Scary Tale of New York

Commissioned Guardian G2 (January 25th, 2007) Unpublished - Nick Constable

It started with a niggling cough on the freezing, windswept streets of downtown New York. Irritating, but nothing to stop Yvonne Bray enjoying a dream mini-break with her two excited teenage daughters. Or so she thought.

Hours later Mrs Bray was fighting for breath in a rundown, bloodstained hospital ward, surrounded by drunks, addicts, felons and would-be suicides, desperately trying to track down, or even identify, the New York City social workers who had taken her girls into care.

Later she would be classified as a suspected child abuser - 'the person who is responsible for causing, or allowing to be inflicted, injury, abuse or maltreatment to the child(ren)' - in the language of the New York State Child Abuse and Maltreatment Register.

And so her nightmare - the 'Scary Tale of New York' as she now understates it - unfolded.

Over the following 24 hours Mrs Bray's daughters Gemma, 15, and Katie, 13, would be admitted to a secure orphanage, searched, photographed, ordered to strip, shower, endure a medical examination and be 'processed' as child abuse victims.

Their explanation; that they came from a sleepy English fishing port - Appledore near Bideford, North Devon - and were on holiday when their mum fell ill, cut little ice.

They were asked if they had been raped, subjected to violence, had homicidal tendencies or were members of a street gang (after careful thought the girls admitted membership of Appledore Library). They were then split up and despatched to separate institutions.

Clad in regulation one-size white T-shirts and elasticated jeans they prepared for a night in glass-walled dormitories with girls from some of New York's toughest neighbourhoods.

By now, across the city, their mother's hacking cough had been diagnosed as pneumonia by doctors at the Queens Medical Center, Harlem, where regular clients include inmates from the nearby prison.

With head swimming, and a cocktail of drugs drip-feeding into her veins, an awful truth was dawning; her girls were alone, in a strange city, linked to her only by a phone number hurriedly scribbled at her bedside.

'Eventually I discharged myself against the doctor's wishes,' she recalls. 'I walked out of that hospital in vomit stained pyjamas, my intravenous needle still attached, and with tears streaming down my cheeks.'

'I think it's fair to say I was concerned.

'I was so ill I couldn't understand what was happening. Two people turned up at my hospital bedside and the man said: "God, bless you." I thought I was being given the last rites.

'Then he said: "These must be your children. We're going to take them to a nice home". I never for one moment thought that meant a care home.

'Those people didn't give me their name. I didn't sign anything. One wrote down a phone number and that was it. A nurse belatedly asked them for ID but the hospital staff didn't exactly fill you with confidence.

'The corridors were slippery with blood and Lord knows what else. At one point I desperately needed a nurse to unhook me from the pipes and needles and take me to the loo - I'd got severe diarrhoea just to complicate matters - but they didn't respond to my call.

'I was left to soil myself. I lay there crying tears of embarrassment and all the time I was so desperately worried about the girls and what they were thinking'

For Gemma, who has ambitions to be a doctor, and Katie, who wants to be a teacher, the hospital's ER (Emergency Room) offered an insight into New York street life not normally available to tourists.

'We were admitted to a ward where one man was chained by his arms and legs to a hospital bed, surrounded by four policemen,' said Gemma.

'A guy in the bed next to mum had a knife through his neck... there was a lot of blood. Then we passed another man who kept shouting "I've swallowed the pills and you're never going to get them out of me now.

'They did offer us breakfast and lunch but it was cold with some kind of gross sauce slopped on top. Luckily the hospital had a McDonalds.'

The Bideford College schoolgirls and their mother, a 39-year-old beauty therapist, had flown in to JFK Airport the previous day - December 27th - on a five day £2,000 'dream' mini-break.

They excitedly checked into the Laguardia Marriott Hotel in Queens before heading off for a shopping spree and limousine tour of Manhattan, taking in Central Park, the Empire State Building and Ground Zero. The highlight of the holiday was a night on Broadway watching the musical version of Mary Poppins.

But the following morning divorcee Mrs Bray realised the bitterly cold New York air had turned her cough into something far more serious. When she called the hotel doctor a security guard arrived, took one look and dialled 911 for an emergency ambulance.

It was, says Mrs Bray, 'the kind of incident you can't even begin to predict'. She was no stranger to foreign travel, having taken the girls on several European holidays. Although she had full travel insurance - she had no idea whether it covered unaccompanied children and, in any case, was too ill to check.

For Gemma and Katie the prospect of an unspecified stay in a foreign children's home was frightening enough. Worse, they had no means of contacting their mother and no idea if she was even getting better.

'We just did not know what to expect,' said Gemma.

'Our knowledge of orphanages was based on the musical Annie and the Tracey Beaker books. It wasn't quite like either of those.

'The other girls were much nicer than we expected. We thought, a New York children's home? That's got to be really rough.

'In fact our English accents meant they treated us like celebrities. They were really friendly, asked about the Queen and what life was like in England. We also got sweet waffles, which were lovely.'

For Katie, though, separation from both her mum and big sister eventually started to tell. 'At first it was a big adventure,' she said, 'we were in a part of New York we never expected to see.

'What happened was so shocking we didn't think it was actually happening. But then reality kicked in. I was worried about mum and I didn't know how long we were going to be held. The orphanage people seemed to know nothing. It was scary.'

By the morning of December 29th Mrs Bray was demanding to know where her daughters were. An on-call city social worker sat at her bedside making phone calls and eventually found them. But the orphanage refused to agree their release.

She was told the rules meant she had to be out of hospital before a handover could take place.

'That was the moment I discharged myself,' said Mrs Bray. 'I just walked out in this dreadful state and got a taxi to the hotel. I had an armful of inhalers and antibiotics and whatever.

'There was this mad crazy woman dressed in pyjamas at the reception desk demanding to be let into her room. Fortunately the duty manager remembered me.

'Even then, it wasn't until the girls were actually in a car and on their way that I knew I was getting them back. It was such a relief to hug them. I wanted to take them and run.'

Despite the family's ordeal she bears no grudges towards her American hosts and plans to return to New York with Gemma and Katie 'because it's a city we all love very much.'

Neither does she have any plans to complain, despite receiving a letter posted to her Devon home from the City of New York Administration for Children's Services.

It begins: 'Dear Evonne (sic) Bray, this is to inform you that you are the subject of a report of suspected child abuse or maltreatment received by the New York State Child Abuse and Maltreatment Register (State Central Register) on 12/29/2007.

'This means that you have been identified as the person(s) who is responsible for causing or allowing to be inflicted injury, abuse, or maltreatment to the child(ren).

'This report has been transmitted to QUEENS County Child Protective Service for commencement of an investigation and evaluation of the report as required by the New York State Child Protective Services Act.'

Mrs Bray says she has been assured this is simply standard practice. 'It seems a bit harsh when you've been struck down with pneumonia,' she said.

'A part of me is still really angry about the whole thing. Why on earth didn't the social workers call the British embassy?

'I would not expect visitors to the UK, or even a child delinquent, to be treated like that. These were two teenage girls on holiday, quite scared, stripped, searched and separated from each other.

'My girls have been brought up to do as they're told, to respect rather than question authority. Perhaps that's the wrong thing in this day and age.

'I felt absolutely powerless to help them. I couldn't breathe - let alone talk. The attitude of the hospital was basically: "No friends in New York? No family? What are you doing here?

'Looking back you would not believe what happened if you saw it in a soap opera.'

Despite it all, the Brays are clearly from sturdy stock. Within 30 minutes of their re-union, they were taking a cab around Times Square and on to Mary Poppins; determined to make the most of their last night in the Big Apple.

When they finally returned to Devon Mrs Bray was distraught to discover that her next big foreign trip - a charity Arctic Expeditionin February - was a non-starter. Her GP told her bluntly that it could kill her.

'It was disappointing but I will definitely be completing my Arctic challenge,' she said.

'As for New York? We'll be back.'