`A daughter is not a stray dog'

A mother leaves her child in the care of the father. The next thing she knows, he's left the little girl at a police station and gone on holiday. Whatever he was thinking, he's not the only one.

IT WAS an act of apparent petulance that has shocked and appalled the nation's parents: Wayne Jackson dumped his 18-month-old daughter at a police station before taking off on holiday to Spain. He marched into Holbeck police station in Leeds and, much to the amazement of staff, left the baby on the counter. A few hours later he got on a plane with his wife and their two young children for a week in Ibiza to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

The nation's appalled. Of course we are. How could he?

This is just the sort of story that Britain loves to get outraged about in the last weeks of summer. With every new case, neighbours and relatives are wheeled out to express their shock and horror. But is that just a twinge of envy in their voices? In moments of extreme exhaustion and frustration, it must have crossed most parents' minds how lovely it would be to shut the door and walk off for a couple of child-free weeks - even days! - on the beach.

In many cases, the neglectful parents are usually confronted at the airport, blushing through their suntans, on their arrival home. In this case, the furious mother is here to voice the community's outrage.

Chloe's mother, Gayle Atha, 24, met Jackson, 35, about two-and-a-half years ago when she went to work as a volunteer at Majestic Cancer Care, a Leeds-based cancer charity. The relationship ended when she got pregnant.

Last Saturday, Jackson was looking after Chloe while her mother was working at a hairdressing salon - a part-time job she did every Saturday. Usually her mother, Janet Atha, looks after Chloe on Saturdays, but she had asked Jackson for help as she was recovering from two operations. He picked Chloe up from her mother's house in Rothwell, Leeds, in the morning but, some hours later, called her grandmother asking her to look after Chloe. Janet, who was about to go to bed, said no.

Jackson left Chloe at the police station, saying that he was going on holiday, and gave officers her grandmother's phone number. Police had no idea he was the child's father.

Janet Atha, 46, who only has one grandchild, is quick to comment. She is disgusted: "I'm angry, I'm bitter. I don't know how anyone can do that to Chloe. I have so much love for this little girl... I helped deliver her... Gayle lives round the corner from me. I can't understand why he didn't put her in the car and bring her round to me instead of dumping her on the police. It was around the time that Gayle would have been coming home anyway.

"A daughter is not a stray dog that you pick off the streets and bring to a police station. You fill in a form when it's a dog. She's a little girl, she's his flesh and blood. There's no greater gift than a child."

Mrs Atha also takes the opportunity to lay into her daughter's ex-boyfriend: "I never liked him from day one. He never spent a lot of time around me, because he knew I didn't like him. I tolerated him for Gayle."

She adds that her daughter had fallen out with Jackson because he didn't want to see Chloe as often as she would have liked. But after the latest turn of events, Gayle Atha is reprtedly seeking a court order to keep as much distance between Jackson and Chloe as possible.

Disgusted readers of this unedifying story are likely to be further infuriated by the strong element of hedonism - a holiday in the sun! In Spain! Indeed, that particular country appears to feature regularly in some of the more celebrated "home alone" cases which have enlivened the dog days of summer in recent years.

Diane Bogg sparked national outrage when she and her boyfriend Robert Pattinson went on holiday to Spain, leaving three children aged between one and eight. The four-year-old girl, who had been left with neighbours, was found sobbing on the doorstep after wandering home. When the story broke, the couple, from Padgate, Cheshire, refused to come home - probably fearing that a lynch mob would greet them. Such was the outrage that Bogg received death threats, fled to a secret address, changed her name and dyed her hair.

Michele Elliott, director of the national children's charity Kidscape, says Wayne Jackson should simply have stayed at home: ``This is an incredibly bizarre thing to do and no right-thinking parent would ever think of abandoning their child in that particular way so that they could go off and have a good time. Clearly, you are not very bonded to a kid if you do that."

She suggests that parents abandon their child out of frustration, selfishness, or a desire to get away from it. "I don't think it happens very often, but during holiday time it's because you see on television all these other people off having a good time. You feel it's your right to go off on holiday and there's no one around to help. You just think `to hell with it, I'm just going to leave the child and go'. It's all about me, me, me."

No doubt all those parents sitting freezing in the park playing pat-a- cake for the 900th time would love to think "the hell with it". But this summer, just like every other year, they'll have to make do with the cautionary tale of what would happen if they did.

Dumped for a week abroad

DIANE BOGG (right), from Padgate, Cheshire, went on holiday to Spain in 1996 with her boyfriend Robert Pattinson, leaving three children aged between one and eight with neighbours. Police were called after the four-year-old was found sobbing on the doorstep.

TWO WOMEN left seven children, including a nine-month-old girl, at home in Dorking, Surrey while they went on a week's holiday. The children told police that their mothers had not told them where they were going. The pair had left a note for a 16-year-old baby-sitter saying that they "had to have a break".

A 30-YEAR-old single mother from Kirby, Liverpool, was jailed for a year in 1995, after leaving her three children alone at home while she went on holiday to Spain. She was released several weeks later so the family could be reunited.

BRITISH COUPLE Philip and Jill Adam, from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, were arrested in Florida in June after leaving their two children, aged five and one, asleep in their hotel room while they went to watch a firework display. They were later released without charge.