Random Short Story

This was a short story I found in my files, based on what happened to me in Jersey. It was amazing that I could write it without collapsing but I was given a prompt and wrote it without thinking, It is called Kangeroo Court.

Every day she huddled in the corner of the cell, shivering, sick of most of what she had eaten.

Every day she struggled, bewildered because no-one told her the rules. Prison isn't the place for someone with autism. She knew nothing about prison.

They tried to make her read what her abusers had written. But she was too sick and traumatized. What they said didn't matter, she was voiceless and they had taken her home, her job, her liberty, why try to make her read their lies? She had no defence.

Every day she huddled in the blanket, trying to keep her thoughts elsewhere. She suffered claustraphobia, and being imprisoned was terrifying.

She was a quiet, shy and mild person, and prison with it's noise and confusion terrified her. She had never dreamed of doing anything wrong, until she stood up to the powerful circle of men that her abuser belonged with.

No-one at the prison explained anything, they didn't tell her what lockdown was and when it occured, they didn't bring her any food and her blood sugar dropped too low, but there was no-one to ask for help.

She got ill and faint and her headache raged, but she had no voice, no-one to turn to.

She couldn't come to terms with prison. She couldn't cope with being put with people who had deliberately been bad.

She didn't understand prison, it wasn't her home and her work and home and her daily routines were gone, replaced by harsh lights and noise and being marched around. Her friends had all gone, and they would never come back.

The prison staff muttered about how they had no scope for an autistic prisoner and that this matter was a crying shame.

She was sick all the time and they asked her if she was deliberately being sick. They never took any notice of the fact that she had no bra and they kept telling her she was to join the prison gym sessions.

She had been removed from her home in pyjamas, and her pyjamas were a tracksuit, so everyone thought she was fully dressed, thought she was the kind of person who would wear a tracksuit during the day. She wouldn't have dreamed of doing that.

At night her nightmares flung her screaming in terror over the cell, the nightmares would be there until the end of her days - being beaten by the police, being jeered at as mad and brutalized.

And then the nightmares about being abused and fighting for justice while the abusers remained esteemed and supported and she was shunned in the community and treated as mad.

Her whole life was gone, and because she had been abused.

She had been in the remand wing for two weeks when they came and told her to choose the meals she wanted after she had been sentenced, and she collapsed in tears.

Then she was bundled into a van and pretty much flung into court.

She sat there listening, with her thumb in her her mouth, rocking backwards and forwards while the press took notes.

She didn't get to speak, she had no voice and no representative, her abuser's circle was made up of lawyers and judiciary, including the judge in front of her and the lawyers in court. She had no voice.

And while the press made their song and dance, and the abusers rejoiced in it and showed it to their friends who knew about the allegations, she was convicted and led away