Go to jail, do not pass go... (The Criminal Justice System)

Member Name: kimgraham

Product:	The Criminal Justice System
Date:	23/09/02 (123 review reads)
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This only just scrapes into this category, so I am sorry, but there is no hope of the right one for some time, so please bear with me.

This op is about an innocent person spending a day in the jail cells:


I am writing this in the hope that none of you will ever feel the need to be helped by it.

I am, I think, a reasonably decent human being. I am entrusted with the education of children and I work as a part time politician. I have been fortunate to be considered successful at both. Aren?t all politicians crooks? No, not in this case!
So how am I in a position to tell you what it is like to spend a day in jail? I am afraid that I am, but to fully understand it I must first go through some background detail. Sorry!

In 1995 my world began to disintegrate very fast. It had been pretty rocky since the late eighties, but things jogged along, after a fashion!

In 1995 I started receiving dubious telephone calls. We had had them a few years previously, some pillar of the Catholic Church who did not think I should have got divorced and be living with another man. There was uproar when we had our daughter! There, for the grace of God goes any one of us, so how dare they judge and harrass me? Anyway, I assumed these phone calls were from the same source and although they were mildly irritating, I tried to laugh them of. My other half seemed to be getting them too, so I never suspected what was really going on.

Then, all of a sudden I noticed that whenever either of us had a dodgy call, usually a hang up at this stage, he decided within ten minutes to go and put his motorbike away. Bear in mind here that our garage was only at the back of the house, so five minutes at the most should have seen him back in the house. Hmm- sometimes it took two to three hours before he re-appeared. Now, I am not stupid, I began to smell a rat. Well, you would, wouldn't you?!

On one occasion he did this at 1am ,so I locked
him
out. That meant I would have to get up to let him in, ensuring that I knew how long he had been, without me losing any sleep. Didn't sleep much anyway, but never mind.
I opened the door to him at 3.30am. He was utterly dishevelled and in tears.
Goodness, looking back on it he was a master of manipulation!
Obviously I didn't yell, as was the original intention. The story- oh you will love this one- he had not wanted to come straight back into the house as it was too hot, so he went for a little drive to the local woods. He couldn't tell me he was going out for what reason? Oh, he didn?t want to leave the engine running in case someone rode off on it!! Anyway, the story goes that he lost his bike keys in the woods and had been grovelling around on his hands and knees in the dark trying to find them. Pardon? You don?t believe it? Well, neither did I!
This sort of thing went on for a further three months. By now the police were involved. The telephone line had a trace on it and Tony had gone missing ( ie not turned up for work either) for several days twice. He had mental health problems and his GP was very worried for his safety.

I had about had enough. The police were not getting very far, and these phone calls were now coming at very odd hours, such as 4 o?clock in the morning. Tony was recovering from a major mental breakdown, so I was used to bizarre and erratic behaviour, but this was different somehow. My best friend and I decided to do some investigating of our own. I soon found out that he was having an affair with the mother of one of his pupils. This was not the first time; he seems to have a penchant for pupils' Mums!

At the time I found out he sneaked off to France for five weeks, with his first wife and daughters. I had thought he had taken the girls to Skegness for a fortnight, so there you go! This meant that I was unable to speak to him about it for a month. I very bravely ( I thought) went to
tackle the woman, with my
best friend in tow. She admitted everything, and it was she who told me Tony was in France.
Eventually he returned. I tackled him and he said he wanted to be rid of her and make our relationship work. As he had also said that I would never be enough for him, and to expect this sort of thing from time to time it seemed a bit of a poisoned chalice! Nonetheless I agreed to continue the relationship.
To cut a long story short, despite solicitor's letters etc this woman was not about to be dumped. She made all our lives a living hell for the next year. She would appear at all hours of the day and night and scream through the letterbox. She attacked me on a few occasions and he just stood and watched. The stupid woman continued the phone calls despite a police caution, only now she was abusive. She then got her children to do it when the police told her she could go to prison if she did not stop.

My health began to fail. We moved house although we did not sell the old one. It didn't work, she still carried on relentlessly. I blamed Tony and said he should sort it out. He seemed utterly out of his depth and didn?t seem capable of doing anything.

In November 96, whilst in my thirties, I had a fairly big heart attack at school. It was the day after she had been to my house shouting the odds about getting rid of me! The general feeling was that it was chronic stress combined with a family history. When I came home from hospital Tony promised to protect me from any more. Then, he started seeing her again of his own accord. I threw him out on Christmas Eve. I just snapped.

This is where the fun starts. Only it wasn't funny at the time!
We had not completely moved out of the other house, and my winter coat and jumpers were there. I had spoken to him early on Christmas morning and apologised and he said he would follow me home, no hard feelings. He never turned up. I had to explain to our then nine
year old, that yet again, Daddy had disappeared.

I went to collect some things from the other house to discover he had deadlocked the front door and gone out the back. My back door key was in the house. I had a locksmith get me in and change the locks. I left a large note saying that new keys were next door, so that he could get back in.
The problem was, he ignored the note and hit the roof that he was locked out of his own house. Guess what! He did not contact me to find out what was going on, he went to stay with the other woman. Bear in mind that this was all taking place 6 weeks after I had my heart attack.

Then the police turned up in between Christmas and the New Year. He had tried to have me arrested for breaking into the house. They were not very amused when they found out I had a stake in it and had every right to change the locks! They did not like what was going on and asked if they could have Tony?s things. It was agreed that I should deliver them to him at the other woman's house so that the police did not have to waste time whilst I did all the packing.

With the encouragement and instruction of the police I set off with Tony?s belongings very early on early January morning. It was about 5.30 am, but I did not want to encounter either of them and it would take several runs as I only had a small car. I did the first two runs and put the boxes etc by the front door under the porch. It had been snowing and was very slippery.
On the third run disaster struck! The woman's drive is down a slope. For some reason the car skidded and I ran into her garage door. It was dented at the bottom and not a mark on the car!

At that point all hell let loose. She opened a window and started screaming that I had done it deliberately. My heart started playing up and I passed out on the drive! The police were called. I came round saw a very large policeman standing over me and panicked so I stumbled up and ran away from him
towards the house. I could see Tony leaning out of
an upstairs window, so I called to him to help me. He refused. I said that it was an accident but he took the view that had I not been there it could not have happened. The policeman grabbed me and threw me to the floor. I told him I had only had a heart attack six weeks before and to be careful with me. He said he didn't believe a word of it. I begged him to go and ask Tony. Tony refused to help and said I was on my own. The policeman kicked me so hard in the back that three weeks later the imprint of his boot was still there. They asked the woman if she wanted to press charges, and she did. For what? I had skidded on some black ice, since when was that a crime? Besides which, my car insurance would have covered it!

Bear in mind at this point that I weighed seven stone and I am only five foot two. This policeman was massive. I found out later that he is known for being brutish. It was terrifying. He was six foot three and fifteen stone, I found out from a policeman friend afterwards! Having thrown me to the floor and kicked me, he tried to grab my wrist. Now, I did resist that. I didn't mean to, it was just human nature. I am a violinist and that wrist is weak from the three times that Tony broke it. The policeman was hurting me so I struggled. I was doomed after that. I was resisting arrest, apparently. I said I wasn?t and that I would go with him quietly, but he was hell bent on beating me up! I was thrown to the floor again, kicked again and then he sat on my head.

To make matters worse, my middle daughter then aged 13 was staying with her friend in the house opposite and saw the whole thing. The friends in the house opposite sent for my ex husband to come and remove Hannah as fast as possible. Ex husband turned up and guess what- he skidded on the ice and narrowly missed the police car. By this time I was handcuffed and in the back of the police car. My ex-husband tried reasoning
with the policeman and said that he had also just skidded as the policeman had seen. This policeman did not want to know. We had to wait for a WPC to come and then I was carted off 15 miles to the nearest police cells, the Basingstoke ones being temporarily closed.


I was thrown, literally, into a closed cell. No windows, freezing cold and a little grille in the door with a cover, which they periodically opened to see what I was doing. They removed my bra and trainers, in case I tried to hang myself, I think. I asked for a doctor and one never came. I have never been so scared. I was put under a lot of pressure to sign a confession that I had deliberately driven into her garage with intent to cause damage! I steadfastly refused, which irritated them even more. I refused food, so they had me marked down as a nuisance, but I wasn't hungry.

I was left in that cell for eight hours by myself. It was quite the longest eight hours of my life- worse than being in labour! Periodically someone would come and tell me to own up. If I was " a good girl" and I quote, I would be released straight away. Well, I was not a good girl. I had not done anything wrong and I wasn't going to give myself a record. What a cheek! I was admitting nothing- it was an accident!

My son intervened and tried to get me out. He was not allowed to see me. The police eventually got my solicitor after my pleading for an hour or so!
He came and was horrified. He knew I was a pillar of the community and was not amused by the turn of events. He told me to stick to my guns. I gave a statement with my solicitor present, and I insisted on writing it myself. I think they thought I was really awkward!I knew it would be my story if I wrote it myself, I do not trust the police.

In the evening they sent for my community policeman to come and talk sense into me. He, bless him, saw my side, knew of the history and pulled some strings to get me out. He took
me home and made me a cup of tea. I had visits from him once a week for a while, as he
was under pressure to extract a confession from me. I could tell that he was utterly sickened. In the end he spoke to Tony and suggested that his bit of crumpet be persuaded drop the charges. She refused. In the end the police threw the case out.They let it be known that they were not very pleased with me as they considered it wasted lots of police time because I wouldn't take the rap for it!

At least I don't have a record. Of course, it could all have been avoided if I had not had such high principles, but why should I confess to something I did not do?

There is no easy way to cope with a situation like that. I tried to sleep for chunks of it, or messed around with anagrams once I had persuaded them to let me have paper and a pen. I asked if I could have my book from my handbag, but that was refused. I did anything I could to divert myself from the surreal situation in which I found myself. At one time I was going through the alphabet trying to find as many words as I could for each letter. I think they thought I was really odd, but I had to do something to take my mind off it or I would have gone mad. I truly believed that if I cracked then Tony and his abominable other woman would have won. I was never going to let that happen.
I refused to drink, as I did not want to have need of their highly primitive and not ever so private loo facilities! I am not keen to make the acquaintance of a bucket, call me fussy, but I have my standards! I was as polite and reasonable as I could be in the hope that they would realise they had made a mistake. I am not sure whether or not it helped as I still found their treatment of me unbearable. Then again, would they have been worse had I been stroppy? Who knows?!

You hear these stories about the police being brutish and hope that it is only the odd one. My experience of the three or four that dealt wit
h me, was that they were all overgrown thugs who did not want to listen to reason and logic. I have felt intimidated and scared of the police ever since.

I thought about bringing a complaint. The community policeman logged my injuries and said he would support me if I made an official complaint. I didn't because that would have meant keeping the situation alive in my mind for the duration of the enquiry. Frankly, I thought it was better to consign it very firmly to the past.

I got home and started to put my shattered life back together. Two days later I had to drive to Wembley as the girls and I had tickets to see Lord of the Dance. It had cost a fortune and it was to be my birthday treat. I forced myself to go, although all I wanted was to curl up into a ball and sleep my life away. I am glad I made the effort, it was a real case of triumph over adversity. It was quite the best thing I have ever been to and I amazed myself ( I constantly do) by really enjoying it.
Tony did come home for a while after a few more weeks away. He blamed me for the whole saga. It was my fault because I had changed the locks (but he had locked me out of my own home!) and I had forced him to live with this woman for two months when he didn't want anything to do with her! Do you feel sorry for him? I didn't!

Eventually she reappeared. That was enough for me and I told him that our relationship was over. It wasn't easy, but how can you really ever trust someone who has encouraged his or her mistress to have you jailed for a day and not given a stuff?
The fact it was so soon after my heart attack hurt the most.

As for the police, they did not care about my health, mental or physical. What on earth did they achieve by incarcerating me, assaulting me and harassing me in the hope of a false confession?
Let's keep a sense of perspective here; we were talking a smallish dent on a metal garage door. When did that become enough of
a reason to treat a perfectly innocent lady with a clean record like a hardened criminal? Perhaps resources would have been put to better use catching real baddies!


If that is justice, then I am afraid it sucks!

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