By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-06 21:51:53 | Updated at 2024-12-23 02:24:20
2 weeks ago
When Angela MacVicar set up the charity Rainbow Valley in memory of her precious daughter Johanna, there was one woman she trusted more than any other to run it: the best friend who had been by her side through the darkest of times.
Lindsay MacCallum was Angela’s closest confidante: her first phone call every day, the friend who helped her through crushing grief after Johanna died from leukaemia aged 27.
It was this unstinting faith in their friendship which made the heartbreak all the greater when Angela, 64, finally discovered that MacCallum had betrayed her in the most devastating way.
For more than a decade, MacCallum had kept up the façade of being the devoted head of Rainbow Valley, while to satisfy her own avarice she stole thousands of pounds from the cancer charity.
She plundered the organisation’s donations to fund her self-indulgence, squandering funds which should have helped people battling illness on designer clothes and handbags, luxury holidays, beauty salons and blow dries.
While she was pretending to be Angela’s dearest friend she was taking from the charity which had been her late daughter’s dream.
In October MacCallum, 62, was jailed for three years at Falkirk Sheriff Court for stealing £85,978 from Rainbow Valley and embezzling £9,505 from the Anthony Nolan Trust, a life-saving stem cell donation charity where she had previously been a fundraiser.
Earlier the court was told MacCallum had £175,000 of available savings – considerable wealth which showed her theft had been motivated by nothing more than greed and a desire to elevate her social status.
Johanna McVicar died from leukaemia aged 27. Her mother, Angela, set up the charity Rainbow Valley in her memory.
MacCallum stole from the charity set up in the memory of Angela MacVicar’s daughter, Johanna
On Wednesday the same court will decide if it will grant a compensation order to allow the charities to claw back the funds lost through MacCallum’s crimes.
But for Angela no amount of recompense can ever make up for MacCallum’s deceit.
She said: ‘My head was spinning when I discovered what Lindsay had done. I could not take it in. She was my best friend and I loved the bones of her. I trusted her implicitly. When I found out she had defrauded the charity I was bereft.
‘I thought she loved Johanna and felt the same about me but she would never have stolen the money if she had.
‘Every penny she took could have been used for good.
‘I realise now that she is incapable of love. She only cares about herself. The charity was Johanna’s legacy but Lindsay exploited it and tarnished the memory of her name. That makes me incredibly sad.’
Johanna died in May 2005 after being diagnosed at 16 with chronic myeloid leukaemia, a type of cancer which affects the white blood cells and bone marrow.
The news that Johanna had cancer had imploded the lives of her family.
Angela said: ‘With a diagnosis like that it is as though you close your eyes and when you open them again your whole world has changed. She was 16 and we were just starting to let go of the apron strings when suddenly we were pulling them back in again trying to save her.
‘I felt I had lost all control of everything. I had to hand Johanna’s life over to doctors.
‘A parent is used to being able to kiss their child better but you can’t do that with cancer. You are lost – thrown into a world of hospitals and medical jargon and there is a sense of utter helplessness.’ Not long after her diagnosis, Johanna underwent a bone marrow transplant but it failed.
Johanna’s only hope was another transplant but neither Angela, her ex-husband Frank nor their other three daughters were a match.
So they turned to the Anthony Nolan Trust which keeps the world’s only register of bone marrow donors.
Angela MacVicar, left and Lindsay MacCallum
Rather than passively wait for a miracle the family threw themselves into campaigning for donors. They were aware that the chances of a match were slim but they were glad for someone else to benefit from their efforts.
It was through the trust that Angela met Lindsay and the two became close as they rallied support for donor clinics across the country.
Angela said: ‘It was an intense friendship. We just got on so well. Sometimes I would speak to her five times a day, even when one of us was abroad on holiday. I thought the world of her.’
As Johanna grew increasingly unwell it was MacCallum who Angela shared her fears with as she cared for her daughter at home in Bishopton, Renfrewshire.
When Johanna’s body finally gave in to her disease, Angela’s only solace was knowing that the struggle was over and her daughter was at last at peace.
One of her first phone calls after her daughter had drawn her final breath was to break the news to MacCallum and the two friends wept together.
At the funeral at Paisley Cathedral MacCallum gave a tearful eulogy where she paid tribute to Johanna, all that she had achieved and how much she had personally meant to her. It is a memory that haunted Angela after she learned of MacCallum’s callous duplicity.
In 2008 Angela decided to establish the charity which had been Johanna’s idea and its name came from her love of rainbows.
The idea was to support cancer sufferers to learn skills which could enhance their mental and physical wellbeing; to help them find a happiness instead of being defined solely by their disease.
It was natural that Angela would want MacCallum on board, not just because of their friendship, but for the benefit of her expertise gleaned from her work at the Anthony Nolan Trust.
For a few years she seemed ideal for the job – the charity seemed to be doing well, Angela trusted her friend’s skills and motivations.
But around 2018 Angela felt MacCallum’s attitude towards her inexplicably change. She questioned her decisions, accused her of interference and asked her to pull back from the charity.
Angela said: ‘I thought I was going crazy; that I must have been at fault when in reality she was gaslighting me.
‘She was trying to push me away to make sure I wasn’t around to scrutinise what she was doing.’
In early 2022 Lindsay shocked Angela by suggesting that the charity was no longer viable and it should be folded through lack of funding.
Angel said: ‘I couldn’t understand it and it was awful to think we might need to close.
‘Then we got a surprise donation of £10,000. I thought she would be happy that the future of the charity had been secured but she really wasn’t.
‘Now I see that she was hoping Rainbow Valley would shut down and she could get a chance to cover her tracks.
‘She was a manipulative narcissist. It is so clear looking back.’
In May 2022, Lindsay suddenly said she was planning to resign and she wanted it announced that she was leaving to save the charity the cost of her salary.
Angela said: ‘She was polishing her halo. Trying to appear so benevolent when all along she had been stealing from us.’
At first Angela thought Lindsay’s explanation for leaving was plausible, given she had appeared wealthy and didn’t seem to need the money – she lived in a pleasant home in Aberfeldy and cash always appeared readily available.
Angela said: ‘She never seemed to want for anything and she did enjoy the status of having money.
‘Once when she was having her kitchen replaced, she threw out every bit of the old one in a skip, right down to the spoons. She was ridiculously wasteful and indulgent.’
It was only by chance that Angela discovered that it was the charity which was funding her profligacy.
Two weeks after MacCallum left, Angela and the board discovered she had set up a bank account under the guise of ring-fencing ticket money for the charity’s annual ball.
Angela and the board decided it should be closed but first they requested the bank statement to tally the accounts. They were shocked to discover payments had been made to boutiques and Lindsay’s personal credit card account.
She had also forged dozens of cheques, and in her last year with the charity had taken more than £20,000.
‘I didn’t want to believe it at first,’ said Angela. ‘But I had to face up to the truth that Lindsay had been defrauding us for years.’
When Angela called to confront MacCallum she at first denied it but eventually, under scrutiny, she confessed: ‘I did it. I took the money.’
To this day MacCallum hasn’t given a concrete reason for her crimes.
Angela immediately called in police and after a two-month investigation officers visited MacCallum’s home and arrested her for fraud.
In the meantime MacCallum donated £25,000 to the charity.
Angela said: ‘At that point she didn’t know I had called the police. I think she thought we would take the money and move on. But as soon as I knew what she had done I was determined to report her to police.
‘The charity was set up to help people with cancer not for Lindsay to have a rich lifestyle.’
The pain of MacCallum’s betrayal was compounded by the fact that Rainbow Valley had been inspired by Johanna.
Despite her illness, which saw her weight plummet to six-and-a-half stones, Johanna vowed she would live life to the full and she fronted media campaigns raising awareness of the trust and her disease.
Angela said: ‘She was selfless. She used to say that it was important that people didn’t join the register just for her, that they did it for anyone who needed a transplant.’
Her charm, vivacity and sheer zest for life captured the public’s imagination and her campaigns saw her form friendships with celebrities including singer Robbie Williams and actor Dougray Scott.
Angela said: ‘Johanna loved campaigning, she loved the attention and adventure. She wanted so much to live and she did more in her 27 years than someone who lives to 100.
‘Her death was a moment in time but her life was everything.’
Since she was a child, rainbows had been Johanna’s favourite thing and when she knew she was dying she told her mother: ‘When we can’t be together any more we will meet in the middle of a rainbow.’
Johanna had often felt that cancer sufferers needed more than medical treatment for their disease; that they should know how to enhance their mental and physical health through nutrition and complimentary therapies.
That has been the ambition of Rainbow Valley.
Techniques such as mindfulness are taught by the charity at two-day residential courses held at Gleddoch Hotel and Spa in Langbank, Renfrewshire, and have been so successful there is now a waiting list of 200 people. Angela said: ‘It is not a lifesaving charity but it is life-changing. We don’t sit around talking about cancer. We laugh so much.’
When MacCallum appeared in court to plead guilty to two charges of fraud, Angela went along to watch the proceedings.
‘I saw her in the dock,’ she said. ‘I felt that she was a woman that I had never really known. She was stranger to me.’
At court McCallum was asked whether she had committed the crimes. She hissed back in temper from the dock: ‘Yes.’
Angela said: ‘There was no remorse, only anger that she had been caught. She eventually apologised to the charity but she has never said sorry to me, to Johanna and our family.’
Two weeks ago, a confiscation order was made under the Proceeds of Crime Act but that money will go to the Crown for distribution among charities other than Anthony Nolan and Rainbow Valley.
This coming week MacCallum will be informed whether she must pay both £70,000 under that order and additional compensation to the charities she defrauded.
Today, Angela and her family will be at a fundraising Christmas concert for the charity at Paisley Cathedral, where Johanna’s funeral was held.
Angela will be there with her adult daughters, Brodie, Kendall and Gemma, and her seven grandchildren. As always, Johanna will be in their thoughts.
‘I refuse to hate Lindsay but I can’t forgive her,’ said Angela.
‘All I want now is for the charity to carry on helping people. It is too late to help Johanna but it is not too late to make her dream become everything she hoped it would be. That’s what’s important to me.’
