My baby had cancer but social workers falsely accused me of child abuse and took all three of my children
One Saturday, when the baby was just four weeks old, Louise noticed that she was looking very ill, as though she was about to collapse. ..."One of the doctors then sat me down and said: 'It is touch and go'" The team mentioned right away that it might be cancer. ...
But further investigation had showed that the left kidney and the area around it was swollen, and among medical staff there was a wide variety of opinion about the cause. Before long, doctors became highly suspicious that this was, in fact, caused by an injury. ...
Her words fell on deaf ears. Back home, her elder daughter, who was being cared for by a neighbour, was collected by social workers and taken into foster care.
Yet still the trusting Louise thought it would all be sorted out in a few days. How wrong she was. ...
Four days later, worse news followed: her baby daughter was to be taken into foster care, too. ...
In an emotional outburst, she blurted out to the jury that she wanted to take a lie detector test to prove that she had done nothing wrong. It was the turning point. The jury believed her, and in November 2004 she was acquitted of the charges. However, her children remained in care. ...
In 2005, a year after she had been acquitted, Louise had became pregnant for a third time.
She is reluctant to talk about the father, or name him, although they are no longer together - but at Christmas time, when she was heavily pregnant, the social workers called and told her they planned to take the latest addition away from her at birth.
"I couldn't believe my ears," says Louise.
"I had been declared not guilty in a criminal court - yet they still had both my children and were wanting my new baby. It was torture."
The baby was born early in 2006. True to their word, Louise had just given birth and was trying to breastfeed when the social workers arrived at Altnagelvin Hospital, Derry. ...
Ten days later, when she was about to leave hospital, the social workers returned and seized the child, placing the baby with foster parents.
Only recently - following the collapse of the Social Services Trust case - has Louise been given back the baby, and her eldest child, too.
She has missed a whole chunk of their early years.
But perhaps the saddest thing of all is that the little girl who was so sick as a baby may never return home again. She has known no mother or father apart from her foster parents, and has bonded with them very closely. ...
"She may never come home and live with me again because she wants to be with the only people she has ever recognised as her parents. It may be cruel to take her back now."
It is, by any standards, a tragic indictment of the child protection system.
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