Jersey, written in 2011, continued

They very soon involved themselves in my life quite deeply, their choice not mine, and I went along, there were similarities to Jill and George in some ways and differences too, this couple didn’t phone me every night, some of their emotional boundaries were different, the wife did have problems but didn’t get ill in the same way as Jill, her husband was a very very tactile man and loved to touch women and look at them, in his own admission, he loved to cuddle the old ladies in church and they looked forward to this treat, but he told me he didn’t like hugging men, he said he had been really embarrassed when a man had given him a bear hug. During this time I became in frequent contact with them as they got involved in my life and my worries, I remember one evening how the man said how a lot of their life was about me at that time, I said to him that that worried me and that I didn’t want to take up too much of their time, and he replied that they would tell me if I was taking up too much of their time.

I was beginning to worry about the future as the summer went on, but this couple and their vicar and his wife had decided it would be a good idea for me to stay in Jersey and 'receive some healing', I did as I do, I went along with what the ‘adults’ wanted. I was restless but at the same time I knew I loved Jersey already. It rained a lot that summer and the postal strikes damaged the flying flowers business that the nursery I worked for ran.

By the way two of the family who owned that nursery were part of St. A's, though one died during my war with the church, and the nursery were struggling due to rising costs and the 50 year old glasshouses needing too much maintenance, but anyway, business was not good for some of that summer.

My abuser took me into town to get my phone sorted out, English mobiles are no good in Jersey. We went through a few confusing hurdles of getting my phone unlocked and put on a Jersey network, he seemed very proud of this, he had ‘taken himself out of work’ to get this done, the funny thing about Jersey is that people seem to have a lot more freedom with breaktimes and people coming to see them at work than people in England do, and my abuser’s wife took to coming to see me at work as well, and taking me out of work for lunch, which is nice, do not misunderstand me, I remember and am grateful for any kindness and that is what makes all the messed up and abuse situations so terrible, I hurt and I have been told that I am malicious and wicked and use people, but I accept their kindness, I ask nothing unless I really have to, and I go along with what other people want even if it is not always what I want.

(14/01/14 Jersey is very old fashioned, it was like being back in the 1950s there)

I loved my job, working in Jersey can be high pressure, just as life in Jersey can be, but both life and work there are also funnily and paradoxically more relaxed as well. For example in England ever single little thing is a health and safety hazard, over there it is not so, in England you don’t get credit or subs on your wages, over there you do, in a way people are more trusting, and in a way they are very sharp as well.  Jersey is a financial centre, so it is not an idyllic island, it is a well equipped and wealthy place with every kind of entertainment, a friend of the abusers involved herself with me early on and told me that in Jersey ‘ people don’t just go to work and go home, they do things’ and that is true, while I was in Jersey I think I did things I never dreamed I would, I took part in a tremendous range of activities which I will describe later.
(14/01/14 described in previous posts about activities).

I was overjoyed day by day to always see the sea, to always be able to ‘walk in the tide’ as Jersey people called it, ‘walking in the tide’ is an everyday thing in Jersey, and I loved it, I also freeclimbed on the cliffs on my own and I loved doing that, I also had with me a boogie board that I had had in the UK, just a cheap polystyrene thing with pictures of dolphins on, and I would go down to St. Brelades and shyly leave my clothes in the big outcrop of rocks between there and Ouasine bay, and slink down to the water and boogie board, I felt amazing doing that, though every day for me was shadowed by my ever difficult money situation, I would lay back on the boogie board looking at the amazing cliffs and trees against the Jersey blue sky and I would look at the beach and the rocks and the sea, and I would feel amazing, it was like being on a faraway holiday island, I had never known such amazing surroundings, and yet the tension of the money and not knowing my future were terrible.

(I was wearing a swimsuit, not nude boogieboarding)

The thing was that I was honest, Jersey was technically a different country and I could have simply vanished from England and not dealt with the debts, but sadly I was not capable of such a thing, especially not as it left my former addresses  open to creditors who could cause them problems, and since the creditors technically could not touch me in Jersey, I gave them all my address and continued to try and pay them and continued to receive threatening letters, though by the time I got their letters each time it was too late to pay the instalments, and so they continued to add charges, so the debt escalated, but I kept trying, each debt letter was like a physical punishment, and I would get home dreading the letters.

My abuser decided to take things into his own hands, as he did, that was his way. One evening I was invited round for supper, as I frequently was, after supper he got me to sit in the front room and this is difficult to describe, he gets what he wants, he gets it in a determined powerful way, and he had decided to get me to tell him how much I owed in debts, by then he had become tactile with me and could cuddle and stroke me, and did all the time, and I was responding, I was being cuddly and I tried to cuddle behind his back on the sofa and ignore his questions, but he continued to question, actually not knowing why he was asking and not believing that he was going to help me, I ended up telling him, because during this recent time, JM had got me to tell her that I was struggling and said she would help, and when I told her how much I was in debt by, she said she couldn’t help but that if I would just come back and live in Hampshire she would ‘see what she could do’, and I knew very well from that that if I came back then that was what she actually wanted as she didn’t want me to be in Jersey but she would not help me if I came back, believe me I knew that for a fact. So I said to her that I was not coming back and that she had embarrassed me. But the abuser had something in mind, he was going to help me, he forced me to tell him how much I owed, even though I prayed out load, there and then for him to stop putting pressure on me, he and his wife roundly told me off for that prayer.
(14/01/14 JM didn't like losing control of me and wanted me back where she could intervene, and she did intervene in Jersey)

He wasn’t taking no for an answer, he cuddled me and loved me and said he was my daddy, while his wife looked on and wasn’t too happy but tried to go along with this. He sat me down and told me he was giving me a letter, I wasn’t happy, I thought the letter was some kind of punishment, but he produced this letter after getting me to give him all the details of my finances, he had written down that he and his wife would pay off my debts and I would owe them instead, I was horrified, I remembered Jill and George and I knew more than anything that I could not be in debt to this couple I hadn’t known that long, I said no initially, but they persuaded me to accept this offer, the wife had tears in her eyes, as she did sometimes, which always horribly reminded me of Jill Lihou being emotionally upset.

My abuser was delighted that I accepted the offer, which had conditions that I didn’t borrow money to repay the loan, that I didn’t mention the loan to anyone – which the man from Autism Jersey said was one of the signs that there was something wrong there, but I don’t necessarily agree, and something about what would happen about the loan if one or the other of the couple died. I believed and believe that loan to be an act of genuine goodwill, albeit a too big one and one that I was indeed under too much pressure to accept.

It took some time to pay off the debts as one of the creditors didn’t read the letter we sent them properly and tried to take the money direct from the bank instead of waiting for a cheque as the money was not in the bank, they eventually refunded the bank charge that that caused but in the meantime it made things worse, then it was all paid off, and I was by then working and had a bit of money in the bank, but that was later.
Anyway.

I found the abusers church difficult, and one memory of that difficulty was the prayer meetings where they used to try and pray the world into submission and pray people to do what they wanted and force people to their God, I remember one of them trying to use prayer to force people to like the new services when they changed all the services, I believe that the divide between me and the vicar and his wife did include my questions about the new services, my questions were innocent and non-hostile and asking among other things what I could do about worship on the Sundays when I was working, as they were removing the 8am communion and evening services, the vicar and his wife would not even discuss or explain the new services to me, the other thing they did that caused a divide was when they were going to New Wine in England I said I had always wanted to steward there, they said they would ask and see if I could and then they said they asked and had been told it was too late for me to apply, I then enquired for myself and found out that not only was it not too late, but NW were short of stewards, and when I told this to the vicar and his wife they said they ‘had assumed it was too late’ even though they previously said they had asked. They were not the Godly couple I had thought they were and later at New Wine Channel Islands they further hurt me but because of time I have left the explanation of that in the statements document.

(They actually did a lot more that is missed out of this statement, including allowing the churchwarden to take me home and do what he was doing even though he was regularly seen to be tactile with me, and be alone with me being tactile, and they allowed him to override a complaint to them by me, and much more, including liasing with him but not speaking to me as I deteriorated as a result of what he was doing).

 Anyway, back to the prayer meetings, afterwards my abuser was always in a high, excited mood and he would pick me up off the ground and hold me in his arms with my legs dangling; he was a big tall man. His wife hated him doing this and would openly protest, no-one had ever done this to me so I was always a bit baffled, and later Philip LeClaire told me that a married man should not do this to a young girl.

Samarez Manor, we went there for a picnic one Sunday, we walked round the grounds and had a picnic, my abuser cut up his orange peel into little bits and folded everything up and put it in a yogurt pot, his wife said he always did things like that and that his old colleagues used to laugh at him. He smiled. He started playing with me, he wanted me to lie on the ground with him and rest my head on his lap or something, it was far too intimate and I protested and so did his wife, so he said something about it being a game that we could play at home in the garden.

Another time that I was a bit puzzled was when they took me for walk at St. Aubins when my abuser went to check his boat, he took my hand as we walked from the boat to the ice cream kiosk, and his wife took my other hand, as we ate ice creams she told me that they loved me, I was puzzled as we had not known each other that long, and I said ‘you don’t know me’, they said that God told them about me or something similar. My abuser said that I had no idea the qualities they could see in me and the potential.

Anyway, Jill and George got in touch after I sent them a forwarding address, they sent me some chocolate but didn’t put enough post  on it, and I only had a pound and I had to pay that to the postman to get their letter and it upset me to hear from them and I told them to leave me alone.
This was typical of them.

Accommodation, my landlord was always an unpredictable chap, he sobbed for his wife or he lost his temper for no reason sometimes, only once with me, and my abuser when he heard about landlord losing his temper told me that lots of people knew about my landlord and his eccentricities, he lost his temper because for some reason he wanted to get his second Mercedes out early one morning before I was up, and I was parked in front of the garage as requested as he usually used his first Mercedes. He came up and thumped on my door, it was early, must have been because I got up for work early, he really thumped and was raging about the car and I was afraid he would come in my room, which he didn’t allow me to lock. I hate noise in the early morning, shouting and thumping early in the morning are unbearable, and he knew he had upset me. My abuser decided it was time to move me on from there sharpish. I feel sad as I write this that my abuser seemed so kind and caring and loving, he was, in his way, but he was over the top and not all his motives were good, and in the end the way he did things and the regression and sexual element were just the last straw.