'DEAD' MUM BATTLES TO GET LOVE-TUG KIDS

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Nov 19, 2006 | by STEVE SMITH in Raymondville, Texas

A SCOTS mother has flown to the US for a courtroom custody battle over the sons who were told she was dead.

Love-tug mum Angela Jackson jetted into Texas to fight for her children who were snatched abroad by her ex-husband as she was being treated for cancer.

Her three-year campaign to have her sons returned took a dramatic twist last week after her US lawyer secured a court hearing for the case.

A judge in the southern Texas town of Raymondville, close to the Mexican border, will now rule this week if sons Scott, 15, and Brett, 13, should return to Scotland with their mother.

The brothers were whisked abroad by Mrs Jackson's bigamist former husband Fred despite a court order banning him from leaving the country with his sons.

Last night as she prepared for Monday's case, Mrs Jackson, 44, of Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, said: "I still cannot believe that after all this time, I'm finally going to have the day in court that I've fought for.

"It is a day I never thought I would see and there have been times when I really felt like giving up.

"It would have been easier to just try and accept I was never going to see my boys again but there was no way I could do that.

"As a mother I knew in my heart I had to do everything possible to let them see that I still love them and will do anything to get them back.

"Fred has moved around Texas but when I found out where he was I put everything into getting my boys back.

"I'm quite sure that after all this time he was laughing at me thinking that I would give up.

"Well now I've got the day in court I wanted and the judge can make the decision.

"I've brought some of the boys' old toys with me and some photographs to help them remember the lives they had in Scotland. It's going to be an incredibly emotional week ahead but I just have to be positive.

"I would love to be getting back on a plane to Scotland with my boys, but I know how long they have been in Texas and they have never had the chance to hear my side of the story.

"It may be that the court rules they should stay in the US but at least I now have the chance to finally make contact and hopefully become a part of their lives again.

"It is going to be an ordeal for the boys and myself going into court this week, but my ex-husband has made me suffer more than any mother should.

"I'm going through every possible emotion, but we just have to wait and see what the court rules and what the boys want."

The Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled in March last year that Mr Jackson - who was fined for marrying wife Sandra while still married to Angela - had removed the boys unlawfully.

Despite having the law on her side, Mrs Jackson has faced a long fight to have the case brought to a US court.

Her lawyer, Pamela Brown, said after meeting Angela yesterday: "We have a strong case because Mr Jackson was in violation of the court order preventing him removing the children from Scotland.

"There are defences he can use, such as the boys are settled in America and might not want to return.

"That is a matter for the judge to decide. This hearing is not about deciding who is the more suitable parent for the boys, it's about getting them returned to the Scottish jurisdiction for that to be decided."

Mrs Jackson said her ex-husband, a former soldier, fled to Texas with his sons before a court hearing to decide who should be awarded custody.

She tracked them down in Texas after spotting Mr Jackson's name on internet chat sites. She managed to email her boys' former school in Beeville, Texas, where she was horrified to learn her sons had told teachers their mother had died from cancer.

Close to tears as she prepared her case, Mrs Jackson said: "I don't know how Fred will be able to even look at me in the courtroom knowing what he told our boys. To lie to your own sons and tell them their mother was dead is pure evil. I will never forgive him for what he has done to our family."

Mrs Jackson, who has two older children from a previous relationship, met her husband in 1988.

They married in 1990 and lived in Scotland and the US. before separating in 1999. Shortly after Christmas that year, police told Mrs Jackson her husband had bigamously "married" Scottish civil servant Sandra MacGregor.

In 2001 he was fined pounds 2,000 for bigamy and later legally married Miss MacGregor, who had two children of her own.

The boys went to live with their father and stepmother in Wick, while their mother was treated for breast cancer and searched for a new house.

But she said that despite being ordered by the courts not to go abroad with the children, he flew to Texas with them.

Mrs Jackson added: "I've contemplated suicide in the past because I was so depressed at being apart from my boys for another Christmas. Maybe this time I have my chance to show them how much they mean to me."