Friday, 18 October 2013
The horrendous end time in Jersey
Arrest, court, imprisonment, court, deportation.
I feel the need to briefly describe things in months running up to the arrest. But I can only be brief as it is too traumatic and I am still dissociating.
Jane Fisher was very much involving herself in my life against my wishes, mainly through my former friend Tracy leCouter, the curate at St. Clements church. Tracy had been my good and trusted friend until Jane Fisher get involved and also let the Dean know where I was worshipping. Which instantly left me feeling completely unable to worship there or be welcome and again my complaint against the Dean seemed to be invalidated, which ,made me furious.
Why tell someone I had complained about, who was in touch with the people who abused me and on their side, where I was worshipping, so I could again be treated badly and left outcast?
Anyway, in this time, the sadness and confusion led to me going to Tracy’s house to ask why it was all like this, and to ask her to stop communicating with Jane Fisher about me.
Tracy was hostile and made me out to be mentally ill, claiming it was only my paranoia about the Dean and Jane Fisher and that I was still welcome in St. Clements, even though I explained to her that I could not feel welcome under the circumstances. I begged her to stop being in contact with Jane Fisher.
She said no, and that she was going to phone Jane Fisher as soon as I had gone.
I told her I could not live with this.
I told her about the Dean calling me wicked and saying I was not abused and she repeated what Jane Fisher had previously said to me ‘we do not know what was said when you went to the Dean’s house’
- I had gone to the Dean’s house because Lou Scott-Joynt said ‘oh, what did Bob do?’ as if he had done nothing wrong. And I had said to the Dean that the way he had behaved was wrong and wicked, this is when he called me wicked and talked about the Lihous and Juliet and made out that that was all the same thing as what had happened with the Avertys, and he said I was not abused. It is claimed in court that I went there swearing and shouting, which I didn’t.
Anyway, Tracy and Jane Fisher then called the police, claiming that I was suicidal. Because I had said I couldn’t live with this.
The police turned up, shocking me and startling my landlady.
They spoke to me outside and I said that there was nothing to worry about and that Jane Fisher was manipulating Tracy and driving me mad.
I also told the police that the fact that they had turned up had put my tenancy in danger.
The policewoman replied ‘Lie to your landlady and tell her that we came to see you because you were a witness to something’.
I was shocked that a policewoman could tell someone to lie. But I did as she said, which proved to be to my detriment when the police were next sent round by Jane Fisher.
That evening I fled the Island. I was at breaking point, I had been called wicked by the Dean, nothing was being done, I was truly in a bad way. I had not been able to go Tracy’s ordination as the Avertys and the Dean had been there. I had been without hope for so long and things were only getting worse. The Bishop who had seen me briefly had said he would see me when he came to do Tracy’s ordination but he did not and would not. He had only seen me briefly in a set-up meeting previously that I had been lied to about.
In England I was in collapse and at present I am struggling to remember it. I stayed with my friends but they were going away on holiday and were sure I was a high risk of suicide and so they changed their minds about leaving me alone in their house while they were away.
My friend Anne, who was not one of the friends I was staying with, was dying of cancer, Tracy and Jane Fisher knew about this and tried to use it as the reason I was having a breakdown and had fled the island. This made me angry.
Jane Fisher reported me missing when I was not missing and she had not made any attempt to contact me. So the police turned up at my house in Jersey where I still had my tenancy and had told my landlady that I was going to see my dying friend. So my landlady was made aware of the church and police’s version of things, but to her credit she didn’t kick me out.
I attempted suicide and was traced and taken to hospital. Hampshire police contacted Jersey police and were told a load of completely incomprehensible things and a psychological report was written based on that and not on what I had told the assessor.
According to Jersey police I was wanted for criminal damage to a car. This caused me to collapse further because I had not damaged a car, this report by the police turned out to be untrue, there was nothing on me for damaging cars. I gather this was an attempt by the Avertys, as I later saw their car and it was all smashed in at the back, but I was certainly nothing to do with that. I may be angry but I would not ram a car deliberately and damage my own car. I guess I will never know what that was about.
Anyway, this criminal damage allegation never went any further.
The psychological report, though completely inaccurate and based on what the police said and not what I said, exonerated the Dean, Jane Fisher, Tracy and the church, even though I had made it quite clear that this was what caused the distress I was in. The report tried to make me out to be grieving for my Dad and claimed I had been close to him, even though I had stated that I hadn’t always been close to him.
I was furious but was beginning to realise that I would be gagged and the Church of England exonerated no matter who I turned to.
However, a very long time later, due to trauma and circumstances delaying it, I did manage to add an amendment to the report, which stated the Dean and the church as the cause of my distress.
Anyway, the assessing team said I was not mentally ill but was distressed and vulnerable and they were reluctant to let me go as I had nowhere to go, but they also could not admit me as I was not mentally ill.
Once assessed, they allowed me to go and see my friend Anne, who was seriously ill in the same hospital and then arrangements were made for me to go and stay with some other friends.
I stayed with my friends, vulnerable and absolutely traumatized and having been told that I was facing a warning on behalf of the Dean when I returned to Jersey.
But on return to Jersey I was told that the bit of paper was not a warning, that the matter with the Dean had been swept under the carpet and that the bit of paper that the victim support worker signed on my behalf was about Jane Fisher and the Bishop and that it not even a warning and wasn’t on my file and that it was about getting two sides of things and that I had been phoning and emailing the Bishop out of office hours. It seemed senseless to me, the Bishop’s wife had told me I could phone out of office hours and she phoned me out of office hours, so did Jane Fisher, and Jane Fisher emailed me when it suited her.
The policeman said it didn’t even go on my record.
This is an accurate account of what happened to me. I was not given a warning about the Dean, although I was told I was going to be. Even though the Dean and his wife had been so unreasonable and I had gone to them because I was horrified that despite persisting with a complaint against the Dean, I gathered from what Lou Scott-Joynt said, that my complaint had not been taken seriously.
Eventually I returned to my lodgings and my work, both of which I had nearly lost. But I was a broken person by the time I returned from England to Jersey.
My car had broken beyond repair while in England. The money saved to repair it had gone on my fare to England. So on return to Jersey I was unable to return to my cash-in-hand work and I was not as useful to my main employers due to being unable to travel to the garden centre for things I needed and unable to take machinery to the dealers for repairs and servicing, and all other tasks that required a car were now beyond me. I was handicapped by the lack of the car.
I was furious with the Diocese for everything, I knew that things were not and had not been done properly, and I did not understand why I had been given a warning for contacting the diocese while they had apparently had me reported missing for not contacting them and why they were apparently still handling my complaint but having me warned by the police for contacting them about it and for contacting Lou Scott-Joynt when she was supposed to be ‘helping me’.
Anyway, I was now attending St. Brelades church, but they were very quickly ‘made aware of me’, by Jane Fisher/Bob Key and I was safeguarded against and reprimanded by Mark Bond and Judith Davey, to whom I replied that there were two sides of things, they did actually listen to that but they did share hurtful things they had been told. I will go into more detail of that at a later date as it is distressing and needs to be part of my statement about the churches in Jersey.
But to add, Mark Bond and his wife were friends with the Dean and would have him round for supper when his wife (who they said was the real Dean of Jersey) was away. Mark Bond made me aware of this friendship early on and I said I did not like the Dean and please could mark not discuss me with him? Mark replied that he and the Dean had a different theology and saw things differently.
I was upset that I had not escaped the Dean/Jane Fisher intrusion and influence on my worship, and that nothing appeared to be being done about my complaints and instead of anything being done about the Avertys and the Dean, the Bishop and Jane Fisher had got me into police trouble and damaged my work and home and worship and relationships.
It was September, the Bishop was in the island and though he made no effort at all to meet with me or communicate, he was at the Deanery, with the Dean, allied, while I was left shamed because he had had me in police trouble and I was being shamed whatever church I went to, shamed by Mark Bond and Judith Davey at the same time as them trying to help me. But it was too late for help now. I was waiting to die. My biggest regret at that time was that the suicide attempt had not worked.
Mark Bond said that many people actually gave up and waited to die or tried to speed the process up, he said that his mother did, she tried to drink and smoke herself to death.
The Bishop then apparently said to Judith Davey at a review at the Deanery that he was ‘grateful to her for helping me’. I was furious, as far as I was concerned no one I was maligned to could help me and it was too late and there was the Bishop sitting at the Deanery with the Dean, talking about me, letting me be given a bad name and refusing to even communicate with me about my complaint.
I snapped, I phoned the Deanery and was furious and said the Bishop should be leaving his meeting in an ambulance or something.
The record of this that was read in court was incorrect, the time they stated was a few hours wrong and I cannot remember what else was inaccurate, I did lose my temper and say things I shouldn’t but that was in one phonecall, the only one I had made to the Deanery in months and again the report in court was inaccurate.
The only other person I think I emailed was Jane Fisher. But I was beyond anything by then. Anne was in hospital in a serious condition because the doctors could not get a needle or line into her to do dialysis and this seemed like the end for her, the end with Jane Fisher and the Diocese having intervened in my friendship with Anne as she was dying and having used Anne as an excuse for my breakdown, as well as trying to imply to me and others that I was seriously mentally ill.
The next morning I was due to be working on a volunteer project all day. But I was now in collapse and had not actually known what to do after making contact with the Deanery and Jane Fisher, nearly throwing myself into the sea but also knowing that this matter was unfinished and I was unheard and thus I needed somehow to find someone who would bring justice.
I was arrested.
But it was a mess.
Some police officers came into the house early on Sunday morning. They asked if I was ****** who owned a blue Rover metro, registration plate *******, I was puzzled and told them that the car had been scrapped.
The officer didn’t seem to know what to say and claimed he was making conversation or something.
Then the other officer came in but they remained unclear.
They searched my room, claiming to be looking for ‘computer equipment’ or something.
Money on my table went missing and was not seen again and I was powerless to report it later as I was homeless in England and treated as if I was mad anyway.
The police were not clear with me, they put me in the police car and spoke to my landlady. The police could not clearly tell me whether it was the Dean or the Bishop who was having me arrested, they mentioned both, alternately, and I think they mentioned Jane Fisher as well but I am not sure. I kept asking them who I was being arrested for, but they remained unclear.
In the police station and before, I was handled roughly. When I had been arrested I had not been wearing a bra, and I felt very vulnerable. I had gone to sleep in my semi-pyjama outfit, my leggings were tracksuit that I used as pyjamas normally, my top was my daytime jumper and I had socks and shoes and knickers on but not a bra.
The custody sargent knew me from elsewhere and jeered and claimed I was not autistic ‘because I could carry on a conversation’.
I do not recall what happened properly. They said I had an appropriate adult on record who now refused to act for me, they treated that as if it was my fault and I was bad, the appropriate adult would either have been Philip LeClaire, who no longer worked for Autism Jersey, or the Victim support worker who was phoning me when she was drunk and causing me problems so I said she wasn’t to work with me.
But I was treated as if it was my fault. I do not know what paperwork was done or what happened. I remember being dragged and carried and thrown about.
I remember being dizzy.
I remember calling out for my Dad in Hebrew, his preferred language ‘Abba, Abba, Eyphoh, eyphoh?’ because I remembered my Dad telling me that when he was in a police cell he felt at risk from harm from the police and so he walked round his cell singing praise to God all night and the police didn’t touch him.
I remember knowing that I had no hope at all, that Bob key had won completely in his battle to avoid accountability, and no matter what happened now, I would never have a clean record or quality of life again.
I still did not know whether the Bishop, Jane Fisher or Bob Key had had me arrested, or all three.
I fell.
I do not know what happened or how time passed.
The custody sargent who knew me was jeering at me through the cell door.
I was sick but I had only had water and the sick went in my hair.
I was not fully awake most of the time I was there and I do not know how long I was in a cell for. I suffer claustrophobia.
The Doctor who had been there to assess me when the Avertys complained about me was there, he was jeering. As were the police, they talked about putting a needle in my eye to wake me up and stripping me and putting me in a cell suit, but I couldn’t properly wake and tell them that I was not feeling well.
One of them, a police or a doctor, took hold of me by the chest and pulled me. I couldn’t wake but I kind of knew they were there.
They did something else to try and wake me but I didn’t feel it. I knew they were there and then I knew nothing.
Someone spoke to me by name and said a man was there who would get me out of there or something. But I couldn’t wake.
Someone spoke and told me they would be back in the morning, I think it was the Doctor.
I woke, I do not know when. Someone spoke, he was sitting in the doorway on something.
He said he was the St. Helier Centenier. He said he was charging me, something to do with the Dean. No one else was in the room or present that I could see, unless they were in the corridor.
I did know that the centenier would be a close colleague of Bob key and with him at liberation day and all events like that, and probably even part of his church.
I don’t remember after that.
It was morning and the custody sargent who jeered was saying something to me about me ending up in LaMoye if I didn’t respond.
I was awake.
He said something about a doctor.
I tried to get up.
I tried to walk myself to the doctor, the police would not keep their hands off me.
I do not know what the doctor said, apart from saying something about me ‘freshening up’. I did not know what was expected of me or what I was being asked.
I did not do the freshening up, I did not know what it meant. There was no one to tell me and no one who cared. There was no appropriate adult.
I was taken back to the cell.
I do not know or understand what that was about.
I did not eat or drink, I was terrified out of my mind on top of knowing that Anne might be dead and that I was never going to be ok again.
I was roughly treated further and locked in a tiny cage in a police van. I think it was this time but it might have been coming away from LaMoye that I was whimpering in terror and a man in another of the cages in the van shouted out ‘Is it your first time, love? Don’t worry, you get used to it’.
I couldn’t imagine how anyone could ‘get used to’ being bad and almost be matter of fact about it.
I continued to be brutally treated and dragged by my arms by the police, my upper arms are very sensitive indeed, and I tried to tell the police this and told them I was autistic and they said I wasn’t and they said that everyone makes excuses and they flung me on the floor of a cell in the court. I stayed on the floor.
I do not know how long I was there, the other people in cells asked for coffee and toilet paper and things as if this was all normal and ok.
I was taken to a room, the woman there was the other side of a barrier and I could not hear her and she could not hear me.
So she was allowed to sit with me.
She told me I had been bad. That I had done bad things and no matter what had happened to me I was in the wrong.
I told her there was more to it than that. I told her I had been abused and that the Dean and Diocese had been unhelpful and I hadn’t been able to cope. I did my best to explain in the state I was in. But as far as she was concerned I was bad.
She told me that I was to ‘reserve my plea’ in court and that bail meant I might have to hand in my passport and have a curfew.
I did not know what all of it meant but I was only doing as I was told.
So I did as I was told in court and no one told me how to address the judge but I think I called him ‘Sir’.
I knew it could have been bad being in court because Bridget Shaw, the wife of the Rector of St. Clements was the main magistrate then, but I don’t think she was in court, I do not know who was.
The person in court claimed I had gone to the Deanery swearing and shouting when I had not, and made it sound like I had been phoning them all the time and stopped when I was given a warning, but I had not been given a warning and I was not phoning the Dean all the time and then they said I stopped when I was given the warning until that time I phoned about the Bishop the previous day, but they gave a very very inaccurate time of me phoning the Deanery. And other innacuracies but I cannot remember. I do know it did not describe things.
The court told the police to phone my work and home to see if they would accept me back, but I knew that was bad because the police had treated me bad so far and never understood me. I could imagine that I would not be allowed home and I knew I would lose my job because I worked for a nursing home and everyone’s contract said that if you got in police trouble you were likely to lose your job.
I was put back in the cells while the police did that, I do not know how long for.
I was put back in court and I do not understand all of what was said but my landlady would not have me back so I was sent to prison.
I was put in the police van, I seem to remember that they let me walk this time and were not too brutal letting me get in the police van.
When I got taken to the prison I was terrified.
I thought I was going to be knocked about more. I did not have my glasses and had not seen those since I had got put in the police cell and I could hardly see without them.
When I got took to the prison. I was put in a room with benches and they tried to give me a hot drink but I was terrified because I was trapped, in prison, bad, never good again, it was the end of me. I did not know that prison staff are different from police and could be ok.
A female prison warder spoke to me, she said something like ‘Hi mate, do you smoke? Shall we go and have a fag and a chat?’ This was so very different from the police brutality that I was shocked, I was in prison and was being spoken to as if I was a real person and as if everything was ok.
I do not remember if I even responded, I returned to the kind of semi-conscious state, I don’t know if I fell or crawled but I was under a bench.
I know what exactly happened but the prison staff, instead of being brutal, seemed baffled, and I heard someone say they thought I had fainted and someone say ‘…then she was under the bench’.
The female warder came back and said to me something like ‘you look like you need a good sleep, maybe a nice shower and a good sleep’ and I went with her and she found me some prison tracksuit clothes and showed me to the shower, but I didn’t want a shower when I was being watched, I am a very very private and modest person and I never show my body to anyone.
The lady said she would let me shower without watching, but she wasn’t completely truthful because she did watch and later told the prison records person that she didn’t see any scars on me when I was showering. I didn’t know if the scars I do have were important enough to record.
Anyway I showered myself and was grateful, I was indeed in need of a shower and I went through my routine of washing everything three times, until the lady said ‘that’s enough!’ and I felt embarrassed.
Then I put on the grey tracksuit and she let some male prison officers take charge and they took hold of me and I completely freaked out and they were dragging me and calling for backup but the lady prison officer said to them ‘no, let her go, it’s because you are male, let her go and it will be ok’ and they did and she walked with me to where the cell was in the remand wing where there was only one other prisoner.
They put me in a cell and I went to sleep. There was almost nothing in the cell and only basic bedding which was supposed to be safety bedding so I could not hurt myself.
I went to sleep and I needed to sleep, I was exhausted.
But the man kept coming past and tapping on the door and asking if I was ok? I think, or apparently he did a thumbs up sign at me but I hadn’t got my glasses and I couldn’t see him but he thought I knew he did the thumbs up sign.
Everything is a blur but I am not sure where anything fits in place after that but there is a lot to write.
I could not see very much and I did not always know what was expected of me and I wasn’t always told, nor was I told the prison routine and sometimes that was a problem.
I am terrified of people standing in doorways and the staff always stood in the doorway, basically I was now living all my worst fears.
There were a number of staff and my ability to recognize people is impaired anyway and without glasses at first I could not tell who was who.
The female member of staff who had been involved so far continued to work with me, she had been told or realised that I was autistic and made an effort to ensure that I understood her.
There was another female member of staff who also made an effort.
I kept hiding in a with my blanket over my head, but they said I should not do this because they were meant to observe me and me going in the corner was making observation difficult.
I tried to be co-operative but I was utterly petrified and hiding in the corner under the blanket was my way of trying to be safe.
They kept bringing me food and drinks and I was not hungry but kept being sick or ‘bringing up food’ - I will explain in a minute.
They kept urging me to eat, and they were not the police, they were genuinely trying to help, so I did my best to co-operate even though I was not hungry.
There was a video camera in the cell, I was on camera all the time and so I was embarrassed to go to the toilet. One of the male staff asked if I was ‘making myself sick’ and I assured them that I was not.
Within a few days the female warders were taking me out of my cell to encourage me to help them when they made me a hot drink.
The drink was made in a blue plastic mug and was made with powdered milk and I realised that the milk might be contributing to the problems.
I told them nervously that I might be being sick because I couldn’t digest powdered milk. They responded by arranging for some proper milk for my tea.
They tried to encourage me to come outdoors for exercise and I told them I would go mad with grief if I was taken outside but not free.
They also turned up with my glasses and asked why I had not asked for them, I responded that I had not known that I was allowed my glasses, I had not known where they were and had written them off as lost.
I did not want to wear my glasses at first as I did not want to see that I was trapped.
I was in a bare cell and under watch all the time.
But the staff were aware that I was terrified and were trying to help.
The church of England chaplain was sent, I do not remember if I asked or not. But when she came, I was under my blanket in the corner of the cell floor.
The staff tried to get me to poke my head out of the blanket, and they told me the chaplain had come to help.
She was wearing a green shirt.
I said ‘dog collar?’ and she said ‘yes’, and I said ‘Bible?’ she said yes and asked if I wanted a Bible, I said I did.
I was not comfortable about seeing a Church of England chaplain and had a feeling that any church of England chaplain would be linked to Bob Key and others in the island churches who had hurt me, at the time I didn’t think Jane Fisher, but I should have done when later on, when I specifically asked to see a methodist or Catholic chaplain (the prison had both), the church of England chaplain continued to turn up despite me being specific and again the ‘forcing on me’ which is typical of Jane Fisher, meant that this Church of England chaplin kept coming.
It is like being raped, every time Jane Fisher exposes and violates me trhough other people.
Anyway. The staff at LaMoye continued to try and help me, but some things were not explained to me at all, including that they have a ‘lockdown’ once a week when all staff are in a meeting and they do not even provide breakfast, or didn’t to me when it was like that.
My blood sugar drops when I don’t eat, and I am not supposed to fast because I become ill. So that didn’t help. And I didn’t know about it. No-one formally explained anything, like when the medicine comes round you are meant to go and get it, so I missed out on my medicine because I did not know, was scared of the medicne person and not well and I didn’t know I was allowed to go to the cell door when it was opened.
The cell had to be cleaned very day, and at first the warders did it and then supervised me having a shower and then they taught me to clean the cell and they brought my day clothes, nicely laundered (but I was still without a bra, much to my shame), and then as time went on they let me shower and the restrictions on me were lifted so that I could have proper bedding and a CD player with some CD’s and some books, they kindly took me to the library and got me lots and lots of extra books, and they got me pen and paper so I could try and write down what had happened to me, but in that state I could barely write adequately.
The staff asked if I would like to go upstairs and meet the others, I was downstairs in the remand wing and the sentenced prisoners were upsatirs), I said no, I remembered that old television programme with the scary prison women on it.
But eventually I came upstairs. The other women, aware that I was ‘special needs’, were extremely kind and supportive, they told me about themselves and they encouraged me to play pool and card games (which I struggled to understand), they chatted with me, lent me books and sent notes down to my cell via the warders and generally were so very nice that I wished I had met them all outside of prison as I felt safe with them. They did their very best to work with my autism and communicate clearly and I wish there was a better way of paying tribute to them.
One young woman in particular befriended me and I was allowed to sit in her cell with her, she had all her things in there as if it was her home, we sat on her bed and chatted and I taught her some sign language and she showed me the computer she had, which was actually very good, it had music and everything. Her boyfriend was in prison as well and they had a young daughter who was living with her mother. When her boyfriend was marched past the block, she waved to him out the window.
The support and activities with the other women was very helpful to me.
They were immeasurably kind and reassuring.
But I hated it that the guards had to search me every time I returned to my wing, they were sympathetic, unlike the police, and they knew that the touch hurt me, but they had to do it.
They also tried to get me to go to the gym with the other girls but seemed to forget or be unaware that I had no bra, I had been taken from my home not fully dressed for daytime and had no bra and I was too embarrassed to tell them this.
The other woman in the remand wing was noisy and angry, shouting all the time at the staff, and it echoed, it drove me mad with distress, and worst of all, she played music on top volume, but when I wrote it down for the staff that it was upsetting me, that seemed to be one thing they could do nothing about.
I am grateful to the staff for everything they did do for me, they said they have no choice as to who comes into prison but they try to work with, and help, everyone who did come in.
They also let me have as much computer access as they could to enable me to write. No internet but plenty of word processing.
And someone tried to interest me in an art group but I freaked out and couldn’t cope.
I was allowed extra time in the library, and there was a chapel service on Sundays but people I knew had come in to run it and I was too ashamed to go, St. Matthews people.
The prison warders also took me to see the manager at the prison to work out how to help me cope with being locked in and in prison, because I was so stressed. He asked me what I did when I was not in prison and got stressed, what helped to calm me down? I told him that I would go out to Noirmont or Corbiere and climb out on the rocks there and sit alone.
He did his best to ensure that I could be out of my cell and out in the exercise yard as much as possible.
Basically the staff really tried to help, even when they got the churches side of things against me.
People who came to see me in Prison:
A prison psychologist. I am not sure why but at first someone said she worked out why people did things that made them go to prison, but then she seemed to understand, and I am not absolutely sure on this, she seemed to understand that I was not actually deliberately bad. One time I had to say I could not see her because I felt ill, and the reason I got ill was that I had two duvets on my bed, and I wanted both, for comfort but it was causing me to overheat and get drowsy and headachy.
The chaplain, the CofE chaplin who turned up even when I asked for an alternative chaplain, I now know that this is Jane Fisher’s doing and I feel violated by it as I feel violated by all her interventions.
This chaplain was determined to be involved even when I specifically wrote to staff asking for a different chaplain.
One day she took me upstairs to talk and a Catholic Bishop was visiting and I got to meet him. But she was asking me about things, as if she didn’t know, and I got suspicious and asked if she had been discussing me with the Dean and she said she had only been in the island a short time and didn’t know anyone involved. But seeing as the Dean and Deanery select Clergy, that couldn’t strictly be true, but then she was in a hurry to put me back in my cell.
The Mental health woman: This was a nasty intrusion and this woman treated me as if I was bad, she was abrupt and rude and I felt as if she was forced upon me and that this was another attempt to make me out to be insane.
I do not understand why she came into things and I fail to see how she helped, in fact the things she said were very upsetting to me and wounded me.
The solicitors: I was sent a lawyer, an English lawyer who apparently was not allowed to represent me in Jersey courts.
Thus I wondered and wonder what the point of him being involved was.
I didn’t really understand much about it. He or the prison staff gave me a load of paperwork and told me to read it and reply, but I was traumatized, this was apparently statements from the Dean and the Bishop and jane Fisher, the Bishop and Jane Fisher and a policeman were named as the Dean’s witnesses.
I didn’t read anything. I was already too hurt and traumatized and trying to keep myself sane in prison, mainly by dissociating and dreaming that I was roaming the roads of South Hampshire alone and free.
The solicitor was there with the rude mental health woman and he said I had no good choices.
The subject of being bound over to leave the island came up somehow and I said that might be best as I had no home, no job and legally wasn’t allowed to sleep rough in Jersey and would not be able to take another home and job and have to live branded officially for the benefit of the church community who already treated me so badly.
And of course, my biggest concern was that if I didn’t agree to being bound over then I would have to be kept in prison because there was nowhere to go and nothing for me.
I made the solicitor aware that I had been trying to get help and that I had been awaiting my first psychological appointment, after so long of being refused psychological help because of my autism.
The solicitor made me read something to him and asked me what it meant and I tried to explain but I was bewildered and I wanted the mental health lady not to be there because I didn’t like her.
The solicitor sent a clinical psychologist to assess me in prison and the psychologist said he found me free from serious mental illness
(which is what church people in Jersey had been implying for so long and even Jane Fisher and Tracy LeCouter had made me out to be seriously mentally ill).
I guess they have no understanding about the psychological harm I suffered or the Post Traumatic Stress.
My friends came to see me in prison but the warder would not give me space and privacy to talk to them but kept standing over me. My friends said they would write a letter to the court on my behalf, but the solicitor intervened and breached confidences to them, embarrassing me by sharing what I was supposed to have done, again not explaining my own circumstances that led to what I did.
My friends did write me a letter though and that went to the solicitor and then the courts.
My friends also said they would have me to stay when they returned to England if I got out of prison.
My friends also paid money for me because I had no access to money and I was supposed to be paying the prison for my food and laundry and things and I have no idea how people who live in prison do that but I was in prison without my money or possessions and so I was in debt to the prison and then my friend.
The English Solicitor was not allowed to represent me in court as he was not qualified under Jersey Law, so there was another female solicitor who I did not get to know and know nothing about.
Back to court:
I will keep this brief because it is traumatic and because I am not sure I remember anything properly.
Before I was due in court again, one of the prison staff started talking to me about food menus, they had just been bringing me whatever prison food was available and not a choice like the sentenced people had, but the member of staff said I should have a menu prepared in case I came back to prison after court, I thought they were telling me I was coming back after court, and I broke down in tears and they tried to comfort me and tell me they hadn’t meant it like that.
I was handcuffed and put in a cage in a police van.
I do not remember how long I had to wait to go in court but the new lady solicitor was taking the case, I was told to plead not guilty to Jane Fisher and Bishop Scott-Joynt’s charges against me but to plead guilty to Bob key’s charge against me.
The mental health woman was there and was being bossy and rude, she was taking my hand and leading me about as if I was an idiot and I felt like an idiot and I resented her, but I felt that if I did not go along with everyone then I would end up back in prison.
I knew I wouldn’t survive if I was put back in prison, even with all the nice people. I have always been an outdoors person and worked outdoors all my working life, and outdoors is my life force.
My friends from Hampshire were there, there were not many people there. The mental health lady took my hand and took me into court. I didn’t like her being there but at least someone was there. I sucked my thumb because I was very distressed.
I do not know what a lot of court things mean.
I do know that the judge man and the people up there seemed slightly surprised that I was pleading not guilty to Jane Fisher and the Bishop and pleading guilty to Bob Key, but I just did as I was told, I do not understand enough to know what it all meant and why. I know I was being condemned as bad forever that is all. (but when Jane Fisher and the Bishop had me arrested again in 2011 it was claimed in court that they had had me convicted in Jersey, even though it was bob key who I was made to plead guilty to in Jersey).
The judge said something about how hard I had worked to educate myself and he hoped I would do that some more when I went back to the mainland. But I wondered if he understood that once you are a criminal you are bad forever and no amount of education makes you employable or acceptable and that there was no point whatsoever in me trying to finish my education now. People who are deemed bad live in the gutters and smoke and drink because they are not going to get employment or volunteer work or houses or be welcome anywhere.
Anyway, I do not know what it all meant and the judge and whoever else was talking talked about me being bound over to leave the island and that seemed to be what happened and they made an error something about thinking I was going back with my friends who were in court or them arranging me going back. But I don’t know but the judge had to come back because of it.
So then I was taken back to the police station but they did not be nasty any more, they got me hot drink and made me fingerprint and photo and paperwork and everything I did not really understand and they talked about booking me a flight and where was my passport and they did an identity sheet because I did not know where my passport was.
Then they took me to my house. All my things were there but instead of getting me any things they brought out the bags of clothes I had ready for the charity, which were no good for me and they thought that was my clothes but I couldn’t tell them, and they found my passport, which was a Jersey passport.
My landlady came to sit in the police car with me and she was so concerned and so upset, but she had said she wouldn’t have me back so that is why I got put in prison so it was hard for me to talk to her.
Then I got taken to the airport and put on a plane and I came back to England.
I got back to the airport in Southampton and had nowhere to go. I logged onto the internet there where I had weeks worth of emails from friends, charities and various things. But it seemed that everyone in Jersey who I worked for and with knew I had been bad and condemned and they wouldn’t speak to me.
I booked myself into a hotel now that I could access my money, but the money that had been in my room when the police arrested me was never seen again and I never got my possessions back either.
I went in the hotel room and looked through the clothes the police had brought out, thankfully there was an old bra in there and I put that on though it was not very comfortable, it was better than nothing.
I cried and shook all night, trying to calm myself with the quiet calming music on the radio, but I knew what had happened was wrong even if I had retaliated to the church, they had made me out to be bad but they had done bad and what happened to me was real.
Ever since then, until the shock of recently being traced and ‘apologized to’ by the Bishop and Archbishop, I have been alone with all this and unable to face what has happened.
I didn’t realise that night that the matter was not over, Jane Fisher and the Bishop were not going to let me alone and were immediately contacting my friends and sending messages via Juliet Montague, who had covered up what her husband did to me and to his daughter and who had heavily involved herself in the case in Jersey, but against me, and yet, Jane Fisher emailed Juliet when I came back from Jersey and used her to pass her and the Bishop’s side of things on to my friends in Juliet’s parishes, including my friend Anne, who died estranged from me as a result!
But that is for another statement.
Anything ommitted from this is omitted because I have forgotten or didn’t know about it or understand it.
I feel the need to briefly describe things in months running up to the arrest. But I can only be brief as it is too traumatic and I am still dissociating.
Jane Fisher was very much involving herself in my life against my wishes, mainly through my former friend Tracy leCouter, the curate at St. Clements church. Tracy had been my good and trusted friend until Jane Fisher get involved and also let the Dean know where I was worshipping. Which instantly left me feeling completely unable to worship there or be welcome and again my complaint against the Dean seemed to be invalidated, which ,made me furious.
Why tell someone I had complained about, who was in touch with the people who abused me and on their side, where I was worshipping, so I could again be treated badly and left outcast?
Anyway, in this time, the sadness and confusion led to me going to Tracy’s house to ask why it was all like this, and to ask her to stop communicating with Jane Fisher about me.
Tracy was hostile and made me out to be mentally ill, claiming it was only my paranoia about the Dean and Jane Fisher and that I was still welcome in St. Clements, even though I explained to her that I could not feel welcome under the circumstances. I begged her to stop being in contact with Jane Fisher.
She said no, and that she was going to phone Jane Fisher as soon as I had gone.
I told her I could not live with this.
I told her about the Dean calling me wicked and saying I was not abused and she repeated what Jane Fisher had previously said to me ‘we do not know what was said when you went to the Dean’s house’
- I had gone to the Dean’s house because Lou Scott-Joynt said ‘oh, what did Bob do?’ as if he had done nothing wrong. And I had said to the Dean that the way he had behaved was wrong and wicked, this is when he called me wicked and talked about the Lihous and Juliet and made out that that was all the same thing as what had happened with the Avertys, and he said I was not abused. It is claimed in court that I went there swearing and shouting, which I didn’t.
Anyway, Tracy and Jane Fisher then called the police, claiming that I was suicidal. Because I had said I couldn’t live with this.
The police turned up, shocking me and startling my landlady.
They spoke to me outside and I said that there was nothing to worry about and that Jane Fisher was manipulating Tracy and driving me mad.
I also told the police that the fact that they had turned up had put my tenancy in danger.
The policewoman replied ‘Lie to your landlady and tell her that we came to see you because you were a witness to something’.
I was shocked that a policewoman could tell someone to lie. But I did as she said, which proved to be to my detriment when the police were next sent round by Jane Fisher.
That evening I fled the Island. I was at breaking point, I had been called wicked by the Dean, nothing was being done, I was truly in a bad way. I had not been able to go Tracy’s ordination as the Avertys and the Dean had been there. I had been without hope for so long and things were only getting worse. The Bishop who had seen me briefly had said he would see me when he came to do Tracy’s ordination but he did not and would not. He had only seen me briefly in a set-up meeting previously that I had been lied to about.
In England I was in collapse and at present I am struggling to remember it. I stayed with my friends but they were going away on holiday and were sure I was a high risk of suicide and so they changed their minds about leaving me alone in their house while they were away.
My friend Anne, who was not one of the friends I was staying with, was dying of cancer, Tracy and Jane Fisher knew about this and tried to use it as the reason I was having a breakdown and had fled the island. This made me angry.
Jane Fisher reported me missing when I was not missing and she had not made any attempt to contact me. So the police turned up at my house in Jersey where I still had my tenancy and had told my landlady that I was going to see my dying friend. So my landlady was made aware of the church and police’s version of things, but to her credit she didn’t kick me out.
I attempted suicide and was traced and taken to hospital. Hampshire police contacted Jersey police and were told a load of completely incomprehensible things and a psychological report was written based on that and not on what I had told the assessor.
According to Jersey police I was wanted for criminal damage to a car. This caused me to collapse further because I had not damaged a car, this report by the police turned out to be untrue, there was nothing on me for damaging cars. I gather this was an attempt by the Avertys, as I later saw their car and it was all smashed in at the back, but I was certainly nothing to do with that. I may be angry but I would not ram a car deliberately and damage my own car. I guess I will never know what that was about.
Anyway, this criminal damage allegation never went any further.
The psychological report, though completely inaccurate and based on what the police said and not what I said, exonerated the Dean, Jane Fisher, Tracy and the church, even though I had made it quite clear that this was what caused the distress I was in. The report tried to make me out to be grieving for my Dad and claimed I had been close to him, even though I had stated that I hadn’t always been close to him.
I was furious but was beginning to realise that I would be gagged and the Church of England exonerated no matter who I turned to.
However, a very long time later, due to trauma and circumstances delaying it, I did manage to add an amendment to the report, which stated the Dean and the church as the cause of my distress.
Anyway, the assessing team said I was not mentally ill but was distressed and vulnerable and they were reluctant to let me go as I had nowhere to go, but they also could not admit me as I was not mentally ill.
Once assessed, they allowed me to go and see my friend Anne, who was seriously ill in the same hospital and then arrangements were made for me to go and stay with some other friends.
I stayed with my friends, vulnerable and absolutely traumatized and having been told that I was facing a warning on behalf of the Dean when I returned to Jersey.
But on return to Jersey I was told that the bit of paper was not a warning, that the matter with the Dean had been swept under the carpet and that the bit of paper that the victim support worker signed on my behalf was about Jane Fisher and the Bishop and that it not even a warning and wasn’t on my file and that it was about getting two sides of things and that I had been phoning and emailing the Bishop out of office hours. It seemed senseless to me, the Bishop’s wife had told me I could phone out of office hours and she phoned me out of office hours, so did Jane Fisher, and Jane Fisher emailed me when it suited her.
The policeman said it didn’t even go on my record.
This is an accurate account of what happened to me. I was not given a warning about the Dean, although I was told I was going to be. Even though the Dean and his wife had been so unreasonable and I had gone to them because I was horrified that despite persisting with a complaint against the Dean, I gathered from what Lou Scott-Joynt said, that my complaint had not been taken seriously.
Eventually I returned to my lodgings and my work, both of which I had nearly lost. But I was a broken person by the time I returned from England to Jersey.
My car had broken beyond repair while in England. The money saved to repair it had gone on my fare to England. So on return to Jersey I was unable to return to my cash-in-hand work and I was not as useful to my main employers due to being unable to travel to the garden centre for things I needed and unable to take machinery to the dealers for repairs and servicing, and all other tasks that required a car were now beyond me. I was handicapped by the lack of the car.
I was furious with the Diocese for everything, I knew that things were not and had not been done properly, and I did not understand why I had been given a warning for contacting the diocese while they had apparently had me reported missing for not contacting them and why they were apparently still handling my complaint but having me warned by the police for contacting them about it and for contacting Lou Scott-Joynt when she was supposed to be ‘helping me’.
Anyway, I was now attending St. Brelades church, but they were very quickly ‘made aware of me’, by Jane Fisher/Bob Key and I was safeguarded against and reprimanded by Mark Bond and Judith Davey, to whom I replied that there were two sides of things, they did actually listen to that but they did share hurtful things they had been told. I will go into more detail of that at a later date as it is distressing and needs to be part of my statement about the churches in Jersey.
But to add, Mark Bond and his wife were friends with the Dean and would have him round for supper when his wife (who they said was the real Dean of Jersey) was away. Mark Bond made me aware of this friendship early on and I said I did not like the Dean and please could mark not discuss me with him? Mark replied that he and the Dean had a different theology and saw things differently.
I was upset that I had not escaped the Dean/Jane Fisher intrusion and influence on my worship, and that nothing appeared to be being done about my complaints and instead of anything being done about the Avertys and the Dean, the Bishop and Jane Fisher had got me into police trouble and damaged my work and home and worship and relationships.
It was September, the Bishop was in the island and though he made no effort at all to meet with me or communicate, he was at the Deanery, with the Dean, allied, while I was left shamed because he had had me in police trouble and I was being shamed whatever church I went to, shamed by Mark Bond and Judith Davey at the same time as them trying to help me. But it was too late for help now. I was waiting to die. My biggest regret at that time was that the suicide attempt had not worked.
Mark Bond said that many people actually gave up and waited to die or tried to speed the process up, he said that his mother did, she tried to drink and smoke herself to death.
The Bishop then apparently said to Judith Davey at a review at the Deanery that he was ‘grateful to her for helping me’. I was furious, as far as I was concerned no one I was maligned to could help me and it was too late and there was the Bishop sitting at the Deanery with the Dean, talking about me, letting me be given a bad name and refusing to even communicate with me about my complaint.
I snapped, I phoned the Deanery and was furious and said the Bishop should be leaving his meeting in an ambulance or something.
The record of this that was read in court was incorrect, the time they stated was a few hours wrong and I cannot remember what else was inaccurate, I did lose my temper and say things I shouldn’t but that was in one phonecall, the only one I had made to the Deanery in months and again the report in court was inaccurate.
The only other person I think I emailed was Jane Fisher. But I was beyond anything by then. Anne was in hospital in a serious condition because the doctors could not get a needle or line into her to do dialysis and this seemed like the end for her, the end with Jane Fisher and the Diocese having intervened in my friendship with Anne as she was dying and having used Anne as an excuse for my breakdown, as well as trying to imply to me and others that I was seriously mentally ill.
The next morning I was due to be working on a volunteer project all day. But I was now in collapse and had not actually known what to do after making contact with the Deanery and Jane Fisher, nearly throwing myself into the sea but also knowing that this matter was unfinished and I was unheard and thus I needed somehow to find someone who would bring justice.
I was arrested.
But it was a mess.
Some police officers came into the house early on Sunday morning. They asked if I was ****** who owned a blue Rover metro, registration plate *******, I was puzzled and told them that the car had been scrapped.
The officer didn’t seem to know what to say and claimed he was making conversation or something.
Then the other officer came in but they remained unclear.
They searched my room, claiming to be looking for ‘computer equipment’ or something.
Money on my table went missing and was not seen again and I was powerless to report it later as I was homeless in England and treated as if I was mad anyway.
The police were not clear with me, they put me in the police car and spoke to my landlady. The police could not clearly tell me whether it was the Dean or the Bishop who was having me arrested, they mentioned both, alternately, and I think they mentioned Jane Fisher as well but I am not sure. I kept asking them who I was being arrested for, but they remained unclear.
In the police station and before, I was handled roughly. When I had been arrested I had not been wearing a bra, and I felt very vulnerable. I had gone to sleep in my semi-pyjama outfit, my leggings were tracksuit that I used as pyjamas normally, my top was my daytime jumper and I had socks and shoes and knickers on but not a bra.
The custody sargent knew me from elsewhere and jeered and claimed I was not autistic ‘because I could carry on a conversation’.
I do not recall what happened properly. They said I had an appropriate adult on record who now refused to act for me, they treated that as if it was my fault and I was bad, the appropriate adult would either have been Philip LeClaire, who no longer worked for Autism Jersey, or the Victim support worker who was phoning me when she was drunk and causing me problems so I said she wasn’t to work with me.
But I was treated as if it was my fault. I do not know what paperwork was done or what happened. I remember being dragged and carried and thrown about.
I remember being dizzy.
I remember calling out for my Dad in Hebrew, his preferred language ‘Abba, Abba, Eyphoh, eyphoh?’ because I remembered my Dad telling me that when he was in a police cell he felt at risk from harm from the police and so he walked round his cell singing praise to God all night and the police didn’t touch him.
I remember knowing that I had no hope at all, that Bob key had won completely in his battle to avoid accountability, and no matter what happened now, I would never have a clean record or quality of life again.
I still did not know whether the Bishop, Jane Fisher or Bob Key had had me arrested, or all three.
I fell.
I do not know what happened or how time passed.
The custody sargent who knew me was jeering at me through the cell door.
I was sick but I had only had water and the sick went in my hair.
I was not fully awake most of the time I was there and I do not know how long I was in a cell for. I suffer claustrophobia.
The Doctor who had been there to assess me when the Avertys complained about me was there, he was jeering. As were the police, they talked about putting a needle in my eye to wake me up and stripping me and putting me in a cell suit, but I couldn’t properly wake and tell them that I was not feeling well.
One of them, a police or a doctor, took hold of me by the chest and pulled me. I couldn’t wake but I kind of knew they were there.
They did something else to try and wake me but I didn’t feel it. I knew they were there and then I knew nothing.
Someone spoke to me by name and said a man was there who would get me out of there or something. But I couldn’t wake.
Someone spoke and told me they would be back in the morning, I think it was the Doctor.
I woke, I do not know when. Someone spoke, he was sitting in the doorway on something.
He said he was the St. Helier Centenier. He said he was charging me, something to do with the Dean. No one else was in the room or present that I could see, unless they were in the corridor.
I did know that the centenier would be a close colleague of Bob key and with him at liberation day and all events like that, and probably even part of his church.
I don’t remember after that.
It was morning and the custody sargent who jeered was saying something to me about me ending up in LaMoye if I didn’t respond.
I was awake.
He said something about a doctor.
I tried to get up.
I tried to walk myself to the doctor, the police would not keep their hands off me.
I do not know what the doctor said, apart from saying something about me ‘freshening up’. I did not know what was expected of me or what I was being asked.
I did not do the freshening up, I did not know what it meant. There was no one to tell me and no one who cared. There was no appropriate adult.
I was taken back to the cell.
I do not know or understand what that was about.
I did not eat or drink, I was terrified out of my mind on top of knowing that Anne might be dead and that I was never going to be ok again.
I was roughly treated further and locked in a tiny cage in a police van. I think it was this time but it might have been coming away from LaMoye that I was whimpering in terror and a man in another of the cages in the van shouted out ‘Is it your first time, love? Don’t worry, you get used to it’.
I couldn’t imagine how anyone could ‘get used to’ being bad and almost be matter of fact about it.
I continued to be brutally treated and dragged by my arms by the police, my upper arms are very sensitive indeed, and I tried to tell the police this and told them I was autistic and they said I wasn’t and they said that everyone makes excuses and they flung me on the floor of a cell in the court. I stayed on the floor.
I do not know how long I was there, the other people in cells asked for coffee and toilet paper and things as if this was all normal and ok.
I was taken to a room, the woman there was the other side of a barrier and I could not hear her and she could not hear me.
So she was allowed to sit with me.
She told me I had been bad. That I had done bad things and no matter what had happened to me I was in the wrong.
I told her there was more to it than that. I told her I had been abused and that the Dean and Diocese had been unhelpful and I hadn’t been able to cope. I did my best to explain in the state I was in. But as far as she was concerned I was bad.
She told me that I was to ‘reserve my plea’ in court and that bail meant I might have to hand in my passport and have a curfew.
I did not know what all of it meant but I was only doing as I was told.
So I did as I was told in court and no one told me how to address the judge but I think I called him ‘Sir’.
I knew it could have been bad being in court because Bridget Shaw, the wife of the Rector of St. Clements was the main magistrate then, but I don’t think she was in court, I do not know who was.
The person in court claimed I had gone to the Deanery swearing and shouting when I had not, and made it sound like I had been phoning them all the time and stopped when I was given a warning, but I had not been given a warning and I was not phoning the Dean all the time and then they said I stopped when I was given the warning until that time I phoned about the Bishop the previous day, but they gave a very very inaccurate time of me phoning the Deanery. And other innacuracies but I cannot remember. I do know it did not describe things.
The court told the police to phone my work and home to see if they would accept me back, but I knew that was bad because the police had treated me bad so far and never understood me. I could imagine that I would not be allowed home and I knew I would lose my job because I worked for a nursing home and everyone’s contract said that if you got in police trouble you were likely to lose your job.
I was put back in the cells while the police did that, I do not know how long for.
I was put back in court and I do not understand all of what was said but my landlady would not have me back so I was sent to prison.
I was put in the police van, I seem to remember that they let me walk this time and were not too brutal letting me get in the police van.
When I got taken to the prison I was terrified.
I thought I was going to be knocked about more. I did not have my glasses and had not seen those since I had got put in the police cell and I could hardly see without them.
When I got took to the prison. I was put in a room with benches and they tried to give me a hot drink but I was terrified because I was trapped, in prison, bad, never good again, it was the end of me. I did not know that prison staff are different from police and could be ok.
A female prison warder spoke to me, she said something like ‘Hi mate, do you smoke? Shall we go and have a fag and a chat?’ This was so very different from the police brutality that I was shocked, I was in prison and was being spoken to as if I was a real person and as if everything was ok.
I do not remember if I even responded, I returned to the kind of semi-conscious state, I don’t know if I fell or crawled but I was under a bench.
I know what exactly happened but the prison staff, instead of being brutal, seemed baffled, and I heard someone say they thought I had fainted and someone say ‘…then she was under the bench’.
The female warder came back and said to me something like ‘you look like you need a good sleep, maybe a nice shower and a good sleep’ and I went with her and she found me some prison tracksuit clothes and showed me to the shower, but I didn’t want a shower when I was being watched, I am a very very private and modest person and I never show my body to anyone.
The lady said she would let me shower without watching, but she wasn’t completely truthful because she did watch and later told the prison records person that she didn’t see any scars on me when I was showering. I didn’t know if the scars I do have were important enough to record.
Anyway I showered myself and was grateful, I was indeed in need of a shower and I went through my routine of washing everything three times, until the lady said ‘that’s enough!’ and I felt embarrassed.
Then I put on the grey tracksuit and she let some male prison officers take charge and they took hold of me and I completely freaked out and they were dragging me and calling for backup but the lady prison officer said to them ‘no, let her go, it’s because you are male, let her go and it will be ok’ and they did and she walked with me to where the cell was in the remand wing where there was only one other prisoner.
They put me in a cell and I went to sleep. There was almost nothing in the cell and only basic bedding which was supposed to be safety bedding so I could not hurt myself.
I went to sleep and I needed to sleep, I was exhausted.
But the man kept coming past and tapping on the door and asking if I was ok? I think, or apparently he did a thumbs up sign at me but I hadn’t got my glasses and I couldn’t see him but he thought I knew he did the thumbs up sign.
Everything is a blur but I am not sure where anything fits in place after that but there is a lot to write.
I could not see very much and I did not always know what was expected of me and I wasn’t always told, nor was I told the prison routine and sometimes that was a problem.
I am terrified of people standing in doorways and the staff always stood in the doorway, basically I was now living all my worst fears.
There were a number of staff and my ability to recognize people is impaired anyway and without glasses at first I could not tell who was who.
The female member of staff who had been involved so far continued to work with me, she had been told or realised that I was autistic and made an effort to ensure that I understood her.
There was another female member of staff who also made an effort.
I kept hiding in a with my blanket over my head, but they said I should not do this because they were meant to observe me and me going in the corner was making observation difficult.
I tried to be co-operative but I was utterly petrified and hiding in the corner under the blanket was my way of trying to be safe.
They kept bringing me food and drinks and I was not hungry but kept being sick or ‘bringing up food’ - I will explain in a minute.
They kept urging me to eat, and they were not the police, they were genuinely trying to help, so I did my best to co-operate even though I was not hungry.
There was a video camera in the cell, I was on camera all the time and so I was embarrassed to go to the toilet. One of the male staff asked if I was ‘making myself sick’ and I assured them that I was not.
Within a few days the female warders were taking me out of my cell to encourage me to help them when they made me a hot drink.
The drink was made in a blue plastic mug and was made with powdered milk and I realised that the milk might be contributing to the problems.
I told them nervously that I might be being sick because I couldn’t digest powdered milk. They responded by arranging for some proper milk for my tea.
They tried to encourage me to come outdoors for exercise and I told them I would go mad with grief if I was taken outside but not free.
They also turned up with my glasses and asked why I had not asked for them, I responded that I had not known that I was allowed my glasses, I had not known where they were and had written them off as lost.
I did not want to wear my glasses at first as I did not want to see that I was trapped.
I was in a bare cell and under watch all the time.
But the staff were aware that I was terrified and were trying to help.
The church of England chaplain was sent, I do not remember if I asked or not. But when she came, I was under my blanket in the corner of the cell floor.
The staff tried to get me to poke my head out of the blanket, and they told me the chaplain had come to help.
She was wearing a green shirt.
I said ‘dog collar?’ and she said ‘yes’, and I said ‘Bible?’ she said yes and asked if I wanted a Bible, I said I did.
I was not comfortable about seeing a Church of England chaplain and had a feeling that any church of England chaplain would be linked to Bob Key and others in the island churches who had hurt me, at the time I didn’t think Jane Fisher, but I should have done when later on, when I specifically asked to see a methodist or Catholic chaplain (the prison had both), the church of England chaplain continued to turn up despite me being specific and again the ‘forcing on me’ which is typical of Jane Fisher, meant that this Church of England chaplin kept coming.
It is like being raped, every time Jane Fisher exposes and violates me trhough other people.
Anyway. The staff at LaMoye continued to try and help me, but some things were not explained to me at all, including that they have a ‘lockdown’ once a week when all staff are in a meeting and they do not even provide breakfast, or didn’t to me when it was like that.
My blood sugar drops when I don’t eat, and I am not supposed to fast because I become ill. So that didn’t help. And I didn’t know about it. No-one formally explained anything, like when the medicine comes round you are meant to go and get it, so I missed out on my medicine because I did not know, was scared of the medicne person and not well and I didn’t know I was allowed to go to the cell door when it was opened.
The cell had to be cleaned very day, and at first the warders did it and then supervised me having a shower and then they taught me to clean the cell and they brought my day clothes, nicely laundered (but I was still without a bra, much to my shame), and then as time went on they let me shower and the restrictions on me were lifted so that I could have proper bedding and a CD player with some CD’s and some books, they kindly took me to the library and got me lots and lots of extra books, and they got me pen and paper so I could try and write down what had happened to me, but in that state I could barely write adequately.
The staff asked if I would like to go upstairs and meet the others, I was downstairs in the remand wing and the sentenced prisoners were upsatirs), I said no, I remembered that old television programme with the scary prison women on it.
But eventually I came upstairs. The other women, aware that I was ‘special needs’, were extremely kind and supportive, they told me about themselves and they encouraged me to play pool and card games (which I struggled to understand), they chatted with me, lent me books and sent notes down to my cell via the warders and generally were so very nice that I wished I had met them all outside of prison as I felt safe with them. They did their very best to work with my autism and communicate clearly and I wish there was a better way of paying tribute to them.
One young woman in particular befriended me and I was allowed to sit in her cell with her, she had all her things in there as if it was her home, we sat on her bed and chatted and I taught her some sign language and she showed me the computer she had, which was actually very good, it had music and everything. Her boyfriend was in prison as well and they had a young daughter who was living with her mother. When her boyfriend was marched past the block, she waved to him out the window.
The support and activities with the other women was very helpful to me.
They were immeasurably kind and reassuring.
But I hated it that the guards had to search me every time I returned to my wing, they were sympathetic, unlike the police, and they knew that the touch hurt me, but they had to do it.
They also tried to get me to go to the gym with the other girls but seemed to forget or be unaware that I had no bra, I had been taken from my home not fully dressed for daytime and had no bra and I was too embarrassed to tell them this.
The other woman in the remand wing was noisy and angry, shouting all the time at the staff, and it echoed, it drove me mad with distress, and worst of all, she played music on top volume, but when I wrote it down for the staff that it was upsetting me, that seemed to be one thing they could do nothing about.
I am grateful to the staff for everything they did do for me, they said they have no choice as to who comes into prison but they try to work with, and help, everyone who did come in.
They also let me have as much computer access as they could to enable me to write. No internet but plenty of word processing.
And someone tried to interest me in an art group but I freaked out and couldn’t cope.
I was allowed extra time in the library, and there was a chapel service on Sundays but people I knew had come in to run it and I was too ashamed to go, St. Matthews people.
The prison warders also took me to see the manager at the prison to work out how to help me cope with being locked in and in prison, because I was so stressed. He asked me what I did when I was not in prison and got stressed, what helped to calm me down? I told him that I would go out to Noirmont or Corbiere and climb out on the rocks there and sit alone.
He did his best to ensure that I could be out of my cell and out in the exercise yard as much as possible.
Basically the staff really tried to help, even when they got the churches side of things against me.
People who came to see me in Prison:
A prison psychologist. I am not sure why but at first someone said she worked out why people did things that made them go to prison, but then she seemed to understand, and I am not absolutely sure on this, she seemed to understand that I was not actually deliberately bad. One time I had to say I could not see her because I felt ill, and the reason I got ill was that I had two duvets on my bed, and I wanted both, for comfort but it was causing me to overheat and get drowsy and headachy.
The chaplain, the CofE chaplin who turned up even when I asked for an alternative chaplain, I now know that this is Jane Fisher’s doing and I feel violated by it as I feel violated by all her interventions.
This chaplain was determined to be involved even when I specifically wrote to staff asking for a different chaplain.
One day she took me upstairs to talk and a Catholic Bishop was visiting and I got to meet him. But she was asking me about things, as if she didn’t know, and I got suspicious and asked if she had been discussing me with the Dean and she said she had only been in the island a short time and didn’t know anyone involved. But seeing as the Dean and Deanery select Clergy, that couldn’t strictly be true, but then she was in a hurry to put me back in my cell.
The Mental health woman: This was a nasty intrusion and this woman treated me as if I was bad, she was abrupt and rude and I felt as if she was forced upon me and that this was another attempt to make me out to be insane.
I do not understand why she came into things and I fail to see how she helped, in fact the things she said were very upsetting to me and wounded me.
The solicitors: I was sent a lawyer, an English lawyer who apparently was not allowed to represent me in Jersey courts.
Thus I wondered and wonder what the point of him being involved was.
I didn’t really understand much about it. He or the prison staff gave me a load of paperwork and told me to read it and reply, but I was traumatized, this was apparently statements from the Dean and the Bishop and jane Fisher, the Bishop and Jane Fisher and a policeman were named as the Dean’s witnesses.
I didn’t read anything. I was already too hurt and traumatized and trying to keep myself sane in prison, mainly by dissociating and dreaming that I was roaming the roads of South Hampshire alone and free.
The solicitor was there with the rude mental health woman and he said I had no good choices.
The subject of being bound over to leave the island came up somehow and I said that might be best as I had no home, no job and legally wasn’t allowed to sleep rough in Jersey and would not be able to take another home and job and have to live branded officially for the benefit of the church community who already treated me so badly.
And of course, my biggest concern was that if I didn’t agree to being bound over then I would have to be kept in prison because there was nowhere to go and nothing for me.
I made the solicitor aware that I had been trying to get help and that I had been awaiting my first psychological appointment, after so long of being refused psychological help because of my autism.
The solicitor made me read something to him and asked me what it meant and I tried to explain but I was bewildered and I wanted the mental health lady not to be there because I didn’t like her.
The solicitor sent a clinical psychologist to assess me in prison and the psychologist said he found me free from serious mental illness
(which is what church people in Jersey had been implying for so long and even Jane Fisher and Tracy LeCouter had made me out to be seriously mentally ill).
I guess they have no understanding about the psychological harm I suffered or the Post Traumatic Stress.
My friends came to see me in prison but the warder would not give me space and privacy to talk to them but kept standing over me. My friends said they would write a letter to the court on my behalf, but the solicitor intervened and breached confidences to them, embarrassing me by sharing what I was supposed to have done, again not explaining my own circumstances that led to what I did.
My friends did write me a letter though and that went to the solicitor and then the courts.
My friends also said they would have me to stay when they returned to England if I got out of prison.
My friends also paid money for me because I had no access to money and I was supposed to be paying the prison for my food and laundry and things and I have no idea how people who live in prison do that but I was in prison without my money or possessions and so I was in debt to the prison and then my friend.
The English Solicitor was not allowed to represent me in court as he was not qualified under Jersey Law, so there was another female solicitor who I did not get to know and know nothing about.
Back to court:
I will keep this brief because it is traumatic and because I am not sure I remember anything properly.
Before I was due in court again, one of the prison staff started talking to me about food menus, they had just been bringing me whatever prison food was available and not a choice like the sentenced people had, but the member of staff said I should have a menu prepared in case I came back to prison after court, I thought they were telling me I was coming back after court, and I broke down in tears and they tried to comfort me and tell me they hadn’t meant it like that.
I was handcuffed and put in a cage in a police van.
I do not remember how long I had to wait to go in court but the new lady solicitor was taking the case, I was told to plead not guilty to Jane Fisher and Bishop Scott-Joynt’s charges against me but to plead guilty to Bob key’s charge against me.
The mental health woman was there and was being bossy and rude, she was taking my hand and leading me about as if I was an idiot and I felt like an idiot and I resented her, but I felt that if I did not go along with everyone then I would end up back in prison.
I knew I wouldn’t survive if I was put back in prison, even with all the nice people. I have always been an outdoors person and worked outdoors all my working life, and outdoors is my life force.
My friends from Hampshire were there, there were not many people there. The mental health lady took my hand and took me into court. I didn’t like her being there but at least someone was there. I sucked my thumb because I was very distressed.
I do not know what a lot of court things mean.
I do know that the judge man and the people up there seemed slightly surprised that I was pleading not guilty to Jane Fisher and the Bishop and pleading guilty to Bob Key, but I just did as I was told, I do not understand enough to know what it all meant and why. I know I was being condemned as bad forever that is all. (but when Jane Fisher and the Bishop had me arrested again in 2011 it was claimed in court that they had had me convicted in Jersey, even though it was bob key who I was made to plead guilty to in Jersey).
The judge said something about how hard I had worked to educate myself and he hoped I would do that some more when I went back to the mainland. But I wondered if he understood that once you are a criminal you are bad forever and no amount of education makes you employable or acceptable and that there was no point whatsoever in me trying to finish my education now. People who are deemed bad live in the gutters and smoke and drink because they are not going to get employment or volunteer work or houses or be welcome anywhere.
Anyway, I do not know what it all meant and the judge and whoever else was talking talked about me being bound over to leave the island and that seemed to be what happened and they made an error something about thinking I was going back with my friends who were in court or them arranging me going back. But I don’t know but the judge had to come back because of it.
So then I was taken back to the police station but they did not be nasty any more, they got me hot drink and made me fingerprint and photo and paperwork and everything I did not really understand and they talked about booking me a flight and where was my passport and they did an identity sheet because I did not know where my passport was.
Then they took me to my house. All my things were there but instead of getting me any things they brought out the bags of clothes I had ready for the charity, which were no good for me and they thought that was my clothes but I couldn’t tell them, and they found my passport, which was a Jersey passport.
My landlady came to sit in the police car with me and she was so concerned and so upset, but she had said she wouldn’t have me back so that is why I got put in prison so it was hard for me to talk to her.
Then I got taken to the airport and put on a plane and I came back to England.
I got back to the airport in Southampton and had nowhere to go. I logged onto the internet there where I had weeks worth of emails from friends, charities and various things. But it seemed that everyone in Jersey who I worked for and with knew I had been bad and condemned and they wouldn’t speak to me.
I booked myself into a hotel now that I could access my money, but the money that had been in my room when the police arrested me was never seen again and I never got my possessions back either.
I went in the hotel room and looked through the clothes the police had brought out, thankfully there was an old bra in there and I put that on though it was not very comfortable, it was better than nothing.
I cried and shook all night, trying to calm myself with the quiet calming music on the radio, but I knew what had happened was wrong even if I had retaliated to the church, they had made me out to be bad but they had done bad and what happened to me was real.
Ever since then, until the shock of recently being traced and ‘apologized to’ by the Bishop and Archbishop, I have been alone with all this and unable to face what has happened.
I didn’t realise that night that the matter was not over, Jane Fisher and the Bishop were not going to let me alone and were immediately contacting my friends and sending messages via Juliet Montague, who had covered up what her husband did to me and to his daughter and who had heavily involved herself in the case in Jersey, but against me, and yet, Jane Fisher emailed Juliet when I came back from Jersey and used her to pass her and the Bishop’s side of things on to my friends in Juliet’s parishes, including my friend Anne, who died estranged from me as a result!
But that is for another statement.
Anything ommitted from this is omitted because I have forgotten or didn’t know about it or understand it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.