St Clement November 2008-March 2009 part 1

• My new home was a lot safer in some ways than previous lodgings, my landlord was an amiable man.
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• The place was a flat in a block of flats and I had a small darkish room which never warmed up, I am not someone who gets cold easily but I had to sleep fully clothed and I still never warmed up, I used to lie there shaking with cold, it is the first and only time I have struggled to keep warm. I think the damp made the cold so bad.
•  The room was on a wall that never saw the sun. 

• But apart from that I was happy in my new home, I felt safe with my live-in landlord and I enjoyed watching comedy films with him and was also happy that I was a few minutes walk from one of my favourite beaches. 
• I tried hard to avoid my ex-adoptive parents and push them out of my mind, but they put themselves on my mind, showing off in the newspapers and going on the radio representing the church and broadcasting that they remained in positions of authority
•  I was angry, and more angry with the diocese and deanery for the way they had treated me and supported the adoptive parents and condemned me and left the adoptive parents in a position to make themselves out to be innocent and me to be a troublemaker.

• my relationship with the church was damaged and I was shunned in the island community and excluded and I felt small, ashamed and useless, especially as JM continued to be allowed to give her opinion, she had always given a damaging opinion of me and she had always been accepting of abuse and abusers and hostile to victims, whether this was conscious or not. 
• To live on a small island where you are at odds with people because of something serious, when you are hurt, traumatized and on the autistic spectrum, it is unbearable and I could not cope.

• The police decided that instead of having a meeting with me and Philip or the social worker, they would send me the results of the abuse enquiry by email, as well as telling me to leave my poor abuser alone because I continued to respond to the way I was shunned and maligned in the community by being angry with him, basically the police treated me like dirt and I responded to that with anger and distress.
• The police responded by liasing with Philip and my landlord to trick me and trap me and beat me and lock me in a cell as punishment for reporting my abuser for abuse, welcome to the Jersey way! 
• The resulting breakdown is something that, to this day, I have not recovered from, and I remember shaking and shaking for days and not really knowing where I was or what was going on, the police who brutalized me did so for no reason at all, just the Jersey way, and that was just the start of it.

• I was in distress and in pain when I lost control of my car and crashed, and I don’t know that I was fully lucid either, it may be that I shouldn’t have been driving at that point.
• It was coming up to Christmas and the Centenier wanted to conduct the inquiry into the crash on Christmas eve! Of all things.
• Thankfully the autism man stepped in and asked them to bring the enquiry forward for my sake and they did.
• I was given a written penalty that just said I had caused an accident or something, it didn’t mean I had points on my licence or anything because they don’t have those in Jersey. But nonetheless I didn't really understand it, any more than I understood anything the police said.

• But for me, everything was terrible, nothing had been done about my adoptive Dad, I had been in trouble instead and I had very little quality of life in Jersey because of what had happened and I was full of bad memories and hurt, and the diocese seemed completely disinterested in doing anything about the situation.
• I didn’t recover well from the accident even thought the hospital said I was ok, I fell a few times, one time was a full faint and I was sick and the other time I fell and hurt my arm badly. Mentally I didn’t recover and I kept reliving the crash over and over and even in my sleep I could feel the impact.
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• Christmas was tough, my friend Anne who was now fairly disabled by cancer, invited me to go and stay with her and her family for Christmas and I asked if she was sure she was up to having me to stay. Anne assured me that she was, and so I agreed to come to the mainland for Christmas.

• But sadly I managed to hear some unkind whispers of other people who said I shouldn’t be at Anne’s for Christmas and that I had been untruthful about the car crash, which was less than funny because my car was a write-off.
• Christmas was spoiled and I felt guilty about being at Anne's and pretty much suicidal because life was so bad and I knew I could not afford another car and so finding work was going to be even harder, I had been doing Christmas temp work in warehouses in Jersey but that finished at Christmas and I did not know what I would do for a living after Christmas.