🪞 SWANK London Ltd.
Mirror Court Dispatch – Journal Series, Vol. II
I Left Her on Read in the Office
In Re: Sibling Protection, Lost Conversations, and the State-Induced Collapse of Normalcy
Metadata
Filed: 1 August 2025
Reference Code: SWANK-JOURNAL-0825-SIBLINGS
Filename: 2025-08-01_SWANK_JournalEntry_SiblingBurden_InterruptedDevelopment.pdf
1-Line Summary:
A teenager documents the silent costs of foster separation: missed love, lost motivation, and forced emotional labour.
I. WHAT HAPPENED
This handwritten page, drawn from the same protected journal as the “Bike Ban” entry, reveals the burden of sibling protection that has been shifted — unfairly and invisibly — onto the shoulders of a 16-year-old boy with chronic asthma, emotional acuity, and the right to a life.
In it, he writes:
That he’s working harder than the state to protect his siblings’ happiness
That his own coping tools have been confiscated or restricted
That he was building a friendship with a girl he met during office visits, but the separation — including lack of digital access — ended it
That he was planning for his future, including exams and GCSEs, before the removal
That he now struggles to find motivation or meaning
That he is trying, maturely, to make peace with an injustice no child should have to rationalise
This is not a behavioural note.
It is a witness statement in longhand.
II. WHAT THE COMPLAINT ESTABLISHES
Regal’s entry demonstrates:
Emotional Labour Transfer – “I’m working harder than them to keep my siblings happy”
Suppression of Joy and Tools – “So far I can only do one of those things…”
Social Isolation – He lost contact with a peer he was bonding with after weeks of silence
Academic Interruption – “Planning for next year’s GCSEs… now it’s hard to find the motivation”
Internalised Resilience – “I’m sure I’ll be reading this back in a couple years and laughing about it”
This is the documentation of an interrupted adolescence — a text of quiet rebellion, grief, and astonishing insight.
It reflects not instability, but unacknowledged stability.
Not dysfunction, but structural betrayal.
III. WHY SWANK LOGGED IT
Because emotional survival is not a safeguarding plan.
Because confiscated relationships are not neutral.
Because when you isolate a child who was thriving, you owe the world an answer.
And because resilience should not be necessary to survive state care.
This page is evidence that love existed — and was interrupted.
That a child was building a future — and was sidelined.
That a system tried to erase normalcy — and was noticed.
IV. VIOLATIONS
Children Act 1989, s.1 – Best interests principle fundamentally compromised
UNCRC Article 12 & 13 – Right to express feelings, communicate, and maintain relationships
ECHR Article 8 – Family and private life obliterated by systemic obstruction
Procedural Negligence – Failure to support sibling relationships and academic continuity
Safeguarding Ethics – Emotional harm via institutional overreach and interpersonal denial
V. SWANK’S POSITION
This entry, like those before it, remains in the evidentiary archive not as trauma porn — but as testimony.
This boy had plans.
This boy had love.
This boy had a support system — internal and external — and it was all thrown into crisis for reasons that cannot withstand scrutiny.
He is not being dramatic.
He is being articulate.
He is narrating the scene of his own detachment — and documenting the state that caused it.
Filed with mirror-clarity and ceremonial scorn,
Polly Chromatic
Director, SWANK London Ltd.
www.swanklondon.com