Monday 9 December 2013

The Church Warden, post 1. answer to request, please note, I can only deal with things like this a bit at a time.

I find this difficult to write, but I will do my best, and at some point I will share some of the many statements that I wrote about the church warden for the police, the Diocese and the people supporting me.

I am writing from memory, and my memory is full of trauma blanks. I have not come to terms with what happened with the church warden, and I have not been able to work through this in therapy, because in therapy we have been trying to help me cope with what the Diocese, past and present, have done to destroy me.

I had not been in Jersey long, and I was working at the weekends, so I had only been able to get to early Holy Communion and evening services.
So I went to the evening service at that awful church, I didn't know it was an awful church at the time.
It was only a small evening service.
The church warden came in, and this was surprising because he normally went to the Town Church with his wife and the Dean and his wife for the evening service as he did not like the evening service at his own church.
 I can't remember why he turned up at his own church that evening. But he did, and he asked people who I was, and everyone said they didn't know.

He came and asked if he could sit with me, and I, really not knowing any better, said yes.
He told me he was church warden, and I was used to lots of safe church wardens on the mainland, so I assumed he was safe.

The Vicar's wife came over and sat with us, and the church warden said she was there to keep an eye on him, which maybe referred to this 'chaperoning' policy, which was so noticably absent the rest of the time. If this chaperoning policy ever properly existed.

Anyway, the churchwarden spoke to me alone outside the church afterwards, nothing untoward then, but two weeks? later, after another evening service, he took me for a walk, told me that God wanted me to be his adoptive daughter, and he held my hand as we walked, but if anyone walked near, he withrew his hand.
He said some unusual and inappropriate things, asking me if I used drugs or had boyfriends, and he said he wanted my Dad's phone number in case anything happened to me, which I thought was very arrogant and behind times, my dad was not my next of kin, I, even then knew I could choose my next of kin, and at the time, my fear of my family meant my Dad was not my next of kin.
I was not happy with his questioning of me, because it did not seem normal.

Anyway, the church warden sat with me in a shelter on the seafront and held my hand and told me about his life, how he had a wife and two sons and how he was a dinghy instructor and how he worked for Romerils, which he described as a 'Christian' company.

He took his hand away from mine when some children approached us.
He told me he 'had to go home or his wife would be angry' which seemed strange to me.

And then he told me he wanted me to go home with him.

So I did.

I completely innocently saw this as just friendship. I still have that naivety, sadly, I cannot tell properly what people's motives are.

But when we got to his house, his wife's immediate reaction was not good, but she quickly pasted on a smile and went to put the kettle on.
But her initial reaction remained with me. She looked angry and worried. She didn't know me and hadn't met me before, but she obviously was not happy at him bringing someone home like that.





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