of Medway Adoption at the time, could not separate her personal life from her professional role. She had effectively placed a personal blacklist on us within Medway Adoption, meaning we would never succeed there, no matter how many times we applied.

2012 – Starting Over with Kent Adoption Team

We had moved again, this time to Folkestone, following the recommendation of our original social worker. The move came with a silver lining: I was headhunted by a UK automotive manufacturer, landing a role that doubled my salary overnight. While this was a career boost, it also meant I would be spending a couple of nights away each week, which raised concerns regarding the adoption process.

We sought advice from friends who had recently completed adoption processes in Birmingham, Medway, and Kent. One of them was a long-distance lorry driver, away for five weeks at a time. Through a proxy with direct links to Coventry City Council’s adoption team, we learned that it was perfectly standard to adopt into a household where one parent worked away, as long as the adopting individuals were cleared.

This contrasted sharply with Kent and Medway practices, where they assessed the entire household instead of the adopters themselves. They were focused on the house, the premises, and a hypothetical “perfect fit” for a child, which went against national adoption standards. Coventry had even put us in contact with a family that had successfully gone from zero to three children overnight, showing that the model worked and was fully compliant with the rules. This gave us the confidence to re-enter the system with Kent Adoption Team, knowing that legally, there should be no barriers.

We waited the required six months while I completed my new work probation—after which my salary was increased by 50%. Feeling secure, we contacted Kent Adoption Team and explained that we had been in the area for a year, as Medway had previously advised.

Their response was frustratingly bureaucratic: they had no case notes from Medway and had never heard of us. Essentially, we had to start the process from scratch. Due to several changes in the system, we were required to attend another induction interview.

We explained that we were a professional couple who had previously started the adoption process with Medway but were unsuccessful because the agency wanted us closer to our friend base rather than our family base. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment, and if accepted, we would consider moving to a larger home—though high rents and fixed tenancy restrictions limited our options at the time.

The Kent Adoption Team responded positively. They saw no issues with the new setup: the apartment was fine, and we were closer to our friends, not family. We were confirmed for the induction interview, officially starting the process with Kent Adoption Team—far from Medway and away from Penny.

2013 – Induction Day at Canterbury University

We attended the Induction Day at Canterbury University, fully aware that nothing had changed in the process since 2011. The mock-up of the induction mirrored exactly what Medway had run, but the big change was scale—there were about 85 couples at this event alone, and they held one of these events each month.

As the Adoption Director for Kent Adoption Team was announced, our hearts sank: it was Penny, with her new sidekick from the private adoption group CORAM. The thought struck us immediately—after what she had done at Medway, there was no way we could be lucky here.

They began presenting figures: how many adopters they had processed that year, how many were in progress, how many had completed the process. As I sifted through the spin and gaslighting, I realized that the number of children actually adopted compared to the number of applicants was extremely low—they had essentially hit their quota right there in the room.

I raised the question about how many people they actually take to the next stage: The response:

“Twelve couples per course, one course per month.”

There was no transparency until I pressed the issue. From our experience at Medway, we knew this number was being deliberately withheld from the crowd, and yet Penny was presenting this flawed process as the “champions of the new adoption system”. With 85 couples in the auditorium and only 12 moving forward, the odds were staggering.

I wanted to ask if any pre-selection had already been made, but carefully phrased my question: how many couples would be offered a home interview following this induction? Everyone or a select few?

Penny’s response: “We hope to take everyone forward to the first interview stage, but it all comes down to resources.” She looked slightly uncomfortable, trying to shift the conversation away from hard questions.

Another couple, two seats down, interjected on my behalf, insisting that the fundamental questions should be answered. Suddenly, the energy in the room shifted. Others began nodding, showing they wanted the same clarity. In five minutes, I had extracted more information from Penny than the audience had gotten in twenty minutes of her presentation.

I laid out my point:

“In 2011, when we applied to Medway, the ratio was roughly 75% carried forward, 25% rejected after the induction and first interview. Of the 75% taken forward, around 33% failed at the second stage. You have 85 couples here today, and you’ve just admitted you only take 12 forward. My odds have gone from 75% at Medway to 10–15% here after just the first interview. How is this process an improvement? What standards have you put in place to increase the number of individuals who progress?”

Penny tried to brush the question off, claiming, “I’m sure your maths is wrong.” The couple beside me spoke up: “No, his maths is in the ballpark. What he’s pointed out is correct—next to no one here is going to qualify past the first interview.” Penny finally admitted that this reality needed to be made clear from the start.

It was a small victory—the truth was out in the open, at least for the room of 85 couples—but it reinforced the frustration and rigidity of the system, and reminded us how far we would have to fight just to be treated fairly.

Penny and CORAM were on stage, talking about how they were “generating the new standard for adoption services”—open days where children could choose potential parents instead of the agency assigning the child. I called out the obvious:

“That’s a great idea, but who gets the invite? Everyone in this room? Or the twelve families you’ve already pre-selected from the eighty-five couples here?”

Penny’s first slip of the morning came immediately:

“We know there are families here which are ready to go beyond the first interview.”

The room murmured. In all but name, she had admitted that the twelve families had already been chosen. Many of us were essentially just there for show, making the statistics look better than they were.

I moved on to the next, age-old question: how long does the agency need to know prospective adopters before they feel confident enough to proceed?

“We’ve had some who have been known to us for around two years,”

Another couple in the room immediately interpreted this:

“So, we’d need to be on the books for at least two years to even be part of the fifteen percent?”

Exactly. That was the unwelcome reality.

Then the maths hit me. Twelve families per month, twelve months—that’s 144. Yet you’ve only adopted 105 couples. Why the 30% failure rate if your system is supposedly so robust?”

“We have a failure rate at the stages,” came the cautious reply.

I pressed further: this was our second attempt at moving forward. At Medway, our chance of reaching the next stage had been nearly 70%, but here in Kent, our odds were now 10%. And this was despite using the exact same process across counties. Meanwhile, the social worker on the floor was clearly struggling to maintain the official line, and my wife was discreetly kicking me under the table, whispering:

“Shut the fuck up, Penny’s going to reject us on principle now.”

The chaos continued: the social worker on the floor, now improvising off script after the boss’s answers had thrown everything into disarray, tried to regain control. A couple who had already successfully adopted shared their own perspective, further adding to the tension.

Then it was tea and biscuits, the informal part of the induction. But before mingling, one of the social workers who had been observing us pulled us aside. She had seen our questions, our experience, and our persistence.

“I’d like you to start working on your diaries,” she said. “From what I’ve seen today, I think you’re ready to move through the system.”

I reminded her, gently, that her boss might have something to say about that, suggesting she consult with Penny first. After all, we weren’t entirely sure Penny would allow a first interview, given how principled—or vindictive—she could be.

Yet, for the first time, there was a glimmer of hope: someone saw our potential and wanted to give us a chance, despite the bureaucracy, the pre-selection, and the shadow Penny had cast over the process.

2013 – First Home Visit, Kent Adoption Team

It took less than five days to arrange the home visit—a seemingly positive sign. But, as we would soon find out, it was part of a recurring cycle designed to keep us off the books and out of Penny’s hair for another six months. The social worker who had been supportive in the days leading up to the visit was suddenly removed from our case by Penny the night before.

The visit began, and the first wave of objections came immediately:

• We could not be considered for adoption because Kent Adoption does not place children in flats.
• There was no grass in the private garden.
• The apartment was deemed completely unsafe due to the layout—despite the fact that every other apartment in the street had children in them. I honestly expected the social worker to call in a removal van for all the kids on the street.
• My job, which required me to be away a few nights a week, was apparently unsuitable, despite my wife being a full-time homemaker.
• Once again, we were too young.

We calmly pointed out to the social worker—a kind Scandinavian lady—that, according to adoption by-laws, she was not there to assess the property. We were not yet approved adopters, so the apartment itself was irrelevant. The property would likely change before any placement, and the focus should be on assessing us as prospective adopters, not nitpicking a flat.

She paused and listened, clearly aware that we were not taking this passively.

During our discussion, the topic of the mechanical baby doll exercise came up—a stage in the induction process where couples are assessed using a data-logging doll. We had learned from other couples that some social workers deliberately skewed the system to get couples “off the books.” One couple recounted how the doll was kept at a safe house rather than with them, forcing them to travel across the county in the middle of the night. Any delay, even minor, could count as a failure. This manipulation explained, in part, why there was a 30% failure rate in the system.

Despite the manager’s earlier instructions, we insisted the social worker do her job properly: assess us as a couple, not the flat. We were determined not to be manipulated by bureaucratic technicalities and Penny’s interference.

After the visit, we were told that, to succeed, we would need to move house again. Each move was costly, averaging around £4,000 in deposits, moving costs, and other expenses. This meant I would need a high-paying, locally-based engineering role to maintain our finances. In 2013, my salary as a prototype development engineer for Jaguar Land Rover was £45–55K. Jobs paying that level in the Folkestone area were scarce, making the demand unrealistic.

What Kent Adoption didn’t know was that we were a strategic military-style couple, keeping our options open. The Coventry City Council Adoption Team had been monitoring our situation. Through conversations with families who had successfully adopted with Coventry, we learned that their system was far less bureaucratic and far more efficient than Kent’s.

Coventry placed children with multiple families each year, often handling several cases concurrently, without the obsession over trivialities like grass in a garden or apartment layouts. One social worker explained that all eight of her cases on the books were being actively placed, because it was simply her job to do so.

In short: while Kent was caught up in petty rules, quotas, and Penny’s personal vendetta, Coventry was getting children into homes, efficiently and professionally. This knowledge gave us confidence that, if Kent continued to obstruct us, there was a viable alternative route out of county that could finally lead to us becoming adopters.

Were with families, and family members who had gone through the system at Coventry had placed our case up to the team, where following an initial meeting with some of the team members sponsored by these families Coventry had started to make some initial investigations to see if they could get some information about us with a view of completing an out of county adoption, Apparently they had discussed with a senior member of the Kent adoption team which offered heavy resistance to the proposal and following further discussions with the senior manager it was advised that Coventry should break all contact with us moving forward with any potential process of adoption.

Around this time, my thoughts started drifting back to my old world — guided‑missile countermeasure systems, the kind fitted to Air Force One and aircraft carrying world leaders. In the military, secrecy isn’t a rule — it’s survival.
When I left service, there were things I had to bury. Literally.

Because of the work I’d done — on frequency modulation and energy dispersion systems designed to throw off heat‑seeking missiles — I went through a process of regressive hypnosis. Neurodivergent minds like mine tend to retain details in perfect recall. I could remember every flicker of light on a control panel, every scrawled note on the inside of a safe door.

And that’s the danger.
If someone, someday, wanted those details — the pulse‑width modulation frequencies, the precise wavelength spreads — they could, in theory, reverse‑engineer them.
Match the signal, match the pulse width, and you could send a missile straight up the jet pipe of Air Force One. So we bury things — deeply.
In my case, buried under a mental failsafe: if I ever tried to access the information consciously, my brain would trigger a distraction — “Run With Us” by Glitter wolf. A neuro‑lock. The music kicks in before the data can.
A crude but effective firewall.

That kind of conditioning stays with you. You learn to move differently, think differently, trust differently. And maybe that’s why, when Kent Adoption started playing games with paperwork, my gut told me there was more going on than bad admin.

You can sense when you’ve become a “file of interest.”
And I had the sinking feeling that we were being quietly black‑flagged.

The Offer

It was a Thursday night in Coventry — the kind of midweek evening that hums quietly with factory chatter and cheap lager. I’d finished another long day on the car testing project and slipped into a local bar, the usual haunt for contractors and university students. The place was packed, air thick with the smell of steak and stress relief.

I’d just ordered my dinner when a woman approached — mid‑thirties, sharply dressed, and carrying that confident calm you only see in people used to asking for things and getting them. In careful, broken English, she asked if she could sit opposite me. No problem, I said, barely looking up from my notes. Contractors shared tables all the time; nothing unusual.

But the accent caught my attention — Mainland Chinese, not Hong Kong. There’s a difference. The rhythm, the restraint, the deliberate choice of words, a lady and a perceived aged difference only jus probably making her older o being more authorities in the conversation. I’d worked with people from both regions; the distinction was unmistakable.

Then, out of nowhere, she asked if I’d be interested in moving to China.

Her village, she said, needed an English couple to teach at the local school — mostly English, maybe a bit of engineering on the side. The offer sounded too neat, too polished: accommodation, a local IVF clinic “of very good standard,” and a salary of £15,000 every three months, tax‑free. All expenses paid. And, she added almost casually, our IVF treatments would be fully funded.

She placed a card on the table, smiled, and walked out — just like that.

At first, I brushed it off as a drunken proposal or some wild recruiting pitch. But the idea lingered. That weekend, I mentioned it to my wife. We both laughed about it — the absurdity, the temptation. Then the laughter stopped, and the question remained: What if it wasn’t absurd?

Because everyone has a price, right? That’s drilled into you during security interviews — not as a moral failing, but a fact of human nature. And for a couple who’d been fighting for years against a British system that refused to help us start a family, the idea of a foreign power offering both the dream and the means was… unnerving.

Would I, could I, trade classified memories for the chance to become a father?

The Bait Deepens

Out of curiosity — or maybe ego — I went back to the same bar a few days later. This time she wasn’t alone. She brought a friend — someone I recognised from the automotive plant. That made me pause.

The conversation was smoother this time. She explained that the arrangement could be made quickly, that travel and visas could be “facilitated,” and that the school was eager to have us. But I had my questions.

“Would this be a Western IVF process?” I asked bluntly.
She nodded. “Of course. Western donor, Western child.”

I pressed harder. I couldn’t exactly go off to China, come home nine months later with a child who didn’t look remotely British, and not expect questions — especially from the same social services already watching us. She smiled and reassured me again: “The child would have Western heritage.”

But there was a catch — the child would need to be born in China. That was non‑negotiable.

And that’s where alarm bells started ringing. Any child born abroad under those circumstances would have to be registered through official channels, consulate paperwork, the works — all of which would light up every database in the system. The same kind of bureaucratic flags that had already torpedoed our adoption chances.

Still, the “friend” leaned in, pushing hard. “If you and your wife accept, arrangements can be made quickly. Travel, accommodation, everything. It would be a good life.”

The whole thing had that too‑well‑oiled feeling. No teaching degree required. No vetting. No hesitation. Just a lucrative offer and a promise of parenthood — dangling in front of a man with classified memories and a clean‑cut military past.

That’s when I started running the mental checklist we were all taught. Approach profile: foreign origin, high incentive, family leverage, medical benefit, secrecy clause.
It fit. Almost perfectly.

The Interrogator’s Tradecraft

You see, when you’ve worked in environments where hypnosis and interrogation overlap, you start to recognise patterns of control.

Back in 2000, during counter‑intelligence instruction, we learned about “Category‑Cleared Individuals.” There were five levels then — Level 5 being the lowest, Level 1 being the kind of clearance that very few hold. Category Two and above meant you’d been exposed to sensitive or classified systems — and were, therefore, a potential target.

We also learned about the techniques that might be used against us. Hypnosis interrogation. NLP anchoring. The kind of stuff that sounds like conspiracy until you’ve seen it demonstrated in a training room — sixty seconds to bypass resistance, twenty minutes to have someone singing like a canary.

If the subject’s been conditioned — resistance hypnosis, psychological blockers — it doesn’t matter. Once the NLP anchor is placed, your conscious defences are gone. You don’t remember it afterward. Even the courts aren’t told where the intel came from. “Undisclosed source under national security protocols.” That’s the line they use.

And if the hypnosis fails? There’s a darker route.

During training, there were rumours — a house somewhere in the south of England. Three “contractors” lived there, supposedly working on a long‑term project. Locals saw them at the bookshop, the post office, the library. Friendly faces. Nothing remarkable.

But those in the know said if one of them ever entered your interrogation room, the game was over. Geneva Convention or not, your rights didn’t exist in that space. They’d take you to the edge of death and pull you back again, over and over, until the truth spilled out. Some never made it back. Others walked away believing nothing had happened at all.

And that was the crossroads I found myself standing at in 2011 — between a British system that treated us like ghosts, and a foreign one that saw me as a key.
Both wanted something. Only one offered something in return.

Between 1999 and 2001, during my first posting in the military, I was pulled into something most people will never even hear whispers of. Because of my neurodivergent processing — officially unconfirmed, but keenly observed — I was selected for a field study coordinated by King’s College London.

They paired me with a military interrogator. That was the start of my first shadow duty.

The brief was simple: they wanted to see if someone who thought differently could read differently — could pick up micro‑expressions, body language, and stress indicators with precision beyond machines. My handler’s term for it was “bio‑intuitive interrogation.” To put it bluntly: I became a human lie detector.

But it didn’t stop there.

I was deployed for weapons training at the Armed Response Unit HQ in Leicester, working alongside selected military members trained to use current police equipment as part of what was the Military Assistance to Civil Authorities. Then came the deeper layer — Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and hypnosis. My handler took me through one‑to‑one sessions that went far beyond basic suggestion or relaxation. It was strategic conditioning — understanding how the subconscious responded to fear, attraction, and pain.

That culminated in what was described as “the meaningful conversation.”

We met the King’s College team formally — led by none other than Nigel Oakes, the same man who would later architect the psychological blueprints behind Brexit and the early nudge theory algorithms that now underpin modern social media manipulation. I watched the seeds of that system being planted two years before his private venture began.

That’s where I learned the darker side of persuasion — the art of evoking just enough pleasure or pain to make someone talk. Cold War doctrine wrapped in behavioural science.

By day, I was an aircraft technician. By night, I was a Romeo — the kind who could extract intelligence through charm, pressure, and carefully measured empathy.

So when those two Chinese representatives sat across from me in that Coventry bar years later, they thought they’d found a mark — a lonely engineer, financially comfortable, emotionally vulnerable, desperate for a family. They thought they could buy what they wanted for £5,000 a month and the promise of a baby.

They had no idea who they were sitting across from.

The Counter‑Read

After the hard sell, they left me to think. I stayed in the bar, doing what I’d been trained to do — watching, listening, and reading.

The woman scheduled to return to China seemed restless, her fingers drumming on the table. The company contact tried to steady the conversation, switching languages mid‑sentence. After a few exchanges, she apologised, smiling awkwardly.
“Sorry,” she said. “We will speak English again in front of you.”

I smiled back. “No need. I’m sure you’ll get your flight safely. Since it isn’t your normal carrier, it shouldn’t cause too much trouble getting back into China.”

She froze. “You speak Mandarin?”

I shook my head. “Not a word. But you’ve told me enough — through your expressions, your body language, the last two meetings — for me to know exactly what’s going on.”

Then I dropped it on them.

“The baby‑milk racket — stop it. The shelves here are being stripped bare while families go without. Whatever you’re running in the UK, cut it off. If I see you or your network in my orbit again, the next thing you’ll be looking at is an 8×10 cell with a deportation order stapled to your passport.”

That ended the conversation, permanently.

Reflections

I never took the offer. Never reported it formally either — though if questioned, I would have disclosed it to the proper authorities.

But it made me think. Someone, somewhere, had my name on a list. Someone believed they could exploit a weakness — our need for a child — to draw information from me.

It was proof of what we were taught all those years ago:
the most effective weapon in espionage isn’t money, or ideology — it’s empathy twisted just enough to become leverage.

And that’s how I knew that, whether by accident or design, I’d brushed against a state‑sponsored operation.

April 2014 — Third Move, Third Chance

By April 2014, we had moved for the third time, this time into a two‑bedroom, three‑floor townhouse. The loft could have been converted into a master bedroom, but we kept it for storage. I had secured a position at a local engineering firm supplying military and defence equipment, working as a Technical Manager. I reported to three board directors of the larger company and a managing director of the parent firm. My salary was £37,500 per year, with a pension equivalent to the directors’ and all reasonable expenses covered.

The job came with an easy Monday‑to‑Friday commute, occasional overseas trips, and the rare embassy visit. Iinteracted with UK Ambassadors — for example, the ambassador to Turkey, who would later become head of MI6. On these occasions, I occasionally liaised with press officers and exchanged business cards with a simple understanding: should I ever need a favour or reference, I had a direct line. These were the circles I was moving in — small gestures could open doors decades later and who know some which were posing as press officers in embassies having drinks on the dawn of a new election would be come the replacement head of MI6, to the one which was about to fall in to the role.

By this time, we were seasoned at adoption inductions. Once my probation at work was complete, we contacted the Kent Adoption Team, giving them updates on our new job and accommodation. Our central point of contact confirmed that, aside from clearing two outstanding issues — our apartment and my job — there should be no obstacles to completing the process.

We were instructed to prepare a diary detailing our availability and received the stage-one application form. Because we had already completed the induction twice, we were told we could skip that part entirely. Our social worker from Medway was back on our case, and everything seemed to be sailing through.

But then Penny intervened.

History repeated itself. Even though all the issues that had previously disqualified us — our military background, living in an apartment without grass, rented accommodation — were now considered acceptable, Penny overrode the social worker’s decision. She insisted we attend the induction again, despite having already done it twice.

By this point, I was certain it was déjà vu, and I resolved that if she tried to sabotage us again, we would be ready to fight. I had already spent our savings and reorganised our lives to meet the adoption criteria; any excuse this time would have to be extraordinary.

I attended the induction casually, in jeans and a Help for Heroes hoodie, driving in an RX‑8. I told my wife: “Why dress up for this? They already have their twelve candidates, and we’re being taken forward this time.” And we could see with the people around us the difference, we were more relaxed going in to this process again.

During the session, they went through the adoption figures again — which, unsurprisingly, did not tally. My wife quietly reminded me to keep quiet. At the end, we met with the social worker who would likely oversee our case. We had our full year’s schedule prepared, down to the last event, and handed in the stage-one application.

Then Penny appeared, ready to interfere.

Considering our history — including being effectively blacklisted in Medway — she stepped in with her usual posh, public-sector tone, insisting that the social worker carry out a brief home visit before we could officially apply for stage one. It was clear: Penny was up to her old tricks again, and we would have to be vigilant to avoid her interference derailing our progress.

The Home Visit – Kent Adoption Team, 2014

Under the new standard of adoption — which at the time Kent Adoption Team and CORAM were proudly calling the “national benchmark” — the wait between induction and first interview was supposed to be fourteen days. In our case, it took six weeks.

Five weeks into the delay, we received a phone call: our assigned social worker had been placed on long‑term sick leave, and another was taking over our case. Right then, I knew we were being pushed aside again. Between what had happened with Penny at Medway and now this, it was clear the system was closing ranks.

And if there’s one rule about the public sector, it’s this — you don’t mess with the hierarchy.

We could see it coming. The interference. The excuses. The made‑up nonsense that had nothing to do with our ability to be parents. But this time, we were ready. We had spent over £22,500 of our own money to meet every single requirement they’d laid down.

If they rejected us again, we were going to take it as a statement from the state itself — that the government was declaring we were not suitable to become parents. And that, as two people who had served our country and were now civilians, would be an outright breach of our fundamental rights.

D‑Day arrived

The home visit was scheduled for 10:00 a.m.

I was up early, 08:30. Quick shower, quick extra tidy‑up. My wife was getting ready. Another quick run round with the hoover — job done.

At 08:50, there was a knock on the door. The social worker stood there, claiming she was “here at the arranged time.” To be honest, I had never met a more pig‑ignorant individual in my life.

Her tone stank of arrogance. I showed her the letter with the appointment time on it, and politely told her she might like to wait in her car until we were ready. She did — for about forty minutes — and then returned at 09:30, banging on the door, demanding we “get this meeting underway” because “she had other things to do today.”

At that point, it was obvious — she wanted us off her books.

I offered her a cup of tea. Instead, she shouldered past my wife and began inspecting the house, muttering under her breath that we’d already “messed up her day.” She stomped through each room, ticking boxes, until we finally sat down. And then came her reasons for not recommending us to become adopters:

1. “The attic is untidy.”

The attic — the attic! — was apparently her first major issue. She demanded we open the locked door and, once she’d seen it, declared it “unsuitable.”

We reminded her that attics aren’t meant to be pristine showrooms, and that if the adoption team wanted it cleared, we could have it done in two days flat. When we moved out years later, that’s exactly what we did. Her objection was pure theatre.

2. “There’s no bed in the spare room.”

The bed had just been taken apart and moved into the loft. We explained we had both a single and a double bed ready to assemble depending on the age or number of children which we could be adopting, and who ever we have come to visit, The room could be converted in half an hour.

At this point, I told her — politely but firmly — that if she was going to move the goalposts again, she had better have a good reason. I wasn’t putting up with laziness or nonsense.

3. “The house is cluttered.”

Apparently, five university law books in the corner of the living room counted as “clutter.” My wife had been helping a friend with some legal advice the night before — ironic, considering the rate this social worker was going, she’d soon need some legal advice herself.

Had she arrived at the agreed time, the books would have been gone. But of course, that didn’t fit her agenda.

4. “You have no experience with children.”

That one almost made me laugh. Between us, we had a network of over thirty families, with children from newborns to teenagers, many with special needs. We were the first point of call for several families when they were struggling. We’d even offered respite weekends.

Those same parents — real parents, not bureaucrats — rated us as more than ready to start a family. So for her to say we had “no experience with children” was insulting. I told her plainly: if that comment made it into her report, there would be thirty families banging on the doors of Kent Adoption until it was retracted.

By the end of the meeting, she backed down on each point, one by one. She knew there was no winning this argument.

And although I stayed calm throughout — calmer than I probably should’ve been — everyone in that room knew what I was capable of when I decided enough was enough.

That day, I learned that “new adoption standards” didn’t mean fairness or progress. It meant the same old gatekeeping in a smarter suit.

The Breaking Point

We reminded her — clearly and calmly — that she wasn’t there to play judge and jury. This was supposed to be a box‑ticking exercise, part of the standard process, nothing more.

But somewhere between her clipboard and her ego, she’d decided she was the Almighty.

Then she said it. The line that detonated the whole situation.

“Well, I’m still not putting you forward for the adoption process. Quite frankly, I’ve spoken to my boss — I don’t have the time. Also, I feel you don’t have any experience changing nappies”.

“I’d like you to go away for another year, learn how to change nappies, and then come back to us.”

For a split second, I thought she was trying to break the ice — some badly timed joke to cut the tension. But no, She was deadly serious.

My wife stood up slowly, without saying a word, walked out of the living room, opened the front door, then turned into the kitchen. As she passed, she said — very quietly:

“You’d better show her out of my house, before I do — because if I get hold of her, I’ll kill her.”

Now, here’s the thing. Between us, she had close to two million pounds’ worth of military training in how to kill a person that combined with my additional training  — and my good lady having a law degree that could she could probably argue the case afterwards on some grounds of diminished responsibility!

By the time the kettle clicked on in the kitchen, I’m fairly certain my wife had already run the entire scenario through her head — the method, the disposal, and the defence plea under mitigating circumstances for “doing society a favour by removing someone so far up their own backside from public service.”

The social worker took her cue and muttered something about bringing Penny round to “certify her assessment.”

That was it. The final straw.

I told her straight:

“Penny’s coming nowhere near this house. You can arrange a one‑to‑one between me and her by 10:00 hours tomorrow. But make no mistake — this is now Mutual Assured Destruction.”

She left, pale and shaken — but of course, she never passed on the message.
Why would she? She was only doing Penny’s bidding.

Complaint, Confrontation, and a Petulant Excuse

We lodged a formal complaint with Kent Adoption Team. The complaint set out everything: the pattern of interference, the repeated unprofessional behaviour, Penny’s apparent meddling across three separate processes, and the way social workers had treated us over five years. We specifically asked for Penny to be excluded from handling the complaint — after all, the complaint was about her — and requested a swift investigation and appropriate recourse against both the social worker and Penny.

Six weeks later we were invited to Kent Adoptions offices. We expected to meet a senior manager above Penny. Instead, when we arrived at reception, we were greeted by Penny herself. My wife and I just looked at each other: what the hell was going on? How does someone have the power to intercept a formal complaint about themselves and deal with it personally? There was no transparency. It was obvious — she answered to almost no one. That situation was going to change.

Penny led us into a cramped box room — boxes piled everywhere, a lone table in the middle. She had our complaint in front of her and immediately refuted any wrongdoing. She had absolved herself before we’d even sat down. Still, she admitted the matter wouldn’t simply be dropped and suggested an “intervention.”

She told us she’d spoken in depth with the social worker and that the junior had agreed to retract the “no nappies experience” line. Before she could finish, I slid our stage‑one application across the table: the attic, the spare‑room bed, the clutter — all of those excuses were now null and void. Penny, in that characteristic posh tone, told us it was irrelevant; she would not accept the application. There was a new objection: we had two indoor cats — and apparently, cats were now a bar to adoption.

Wait — what?

For five years, through every inspection and every home visit from both Medway and Kent, the same two cats had been in the house. No one had ever raised this issue. Now, after six weeks, Penny produced this “gem” and told us we either re‑home the cats or wait until they’d died before we could proceed. She offered to send another social worker to “confirm” the first worker’s notes.

It was obvious where this came from: personal. This was a spiteful, targeted move. I thought straight away of her niece — the woman I’d once been engaged to. The family drama, the debts, the fallout — it all made sense in a horrible, petty way. Penny was sending a personal message: you will not pass here.

The cat demand was intolerable. Giving up our cats would have felt like handing a child back to the state. I asked Penny for chapter and verse of the policy that banned indoor pets for prospective parents; she refused to provide any legal basis. Her decision was final — re‑home the cats or wait. No evidence. No statute.

That cornered us. My wife immediately grabbed the law books left in the room following the social workers visit and started hunting for legal recourse which with the delay in answering the complaint had given her a lot of time to research. If Kent and Penny were running this sham, we would not roll over. We told them, bluntly, that if this farce continued, we would take the complaint to our Member of Parliament and push for Kent Adoption Team to be placed into special measures under Section 14 of the Children Act. We were convinced we were not the only couple who’d lost faith in KAT’s management; if they would not fix it internally, we would escalate it publicly.

Penny visibly went pale the minute we told her we would escalate. She’d turned up to the meeting convinced she held every card; by the time we finished, she knew she did not.

When we explained that we would ask the people who control her department’s budgets and oversight to look into her conduct, she bristled. She told us, sharply, that that course of action would be “inadvisable.” We did not care. Five years of what we regarded as obstruction and nonsense had cost us more than money — it had cost us time, opportunities and the chance to become parents. We were done being polite.

Penny tried the last‑ditch emotional gambit. “If you put Kent Adoption into special measures under Section 14, all adoptions will stop until we’re removed,” she said. Absolute bollocks, I told her. What would actually happen was the public scrutiny she feared: every social worker — including managers — would be examined against the profession’s bylaws. If they had been mismanaging cases, heads would be held to account. She would not like the results. I left the comment to hang there while she considered her options.

The meeting lasted thirteen minutes from start to finish. When she asked us to leave, my last line to her was plain: this is not Denmark, and the world has changed since you wrote that white paper in 1989. You talk of cutting red tape yet you endorse a framework that removes rights from families and punishes the vulnerable. That contradiction is not lost on us.

She tried to hide behind academic papers and “best practice” while continuing to black‑flag couples who do not suit her view of acceptable parents. I reminded her (calmly) that, if necessary, I had contacts in crisis media and government communications — people who know how to shine a light on failing public services. I also reminded her that media scrutiny and parliamentary oversight are exactly the tools reformers use when internal systems fail.

The colour drained from her face. We left Kent Adoptions offices feeling for the first time in five years like we had taken something back: control of our narrative, our dignity and our fight. What happened next — how far Penny and their friends in power went to protect themselves — is something we will document, fully, in due course.

Escalation to the MP

We decided to take the next step and complain to our local MP, Damian Collins, in Folkestone. Initially, we expected to see one of his assistants at the constituency office, but instead, we were invited into the room with him directly. It was only a couple of months after he had displayed the Premier League trophy in a local supermarket — a trophy moment my joke about the wrong shade of blue on the ribbons had apparently set him up for the day. (For context: my team had just been promoted into the Premier League, and by every statistic over the last ten matches, we had outperformed Manchester City — a small victory in a long season, but it made for a lighter start and my team won the premier league that year they were promoted)

Once the pleasantries were over, we laid out the full story, presenting Damian Collins with the extensive documentation of the years of obstruction, arbitrary decisions, and professional misconduct by Kent Adoption Team (KAT) and the involvement of Penny. He reviewed the evidence in front of us, and with the gravity of press and media exposure hanging in the room, it became clear that action had to be taken.

He immediately began exercising his rights under Section 14 of the Children’s Act, pressing KAT to comply with the statutory duties to facilitate our progression through the adoption process. At this point, the process was no longer in KAT’s hands — it was under parliamentary oversight. Despite this, Kent Adoption Team remained silent, and in their formal correspondence, they outright refused to take the requested action.

By this stage, we had already spent our savings — approximately £22,500 — preparing for adoption. Even if there was no practical recourse to recover that money, there remained options under the Social Worker By-laws to hold individuals accountable, including:

• Legal action against individual social workers or KAT’s ADM to recover losses. While costly, it would create precedent and public scrutiny, setting a benchmark for others subjected to similar incompetence.
• Fines and disciplinary measures through the bodies that oversee adoption services. Maximum fines under the Act could reach £25,000 for a senior manager and around £5,000 for a social worker. The goal was to push the system toward accountability and ensure professional standards.
• Pursuing private adoption agencies. While options existed, KAT’s control over the process created bureaucratic blockades, making “out of county” or private pathways nearly impossible. Coventry City Council, for instance, refused to engage with us, creating further roadblocks.

Despite these challenges, Damian Collins acted swiftly. His assistant drafted and sent a formal letter within forty-eight hours of our meeting, formally requesting KAT to comply with statutory requirements and uphold their responsibilities under the Children’s Act.

This episode highlighted two critical realities: the fragmentation and opacity of social services and the potential for abuse when power is concentrated in unaccountable individuals. For us, it underscored that challenging the state requires top cover — parliamentary support, public scrutiny, and meticulous documentation. Without it, navigating the system can be not just frustrating, but punitive.

Kent Adoption Team Responds

It’s been a while since my last update, but we’ve finally received a response from Kent County Council (KCC) regarding their stance on the ongoing issue we’ve faced over the last five years trying to become approved adoptive parents.

For those new to the story, in the previous post we explained how we had escalated our complaint to our local MP, Damian Collins, on 19 September 2014. Following multiple complaints of a similar nature from other families, he confirmed that he would exercise his right under Section 14 of the Children’s Act to compel Kent Adoption Team (KAT) to act lawfully and transparently.

After returning from a business trip to Italy this week, we were met with two letters from KCC, the first arriving just six days after that initial blog post — on 3 November 2014.

This entry is dedicated to publicly outlining:

1. What Kent County Council, Coram ADM (Adoption Decision Maker), and the social workers have stated to our Member of Parliament, and
2. Our direct response to each of their claims.

We want to begin by thanking our local MP for his support in this matter — he acted swiftly and with integrity. However, as you’ll see below, it appears that Kent Adoption Team and the local authority have now closed ranks in an effort to shield themselves from accountability.

Kent County Council’s Official Response

Shortly after Damian Collins MP intervened on our behalf, we received a letter from Kent County Council, dated 22 September 2014, concerning our long-running application to adopt a child through their system.

It began with the usual formalities:

“Dear Mr Collins,
Thank you for your letter of 22 September 2014 on behalf of Adopter One of [address withheld] and their wish to adopt a child through the Council’s adoption team.
I apologise for the delay in responding to you.”

Our Reaction

1. Wrong address. Wrong postcode. Wrong phone numbers.
   They couldn’t even get our details right — and this is the same department tasked with safeguarding children and processing life-changing adoption paperwork. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.
2. A “delay”? Try an epic failure.
   The council took over a month to respond to an MP’s formal letter. That’s not a delay — that’s a logistical blackout. I could have driven around the world in the time it took them to type this response.

From the very first paragraph, it was clear that accuracy and urgency were not priorities. When you’re dealing with families desperate to adopt and children waiting for homes, that’s more than sloppy administration — it’s systemic negligence disguised as process.

Kent Adoption’s Response: Rewriting Reality

Kent County Council’s letter continues:

“I have now been able to look into the details of this situation and can confirm that an adoption social worker visited the family in May 2013. (Adopter One) were encouraged to consider changing jobs so that he could be more available at home, and it was also suggested that the family move to more suitable accommodation. The social worker also discussed the condition of their home, as it was unsuitable for a child, which (Adopter One) acknowledged. It was also recommended that they seek more childcare experience.”

“(Adopter One) had another initial home visit on 5 July 2014, by which time they had moved to a larger property and (Adopter One) had changed his job to be more available for an adopted child. Unfortunately, the social worker noted that the house was ‘untidy, unclean, cramped and disorganised’. This was discussed with the couple; however, (Adopter One) did not accept the relevance of this to their adoption application. (Adopter One) also stated that their home was not ready for friends’ children to visit. I appreciate that (Adopter One) thought they were being asked to prepare a room; however, this was not the case, as the main concern was about the overall condition of their home.”

1. The Job Change That Wasn’t a Choice

We were told, not “encouraged”, to change jobs. There was no polite suggestion or gentle nudge — it was an ultimatum.
Kent’s own Coram Adoption Decision Maker (ADM) wrote clearly in an email that “the adoption process will not continue until you have changed your work role.”

I was then employed as a prototype engineer in the automotive sector, a role that required long hours but one that had sustained our household. The social worker’s version now makes it sound optional — it wasn’t. Had we been given the choice, we would have completed the process years earlier.

2. The “Unsafe” Home

The assessment branded our former accommodation “unsuitable for a child.” We strongly disagreed. The implication was absurd: by their logic, every family on that street would be deemed unfit. Children lived happily in comparable homes all around us.

We were not adopting a property — we were adopting a child.
Kent’s blanket statement that they “do not adopt children into apartments or flats” was discriminatory in itself. We made it clear that if relocation was required, we were prepared to move — and in time, we did.

3. The Myth of “Insufficient Childcare Experience”

This part of their letter verges on the insulting. Between us, we had more structured childcare experience than many qualified professionals.

• During our Armed Forces service, we volunteered on children’s summer programmes, caring for over 250 children aged five to eleven, many of whom came from traumatic or disadvantaged backgrounds — including groups from Chernobyl.
• We mentored civilian youth volunteers aged 16–18 working towards the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, several of whom aspired to careers in social work.
• I personally taught Year 5 and 6 students basic principles of electricity at a local school. The teachers described my rapport as “natural” and even encouraged me to train as a teacher after military service.
• My wife’s mother manages a day nursery, and we regularly engage with the children there and attend social events with staff and parents.
• Between us, we have nine aunts and uncles and an extended global family with countless children — including several relatives who have themselves adopted.

We are surrounded by children, experience, and perspective. Yet, according to Kent Adoption, this was “not good enough.”

4. The Home Visit That Went Off-Script

The Council’s letter admits that we’d already moved to a larger home and changed jobs — exactly as they’d required. But then they criticised that home as “untidy, unclean, cramped and disorganised.”

At the time, my wife worked part-time as a hotel chambermaid while preparing to become a full-time parent. The accusation that two ex-military professionals — people who have prepared for real inspections — lived in disarray was laughable.

The social worker arrived unannounced, one hour and ten minutes early. Naturally, the house wasn’t “inspection ready”. The vacuuming hadn’t yet been done, and the university books were still on the table. Her main complaint? The attic.

Apparently, because it had a proper door rather than a hatch, she decided it was part of her inspection remit. She labelled it “unsafe” — despite the fact we’d already sourced stair gates and locks to make it fully child-safe within minutes of knowing a placement.

In truth, it wasn’t “disorganisation” — it was the social worker’s failure to follow schedule and protocol.

5. The “No Nappy Experience” Excuse

And then came the now-infamous comment:

“You cannot adopt because you have no experience changing nappies.”

Every mother we know laughed at this. No parent has “nappy experience” before becoming one. That’s what the instructions on the packet are for.

If two aircraft engineers can’t follow basic written instructions, then yes — perhaps the world should start worrying about planes dropping from the sky like tent pegs.

Our Assessment

This letter from Kent Adoption Team was a masterclass in bureaucratic contradiction: facts re-written, timelines blurred, and achievements ignored. It paints a picture of compliance on their part and incompetence on ours — when in reality, it was quite the opposite.

Every point they raised has a paper trail, every conversation has context, and every contradiction reflects a system more interested in process than people.

“Adopter One subsequently emailed the adoption service and an appointment was made for the couple to come and speak to a manager (The Coram ADM) on the 28th August. They attended and the concerns were discussed in depth. It was agreed with Adopter One that they would attend to the condition of their home and contact the manager once they had felt the improvements had been made at which point a second home visit would be arranged. To date the manager has not heard from Adopter One.”

Adopter One’s Recorded Account:

1. Meeting Request Context –
   • The email was not a general enquiry but a formal complaint about the social worker’s misconduct and lack of professionalism.
   • The ADM failed to initiate contact for over 50 days.
2. Meeting Duration and Content –
   • Contrary to the claim that concerns were discussed “in depth,” the meeting lasted exactly 13 minutes.
   • The ADM refused to carry the complaint forward, effectively investigating her own conduct and that of her subordinate.
3. New Issues Introduced by ADM –
   • “Cat Policy” Claim: The ADM stated that Adopter One’s indoor cats must be made outdoor cats or removed from the household to progress adoption.
     • This was never raised in five years of assessments by previous social workers.
     • Adopter One saw this as arbitrary and discriminatory, particularly given the cats were considered part of the family.
   • Conflict of Roles: Penny Stanley-Evans was found to be both the Kent Adoption Team ADM and Coram ADM, a structural conflict undermining impartiality.
   • Family History Block: The ADM cited that Adopter One could not progress until the wife’s mother’s historic adoption of a sibling (30+ years prior) was resolved.
     • This was an impossible condition, as the biological mother refused to disclose details and KCC offered no assistance.
     • Adopter One were effectively penalised for a relative’s decades-old private action.
4. Environmental/Home Visit Discussion –
   • Adopter One clarified that the home had been tidied, reorganised, and cleaned.
   • Issues arose because the social worker arrived over an hour early, before scheduled inspection time, then misrepresented the state of the home.
   • The ADM acknowledged this but took no corrective action.
   • Adopter One requested a second home visit with a different social worker — this was verbally agreed, but never actioned.
5. Outcome of Meeting –
   • ADM did not follow up or schedule the promised visit.
   • No written summary or complaint reference was ever provided.
   • Adopter One concluded that dialogue had become futile and that the Kent Adoption Team had closed ranks.

After 28 August 2014 – Cessation of Contact

• Following this meeting, Adopter One ceased communication with KCC Adoption Team due to perceived stonewalling and bias.
• Over the next five years, the same ADM (Penny Stanley-Evans) would appear in multiple overlapping roles across Kent, Coram, and other councils, each time obstructing progress in similar ways.
• Adopter One records that every approach resulted in either administrative obstruction or fabricated reasoning for exclusion.

“Adopter One have been reassured that part of our role is to assess an applicant’s readiness to adopt, though this does not mean they should have a fully ready home for a child. However, it is essential that the home is clean and sufficiently uncluttered so that it does not pose a danger to a child.”

“I am sure you will appreciate that occasionally we have to make difficult decisions in relation to applicants’ suitability to adopt as it is essential that we place our most vulnerable children in safe and secure families in order to maximise successful outcomes.”

Adopter One’s Rebuttal and Evidence (Documented Response):

1. Misrepresentation of Home Safety:
   • The statement implies that Adopter One’s home posed a potential danger to a child — a claim completely unsupported by evidence.
   • During multiple assessments across five years, no previous social worker had ever raised safety concerns.
   • Adopter One and their wider social network had implemented every recommended safety measure, including:
     • Cupboard safety catches to prevent child poisoning.
     • Blind cord wraps mounted above child height to remove strangulation risk.
     • Stair gates fitted and spare gates stored in the attic.
     • Safety covers on electrical outlets and cabinet locks where advised.
   • Friends with children, forming part of their approved social network, even offered home inspections to demonstrate that Adopter One’s standards met — and in many cases exceeded — average family safety.
2. False or Unfounded Allegation of Unsafe Conditions:
   • The KCC assertion that the home was “cluttered” or unsafe is seen as an attempt to undermine credibility rather than an evidence-based finding.
   • The suggestion that Adopter One’s home environment posed any danger was categorically false.
   • Adopter One note that Kent Adoption’s repeated moving of goalposts made it impossible to achieve “approval,” as each new visit raised new, fabricated concerns.
3. Defamation and Personal Discrediting:
   • The phrase that Adopter One was “not a safe and secure family” constitutes defamation of character, given the lack of factual basis or professional evidence.
   • Both applicants have impeccable personal and professional records, including:
     • Military and legal backgrounds with strict vetting.
     • Multiple prior assessments passed without issue.
     • A demonstrable understanding of child welfare, protection, and safety.
   • Adopter One formally requested that Kent County Council retract or clarify this statement, warning that if no correction was issued, legal action for defamation would be pursued against the individual responsible.
4. Contextual Irony and Social Commentary:
   • Adopter One note the irony that KCC officials, while failing to act on systemic safeguarding failures, appeared to obsess over trivial matters like the positioning of DVDs and stair gates.
   • Quote:

“If Kent County Council still believe our home is dangerous to a child, they should stop watching Equilibrium — because it’s clearly not doing them any favours.”

4. This line reflects frustration with bureaucratic overreach, not a lack of seriousness about child safety.

“If Adopter One would like to update the manager (Coram ADM) about their progress in relation to the home environment, (Coram ADM) would be happy to talk to them.”

Due to the lack of progress and perceived bias, Adopter One concluded that further communication with the Coram ADM or any social worker appointed by her would not be conducive to progress.

“We feel that no further progress can be made by talking to the Coram ADM or a social worker that she arranges for a home visit.”

5. Response from Corporate Director – Social Care, Health and Wellbeing
A letter from the Corporate Director acknowledged the correspondence and stated:

“I hope that this is helpful but please let me know if I can be of further assistance.”
Adopter One felt this response showed no meaningful intervention and that the Corporate Director had “the wool pulled over their eyes.”
Adopter One therefore requested a complete investigation with full disclosure.

6. Follow-Up Letter from Team Manager, Kent Adoption Team
Shortly after, Adopter One received a new letter:

“Dear Adopter One,

As per previous correspondence I understand that you are not happy with the process you have gone through in regard to adoption. I am aware that you have spoken to (The Coram ADM) previously, but if you would like to arrange a meeting to discuss your concerns further you can contact me on XXXXXXX.”
— Team Manager, Kent Adoption Team

7. Adopter One’s Response
Adopter One replied courteously, noting travel commitments but confirming the intent to follow up:

“In response, I am off to France this week for a business meeting. On my return I will call you on the number provided and arrange something.”
— Adopter One

THE WORLD WORKS STRANGER THAN YOU THINK

It turned out that the second letter hadn’t come from the Kent Adoption Team at all, but from their HR department, which makes the entire exchange even more absurd when you think about it. HR — the same people who handle payroll errors and staff grievances — had suddenly become the ones reaching out to “resolve” an adoption complaint. If that doesn’t scream damage control, I don’t know what does.

When I got back from France, I did exactly what I said I’d do — I called. The number rang, then rang again, and again. No answer. Every attempt went into the void. You can almost picture the email trail, the silent phone, the internal panic — someone somewhere realised that if HR were admitting there was “a case to answer”, then someone higher up had to shut it down. And just like that, it vanished.

From what I could piece together later, there’d been an internal clean-up — the kind that happens quietly when management smells the kind of accountability that could make careers evaporate overnight. In the military, we called it operational containment. In local government, they call it a restructure. Different language, same playbook.

By early 2015, I’d had enough. You reach that point where you either stay silent and let them rewrite your story, or you push back and force them to own it. I chose the latter.

So I sat down and wrote to Christopher Booker at The Telegraph. The man had a reputation — he’d taken on Social Services before, called them out for what they were: overreaching, unaccountable, and untouchable. My email wasn’t some polite complaint; it was a briefing note, military-style — facts, law, evidence, motive.

I opened with the truth that everyone else was too scared to say:

“If you think they’re bad when they’re taking children away, you should see how selective they are when they decide who’s allowed to adopt them.”

And I laid it out — name by name, action by action. Penny, the Coram ADM who seemed to operate above the law, wielding authority she didn’t legally possess. The so-called “independent” social workers contracted under her — working through LLPs designed to blur accountability so that when something went wrong, it became your word against theirs.

Every section of the Children Act 2002 I quoted had been breached — multiple times.

• The two-year statutory window to approve adopters? Ignored.
• The rule that says failed adopters restart from the point of failure, not the beginning? Dismissed.
• The requirement for lawful oversight by a High Court judge before disqualifying a couple? Completely bypassed.

Each one of those violations carried potential fines and criminal liability. None were enforced.

I explained that Penny’s decisions weren’t just procedural errors — they were deliberate policy distortions. She’d built a system that mirrored a private franchise, run off public funds, where “independent” assessors were hand-picked for compliance, not competence. And when complaints came in? They were left to rot in inboxes. No follow-up. No accountability. No justice.

I even included the link to the blog, the one that had started it all — before it was buried. Back then, it still ranked in Google. Within months, it didn’t. The SEO was stripped, links decayed, and unless you knew the exact URL, it was like it never existed. Someone had pulled the digital equivalent of a vanishing act.

But the thing about truth is — it lingers. Even when they try to erase it, someone remembers. Someone talks. Someone keeps the receipts.

2015: When the Game Changes

By 2015, it wasn’t about the kids anymore. You can still help the kids — sure — but only by fixing the system that’s supposed to protect them. That’s when it hit me: the adoption process wasn’t broken by accident; it was designed that way. And if I couldn’t fix it from the inside, I was going to expose it from the outside.

To say I threw myself into my work would be an understatement. The government? A crock of shit. The so-called masters I’d once served? Bigger crocks still. So I did what anyone with a pulse and a passport would do — I decided to make money, travel, and live. Europe, Asia, borderlands — marketing circuits that were equal parts business and survival. If we weren’t going to have kids, we were damn well going to live.

Then came that Friday afternoon — the one that changes everything.

It started with momentum. After the last email to The Telegraph and a few quiet nudges through media contacts, Channel 4 News bit. They were interested — properly interested — in what was going on with Kent Adoption Team and CORAM. The stats didn’t make sense, the process was riddled with inconsistencies, and the outcomes were actually worse than before their so-called “improvement plan.”

Channel 4 wanted hard data, so their advice was simple:

“File Subject Access Requests with Kent Adoption Team and CORAM. Get everything. Every file, note, memo, side comment — all of it.”

So we did. We dropped the SARs, loaded them with precision wording, and hit send. Then came the waiting game — the bureaucratic slow torture of a system that moves at the speed of denial. But I wasn’t just waiting. I was watching. I wanted to see how many others had filed complaints, how many couples had hit the same wall, and how deep this rabbit hole really went.

That same week — Friday again, naturally — came the curveball.
I was summoned to HR.

Now, anyone who’s worked in a corporate environment knows what a Friday afternoon HR meeting smells like — bad news. At the time, I was the Technical Sales and Applications Manager. I was the go-between for three board directors and one Managing Director who couldn’t agree on lunch, let alone strategy. Eight thousand emails a year, trade shows, logistics, diplomacy — it was military ops with a business badge. And I loved it. It scratched that same operational itch: organise chaos, mediate conflict, get results.

So when HR called me in, I walked in expecting the worst.
Opposite me: the local HR manager.
On the phone: the London HR lead and the CEO in Israel.

This was not your standard “let’s talk about your holiday allowance” meeting.

My first thought? I’m getting the sack.
But it turned out to be the opposite — and somehow, worse.

They wanted me to compile evidence for an internal mediation between the MD (let’s call him Mike) and the board directors. It wasn’t about performance; it was a power struggle. The board had lost confidence in Robert, and reports to Israel hinted that the UK office was drifting. I was the neutral party — trained in conflict arbitration, trusted by both sides, and conveniently sitting on the budget data that everyone wanted.

So I was told — politely, firmly — that I was being deployed. My orders were to conduct an internal assessment and report directly to the CEO and Group HR. No leaks. No discussions. Classified, corporate style.

Anyone who’s served knows the look: when sharks smell blood in the water, the pond doesn’t stay calm for long. You don’t talk, you don’t speculate — you just watch.

And that’s why when I walked into the office the following Monday, I wasn’t shocked — not really.
The Head of HR had been fired over the weekend.
No warning. No announcement. Just gone.
And in her seat? A new replacement, already briefed, already waiting for me.

My London contact was rattled. The CEO in Israel was “concerned.” And me? I’d just realised I was standing in the middle of a corporate coup. The same silent, precision-style takedown I’d seen a dozen times before in uniform — only now it was in suits, not fatigues.

So I said it plainly in my next report:

“If this is the game you want me to play, fine. But you’d better make sure I’m looked after — because right now, your sharks are clearing the pond.”

So I walk into the office — mid-40s, recently divorced, blonde — the recruitment agency had fast-tracked her in at Robert’s insistence. The CEO hadn’t even endorsed the hire, so something shady was going on. I take a seat; she’s tapping away behind the desk, clearly in the middle of her weekend catch-up.

“You have one opportunity to tell me about any undisclosed illnesses,” she says. Odd question, side-balling me into her agenda. I answer honestly: apart from a bout of sepsis a couple of months ago and being moderately dyslexic (all known to the company), there’s nothing else. Her eyes said it all — disappointment. She repeats the claim.

I push back: “Is there a parrot in the room, or can we just put cards on the table? I’m busy, and sensitive work is on my desk.” She’s not picking up the hint. I realize now: my ability to handle the planned mediation — the one the CEO had asked for between four directors and the MD — is at risk. Perfectly positioned for me before, now I’m on the chopping block.

Her voice lowers; she leans in: she’d been part of the Kent Adoption HR team until recently, before she was made redundant. And here’s the kicker — she’s heard rumors about me, alleging sexual activity towards children. Now, that’s low, even for local government bureaucracy. I set her straight: no convictions, no arrests, no accusations — ever. She needed to record that truth in her files.

Then came the subtle threat. She suggested it might be “in my best interest” to take the Adopter One blog offline, remove my socials, and drop the Subject Access Request with Kent Adoption Team. Otherwise, changes could be made to my file — potentially manipulative, potentially portable, potentially tying me to someone else’s records. Essentially, I could be boxed into a social or governmental profile I had no part in creating — a personal ‘Black Mirror’ episode in real life.

For the uninitiated: there are two types of files governing your life — your public record, and your government-personal file, shared between businesses and state bodies. Kent Adoption, if it chose, could manipulate that file, opening doors to broader consequences for my employment and social standing. This isn’t paranoia; it’s a system built to intimidate, manipulate, and isolate anyone who challenges it. And it’s exactly what they were trying to do.

It was clear: this wasn’t just about adoption anymore. This was about control, leverage, and making sure anyone who dared question the system learned exactly where the lines were — and the sharpness of the stick if they crossed them.

The White Wine Warning

“I’d call off the press if I were you,” she said. “It won’t do you any favours in the long run. There are some very nervous people right now within the Kent Adoption Team and at Coram. Your blog has… caused some issues. Myself included.”

I had no answer for her other than, “Next time you’re drinking a white wine with Penny in the bar, please do say hello from me. And out of interest— is it just Channel 4 making inroads into this epic failure? Five years of my life, gone, working towards something that was never going to happen because your former boss couldn’t keep it professional and came up with pure bollocks to block me and my wife at every turn?”

That ended the meeting. Swiftly.

Back at my desk, a restricted envelope sat waiting — not the usual pension nonsense, which was dreadful enough, but something more personal. The label alone told me it hadn’t come through normal channels. Normally that meant Accounts. This time, it was from Telephones and IT. I was told the guy wanted to see me in person — too “sensitive” for email or a call. Which meant only one thing: they were monitoring my phones and system. The company’s so‑called “security detail” — the same Land Rover Discovery Sports I’d clocked tailing me since early morning — were getting less subtle by the hour.

Down in his office, the IT tech handed me a CD, a memory stick, and every other piece of data storage they could scrounge up.

“Mike — the Marketing Director — was in here this morning,” he said. “He had a memo from Robert. Your current email account’s being quarantined. All existing mail deleted. You’ll get a new account. Those discs — that’s your old mail and documents. HR said this would be requested. I finished it over the weekend. They’re already building her desk in the director’s office.”

The Monday from hell just got more interesting.

Now, running OSINT on yourself isn’t standard practice — but in my line of work, it’s survival. I always tell people: do a self‑check every six months. You’d be shocked what floats to the surface.

That night, I told my wife what happened. She didn’t hesitate: “Check your records. Make sure they haven’t been messing around.”

It didn’t take long.

There it was — a notice on Paedophiles UK. Every other listing had a mugshot; this one didn’t. But the name? Mine. The age? Off by a few months. The location? Faversham — not Folkestone. The conviction? Maidstone Crown Court. And the date? Right around the time we’d moved house.

Anyone looking quickly would assume it was me.

I emailed Paedophiles UK politely. Told them they were doing an important job — but unless they could attach a confirmed image like the rest of their notices, they should take this one down before it put an innocent person in danger. I also asked who submitted the notice, just to see who was pulling the strings.

Their reply? A masterpiece in stupidity. I was called every name under the sun, accused of protecting predators, and threatened with an exposé. The bloke behind the email — clearly thinking he was some sort of hard‑man vigilante — expected me to fold.

He didn’t expect my wife.

She might be small, but she’s armed with a 2:1 Honours degree and eligible to sit the New York BAR. I wrote back:

“Either you attach a certified image proving the individual is not me, or my legal adviser — on retainer, by the way — will make it her personal mission to have your entire site taken down and you sued into oblivion.”

Silence after that.

The Vanishing Act

Needless to say, Paedophiles UK caved. The notice was quietly taken down then replaced with th same post and some pictures of a man in there front garden rolling a cigarette only showing the bottom portion of their face

But if there really had been an attempt to link me to that listing, then it meant something deeper — something fluid and coordinated. I wasn’t just being undermined anymore. I was being targeted. My personal life and professional life were both under attack, and whoever was behind it wasn’t playing fair.

A couple of months later, another letter arrived — this time from Kent Adoption Team.
They claimed they had no information available — or, more accurately, none that they were “prepared to share at this time” — regarding the Subject Access Request I’d submitted.

That phrase would become very important later.

For months, the same pattern played out. Each question I sent would take a month to answer, each reply saying exactly the same thing: no records found. It was like being ghosted by bureaucracy. According to Kent Adoption Team and CORAM, my wife and I simply didn’t exist.

They weren’t stonewalling — they were erasing.

We realised something had to change. I spoke with my wife, and we agreed on a new approach. Channel 4 had been asking for updates and, even they, seasoned as they were, looked sceptical. So, we switched tactics.

Instead of asking directly about our case, we filed a Data Protection Request asking how many complaints the Kent Adoption Team had received during the current and previous financial years.

It was the perfect Trojan horse. It looked procedural, harmless — just numbers. But if the system was legitimate, there would have to be a record of every complaint. That data alone would expose how much they were actually logging… or hiding.

We waited. Two months of silence.

Then — another visit from the head of HR at work, on yet another “sniffing exercise.”
She wanted to know what I was “looking for this time.”

This was never mentioned in my blog, not once. Which meant Kent Adoption Team were leaking private information into my workplace. There was no other way she could’ve known. I sent her packing, politely enough, but made a mental note: they’ve broken privacy again.

When the response finally landed, it was laughable.

“For the two financial years requested, Kent Adoption Team received one complaint.”

One.

Just one complaint. In two years.

My wife and I looked at each other — it had to be ours. There couldn’t possibly have been another. We’d complained formally, fully, and loudly. It made no sense. Unless, of course, they’d scrubbed us from the system completely.

Surely a government department wouldn’t be that corrupt?

We sent another request, asking for all details of that single complaint.
After another month of “review,” the reply came back:

“The complaint does not match your records. It is an unrelated case. Kent Adoption Team holds no data concerning you or your wife, nor any record of a complaint made by you.”

So, that was it. We were gone. Wiped clean from three systems — Kent Adoption, CORAM, and Kent County Council.

That was the moment we escalated. We went straight to the Information Commissioner’s Office and lodged a formal investigation. And that’s when the fun began.

I don’t believe in coincidences.
The week after our ICO request was filed, I was summoned to meet the Head of HR.

That sinking feeling hit me instantly — another “sniffing” session, no doubt.

Before anyone suggests this was about performance — it wasn’t. Robert, The Managing Director, had already told me he was happy with my work. I’d just come back from a near-death experience with sepsis — ten minutes later and it would’ve been curtains — but I was hitting every KPI, meeting every target, keeping the books and systems watertight, an he had paid me a discreet bonus just a couple of months before for all the hard work I had done despite me recovering from sepsis at home but co-ordinating the delivery of a major event for he company.

So, no. This wasn’t about work.
This was about something else entirely.

The Meeting That Changed Everything

When I walked into her office, I didn’t expect to see Mike, the Director, sitting there beside the HR manager. The last time I’d seen him, I’d been quietly gathering evidence for a mediation — one that the CEO himself had ordered.

Without so much as a greeting, they slid a single sheet of paper across the desk toward me — a so-called “Conditions for Improvement Notice.” It listed three so-called “key objectives,” vague enough to be meaningless and impossible to achieve. The kind of thing that looks official on paper but is deliberately written to trap you — open-ended phrases like “improve communication” or “meet performance expectations” without ever defining what those expectations are.

The HR manager leaned forward, her voice all smooth and procedural:

“You’ll need to sign this before you leave.”

I looked at her, then the document, and slid it straight back.

“Not in that wording,” I said. “You fix the language, make it specific, and I’ll sign it. But not like this — this version is my resignation in disguise.”

She pushed again, trying to sell it hard — the corporate equivalent of a mugging in daylight — but I stood my ground. I told them we’d meet again in two days once the notice was rewritten. I also asked for a copy of the document to compare against the next version. They refused.

Fine. I told them I’d memorised every line.

What the HR manager didn’t know  — was that only an hour before that meeting, Mike had taken me into a side room for a very different kind of conversation.

He wanted information. Secret information.

Specifically, he’d asked me to provide classified data on guided missile countermeasure systems — tech I’d worked on during my time in the military. He claimed it was for “research purposes” and that the Moroccan government — supposedly working through a third party — wanted to perform comparative testing between Elbit Systems’ Israeli-developed missile countermeasure suite and the BAE system used by the UK.

In other words, he wanted me to hand over restricted data that could directly compromise NATO aircraft defence systems.

And he wanted to funnel it through Morocco, who were on friendly terms with certain foreign powers — powers that neither the UK nor Israel had good relations with. The implication was clear: the information wouldn’t stop in North Africa. It would travel further East — possibly to Russia.

He even had the gall to suggest that this data could be used to “simulate potential real-world threats” — his words — against VIP aircraft, including those carrying presidents and their families.

It was treason wrapped up in corporate language.

He wasn’t cleared for the data. He had no legal pathway to access it. If I’d handed it over, I’d have been the one facing life in prison — or worse, labelled a traitor and on the next flight to Guantánamo.

I refused. Flat out.

That’s when his tone shifted from persuasion to threat.

He said he’d spoken with “friends in high places” — one of them his sister, Louise, a senior government lawyer within the Civil Service. Another name he dropped was Penny, someone who seemed to float in their social and professional circles. Then came the real hammer:

“If you don’t give me the data,” he said, “and if you don’t shut down your adoption blog, I’ll make sure you’re living in the gutter by the end of the year.”

There it was — the blackmail. Pure and simple.

I told him he could do whatever he liked. I wasn’t betraying my country for anyone.

If losing my job, my home, or my livelihood was the price, then so be it.

What I didn’t realise then was just how far they’d go to make good on that threat.

The Hard Sell and the Impossible Choice

Two days later, I walked into another meeting. Unsurprisingly, the language on the “Improvement Notice” hadn’t changed — a hard-sell tactic designed to pressure me into compliance. Both Mike and the HR manager were trying their best, but I wasn’t having any of it.

In response, I handed back an unsigned copy. Then I placed a full-size A4 white ring binder in front of the HR manager. On the first page was a summary note with updates from the previous day, including statements from the director. I asked the HR manager to read it aloud — every word.

This was no longer just a routine HR matter. What had been a simple mediation exercise now bordered on gross misconduct in office. If the HR manager went along with it, she would become complicit in what Mike was attempting.

At that moment, Mike demanded I be sacked on the spot. But the truth was clear: he had no authority to hire or fire in the company. That power had been stripped from him years earlier, after a mismanagement incident in another department — and witnesses could confirm it. Signing the notice would have been game over for me.

I left the office feeling a strange mix of triumph and wariness — like I’d won a battle, but the war was far from over. The director supporting me was pale, shaken, and whispered that he had never seen such a display of defiance. I had made it clear: nothing would stop me from pursuing the blog or exposing what Kent Adoption Team and CORAM were doing.

The real point here: the notice was designed to preoccupy me, to keep me away from the adoption system for at least six months — possibly years. If I signed, it would delay any chance to restart the process, keeping me off the radar while they tried to control the narrative. I refused.

The following Monday, Robert promoted the HR manager to HR Director. She was learning fast. I called her out immediately:

“I hope that promotion and the £50,000 increase didn’t come with a bribe to sack me?”

She laughed, but the evidence we had compiled was damning. Mike had tried to orchestrate computer fraud via the IT manager, all to gain secret military-grade information. The HR Director now understood the stakes: if she allowed the charade to continue, she’d be complicit. Worse, Mike had connections — family friends tied to Penny at Kent Adoption Team, plus his sister at the top of the Civil Service.

All of this evidence, safely documented, meant the investigation could drag on. I was told that even with full cooperation, it would take until December 2016 at the earliest to conclude. Signing that improvement notice would have wiped all of it away. No chance.

Meanwhile, we received the response from the Information Commissioner’s Office — and it was worse than expected. Kent Adoption Team had no records of us existing. According to their systems, we had not been part of the adoption process in the last five years. Any complaints or interactions we thought had been logged simply did not exist.

It felt like we’d been trapped in a Ponzi scheme. We’d spent years engaging with a system that, officially, had no record of us. The ICO confirmed that only once an adopter formally applied at Phase One — the induction meeting and initial home visit — was information required to be logged. Any social workers’ notes remained on individual laptops, meaning that for a full Subject Access Request, we’d need to contact every single social worker individually.

In short: the system was a maze designed to hide its own failings, and anyone who tried to dig too deep risked being buried in bureaucratic shadow.

The Award, the Cover‑Up, and the Corporate Firestorm

Channel 4 News were like WTF. We were like WTF.

But they were right — none of it made investigative sense. Kent Adoption Team and Kent County Council had slammed the doors shut, burned the files, and buried every trace of our five‑year history with them. On paper it would look like our word against theirs, and they’d happily paint us as fantasists waving around fake paperwork.

Still, the obvious question screamed for an answer:
Why wipe an entire family off the system?

Then, just before Christmas, the answer landed in my inbox — a no‑reply email, the kind that appears once and vanishes. CORAM and Kent Adoption Team had just won “Best Adoption Team in the Country.”

There they were — Penny and the same smiling faces we’d hoped never to see again — posing for national recognition. And you have to ask yourself, after everything you’ve read so far: how the hell did they manage that?

The Quiet Winter and the Brewing Storm

By New Year, Mike was only coming into the office one day a week, “working from home” the other four. Fine by me. What I didn’t know then was that a plan was already unfolding behind the scenes.

I spent those first three months of the year buried in defence‑industry travel — bouncing between arms manufacturers across Europe, helping with major marketing expos through the summer. The pace was insane. Then, as the financial year end crept closer, the director suddenly developed an urge to “spend the remaining budget.”

Smelled like a rat.

During a business trip to Germany, over conveyor‑belt sushi in some city I can’t even pronounce, another director let something slip.

“They’re not going to find Mike guilty,” he said, lowering his voice. “His sister’s a top civil‑service lawyer. She’s already pushing a clause in his contract — guarantees him a six‑figure pay out even if he’s sacked for gross misconduct.”

So that was the play. HR had been quietly authorised — through the Production Director — to release me from my contract in exchange for what was left of the marketing budget by December 1st 2016. No budget, no pay out.

Problem for them: accounts had already been told not to process his spending spree and where I had authority over the budget I could question everything with in the larger plan.

Then came the next twist. The Board Director in Germany asked if I’d requested we send a team to America for a marketing campaign. I hadn’t, quite the opposite. With the new U.S. President Donald Trump about to take office, I’d warned Robert in a two side A4 brief that I felt the pound‑to‑dollar would crash from 1.50 to around 1.20 — wiping out any overseas spend in the budget for the rest of the year, and it would be a risk of putting the marketing budget in the red if we committed to that level of expenditure with out firm and fixed business coming from the event.

“Keep your ears open,” I was told. “He’s claiming it was your idea to give the U.S. contractor the leftover budget.”

Classic setup.
Another board member later confided that the Marketing Director had been pulling this stunt for years — funnelling tens of thousands annually to the same “one‑man‑band” in the States for a 9×9 ft display for a show in Washington where there would be a symposium style table with a couple of titbits, in reality it would have looked like we were attending a car boot sale that supposedly cost as much as a 60 sqm stand in France. His excuse?

“Union country. Everyone needs paying.”

Right. Every year the same justification. Every year the receipts disappeared.
Now he was trying it again — only this time with an £80,000 “loan” on the line for his sister, the very same civil‑service lawyer. Convenient timing, considering she was going through a divorce and needed a quick cash injection before banking a £1.4 million settlement, the house in France an the title deeds to some peerage Mikes return on the deal was going to be quite excessive.

The Kangaroo Court

End of the year.
Everyone gathered — each with their version of “evidence.”

The investigation, unsurprisingly, had been led by a long‑time friend of the MD. The Marketing Director was grinning ear‑to‑ear, thinking he’d already won.

I walked into that boardroom to find a table full of old pals — the Marketing Director, godfather to half the MD’s kids, flanked by a “neutral” investigator who’d travelled the world with them for twenty years.

Kangaroo court, anyone?

Three Days in the Lion’s Den

We sat there for three straight days. The Marketing Director came armed with a mountain of complaints, stacks of emails — some obviously doctored. When I pointed out a tampered email, it was immediately replaced with the original, 256‑bit hashed, proving its authenticity.

The IT manager — a young lad responsible for all data comms — knew exactly what he was doing. He despised the Marketing Director and wanted to protect me. Every document I presented had an unalterable digital signature. If anyone tried to falsify the evidence, the key would change. He had effectively made my case rock solid. Any attempt at forgery would be instantly detectable.

Three days of cross-examination, consultations, and boardroom wrangling later, the verdict was clear: I was clean. The Mike’s evidence was questionable at best. Despite mountains of fraud and misconduct pointing in his direction, Robert stood by his friend — admirable loyalty, but it came with consequences.

The Christmas Eve Ultimatum

Four days before Christmas 2016, I was in the office with the Production Director and the HR Director. A slip of paper was slid across the desk. It outlined a very high sum — my wages, bonus, and an extra payout — all contingent on signing, collecting my things, and walking out that day.

Robert’s decision was personal. On record, there was no evidence of wrongdoing on my part. The HR Director nodded at the Production Director, who immediately went to summon the Marketing Director.

The CEO had placed serious restrictions on him:

• New role and probation cycle
• Five days a week remote office reporting to HQ
• Every meeting, overseas trip, and contact monitored
• Failure to meet KPIs or accept conditions would trigger the improvement process

And before the day was out? The Robert himself was placed on an improvement notice.

I left feeling vindicated — my career wasn’t destroyed, and the path was clear. I even had back-up options, with business cards from companies ready to hire me instantly. The company had grown from £4 million to £8 million — now projecting double figures — and I had played a part in that.

The Holiday That Wasn’t

A week in Spain was supposed to be a reset, but the first local company I interviewed with called immediately, and everything looked perfect — until the MD of my former company, Robert, intervened. He threatened them: no business with them ever again if they employed me.

Twenty-five years of connections ensured the mud sank deep. I wasn’t getting that job.

Back from the holiday, there was no time to waste. The countdown was on — I needed a new job, fast, because my wife and I were determined to re-enter the adoption system, this time applying directly for Stage One.

The Job Hunt from Hell

I started local — the job centre, CV in hand. My job coach looked at it and said:

“You don’t need us to find you a job. You just need monetary support. You won’t be here long.”

It was the kind of comment that pricked ears up. I threw myself into every recruitment agency and online application portal in town, but responses were nonexistent.

Then came the outright hostility. At one local agency, I handed over my CV. The lady glanced at my address, threw it in the bin right in front of me, and told me bluntly:

“Don’t bother applying here. Or anywhere in the UK. No one will touch you after what you’ve done.”

Before I could even respond, her manager appeared and threatened to call the police if I didn’t leave. My wife was stunned. I had never been threatened with police for simply walking into a building before.

No matter where I applied, the same story repeated. Offers were pulled at the last minute, and feedback was minimal or hostile. Even colleagues I work alongside now and interviewed me back then refused to engage — eight years later.

Looking Abroad

By 2017, desperation forced me to look overseas. Hundreds of applications, no luck — until a strange turn of events:

The Saudi Air Force was considering a variant of the Eurofighter, with a guided missile defence system fitted to it similar to what I had worked on in the past A former colleague vouched for me. There was no formal application process; the job was mine, with a £100,000+ package and a week of induction. My wife immediately started talking about IVF plans — a potential family future was in sight.

Then reality hit: My contact at BAE systems where the job was being offered from phoned me from the charted plane he was getting on to Saudi Arabia, I was the man they wanted The Saudi’s wanted me and BAE wanted me, but he had been summoned to a Saudi diplomat in country and would let me know the following day after the meeting concluded.

he following day my head sank to wat I was hearing on the phone call, Someone at Instro Precision (Elbit Systems) after I had left the company and with out my knowledge had applied or , and had me granted with an Israeli security clearance, this made me a non-starter for any position with BAE apparently as it was company policy at the time to not employ anyone having or had an Israeli security clearance. an banned me from working in Saudi while the clearance was in place

Job gone. Family plans stalled. I hadn’t even set foot in Israel — but someone had just destroyed my opportunity and they were not going to get away with it.

Back to the Job Centre

Their regular positions were no match for my skills — anything on the books wouldn’t be a real opportunity with the work coach flagging that if I could not secure a position which was already given to me how was I possibly going to get offered a position they had on the books which was saying to me he had already tried, with the responses being a flat no.

Then, unexpectedly, a phone call from an overseas private bank in Saudi Arabia changed everything. They offered me a chance to trial as a financial adviser, starting under their banking licence with full qualification potential later. It was 100% commission, fully overseas, and meant months away from the UK — and the adoption process — but it was the first genuine opportunity in months.

The job centre supported me fully, funding training, suits, and travel wherever they could. My parents chipped in for flights and accommodation. I had just enough support to take the leap, and for the first time in months, there was a path forward.

The St Andrews Meeting

Before I could even attend the bank’s training, I was summoned — a one-on-one meeting with a Saudi diplomat at the St Andrews Hotel. Not exactly the kind of call you ignore.

The reality? I was now flagged as an Israeli security-cleared asset — and I was walking into a private meeting with a representative of a state that didn’t exactly enjoy warm relations with Israel. Journalists had gone into embassies like that and never come back out. I had little choice. The meeting went ahead.

My wife stayed behind; this wasn’t a conversation for her to hear.

The diplomat was polished, his English precise. He laid out a set of photographs on the table and asked if I recognised the people.

I did.

One was a Northern Irish national, a man with multiple identities, who worked for Instro Precision (Elbit Systems) — the one taking over my old position, reporting directly to Mike now operating out of the company’s London HQ.

The diplomat explained: the Irishman had attempted to gain access to a Saudi military compound, using UK credentials. Once cleared and invited inside, he’d presented a business card from Instro Precision — and proposed selling a British countermeasures system for the Eurofighter. Only it wasn’t British.

It was Israeli.

And the kicker? He wanted to sell it into Saudi Arabia, a state that avoided buying Israeli technology at all costs.

I was then shown another image — this time, the Irish national and Mike, together in London, alongside a man the diplomat didn’t recognise. I told him: “That’s the UK-area Marketing Director Insto Precision (Elbit Systems).”

On paper, the company looked British — registered in both the UK and the Netherlands — but behind the scenes, it was owned by one of Israel’s largest private defence manufacturers.

The Saudi official then produced a Technical Data Sheet. What the Irishman had offered wasn’t British at all; it was a derivative of the MUSIC system — an Israeli-made countermeasure designed to defeat heat-seeking missiles. I showed them on the computer the Instro Precision Technical Data Sheet which was exactly the same to the Elbit Systems sheet but with Instro Precision’s branding all over it.

I explained how the game worked. The equipment would be built in Israel, flown to the UK, stripped of its serial plates, rebranded, and shipped out again under the guise of British engineering where there would be some cock and bull story from the compliance team fed to the UK Trade and Industry UKTI department, who at th time delt with weapons classed systems and released them for export to other countries. It wasn’t unusual in the industry — but it was a line you didn’t cross with the Saudis.

And this wasn’t the first time Israeli tech had found its way into the wrong hands. Back during the Second Gulf War, IAI equipment had been discovered inside RAF Tornado GR4s — complete with hidden GPS trackers. On the very first day of the war, coalition forces had the chance to strike Saddam Hussein while he dined in central Baghdad. The RAF had him locked, jets armed, 45 minutes to target.

No one in Iraq could have known. But Israel could — because they were tracking the Tornado fleet in real time. by accounts one of Sadam Hussein’s team received the call with him being evacuated immediately.

That single breach of operational security cost two decades of war which it could be disputed with it being potentially set up by the Israeli Lobby has enabled vast flows of monies in the the Israel economy in military sales to western allies, and loan to governments and feds in keeping the war on terror alive.

The diplomat’s expression hardened. He made a call, thanked me for my time, covered my travel expenses, and that was that. I didn’t wait around.

A few days later, I got a call from a former colleague.

“You heard what’s happened?”

I hadn’t — and I wasn’t particularly interested. Between the company politics, the black listings, and trying to figure out how to feed my wife while preparing for a move abroad, I’d had enough.

But he told me anyway.

The Irish national and Mike were now banned from entering Saudi Arabia. Both were also barred from Eurofighter consortium facilities and defence expo’s And Instro Precision, (Elbit Systems) hiding behind a UK front, had been blacklisted from all Saudi contracts.

So yes — justice, in a sense.

But it didn’t change my reality.

“I’m glad you told me,” I said. “But right now, my biggest problem isn’t the defence industry. It’s trying to keep food on the table and get us back into the adoption process.”

The Malta Briefing — How It All Started to Get Real

I set off for Malta, bound for what I thought would be another training course. The instructor — an ex-MI6 man — could read a room in seconds. I arrived playing dumb, trying to mask some of my background, but there’s only so much you can hide from someone who’s lived their life two steps ahead of everyone else.

There were sixteen of us in the room — a mix of seasoned pros from top financial institutions — and just two of us with no industry background. The challenge was simple: could you really teach an old dog new tricks?

The bank’s sales pitch was basic — two sides of A4, maybe six paragraphs. But by the end of the week, we had to know it word-for-word. No notes. No hesitations.

On day two, jet-lagged from a chaotic reroute through Türkiye thanks to the French airport strikes, I was barely functioning. Sinuses blocked, head pounding having only been given the pitch the night before The instructor called my name.

“Your turn. Word for word.”

Sixteen pairs of eyes followed every syllable. And I nailed it. Not a single slip. Fifteen people wondered how I’d pulled it off. One of them knew exactly how.

The Philippines Assignment

After Malta, the talk turned to deployment. The Philippines was on the list, though the instructor wasn’t thrilled about sending me there. The issue? he though I would be more suited to a position in Japan or China the problem there was no degree (that is another blog I have white papers in my name but no degree) — which meant visa complications. I was under forty, married, and, in their eyes, “high risk.” for the Philippines as the bank had a high level of divorce in south east Asia with younger bankers, but the fact we appeared to be solid from all the information thy had on us the instructor thought there would not be an issue

That’s when things started to turn strange. The instructor said, “Keep your eyes and ears open. You’re going to get approached — I can guarantee it.” He handed me a number. “If anything feels off, call this.”

I was effectively being sent abroad on a 35-day window to prove myself. If I secured a client, I could stay as it would then earn me a payday to keep going and then build up my rolling commissions. If not, I’d be on a flight home. The opportunity was real, but so were the risks. The biggest one wasn’t overseas — it was back home.

When the Shadows Started Moving

A couple of days after returning from Malta, I got a call from an old contact.
“Mike’s been in asking questions,” he said. “About your trip. About the Philippines. About everything.”

That stopped me cold. Mike shouldn’t have known a thing. I’d gone dark — no posts, no updates, nothing public. Even LinkedIn was on hold until I was officially in-country. Yet somehow, he knew my flight dates, possible accommodation, the works.

This wasn’t curiosity. It was surveillance.

Mike’s sister, a senior UK Government legal attaché based in the south of France, had access to the kind of networks that could make people disappear off paper. Suddenly, this wasn’t just a personal grudge — it was a power play.

Manila — Under Watch

When I landed at Manila International Airport, the feeling hit instantly: I was being watched.
The guards by the gate weren’t subtle — eyes tracking every move. I was meant to be travelling solo, and they knew it.

Three people ahead in the customs queue, I started planning what to say if they pulled me aside. That’s when she appeared — red hair, Australian accent, heavily pregnant, and calm as anything.

“I’m press,” she said. “Stick with me, you’ll be fine.”

We went through customs together. The officer glanced at her, then at me, and smiled.
“Congratulations,” he said, nodding toward her bump. “And enjoy your stay in the Philippines.”

Just like that, I was through.

We parted ways outside, and as I handed her the last of her gear it was the least I could do, she said quietly,
“Stay safe — whatever it is you’re doing.”

And that’s when it hit me. Someone, somewhere, had seen exactly what I had seen — and decided to intervene just long enough to make sure I wasn’t the one who disappeared in Manila that night.

Manila: Where the West Meets the Edge

The Philippines — one of the world’s happiest countries.
But beneath the smiles and karaoke bars, the place was splitting in two. Western capitalism was digging its heels in hard. You either joined the new money — banking, finance, luxury condos — or you stayed in the shanty towns, patched up tin roofs and carried on laughing at life anyway.

But something was brewing.
You could feel it. War was coming.
Al-Qaeda was still operating in the shadows, hiding in plain sight across the islands, and everyone — from the street vendor to the security guard — knew it.

My taxi driver clocked me instantly. One look at my posture, my kit, my way of scanning every junction, and he pegged me as former military — Western, disciplined, aware.

As we hit the outskirts of Manila, he said quietly,

“Sir, no worry. President say — if any westerner harmed in Citadel, there will be… repercussions.”

So the taxi driver knew. The president knew. Everyone knew.
And I started to ask myself — what the hell am I doing here?
I hadn’t even reached my hotel in the French Quarter yet.

Three Weeks Later — The Ninth Floor

Fast forward three weeks. I’m sat on the ninth floor of an office block in BCG Manila, in what was supposed to be a respectable office for a building supplier.
People pretending to be busy. Architectural drawings scattered on desks like props. Even the framed photos of their supposed projects looked like they’d been dragged through Photoshop one too many times.

Then came the offer of tea — and the real reason I was there.

The man across from me was a middleman — a quiet operator between compliance managers at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. A couple of days earlier, I’d already had a call from the Vice President of the Bank of Philippines — direct to my mobile. Same kind of conversation.

All three banks had clients about to fail “compliance checks” — and they needed to move their assets fast. The Bank of the Philippines wanted me, working through a private offshore entity tied to DeVere Group, with the middle man sat opposite me openly discussing a direct hand over of portfolios from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase in which the customer with the two banks would have their portfolio swapped with the other bank, so the Goldman Account would be transferred to JP Morgan and vice versa, then with both entities were wantingto transfer the accounts to Devere Banking Group and wanting me to handle the “transfers.”

In plain English: wash the accounts. Make them look like legitimate new customers before a lock hit.

The total value of those accounts? Somewhere between $50–60 million USD.

If I pulled it off, my cut would’ve been north of $1.5 million USD.
Enough to change everything. Adoption, IVF, maybe even disappear quietly to some European backwater and “solve” the family issue with a few thousand in cash.

But there was a catch.
To take that money would’ve meant me being involved in something serious — helping three global banks offload clients who looked like they were about to be sanctioned.

That’s when it hit me: somewhere, somehow, I’d been profiled as dirty enough to take the offer.

The Choice

I smiled, thanked him for the tea, and said I’d “think about it.”
Inside, my head was racing.
Was $1.5 million enough to buy peace of mind — or just another kind of prison?

I walked out of the office, hit the street, and did what any man does when he needs to think — I went for a haircut, grabbed a drink with a Dutch expat from my building, and listened as he offered me a full Philippine re-entry visa in exchange for a plane ticket back to the UK.

£450 for a new visa and a clean stamp in my passport.
Tempting, sure. But it felt like I was already halfway down a slope that only ended one way.

So I headed to a small pulled-BBQ joint in the French Quarter. Sat down. Ordered food.
And just as I started eating that first perfectly tender cut of meat —
things started to take a very weird turn.

I smiled, thanked him for the tea, and said I’d “think about it.”
Inside, my head was racing.
Was £1.5 million enough to buy peace of mind — or just another kind of prison?

I walked out of the office, hit the street, and did what any man does when he needs to think — I went for a haircut, grabbed a drink with a Dutch expat from my building, and listened as he offered me a full Philippine re-entry visa in exchange for a plane ticket back to the UK.

£450 for a new visa and a clean stamp in my passport.
Tempting, sure. But it felt like I was already halfway down a slope that only ended one way.

So I headed to a small pulled-BBQ joint in the French Quarter. Sat down. Ordered food.
And just as I started eating that first perfectly tender cut of meat —
things started to take a very weird turn.

The Warning

A mid-thirties gentleman slid into the chair opposite me. Well groomed, sharp suit, American accent — U.S. educated, Western money. There were plenty of empty tables in that French Quarter restaurant, yet he chose mine.

“Interesting meeting you had earlier,” he said, straight to the point. “What was discussed?”

I didn’t even blink.

“You tell me,” I said. “You’ve been tracking me since I landed. You know who I am you’re intelligence?”

He smiled slightly.

“Sort of I am a member of the Legal Directorate.”

Ah. The Legal Directorate — the polite title for the people who give the warning before the bullets start flying.

“So you’re the ones who tidy up after,” I said, leaning back. “Make the problems disappear, make the headlines stay buried. But we’re not having that conversation, are we? Not here — not in the Citadel. The President’s decreed that no westerner comes to harm here. I’d like to think even his henchmen follow that rule.”

I was winging it, playing it cool while my brain was spinning at a thousand miles per hour. If this man really was part of the Directorate, I’d be lucky to leave this place alive. One wrong word and I’d be another westerner who “vanished” in Southeast Asia — a two-week headline, then gone forever.

He gave a dry chuckle.

“No. I’m more the legal that gives the warning before the bullets. The kind that keeps the people who pull the triggers out of prison.”

Cold. Calm. He was trying to spook me — but he didn’t know who he was sitting across from. I’d done interrogation training the hard way. No safe words. No escape. When you’ve spent hours on both sides of the table, it takes more than a quiet voice and a dead stare to shake you.

He changed tone.

“You came here with a record,” he said softly. “There are people — governments, criminal networks — becoming very interested in you. They’ve approached you, and they’ve approached someone else at your bank. He’s the one we want. My team’s been chasing him across Southeast Asia for twenty years.”

He let that hang for a moment, then added,

“It’s a lot of commission to think about. Then the rolling commission half a million a year, tax-free. Tempting, isn’t it? Even if the War on Terror drags on another five years.”

He paused, his eyes narrowing.

“But if you take the money — if you move the money — then all bets are off. You’ll never be welcome in my country again. The President has made it clear: the funds stay with Goldman and JP Morgan. They’re not to be ‘floated’ into the ether or parked in one of your private bank acquisitions. Don’t even think about it.”

That was a cast-iron threat — and it came with the full weight of government behind it.

Then he leaned in just slightly.

“Leave them hanging. We’ll take care of the rest. Get on your flight home. Sort out your life — because this isn’t yours anymore. Someone’s trying to make you into something you’re not.”

He stood up, dropped some cash on the table, and walked toward the door.
Before stepping outside, he turned back with one final line:

“Watch the news about the Philippines and Al-Qaeda over the next few days. It’ll be… interesting.”

And then he was gone — into a waiting car, never to be seen again.

The last person who’d spoken to me like that was Jooles — my best mate from the military, now gone from bowel cancer. My Number Two. My brother in interrogation, every instinct I had screamed the same thing Jooles once had: Something isn’t right.

I looked down at my plate.
The pulled pork was stone cold.
I realised I’d just been handed a message from a ghost in a three-piece suit — and a warning I’d be a fool to ignore.

Somewhere between the war rooms of finance and the shadows of counter-intelligence, I’d stopped being a man trying to rebuild a life… and started becoming a problem someone wanted erased.

The Escape from Manila: Amber Message

 A Couple of days later, I woke early, packed my bag, and walked out of the complex where I’d been renting a room. On the way out, I handed the security guard a bottle of brandy — a quiet bribe for silence.
“Don’t tell the office I’ve gone,” I said. “If they call, just say I’m working from the room today.”

That small favour might buy me a few precious hours — enough time for Stage Two: get out of the country. I had now became The Running Man

By now, I had too many eyes on me. The Bank of the Philippines, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and maybe even a few faces from a “legal directorate” — whatever that meant — were all suddenly very interested in where I was.
Rumours had already started flying down at the Woodman’s Pub in Manila: Senior Manager for the ASEAN region for the DeVere Group was flying over from the UK — the same one the legal directorate mentioned to me his team was hunting — had flown in to move roughly $60 million of off-book funds.

And here I was, right in the middle of it.

He’d flown despite a recent knee operation — a twenty-hour journey that would’ve crippled most. So whatever was at stake had to be worth it. For me, there was only one plan left — make sure I got on the same plane, only going the other way.

The Office Trap

I walked into the main office building — of glass and marble, one of the most prestigious addresses in central Manila.
I greeted the guards on the door. They knew me by now.
The DeVere Group had their offices on the twenty-second floor, with a view stretching all the way to BGC. But I wasn’t heading there — I just needed in, and I needed out.

At reception, I handed over my ID card and said, calmly,
“I won’t be back. Please cancel my access and notify the DeVere desk.”

The receptionist froze, then put the phone down. “The Head of Banking is on his way down,” she said.
“He knows you’re here. He’s coming to take you upstairs.”

Wait — what?

There was no way they could have known I was coming. But as I replayed it in my head, I realised — the second I stepped into the lobby, she’d been on the phone. They’d been told to hold me.

If I got in that lift, I wasn’t coming back down. Not as a free man, anyway.

“I won’t be waiting,” I said.

She immediately started shouting for security. The guard moved in — hand near his holster. I dropped my bag, squared my shoulders, and gave him the look — the kind that says, We’ve both worn a uniform, brother. Don’t do this.

He froze. His hands came up slowly, palms visible, edging away from his pistol. He got it.
You don’t cross another soldier when he’s fighting to survive.

That gave me thirty seconds.
Forty-five before the lift doors pinged open.

I bolted for the rear exit — exactly as I’d scouted weeks before. Through the service corridor, past the canteen, across the executive dining area, up one level through the executive bar, then down two floors to the alternate elevator that led straight out onto the side street.

I hit the pavement just as the ASEAN Banking Head stepped out the main door — flanked by three Western men in white shirts and black trousers. Corporate muscle.

They turned back toward the building. And that’s when it clicked — I was being set up. Whatever was happening wasn’t small-time. This was coordinated. Cross-border. Possibly government-level.

The one advantage?
My phone was already dead. SIM card out. Battery out. No trace.

Before cutting comms, I’d sent my wife our amber message — a single code word that meant I’m in the shit. Going dark. If I’m not home in seventy-two hours, raise the alarm.

That bought me a window — seventy-two hours to vanish, get home, and stay breathing.

My flight out went through Türkiye. One per day, and you didn’t check in until you boarded — perfect. No trace in the system until I was already halfway down the concourse.

Manila faded behind me, but the sense of being hunted didn’t.
Somewhere, someone with deep reach had decided I was part of their $60 million problem.

And they weren’t done yet.

The Flight to Türkiye

I made it to the airport without a hitch. My on-foot route worked like clockwork — through the security gate, bag scanned, straight into the main hall.

The place was a cavernous space full of airline counters and chaos. Anything could happen in here, I thought. After the last twenty-four hours, I was ready for anything.

Two hours until boarding. That was my window — the danger zone. No one was going to interfere again. Not here.

So I did what any ex-forces operator with a gut full of adrenaline would do.
I took my rucksack, plonked it right in the middle of the hall, and sat on it.

The air was thick with heat and suspicion. Above, border police and army personnel watched from the balcony. They could all see me — a lone Brit sitting on his bag in the centre of the departure hall.

They didn’t approach. They just watched.

Then a few more travellers sat nearby. Then more. Within half an hour, there was a circle of passengers sitting around me — a human shield of sorts. Anyone wanting to get close would stand out like a flare.

For a moment, I actually relaxed. Maybe I’d done it. Maybe I could finally let my guard down, get home, and pick up the pieces. Maybe even get the adoption back on track in six months — if I could just find another job.

How wrong I was.

Boarding was a free-for-all. No priority lanes, no order — just chaos. I grabbed my seat halfway down the aircraft and buckled in.

Then he arrived.

Jeans. Desert-tan military boots. Khaki jacket. No carry-on. The kind of man who reads a room the moment he steps into it. His eyes locked on me immediately.

He took the front row seat, perfect view for when I’d disembark in Türkiye. Fair game after that.

The stewardess stopped him — wrong seat. She told him to move. He refused. Tried to have the passenger bumped. She wasn’t having it. Eventually, she kicked him out of the seat.

He started walking down the aisle.

And of all the rows on that plane, of all the empty seats, he came straight to mine — dropped himself at the aisle seat, blocking my exit.

This was going to be an interesting flight.

Then fate intervened. The same stewardess reappeared, telling him he was in the wrong section again. He exploded — shouting fluent Hebrew. I’d heard enough Hebrew through the years to know it was the language he was speaking. He was furious. She forced him all the way to the back of the plane.

So the game was on.

Cat and Mouse at 30,000 Feet

For the next ten hours, I stayed wired. He kept to the back of the aircraft, but I could feel his eyes. Watching. Calculating.

If anything went wrong mid-air, there’d be no second chances.

I told myself: Get to Türkiye. If it hits the fan — embassy, immediately.
Half the world might think I was an international criminal, but there were people in Ankara who owed me favours. The right kind of people — one of them the former right-hand man to the British ambassador. Soon to be MI6 incumbent.

That kind of favour? Worth gold. I just needed to survive the flight.

We landed without incident. I got my visa stamped, went airside, and finally — salvation.

Every time I transited through Türkiye, I went to the same spot: a small bar halfway down the main concourse. Best club sandwich and coldest beer in that part of the world.

The barman saw me coming. “The usual?” he grinned. He already had the first pint of Efes poured and a tower of beer filling up beside it. The club sandwich hit the counter seconds later.

It had gone up to eighty euros. I didn’t care. For the first time in days, I was among friends.

Then he clocked the stranger — khaki jacket, same boots — sitting on the opposite side of the bar, keeping watch.

Even the barman noticed.

The stranger lingered too long over his drink, stalling. The barman wasn’t having it. He switched to Hebrew — sharp and fast — telling him to finish up and move on.

That got the message across. The man protested, but eventually stood, drained his glass, and walked out.

For now, at least, he was gone.

Next stop: Flight 1981 to London. Eight hours to kill, eight pints to sink, and a growing sense that the game wasn’t over yet.

The barman leaned in, eyes sharp. “You in some kind of trouble?” he asked quietly.

Apparently, the stranger — the one in khaki boots — had offered him a wad of cash to throw me out of the bar and leave me stranded on the concourse.

I smiled. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

He gave a nod — the kind of nod that means you’re one of us now.
“You know the rules,” he said. “Keep eating, keep drinking, don’t fall asleep — you’ll be fine you can stay here for the whole eight hour layover”

Then the news came on.

And it hit like a sledgehammer.

While I’d been in the air, the President of the Philippines had launched full-scale attacks on Al-Qaeda strongholds across the southern islands. Villages were burning, stick houses and camps being obliterated by airstrikes. The footage was brutal — smoke rising over shattered coastlines and there was heavy losses being generated on both sides.

Then came the kicker: several millions of dollars frozen across major banks in the ASEAN region, crippling Al-Qaeda’s funding network.

There was no way the Directorate could have pulled that off by chance. This had been pre-planned.
Someone was setting me up.

And not just anyone. This had the fingerprints of top-tier intelligence all over it. Someone who knew how to move money, erase trails, and twist a narrative until it looked clean.

I’d already been warned off by senior legal officials before leaving the country. Men with authority. Men with shadows. Some tried to coax me up to the 22nd floor of a Manila bank tower — the same one I’d been warned not to set foot in — for a “discussion.” Personal bank security, too polished to be local muscle.

Now I had an Israeli tail following me halfway around the world.

And I knew damn well he’d be on the 1981 flight to London. and the possibilities of that happening had to be well over a billion to one

The 1981

I said my goodbyes to the barman — the only friendly face that day — and made my way through the terminal.

It was familiar territory. I’d done this run dozens of times, but this time felt different. UKTI people were milling about the boarding area — a few I even knew by name. Usually, we’d nod, share a beer, exchange a story or two.

Not today.

Today, I was radioactive. The looks said it all — whispers, glances, people turning away.
The establishment had clearly passed the word.

No sign of the Israeli. Boarding was smooth. I sat mid-plane again. Just six hours, I told myself. Six hours of calm if the door closed and he wasn’t on board.

No such luck.

Same entrance, same tactics. He took the front seat, near the door, scanning the cabin. When told to move, he argued — Hebrew, loud, indignant. Not enough to get kicked off, just enough to draw attention.

He was playing the long game.

Moved again to the back of the aircraft. Same as before. Same eyes, same tension.

Six more hours of cat and mouse.

When we touched down in London, I waited until the cabin was nearly empty before standing. The aisle cleared — except for him. He was still there, half a row behind, standing motionless, waiting for me to move.

Every muscle in my body was wired.
If he came closer, it was going to end badly for both of us I was going to go down fighting I did not care at this point.

I walked slowly off the plane. The stewards nodded, oblivious. As I stepped into the concourse, two men in trench coats walked past me in the opposite direction, subtle nods exchanged. They stopped behind me.

Then came the Hebrew again — shouting. A scuffle.

Silence. I didn’t look back.

Out the front door of Heathrow, the cold air hit me like freedom and guilt rolled into one.

I’d made it home. But the cost was heavy.

I’d walked away from $1.5 million plus sitting on a table in Manila — dirty money that could have changed everything.

With that kind of cash, we could’ve told the council where to stick their adoption panel. We could’ve started again — new life, new home, no more interference.

But that would have meant siding with the very people I’d once fought against.
Some prices are just too high.

Instead, I came home broke — two grand down on the whole ordeal, a wrecked reputation, and a mother-in-law campaigning to have her daughter leave me because, in her words, I was a “useless husband.”

If she’d known what I’d been through — what I’d done — maybe she’d have thought twice.

But she didn’t.
And now she’s no longer part of our lives.

Too toxic. Too negative. Too blind to see that survival sometimes looks nothing like heroism.

When the System Turns Its Back: The Day I Realised I had Been Blacklisted

Two days later, I was back at the Jobcentre in Folkestone — signing on again.
It hadn’t gone well.

The guy behind the desk lived just down the road from us, so he knew the story already. He’d seen it happen — the finance company rolling up and taking the RX-8 off the drive. To him, same as me, it felt like the establishment had literally taken the shirt off my back.

The best part? The finance company didn’t stop there. A few days later, they decided they wanted another £4,900 — for nothing.
They thought they could pressure me into signing a document agreeing to pay it.

That’s when my wife stepped in — calm, logical, brutal.
“Would you pay £4,900 for absolutely naff all?” she said.
“They either give you the car back, give you a car of the same build, or they can jog on. They ended the agreement, you made offers of payments, they gambled and lost — so f*** ’em.”

So I did.

I went back to them, made it official, and added one more twist: their car had been spotted on the company car park — already bought by one of their own team, at a ridiculously low price. When I put that in writing, they vanished — no contest, tail between their legs.

One day, I thought, I’ll get another one.

A week later, I was back in front of the same lad at the Jobcentre. Mid-week, I’d landed an interview with a local telesales and marketing firm. everyone thought I was a shoe-in.

Given my last role with the bank, I smashed the interview — full of confidence, charm, precision.
The manager said the job was mine.

Then came the silence.
No paperwork. No call.
When I chased it up, the offer had been retracted.

There it was again — that sinking feeling.
No one was going to employ me. I’d been blacklisted. Not just locally — worldwide.

Our accounts were being frozen. My wife faced bankruptcy — and if that happened, her legal credentials were gone.
We were inches from the street.

That’s when my parents stepped in — the ones who’d always had my back. They offered the third floor of their townhouse, rent-free. A lifeline. A roof. A breather.
We’d sell up, move in, rebuild.

But before that move could happen, we had one more meeting. And it was one we’d never forget.

The Jobcentre Meeting That Changed Everything

We barely had time to sit down before the guy at the desk said, “You won’t be seeing me today.”

He smiled awkwardly, then told me he’d been promoted — going to work with the security services. He shook my hand and thanked me for everything I’d done.
I sat there thinking, What the actual hell is going on?

Then the door to the meeting room opened.

Inside — an oval table, freshly sanitised. On the left, a woman with a thick ring binder. On the right, a lad with a laptop.
No names. No IDs.

The woman called us by our first names, polite but clinical, and invited us to sit.

My wife hadn’t been through this before, but I had — and I knew the vibe.
This could go one of two ways.

Either we walked out sanctioned — six months cut off, no benefits, no income — or somehow we scraped through.

If we lost the payments, it was game over.
The government money kept the credit cards alive, the cards kept the rent paid, and the rent kept the roof over our heads.

Eight years earlier, we’d started this whole process with £25,000 in savings.
Now, we were sitting in a sanitised room in Folkestone with £15,000 in credit card debt and counting — wondering how the hell it had all come to this.

We barely had time to sit down before the guy at the desk said, “You won’t be seeing me today.”

He smiled awkwardly, then told me he’d been promoted — going to work with the security services. He shook my hand and thanked me for everything I’d done.
I sat there thinking, What the actual hell is going on?

Then the door to the meeting room opened.

Inside — an oval table, freshly sanitised. On the left, a woman with a thick ring binder. On the right, a lad with a laptop.
No names. No IDs.

The woman called us by our first names, polite but clinical, and invited us to sit.

My wife hadn’t been through this before, but I had — and I knew the vibe.
This could go one of two ways.

Either we walked out sanctioned — six months cut off, no benefits, no income — or somehow we scraped through.

If we lost the payments, it was game over.
The government money kept the credit cards alive, the cards kept the rent paid, and the rent kept the roof over our heads.

Eight years earlier, we’d started this whole process with £25,000 in savings.
Now, we were sitting in a sanitised room in Folkestone with £15,000 in credit card debt and counting — wondering how the hell it had all come to this.

The Sanitised Room

“I’m going to cut straight to it,” the woman said.
“What I’m about to tell you isn’t good.”

I sat back, waiting for the next wave of crap to hit. a sanction, another six months being accused of throwing interviews. Same old routine, I thought.

Then she carried on.
“We’ve had you under investigation for some months. We’ve found a serious breach in your Equifax and CIFAS files. Added to that, your government file has been systematically altered. This gentleman here will be restoring those files — CIFAS, Equifax, and your government records. The damage is so extensive that it will have to be zeroed out and rebuilt from scratch. Your pensions and service records will be preserved, as will your National Insurance number.”

I sat there, jaw tightening.
That level of access… only a handful of people could do that.
Mike. Louise. Robert. Penny. Maybe two others. All of them high enough to play God with data.

“Who did it?” I asked.

“We can’t disclose that.” Was the response

I cut her off. “You’re sitting here with no ID badges, in a sanitised room, with a laptop that’s been live since before I walked in. You’re not Jobcentre staff. You’re high-level government, or civil service. So, which is it?”

The young lad finally spoke. “Your account’s been active since this morning,” he said quietly. “We’re monitoring the individual responsible in real time. They’re still making changes. We can’t zero your file until the source is isolated.”

Twelve weeks, he said, minimum.

Then the woman explained how deep they’d gone — posing as company directors, visiting recruiters I’d dealt with, following my job applications. They’d uncovered the reason I’d been blacklisted:
Recruiters were being told that if they dared to hire me, they’d lose every government and defence contract they held.

That was it.

They hadn’t just poisoned my name.
They’d rigged the entire system against me.

I realised then that every time I’d turned up for an interview, there was always the same mysterious name a couple of lines above mine in the guest book — or it would appear just before a second interview If I got invited to a second interview. They weren’t just warning recruiters. They were warning companies directly.

When Do We Eat Again?

I looked them both dead in the eye.
“Well, good luck sorting it. But when can my wife and I eat again?”

Because if this was about national security — and I’d once been close enough to know about certain Cold War ‘sticking plasters,’ a sunken submarine, and a retaliatory strike that never made the news the odd Scottish Coup-de-tat — then it wasn’t a good look for the government to have me homeless.

And they knew it.

That’s why we were here, in a sanitised office in Folkestone, no IDs, talking about rebuilding a government file from scratch.

My wife broke the silence, her voice calm but sharp.
“We can’t survive three more months. Have you even considered chasing the money?”

The woman frowned. “What do you mean?”

I leaned forward. “If this ties back to Mike, Penny, The Adoption Team and Louise — the senior civil servant with the peerage — then you’re looking at the real reason this is happening.”

I spelled it out. Louise, who had Prime Ministers on speed dial, had just come through a messy divorce. To save her French villa, her brother, had arranged a private £80,000 ‘loan’. None of it was disclosed through the proper government channels. That’s conflict-of-interest territory — enough to end a career, if not trigger an inquiry.

And who was Mike?
A board director for a UK shell company — a convenient front for Elbit Systems.

He used his sister’s position in the civil service to quietly have her bypass or work channels with I the civil service channel tech and IP from Several British defence contracts through UKTI to Elbit Systems in the UK, washing it through joint ventures and “research partnerships.” backward processing the secret NATO / UK secret technology with then through the Israeli Lobby, Mike, Louise, and others were offering the information gleaned to nations which did not care about east and west

I sat back and watched their faces.
“If I wasn’t close, and coupled with the other stuff I know” I said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

She leaned across the table, that kind of knowing smirk only people in government circles wear.
“Well, you know who the players are,” she said quietly. “All I can say is—keep your eyes open. Watch for resignations, early retirements, scandals, and sackings from the UK government. You won’t see us again once this is sorted. Give it twelve weeks, minimum.”

It was one of those moments where everything feels like it’s happening behind frosted glass. Nothing direct. Nothing recorded. Just a wink and a promise.
Then came the kicker:
“If you see the gentleman at the desk over there,” she added, “there’s a job interview waiting for you. It’s hard work—but it’ll keep you going until this all blows over. you can get your career on track again. You’re right—you’re boxed in. And that’s not where we want you.”

That was it. Handshakes, polite smiles, and a subtle “don’t worry—we’ll have it sorted.”
No paper trail. No accountability. Just another day in the world of quiet government damage control.

The gentleman behind the desk

The “gentleman at the desk” who for this story w will call James — a blunt, no-nonsense contractor who didn’t sugarcoat much.
The company he represented? Ironically, supplied people power to the same local company that had previously offered me a position… and then retracted it.

“How are you going to get me in there?” I asked.

His answer came without hesitation:
“We’ve got contracts all over the world. We’re a £2 billion-a-year company, family-owned. The government wouldn’t want to turn our screws. If we make the call, they listen. Heads would roll before they’d rock our boat.”

The arrogance was almost impressive — but it was also believable. I’d seen enough of how these backroom relationships worked to know he wasn’t bluffing.

“What about security clearances?” I pressed. “Surely that’s going to be a problem?”
“All squared away,” he replied. “Your clearances in multiple countries are still intact. It’ll smooth through the system. The work’s hard, but it’s the best we can do right now, given… the situation.”

Given the situation. That phrase again. The one no one ever explains, yet everyone knows means “you’ve upset someone important.”

James wasn’t lying about the work.
Six days on, one day off. Twelve-hour shifts. £8.25 an hour.
When I did the maths, I realised I’d only be about £100 better off than if I’d stayed on benefits.

But it wasn’t about the money. It was about purpose. About proving I wasn’t beaten.

Every morning, I got up with a reason walked the three miles to work and the three miles back because trying to buy let alone keep a car on the road was out of the question — to keep so busy I wouldn’t dwell on how the adoption process had collapsed or how a simple complaint about methodology had snowballed into career sabotage.

Because make no mistake — that’s what it was.
A quiet, bureaucratic shutdown.
A system designed to silence anyone who dared question how and why the government was choosing who got to be a parent — and who didn’t.

Behind the curtain were outdated European policies, elitist ideals, and a deep fear of the establishment being “rocked.”

But they’d underestimated something:
I wasn’t just a name on a file anymore. I had experience, insight, and a story that could expose the machine for what it was.

They’d boxed me in — but in doing so, they’d handed me the keys to unlock what really lay behind AdopterOne.

The Knife-Edge Year: Stability, Surveillance, and the Next Move

By late 2017, things had finally started to feel… stable. Well, as stable as life could get after the chaos of the last year. Six days on, one day off, twelve-hour shifts, £1,700 a month after tax — it wasn’t glamorous, but it was enough to keep the lights on and the fridge stocked. Adoption? That dream had been shelved indefinitely. Every pound earned went straight to servicing debt and paying the bills. Survival first, dreams later.

But even in stability, the past never truly lets you go.

One week, close to the year’s end, a call came from a friend inside the defence company — a Managing Director who had just retired early. “Robert has had to step down immediately,” my friend said. “New MD coming in, everything moving to new premises. You know the drill.”

Within an hour, Robert’s boxes were packed. Gone. Just like that.

The weird part? My friend was checking in on me. “What do you know?” he asked.

I gave him the honest answer: Nothing. But we both knew better. This wasn’t the first domino to fall. My social media profiles had been lighting up like a beacon — friend suggestions, profile visits from current and former employees, some travelling across the country just to check in. People were watching, quietly calculating, and talking.

The response was a single, exasperated expletive. “Is it really that bad?” he asked. I just nodded. I was employed. I was safe. For now. But someone was driving the changes, and I had no idea who.

Later that same week, James came by. Always blunt, always direct.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, no preamble.

Then straight to business: he had finally landed the dream job he’d been chasing. But there was more — a bigger picture. He was asked if anyone on site could take over his role managing contractors. He was putting my name forward.

I was flattered, of course, but he also knew the reality: financially, we were still on a knife edge. Every day, every pound counted.

At the same time, opportunities were quietly stacking up.

• The automotive company I’d worked for had sent a formal invitation to their annual dinner at the British Heritage Motor Museum. Managers across several departments were eager to reconnect and discuss possibilities.
• Another company, one that had twice rejected me, was now circling again, interested in headhunting me for a permanent role.
• Meanwhile, the contract role I held as a contractor had just opened up a managerial opportunity where I was now the lead candidate.

The field was ripe. Choices were there. But the margin for error was razor thin. One missed payment, one financial misstep — even £25 — and everything could collapse.

We were literally on the knife-edge of stability and chaos. One firm, formal offer would secure the next chapter. Until then? Every day was about keeping our heads down, our accounts in order, and watching carefully for the next move.

AdopterOne: 2018 — The Year the Screws Tightened

Rolling into 2018, it finally felt like things were turning around a new year, a new start.

I’d been offered a permanent position with the very company I’d been contracting for — an engineering role, £27,000 a year, plus extras and benefits. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was a foot back on the ladder. Six months’ probation, then I’d be through. The plan was simple: complete probation by June or July, then finally re‑enter the adoption system with a stable income and a secure home.

That was the plan — until the phone rang.

The HR Call That Changed Everything

First week on the job. I’d just completed my medical — standard stuff, though a little heavier for ex‑forces like me. PTSD screening was part of the norm now; fifteen years of war will do that to a country. Employers wanted to “protect their brand,” as they put it. Fair enough.

But the medical questionnaire had one particular question that stuck in my mind:

Do you have any disabilities that fall under the 2010 Disability Act?

It gave no option to skip.
I’ve got dyslexia, and since it’s classed as a disability under the Act, my wife said, “Don’t take any chances. Just answer it honestly.”
So I did.

Two weeks later, my phone rang. HR.

The Head of HR wanted to discuss my medical form. She asked, point blank, “Why did you declare a disability under the 2010 Act when you didn’t mention it on your application?”

Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I told her calmly, “Because there wasn’t a question about it anywhere in the application.”

There was silence. Then: “Oh. Give me five minutes — I’ll call you back.”

I could almost hear her rummaging through the paperwork, checking every form I’d submitted. Someone, somewhere, was already tightening the screws. You could practically hear the vice turning.

Five minutes later, she called back.
“You’re right,” she said. “It wasn’t on the application.”

Then came the hammer blow:

‘If you’d declared dyslexia earlier, we probably wouldn’t have offered you employment. It can affect safety-critical work, and now that we know, we’re reviewing your position.’

I was speechless for a moment — then furious.

Remaining calm but firm, I reminded her of her legal duty under the 2010 Equality Act. I told her, in no uncertain terms, that if they wanted to make this a test case, I had a union lawyer on standby. If she wanted to imply I was unsafe to employ because of dyslexia, she might want to educate herself before the next call came — and it wouldn’t be from me.

Five minutes later… no call. No email. Just silence.

The Calm Before the Next Storm

For the next six months, it was quiet. Too quiet.
I kept my head down, worked hard, and started counting down the days to the end of probation. We even started talking about restarting the adoption process — but I wanted to wait. I wanted the paper proof that I was secure in my job, that there was no lingering cloud.

Then the letter came.

Same HR manager. Same name. Same neat corporate signature.

“Your probationary period has been extended by three months. Failure to complete this period successfully will result in termination of employment.”

No explanation. Just that.

My manager had told me everything was fine. Now HR was basically putting me on three months’ notice. Another delay, another blow — and another company trying to quietly edge me out.

But this one? They’d already done it twice before. There wasn’t going to be a third.

I confronted my manager, letter in hand. “What’s going on?” I demanded. “You tell me everything’s fine, but HR’s threatening my job?”

He looked uncomfortable. Then out of nowhere, he said:

“Tell me about your issues with the adoption process — and why you wrote about them online.”

That stopped me cold. I’d never told anyone at the new company about the adoption saga. The only way to link me to that blog was through a government-tracking application used by certain agencies. So how the hell did he know?

It wasn’t paranoia — it was pattern.

By now, the message was clear: anyone who challenged the adoption establishment was to be boxed out, sidelined, buried quietly under “HR policy” and “probation extensions.”

What began as a complaint had become a quiet, career‑long punishment.
And for me, 2018 was the year the screws turned just that little bit tighter — and the truth started to show its face.

2018–2019: The Dominoes Start Falling

By early 2018, I’d been assured I would still be at the company in three months’ time. I even asked for it in writing — trust had become a rare commodity ever since that letter from HR hit the mat. We all knew how these things worked: three months of extended probation, then another potential six months, which meant that realistically, the adoption system would remain off-limits until mid-2019.

And yet, outside the company, things were starting to get… interesting.

I got a call from a contact at my old company — the one I had left behind over a year prior. Apparently, the 2017–2018 financial year had been… messy. Key KPIs weren’t met, particularly during an overseas expo. Directors were under scrutiny: Mike, the easily-led Sensors & Systems Director, and the Engineering Director were all feeling the heat. Even Louise, tied up in government and civil service dealings, was supposed to receive formal notice stripping her of executive privileges.

The new Managing Director, ex-RAF, had called the entire leadership team in for a meeting. The question on the table: why the company’s performance had tanked and why certain Middle Eastern markets weren’t delivering.

The answer? They all tried to put me under the bus.

I hadn’t been at the company for eighteen months. The first six months of that two-year period had been about securing space, building operations — yet somehow, I was the scapegoat.

The new MD didn’t buy it. He stopped them cold. He referenced a past experience from the RAF: an airman, placed suddenly in a critical department, responsible for ensuring airbridge supply operations, whose work saved countless lives. He drew the comparison clearly: that’s the kind of person I trust — one who sees the end goal, executes with precision, and doesn’t fail under pressure.

The result? Immediate.

• Mike: released with immediate effect.
• Sensors Director: reassigned overseas.
• Engineering Director: stripped of executive status.

And me? They offered me a chance to return to my old position — with a bigger hand in running operations. I politely declined. My eyes were on a much larger goal, one I’d been chasing for nearly a decade. Nothing was going to stop me.

While corporate fallout played out, another front was opening. News broke about a senior civil servant — a top government lawyer — being sacked for failing to declare loans correctly. She was banned from holding executive positions or accessing CIFAS or Equifax databases.

My wife and I watched in quiet satisfaction. The people who had caused so much havoc in our lives were finally being held accountable. But we knew the biggest one was still to come.

And then, Penny — the last key player in our personal saga — announced her retirement. Abrupt, unexpected, but necessary. The lady in that sanitized office in Folkestone had warned me: watch for resignations, abrupt retirements, and scandals among the key players. This was it.

HR finally removed restrictions on my position at the company. I was now starting with a clean slate.

Of course, the deputy Manager tried to sabotage me as well as many others in the office (every office has a bully) — sanctions, firings, endless interference with promotions. But when the union launched an official investigation, the company had a choice: side with me or the deputy.

The result? The deputy stood down, leaving me secure. By 2023, things had quieted down at work. No one was trying to destabilize my life, no one threatening the household finances, no one pulling strings to throw me out onto the streets.

After years of chaos, manipulation, and targeted attacks, it felt like — finally — the dominoes were falling in the right direction.

When the System Turns Away: Blood, Bureaucracy, and the NHS Blacklist

Two months after I’d finally been cleared from probation and could breathe again, we decided it was time to get back on the adoption register.
The timing felt right — stable work, solid footing, even with the deputy Manager doing his usual routine of trying to make my life hell.

Then, out of nowhere, my body staged its own rebellion.

It was the end of a night shift. I’d been pushing through fatigue when a searing pain gripped my lower abdomen — a kind of twisting, gut‑wrenching cramp that made me double over. I’m not one to complain about pain, but this one hit hard.

Three days later, I went to the toilet — and pissed blood. Not a trickle. Not a tint. Full‑on crimson.

I tried to reason with myself. Maybe an allergic reaction to something I’d eaten the night before? Maybe dehydration? But by that afternoon, it got worse. A lot worse. Within hours I was passing more blood than urine, and eventually, no urine at all — just blood.

I drove straight to my GP surgery. The receptionist tried to fob me off with “no appointments available.”

I wasn’t asking for an appointment. I was asking for help now.

I’d already lost close to a pint of blood, and my patience was running on fumes. Reluctantly, she got a nurse to see me. The nurse asked for a sample. I gave her one. The blood inside me had started to congeal — it acted like a bung, building pressure. When it finally released, it was like a crime scene in the surgery toilet.

The nurse’s face said it all. She immediately called for an ambulance.

When she explained my condition, the ambulance service categorised me as Stage Four — the lowest possible priority. She argued, protested even, but was told the system wouldn’t let them treat me any higher.

So much for having my record “zeroed,” I thought. They’d just found another way to get at me.

I was handed a sealed letter and told to drive myself to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford.

The Hospital That Said “There’s Nothing Wrong With You”

William Harvey — the same hospital where I’d nearly died from sepsis years before. I joked grimly to myself: third time lucky for the establishment, eh?

I arrived, letter in hand, still bleeding. They triaged me, read the doctor’s notes… and after four hours, a doctor came over and told me flatly,

“There’s nothing wrong with you. Go home.”

I’d been literally pissing out blood for hours, and they sent me away.

That night I deteriorated fast. My organs were starving of oxygen; my head felt like it was underwater. The next morning, barely functioning, we went back to the GP — refused again. Back to William Harvey — refused again. I phoned every hospital in Kent. No one would see me. Ambulance wouldn’t attend.

I knew Folkestone’s Victoria Hospital had a urology department, so we drove straight there.

At reception, the clerk typed my details into the system — and froze. Her face changed. She refused to process me, no reason given.

I stayed calm, but I wasn’t leaving. It was a publicly owned building. I had a right to be there. I walked past the desk, determined to find a urology nurse myself.

That’s when she hit the panic alarm.

Within seconds, security surrounded me.

They started it; I reacted in kind. Equal and reasonable force — I played by the book. Eventually, a urology nurse came out, demanding to know what was going on. When she saw the sample I’d brought, her professional instincts kicked in.

“Stand down,” she snapped at security.
“And you,” she barked at the receptionist, “you’ve just refused emergency care for a critical patient.”

She was on the phone to the Kent & Canterbury Hospital within minutes, booking me in for immediate emergency admission.

Kent & Canterbury: The Long Night

Thirty minutes later, I was driving myself again, barely conscious, to the Kent & Canterbury. They bypassed the queue and got me straight onto a bed.

I told them I’d had a kidney stone six months prior, wit a CT Scan of the kidneys, the bladder, and the abdomen which was all clear, but the pain and bleeding had come out of nowhere. They ran scans but said nothing until, one of the best urologists I’ve ever met, came in.

Before I could even ask questions, they inserted an oversized catheter to help clear the clots. The blood had started to congeal inside me, clogging everything.

All night, a nurse had to manually drain 200–300 ml every thirty minutes.
As fast as the blood went in, it came out the other end.

That was my night —
hooked up, bleeding out, alone, and still trying to process how a system that was supposed to protect me had actively tried to let me die.

The Silent Tumour and the Enigma of Survival

I was rushed in for a CT scan, my wife keeping a careful eye over what was happening. I knew what the results would reveal — and apparently, the doctors did too. Sitting in an open ward, I could hear the staff quietly trying to manipulate my file while I was having my bladder catheterized. The consultant in the A&E department was on the phone to a colleague at William Harvey, trying to backdate a note on my file. He wanted to cover himself for releasing me after the test results I’d just had. My wife overheard parts of the conversation but when I put in active hearing and heard what the other doctor was doing verbatim in the other room and penning a letter to also cover her colleague my wife asked me  incredulously how I managed to navigate all this in intense pain but I could still focus on a conversation over the other side of the ward coming out of an open door. which she had been stood at the counter and only heard parts of on the busy ward I just shrugged: training from twenty years in the military, I told her.

The following morning when the head urologist arrived after there doctors spent all night doctoring my file and holding my results off from me, he first reassured me: “Nothing to worry about.”

I interrupted. I could see it on the CT scan — a massive tumour in my bladder. He looked at me, surprised that I could read a CT. I explained my background: working with military medical flights, bringing home war wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq. “Just give it to me straight,” I said.

The plan was clear: exploratory surgery, tumour biopsy, and possibly chemotherapy immediately, depending on what they found.

The shocking part? The tumour was completely absent six months earlier. My previous CT scan showed nothing. No hint. And yet now it was aggressive, life-threatening, and almost certainly would have killed me had it not ruptured spontaneously.

The day I was admitted, the ward seemed almost haunted. A friend and colleague, a department cleaner, and weeks later, another workmate all presented with the same symptoms.

By rights, this should have triggered a Stage Three hospital incident, and should have triggered a stage three incident at the company — an internal alert for clusters of severe cases. Nothing. No procedure was activated.

Surgery went ahead. The tumour was patched, a biopsy taken, and I was monitored intensely. When the results arrived, the news was astonishing:

Paraganglioma of the bladder.
Known as a silent killer, it manipulates the body’s glands, making blood pressure and other vital signs appear normal — until it doesn’t.

In my case, benign, but phenomenally rare: only 0.2% of the world’s population could ever develop this type of tumour in the bladder and that day three people from my work were wheeled into the ward all to be diagnosed with the same tumour both of varying degrees, and same symptoms where they had ruptured from them being very aggressive.

2019 – The Year of False Dawns

It was March 2019 when the call came — one of those moments that changes everything and yet feels strangely mundane.
“Hello” said the voice on the other end, “the surgeon wants to operate — this week if possible.”

Just like that, my life was back on the clock. A major bladder resection, a “chunk,” as he put it, was going to be removed. My first thought wasn’t fear — it was relief. “Good,” I thought. “Get the operation done, recover, and we’re back on the adoption track.”

We had it all mapped out. By October 2019, we’d be through the adoption board, and maybe, just maybe, by mid‑2020, we’d finally be parents.
Ten years of trying. Ten years of paperwork, assessments, and setbacks. But this time felt different.

Our tenancy was secure. The house in Folkestone was stable — a proper home. Sure, the bathroom was downstairs, but so were half the bathrooms in that part of town. The adoption team didn’t seem to mind. We were finally making headway. With my government record wiped clean, Penny retired and free from the bureaucratic machine, there was nothing to stop us — or so we thought.

All I had to do was survive a “little operation,” recover, get the all‑clear, and life could start again.

A month later, I was back in hospital. The operation was over. No sepsis, no complications — the bladder was holding strong. The catheter was out, the stitches healed, and for the first time in months, I dared to breathe.

That’s when I found myself in Mr Streeter’s office, hearing words that felt like a reprieve:

“We’ve tested it every way possible — it’s benign.”

They had thrown every scan, stain, and scope at it. It was official. I had been on of the 1% which survives that tumour, and for the tumour to be classed as benign two of my colleagues were not so lucky

All that remained was to get back to work. That, I thought, would be the easy part.

The Corporate Wall

It wasn’t.

Within weeks, I found myself caught between three doctors and two agendas.
Mr Streeter and my GP both cleared me — fit for full duty, any shift pattern. But the company doctor disagreed.

He argued that because of “recent research” — something about hormonal imbalance risks and night shifts — I was unfit for nocturnal work. To me, it sounded like another way of saying, “We’d like you to leave quietly.”

Meetings followed. Weeks of them. I was polite but unmovable. My fitness wasn’t up for debate; it was medically verified. Eventually, they relented, and I was cleared for full duty once again.

That victory felt like a turning point — a return to normal life after years of uncertainty.

But fate, as ever, had other ideas.

By August 2019, life was finally settling into a rhythm again. The operation was behind me, my job stable, and we were inching closer to restarting the adoption process. I was also quietly preparing for a career pivot — retraining in ethical hacking and penetration testing. Tech had always fascinated me, and if all went well with adoption, I wanted a job that offered flexibility. Something that could support my real passion — photography.

I’d just finished setting up a home network for my coursework, tracking how data flowed in and out of the house. That’s when I noticed something strange. My internet traffic, which normally routed out through Paris, suddenly diverted through London. Seconds later, one of my encrypted comms apps started ringing.

There was only one person in the world who could have triggered that line.

A man I knew from years ago — ex‑special forces, with links to SIS. Not the kind of person who calls to talk about the weather. I braced myself; this was going to be an interesting conversation.

After a bit of small talk, he cut straight to it. “Do you remember that old Harvard Science Review piece?” he asked. “The one about the French‑Russian team in Siberia who found a virus in an ice core?”

I did.
But I hadn’t thought about it in years.

He went on: the virus’s base pairs exceeded the human genome — meaning, in theory, it had a more complex genetic code than us. Some even speculated it could exhibit a form of intelligence.

Now he had my attention.

I leaned in. “If that virus exists, and it’s in joint French‑Russian hands, it’s already been shared,” I said. “China will have it, Europe will have it, the UK and the US will have it — and from there, Japan. You’d need samples across the globe just to study it. Which means you’d need containment labs — the highest biohazard levels.”

He was silent for a moment.
Then I asked the question I didn’t want to:
“So who’s messed up?”

If something that sophisticated had escaped, the consequences could be catastrophic — a self‑replicating intelligence, a viral storm circling the planet.

“What’s its R number?” I asked, scribbling figures on a notepad.
“Three to four,” he replied.

I didn’t need a calculator. At that spread, the UK death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands — over half a million in the UK dead in a worst‑case scenario, then it all depended if there was a vaccine.

It was a dark conversation for two people who hadn’t spoken in five years.

The Early Warnings

He told me he’d seen Chinese satellite imagery — hospital car parks filling up, the same cars parked for days, and heat maps from crematoriums glowing hotter than normal. “Something’s going on,” he said.

If that was true, then it had already started.

I joked, “Well, if it starts in China, nice knowing you. I’m off to order masks.”

But it wasn’t a joke. As soon as we hung up, I went straight online and bought reusable masks and essentials. My wife did the same.

By September, I was wearing a mask every time I stepped outside. People gave me odd looks — some thought I was paranoid, others assumed it was a coping mechanism from my tumour recovery. I didn’t care. I knew what I knew.

We agreed to delay our adoption application until the new year, just to give everything time to stabilise — medically, emotionally, globally.

Then came Christmas 2019.

First, whispers in independent media. Then the mainstream picked it up:
a mysterious respiratory virus spreading through China.
Doctors and nurses were dying from exposure, entire wards overwhelmed.

It was exactly what I’d been warned about.

By January, it was everywhere. The masks I’d bought months earlier suddenly looked prophetic. My wife was soon furloughed, and I — being in a critical logistics role — was drafted into ensuring supplies reached the UK. “Just in time” became “just surviving.”

As the world shut down, I couldn’t shake the thought:
that random August call, the ice virus, the warning signs —
had the Adoption dream ever stood a chance against something like this?

Everything we’d built our hopes around was now at the mercy of a world that had just changed forever.

When Choice Wasn’t a Choice

I’d been expecting something to happen for a while — a whisper here, a delay there — but it still caught me off-guard when one of my bosses came out of the office and said,

“We’ve had notice from an unknown source that your name’s on a list. The company doctor says you need to shield.”

I remember thinking: No. Not happening. I’d trained for this kind of crisis. I wasn’t just another engineer; I had experience on the ground, and I wasn’t about to be side-lined. When I asked who was really pushing for me to shield, nobody would say — just vague references to “medical advice.”

Then came the rollout. When the first vaccines appeared, I was given access to the Level 3 test documentation through a secure portal. I read everything — the test data, the development timelines, the maths — and something didn’t add up. For me, the decision wasn’t just about health; it could impact our plans to adopt. I could already see how other countries were socially excluding anyone who refused. It was only a matter of time before the UK followed suit.

After weighing the numbers, I decided: no shield, no jab.

When the AstraZeneca vaccine finally launched, I knew I’d be low on the list — no health conditions, not elderly, not high risk. But a few days later, I received a letter ordering me to report to the Folkestone Civic Centre by 1500 hours for vaccination.

No contact details. No option to decline in writing. Just an instruction.

I arrived at the little porta-cabin outside the civic centre In Folkestone, Kent. When my turn came, I told the nurse, politely, that I wanted to refuse the jab and offer my dose to my wife.

She looked me dead in the eye and said,

“You don’t have a choice. You’re Section Six.”

I thought she was joking.
She wasn’t.

Three police officers stood by the door. One took the letter from the nurse and said,

“He’s one of them — but he’s refusing.”

The officer flipped through his clipboard, found my name, then turned to another list. Without even asking me for ID, he knew everything — my background, my former military unit, my current job, even where I lived.

Then he told me:

“You’re one of sixty in the Folkestone and Hythe area designated as essential personnel. If the situation deteriorates and vaccine supplies run short, you’re required to remain operational. Refusal to vaccinate means we have authority to detain you.”

He wasn’t bluffing. He mentioned three others on the list who hadn’t turned up and said officers had already been dispatched to retrieve them.

The explanation was grim.
If the vaccine failed, or if bodies started to pile up, my designated role would be to keep things operational — logistics, clearance, possibly even body disposal. It was dark, but that world wasn’t unfamiliar to me.

In that moment, it wasn’t a decision anymore. It was comply or be detained.

So I rolled up my sleeve and took the jab. Not because I believed in it, but because the alternative was a cell full of potentially hazardous individuals — and I knew enough about risk to make that call.

February 2022 — Doing Things Backwards

Talk about doing things backwards.
We’d just lived through a global pandemic, a full national vaccine rollout, lockdowns, and endless restrictions — and then, almost overnight, with war breaking out in Europe, every single restriction was lifted.

For us, it was a turning point.

After thirteen years of waiting for the right time, and battling through red tape, assessments, and endless roadblocks just to get as far as the induction stage of adoption — we finally stopped. We moved towns for a fresh start, and for the first time, said the words we’d been avoiding:

“We’re not going to be adopters.”

It hit hard. We realised how much of our lives we’d put on hold to fit into the box that social services wanted us to occupy. We’d stripped back everything — every plan, every risk, every joy — all to become the people they said we needed to be.

And for what? Another obstacle. Another delay. Another “next time.”

In the end, it was one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever made — accepting that we would never become parents. But some things simply aren’t meant to be. We have godchildren, friends’ kids who light up our lives, and now, for the first time in years, the space to start living for ourselves again.

My wife threw herself into a new challenge — aside from the nine full length novels she has written which have sold in e-book form internationally all over the world she has launched a niche business in our new town, She’s gone from strength to strength, carving out her own name and reputation.

As for me, I’ve poured my energy into — my passion, my brand, my craft.
And like us, it’s finding its stride again — growing stronger with every new day, every new image, every new story told through the photography lens.

2024 – Behind Closed Doors: The Sauna Meeting That Changed Everything

By 2024, life had finally settled into a kind of rhythm. I had my “sauna time” — a ritual that kept the stress of daily life in check. My days followed a cycle: cycling to work and back six days out of every ten, taking a couple of days for the sauna, then returning home to help my wife with her thriving business while pursuing my photography brand. The adoption dream was long buried — or so I thought.

It was during one of those quiet, early-morning sauna sessions that something strange began to unfold. A young woman entered one morning, froze when she saw me, then turned away as though she’d seen a ghost. A week later, she returned. Then again. It was odd — my shift pattern was irregular, my sauna days unpredictable. Her repeated appearances didn’t sit right.

Normally, I let things go. But after years of military work — intelligence, observation, pattern recognition — my instincts kicked in. Something was off. So, rather than going full OSINT on her (though it crossed my mind), I quietly engaged a trusted local intermediary — someone capable of finding out what needed to be found out.

Within a week, I knew who she was. I knew her car, her address, her walking routes, even her dog’s name. Most importantly, I knew her employer: Kent Adoption Team.

Well then — if they were going to spy on me, it seemed only fair I returned the favour.

After several weeks of this silent game of observation, we finally spoke. The setting? The sauna — that unassuming space where half the region’s small-town politics seemed to play out. It was where councillors struck under-the-table deals, where project funding quietly shifted from one town to another, and where “inconvenient” ideas were quietly shut down before reaching the council chamber. A place where phones were banned, ears were trained, and conversations vanished into the steam.

What followed wasn’t a chat. It was a confession.

She was visibly burdened — the confidence she’d shown in earlier weeks now replaced with a haunted exhaustion. When I asked her what was wrong, the dam broke. In hushed tones, she admitted she worked within the local adoption services and that she’d become increasingly alarmed by what she was seeing.

Couples like us, she said — stable, long-married, financially secure, and ready to offer a child a safe home — were often quietly sidelined. Hidden in the system.

When I asked why, she said something that still chills me:

“Because you’re too visible. Too solid. Too unassailable. Too difficult to reject without cause.”

By contrast, she continued, others — individuals with histories of substance abuse, crime, or recent recovery — were being waved through. Some were even fast-tracked. Not just tolerated — encouraged. And when she raised concerns, her warnings were dismissed.

Her words didn’t sound like bitterness; they carried the weight of conscience. She spoke of colleagues she no longer trusted, of board members whose decisions seemed to follow patterns of influence, not child welfare. She hinted at corruption — delicately, but with conviction.

Then came the shocker.

She told me she’d sought me out deliberately.
Not because of who I was now, but because of something I’d written a decade earlier: the original AdopterOne blog.

My words, it turned out, had never quite died inside the system. They’d circulated, struck nerves, and even — according to her — forced senior managers into early retirement. Whether or not that was true, the fact that it was rumoured within the service spoke volumes about the culture of fear and denial festering there.

It was, for me, both affirming and alarming. Affirming, because it meant my early warnings about malpractice weren’t imagined. Alarming, because it proved the system was willing to gamble with the lives of vulnerable children — sacrificing stability for convenience.

I won’t name names here; none were given in that meeting, and speculation helps no one. But what was implied was explosive. Around the same time, whispers were circulating about a high-profile government appointment — Louise was being lined up for a new non-executive role in Keir Starmer’s incoming administration. I was already aware of this from my own sources and had been advised to monitor my accounts and communications as with any new roles which were taken up by any of the original people who systematically abused my files and my life.

Her timing, her knowledge, and her visible fear told me everything I needed to know this wasn’t just an ethical dilemma. It was a systemic one.

That meeting, in that steam-filled room, remains one of the most extraordinary encounters of my life — and I’ve seen a few. It didn’t end with someone flashing credentials and ordering me to forget what I’d witnessed, like that time in my service days when two lads in a stolen Royal Mail lorry swapped out election ballot boxes on an airfield before dawn.

No — this was quieter, more insidious. And far more dangerous.

Because it exposed a truth, we all need to confront:
When those inside the system begin whispering about corruption, and when those whispers are drowned out by bureaucracy and silence, reform isn’t optional — it’s overdue.

Adoption isn’t a bureaucratic checklist. It’s about shaping the life of a child.
When the system forgets that — when it values convenience over conscience — silence becomes complicity.

All I can hope now is that others will come forward to bear witness, as we continue to write — and to fight — for the truth.

The Invitation Back – and the Rabbit Hole Reopens

That conversation left me in a quandary.

On one side, I had just been told Louise one of the people who had once all but run me into non-existence was being invited back into the Keir Starmer Labour government — this time in a non-executive role, reportedly to “support” Social Care, Grooming Gangs, and like before and with me in them roles she has manged to split inquiries to the point of incitement where senior political figures like Jess Phillips could and still probably have everything, including their reputation and the shirt of her back I am living proof of what Louise is capable of and I would have no hesitation in thinking she would work with the Israeli lobby again to put Keir Starmer on the street as well and place in power the most destabilising leader this country has seen in a century. On the other side sat this senior insider, offering me what sounded like a clean slate.

An unconditional invitation.
A direct path back into the adoption process.
Stage One — guaranteed.

She assured me that, following the “investigations” they had already conducted into me and my wife, there would be no reason we wouldn’t reach the end this time and be accepted by the board. She even referenced our neighbours’ views of us — how they’d described us, what their children thought of us — details that made it very clear: they’d been digging.

The more she talked, the more uneasy I became.

If the system was as compromised as she claimed — if it really was bent — then what would it say about us to accept an offer that allowed us to skip the queue? How would that make us any different from the so-called “fast-tracked” applicants she’d just condemned?

And then there was time.

We were in our twenties when we first began this journey — through IVF, through adoption, through the endless forms and heartbreak. Now, in our mid-forties, reality had changed. In ten years, we’d be thinking about winding down for retirement; in fifteen, retirement itself. We’d never wanted to be the parents in their sixties still navigating GCSE stress or university fees. That ship had sailed.

Add to that my wife’s early-onset menopause — brought on by a medical condition — and the answer became clear.
It was a very firm no.

Still, the offer gnawed at me. The timing, the invitation, the references to my past writings — it all stank of setup. But what if she was telling the truth? What if this was the proof I’d been looking for all along — that there was something fundamentally broken inside the system?

There was only one way to find out.

And when you want answers in Britain, there’s a particular rabbit hole you learn to dive into: the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

We’d gone down this route before. We knew how the game worked — how requests were deflected, redacted, or hidden behind a fortress of “legal exemptions” and “corporate confidentiality.” We’d seen the cover-ups firsthand, wrapped neatly in the language of compliance.

But that didn’t mean you stop asking.

So I sent the following request to Kent County Council’s FOI team — and with it, reopened the investigation:

Freedom of Information Request – Adoption Panel Membership & Adopter Approvals (2019–2025)

To: freedomofinformation@kent.gov.uk

Dear FOI Officer,

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following recorded and anonymised information held by Kent County Council in relation to adoption services and adoption panel decisions.

1. Adoption Panel Membership (2019–2025)
Please provide a list of individuals who have served on Kent County Council’s Adoption Panel(s) between 1 January 2019 and 31 October 2025, including their job titles or roles (e.g. chair, agency adviser, independent member, social worker).
If names cannot be disclosed, please provide the number of members by role for each year.

2. Approvals involving criminal or drug history (anonymised figures only)
For each calendar year 2019–2025, please provide:

• The total number of prospective adopters approved by Kent County Council. (Include both those who formally entered Stage One and those who attended an induction meeting or home visit but were not officially recorded.)
• The number (and percentage) of approved adopters where the assessment recorded:
  a) a previous criminal conviction, caution, or police record; and/or
  b) a current or past issue of drug misuse or dealing (categorised as “past use – ceased”, “current use”, or “unknown”).

Please provide this information in aggregated, anonymised form.

3. Safeguarding incidents post-placement
For each year 2019–2025, please state the number of adoptive placements that required safeguarding intervention, review, or disruption within 24 months of placement due to parental drug misuse, dealing, or criminal activity.

If any part of this request is exempt, please supply the remaining information and specify the exemptions relied upon. If providing the full data would exceed the statutory cost limit, please advise what can be supplied within those limits.

I am happy to accept the information in electronic format (Excel, CSV, or PDF) sent to this email address.

Yours faithfully,
AdopterOne

So there it is. The next move in a long-running game of bureaucratic chess.

The question now is simple:
Will Kent County Council finally come clean — or will we find ourselves back in the familiar fog of “policy language” and strategic silence?

Either way, the rabbit hole is open again. And this time, we’re following it to the end.

Updated 21st November 2025

Kent County Council Responds – and It’s the Same Old Pattern

WAW.com is now in receipt of Kent County Council’s formal response to our FOI request — and at first glance, it reads like more of the same:
polite wording, quick turnaround… and very little in the way of actual transparency.

For a council that has had more than a decade’s worth of warnings, interventions, restructures, “learning exercises,” and media scrutiny, you would think the culture would have shifted by now. Yet the reply we’ve just received mirrors the exact patterns we saw all those years ago when I first challenged their practices.

We want to thank Kent County Council for their timely response — that much they got right.
But they seem to have badly misjudged who they are dealing with.

This was not a casual query.
This was not a tick-box request.
And it certainly wasn’t something we’d glance over and quietly file away.

Their response could — and should — have been far more forthcoming.
Instead, we have the familiar fog: selective answers, ambiguous language, and gaps big enough to march a safeguarding review through.

Below is the breakdown of their response, point by point, with our analysis beneath each section.

Considering there were some very direct questions put to the council — and considering the seriousness of what WAW.com has already exposed — we genuinely expected more substance from Kent County Council. In fact, the response we received was so thin, so deliberately non-committal, that it only reinforces the concerns already raised by the claimed whistle-blower inside the adoption team.

Given the gravity of those allegations, you would assume the council would seize the opportunity to demonstrate transparency. Instead, the shutters came down. This is the classic behaviour of a government body circling the wagons, closing ranks, and minimising the paper trail.

So let’s start with the very first question we asked them — a question so straightforward that it should have taken them all of five minutes to answer:

1. Adoption Panel Membership (2019–2025)

Please provide a list of individuals who have served on Kent County Council’s Adoption Panel(s) between 1 January 2019 and 31 October 2025, including their job titles or roles (e.g. chair, agency adviser, independent member, social worker).
If names cannot be disclosed, please provide the number of members by role for each year.

Year	Vice-Chair	Chair	Independent	Medical Advisor	Councillor	Social Worker	TOTAL
2019–20	3	4	9	7	0	16	39
2020–21	4	4	5	9	2	11	35
2021–22	4	3	9	8	2	9	35
2022–23	4	3	9	8	0	12	36
2023–24	4	4	8	9	1	14	40
2024–25	4	4	8	9	1	14	40

This was the absolute minimum they could have provided. And considering the seriousness of what the WAW.com investigation is now pushing into the public domain — and the fact we already have a claimed whistle-blower from inside the adoption service — Kent County Council’s response demonstrates one thing very clearly: they are keeping the armour plates on and the blast doors shut.

This wasn’t a request for intimate personal data. It wasn’t a request for case files, children’s records, or anything remotely sensitive. It was a simple, factual question about panel membership — the structural backbone of how adoption approvals are made. If the system is robust, transparent, and functioning correctly, this should have been the easiest public release they’ve made all year.

Instead, what we received is the bare minimum: anonymised headcounts, stripped of all meaningful context.

Now, anonymity can be lawful — but only when it is accompanied by a lawful reason. And here is the problem: Kent County Council have provided no justification whatsoever. No statutory exemption. No legal footing. No reference to the Data Protection Act. Nothing.

If the council had nothing to hide, they would have released the names and roles openly — or, at the very least, cited the correct exemption under FOIA. Instead, they dodged the requirement entirely, hoping that the numbers alone would silence the question. It hasn’t.

And this is where the council’s response veers into outright non-compliance.

Under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, any public authority withholding or redacting information must issue a formal Refusal Notice. That notice must legally state:

• Which exemption is being applied
• Why that exemption applies
• And, if it’s a qualified exemption, how the public interest test was assessed

Kent County Council did none of this.

They anonymised the data without naming the exemption. They removed identifiable information without stating why. They responded as though transparency is optional — which, under the FOIA, it is not.

The irony is that we did not request anything unreasonable. Every adoption panel in England operates through appointed officials whose identities are typically published, routinely disclosed, or already present in other public documents. We are not asking for family histories or medical records. We are asking who is making the life-changing decisions for vulnerable children and prospective parents.

So the council now needs to clarify:

Under what section of the FOIA have they decided to anonymise this data?
Because right now, they have not provided a lawful reason — and without one, the redaction is invalid.

And for a council already under scrutiny, already being watched by MPs, and already facing questions about the integrity of its adoption processes, this is not the moment to start hiding behind unlawful silence.

Section 2 — Approvals Involving Criminal or Drug History: What Kent County Council Actually Told Us

When we asked Kent County Council for anonymised data on prospective adopters with past criminal convictions or histories of drug misuse between 2019 and 2025, the response came back with two very different tones — one clear, one evasive.

Part A — The “0% Problem-Free” Answer

KCC stated that:

• 0 adopters approved by the Council in the last five years had a positive DBS result.
• 0% of approved adopters had any recorded criminal conviction, caution, police marker, or custodial sentence.

On the surface, this is commendable. A clean record for every approved adopter sounds like a strong safeguarding success story.

But this is exactly where the problem begins.

Our whistleblower — who worked within the system — was clear and consistent:
they had been instructed to process applicants with known or suspected drug histories, including former users and individuals believed to have been involved in dealing. These applicants were reportedly required to produce three consecutive clean drug tests over a three-month period before being sent to panel. That means:

• If an individual had never been arrested or charged,
• if their drug use was informal or hidden,
• or if they were known through professional channels rather than the criminal justice system…

…then nothing would appear on a DBS check.

So KCC presenting a “0% positive DBS” result does not answer the question we asked — nor does it address the safeguarding concern raised. In fact, it nudges attention away from the real issue: non-criminalised drug use is completely invisible in DBS data.

This response reads less like transparency and more like an attempt to quietly usher us away from the scent.

Part B — The Section 12 Detour

When it came to data on drug use — past or present — KCC claimed they could not provide the information because:

• It is “not recorded in a reportable format”.
• They would need to manually review 990 case files.
• At 3 minutes per file, this would take 50 hours, exceeding the 18-hour / £450 FOIA limit under Section 12.

Here’s the issue:

If they know there are 990 relevant records, then the information exists, even if not neatly tabulated.
And crucially, they failed to meet their legal duty under Section 16 — the requirement to assist a requester in refining their question so the information can be provided.

A compliant response should have included an offer such as:

• breaking the request into five separate FOIs,
• one for each year,
• each comfortably below the Section 12 time limit.

KCC offered no such advice.

To us at WAW.com, that is a red flag.

It suggests either a lack of understanding of their obligations, or a tactical decision to avoid releasing uncomfortable data — particularly data that may reveal a pattern:
declining stable adopters while approving applicants with drug histories that do not show on a DBS check, potentially normalising risk exposure for vulnerable children.

Our Position

Kent County Council’s response to Part A feels like misdirection.
Their response to Part B feels like obstruction by omission.
And their failure to engage their Section 16 duty feels like a deliberate barrier to public scrutiny.

This is not about “catching out” a council.
It’s about ensuring that the children of Kent are placed in safe, stable homes, and that all prospective adopters — including those who were unfairly rejected — are treated with consistency and fairness.

We will be pursuing clarification.
And we will not be dropping this strand of the investigation.

Section 3 — Safeguarding Incidents Post-Placement: Another Wall of Silence

Our third question to Kent County Council was direct and simple:

For each year from 2019–2025, how many adoptive placements required safeguarding intervention, review, or disruption due to parental drug misuse, drug dealing, or criminal activity within 24 months of the child being placed?

Kent County Council’s response?

“This is not recorded in a reportable format and to gather this information would require a manual check of 399 records, which would exceed the 18-hour FOI time limit.”

And that was it. No numbers. No context. No indication of how long such a check would actually take. No suggestion of how we could refine the request.

Nothing.

A Concerning Claim — and an Implausible One

KCC are effectively saying that:

• They do not hold, in any structured format,
• any recordable data showing how many children placed for adoption
• required a safeguarding intervention
• because the adoptive parents became involved in drugs or criminal activity
• within the first two years of placement.

Given the history of major safeguarding failures in the UK — including cases like Baby P that reshaped national safeguarding practice — this is extremely difficult to accept at face value.

Any responsible local authority should be able to quickly identify incidents requiring intervention post-placement. These are core safeguarding duties. They involve multi-agency alerts, social work reviews, and in some cases emergency removal of a child.

For Kent County Council to suggest they cannot retrieve such basic safeguarding data without manually leafing through nearly 400 files raises serious questions about:

• internal tracking systems,
• oversight mechanisms,
• and whether uncomfortable information is being deliberately buried under the guise of “unstructured data”.

And again, just like with Question 2, no Section 16 assistance was offered.

Another Section 16 Failure — and Another Red Flag

Under the law, public authorities must assist requesters in refining their FOI so it falls within the time limit. Yet again, KCC failed to provide:

• any suggestion of splitting the request by year,
• any indication of which years may be easier to report,
• or a breakdown of how long each file would take to review.

Instead, they leaned on a vague invocation of Section 12 — without even giving the courtesy of a workable refinement route.

This pattern is now unmistakable.

A Strategy of Delay — Not Transparency

From our perspective at WAW.com, this latest refusal fits neatly into a wider pattern:

• Avoid giving figures.
• Avoid offering assistance.
• Push everything behind “non-reportable formats”.
• Force the requester into a corner where data can only be recovered by drip-feeding multiple FOIs over a period of 12+ months.

Because here’s the catch:

If we submit one request per year to fit within the FOIA time limit, Kent County Council could easily regroup them, argue they form a series of related requests, and issue another Section 12 refusal on the grounds of combined cost.

That tactic alone could drag the release of this information well into 2026, if not later.

But let us be clear:
WAW.com will not walk away from this investigation.

We represent the British public — the working men and women who expect better from the institutions that safeguard children. If there are failures in oversight, if children have been harmed post-placement, if risk factors were ignored, and if data is being shielded from scrutiny, then that is not merely poor administration — it is a breach of public trust.

And we intend to get the answers.