Hidden: Betrayed, Exploited and Forgotten. How One Boy Overcame the Odds.

ONE REMARKABLE WOMAN

OVER 30 YEARS OF FOSTERING

CARER TO MORE THAN 150 CHILDREN

Tayo arrives at Cathy’s with only the clothes he stands up in. He has been brought to her by the police, but he is calm, polite, and very well-spoken, and not at all like the children she normally fosters. The social worker gives Cathy the forms which should contain Tayo’s history, but apart from his name and age, it is blank. Tayo has no past.

Tayo is an 'invisible' child, kidnapped from his loving father in Nigeria and brought illegally to the UK by his drink and drugs dependent prostitute mother, where he is put to work in a sweatshop in Central London. When he sustains an injury and is no longer earning, he is cast out.

When Cathy takes Tayo to school he points out a dozen different addresses where he has stayed in the last six months, often being left alone. Tayo lies, and manipulates situations to his own advantage and Cathy has to be continually on guard. Tayo’s social worker searches all computer databases but there is no record of Tayo – he has only attended school for three terms and has never seen a doctor. He and his mother have been evading the authorities by living ‘underground’.

With his mother recently released from prison, Tayo is desperate to live with his father in Nigeria, but no one can track him down or even prove that he exists.