Lets go back, part 8

One Sunday after church a woman approached me and said ‘Hi’ with a big friendly smile, JM had taught me to look at people and I could see a big friendly grin on this woman’s face, lots of people said hi and hello to me but I knew few names and I struggled to respond at all, but I knew that smiles meant friendliness, and this woman with delight and friendliness in her voice said to me ‘would you like to come to us for lunch? We are eating in the garden.’

This woman and her husband took me home, I was so very very nervous that my nose was running, they chatted away, seeming to realise that I could not say much, the woman did most of the talking while her husband listened and agreed with her and so did I, I actually had no idea who I was having lunch with, only that they were delightful and so was their garden, after a nice lunch they took me round the garden, teaching me plant names, and then we did the crossword, my first telegraph crossword, and I was hopeless at it back then.

Later I described that couple to JM and asked who I had lunch with, she said ‘That is A and R.’.  JM then said that she when she arrived in L. she had never thought she would have the (interesting surname) in her congregation, she became helpless with laughter as she said this, and so I did too, even though to this day I am not sure what the joke is. I am crying as I write this, the memory of that beautiful day and the start of my friendship with A. and R.

JM had to dismiss A. as benefice administrator shortly after that, she felt bad about it but A. was too busy with too many areas of her life to get all the administration done, then JM employed R.P. as benefice administrator, and after a while R. P. had an affair with a a girl who worked at Old Alresford Place, the headquarters of the Diocese of Winchester! and went off with her, so he was no longer benefice administrator.

 R’s wife  was left behind and got a horrible cancer and died, but JM ‘forgave’ R. and hugged him still, it’s funny how everyone else can do as they please and be forgiven and hugged, and I am outcast, abused in the church and, condemned and ostracised by the church and the diocese, when I have tried to behave morally! Again, being vulnerable and abused and angry is classified as much much worse than sexual immorality by anyone in the employ of the diocese of Winchester!

When R. left there was competition for the Benefice administrator post, FM applied and was angry that JM didn’t support his application as he did a lot of paperwork for the benefice anyway and was on the deanery synod, diocesan synod, even the general synod if he wanted – think about that and think about me putting a complaint to the diocese about this man who was in these positions, who was  a freemason supported by freemasons in the church, who was a magistrate, who was a part of Lou Scott-Joynt’s club, I didn’t have a hope in hell of having my complaint dealt with properly in the end with FM and the abuser in Jersey both well backed up and the parties in Jersey and L. working together to condemn me!

But in the case of the Benefice administrator job, FM failed to get it and was angry and refused to help with paperwork for JM and sulked long and deep, another member of church got the job and I think it was because of shingles she had to stop? And two other women took over and shared the job. I remember shyly bowling into the benefice office with a parcel of goods I had put together for the nightshelter for Christmas, ironically enough I also spent some spare time helping with street collections for the Trinity Centre!
( I didn't know, all those years ago, that I was going to be forced to use those services myself because of the same Diocese of Winchester). (And be further harmed by the Diocese of Winchester through them. 13/08/2015)

Back to the story: Things at JM’s house were not good, it is really hard to actually write things like this in sequence and explain it as it happened because I am trying to describe everything to you at once, and I keep remembering things and adding them in.

FM, as I explained, had suddenly softened to me and hugged me and then let JM move me in, he was a very jealous man and protective of JM, just as her mother was, but to extremes, he was known to lose his temper with people who turned up for help on JM’s day off, and to shout at people who came to the door, for which JM slated him if she found out, he also fell out with men in church over church matters and FM being unreasonable, but he was sweet and gentlemanly with most of the ladies, talking to them in a soft well-bred voice, as if he had swallowed chalk.

FM became involved in my life, JM had told me while I was in the bed and breakfast that she wanted to be like an adoptive mother to me, so I sometimes called her ‘Mammy’ or even ‘Parental unit’ –which made her laugh, and FM asked if he was a parental unit too? And JM and I were surprised. FM hurt and hated his own daughter, to the point of alienating her and leaving her in a psychiatric unit a lot of the time, JM used to try to look after FM’s daughter, until she had to choose between the daughter and FM because FM was being alienated by JM’s care of the daughter, so JM abandoned the daughter, unfortunately for me I was the spitting image of FM’s daughter (Sally), and this may well have caused some of FM’s reactions to me and definitely caused some of JM’s reactions.

JM made many references to Sally and me; I will go into this in more detail later as I need to go back to explaining about FM.

FM started to call me to him as I went past his study to go to my room, he told me he was ‘starved’, I was puzzled, he told me he was ‘starved of affection’, and he reached out to hug me, he told me that if JM was my mum, then he was my dad, he sat at his computer and hugged me, he got me to play games on the computer, he took me to the top of the stairs and sat me on his lap, JM’s dad came up the stairs and said ‘No!’ and I think he told JM and she told him not to, I had not thought anything about it, just that JM was a good person who loved God and FM was a church person and loved JM and so he must be a good person. But FM was never my Dad, or adoptive dad, and I remained fearful of him.

But things progressed, my friendship with JM was deeply strained and FM was taking advantage of this to comfort and cuddle me, JM got me to go into her office and tell her about my brother abusing me, after that, FM who had been listening outside the door got me to go and sit by his chair and tell him as well, ‘Poor kid’ he said softly, sympathetically. He liked to get me to sit by his chair after that, but I gather that JM got me to tell her because she really didn’t understand me and was wondering if I was a psychopath, I don’t think it helped that I couldn’t verbalise the abuse any more than I could verbalise anything, Great.

FM told JM that he wanted to buy me a skirt, JM told him that she doubted I could cope with men’s reactions if I went around in a skirt, and I did not want a skirt either, FM used to look at me as I walked upstairs to my room when he was sitting in his office at the bottom of the stairs, and this embarrassed me, I was not going to walk up those stairs in a skirt!

FM started standing on the landing outside my door, this was not great, the room had a window that faced onto the landing window so if I did not shut the curtains then he would be able to see me as he stood there when I was changing, the curtains had gaps even when they were closed and also when I was in the bathroom there was a gap between the bathroom door and the wall and if you looked through this gap you would have been able to see someone having a wash at the washbasin, this part of the abuse is part where I cannot actually prove his motive or justify what I am saying, but I know that he would stand on the landing and that he did actually come into my room without knocking one day when I was changing, and that I was uncomfortable with this. He took me out on day trips during the abuse, telling JM that I needed days out and it would help me, I had only ever had a few days out, and that was when I was living in Winchester with my landlady and her husband, and I was starting to have days out with Youth Group as well.

one day trip with FM in the beginning was to Marwell Zoo, I was really excited as I had never been to a zoo, as we were walking FM said to me ‘I can never allow anything sexual to happen between us, for JM’s sake’ I was amazed, I thought he was really eccentric, I told him that he was married and of course nothing would happen, but he kept hugging me, and when we went into the tropical house where the little crocodile was he hugged me and kissed me on the lips, I was bemused, I told him I wanted to kidnap the crocodile and bring it home. We went to the gift shop and got a big toy spider that looked real, we took it home to frighten JM with because she was terrified of spiders, we put it on the phone unit while JM was wandering round the house talking on the cordless phone, and she nearly screamed out loud when she saw it, only she was still on the phone so she stopped herself from screaming.

The next day trip was to Basingstoke, to the Milestones Museum, which bored me back then, and I was scared of the crowds and being enclosed, then we went bowling afterwards, FM was good at bowling as he used to do lawn bowls, I was hit and miss, on the way back he pulled over into a car park in Micheldever woods and he wanted me to give him oral sex and said he would reciprocate, I did not want to, so I put my thumb in my mouth and ignored him, I was a bit frightened, but he just got cross, not mad angry, and drove us home, he said that when I put my thumb in I was like a child and he couldn’t make love to a child, later he said to me ‘am I being too sexy?’ I answered ‘yes’ though I thought he would go mad, but he didn’t, he just backed off a bit for a while.