At this time of night?

10.29 precisely (on my watch) the phone rang tonight. I hate phones ringing period, ever since I got that threatening phone call from Carruthers in November ‘98. “Number withheld” came up on the handset. I’ve gone for the caller display now and hope to work out who is calling before I answer the phone …..but it’s not foolproof.
I know the SERCO monitoring team comes up as ‘number withheld,’ but surely not at this time of night? As always and with the deepest of suspicion I answered tentatively. The voice was unknown. Yep, at this time of night it was SERCO …..and a bad line and a woman who spoke really fast and used a lot of techie language that meant nothing to me. Had I tweaked an aerial on the box when I’d got something from behind the curtains? Was that what the weird cracks were that I couldn’t figure out and had it set the alarm off in their control room? No they wanted to send somebody to come out tomorrow.
I’ve never had much notice from SERCO for anything they need to do to the black box since it was installed in the house. So me, one of the victims; me who courtesy of what Carruthers did when he realised he was being sussed and about to be suspended got a threatening phone call; me who hates phone rings with a vengeance gets phoned up on a Friday night at 10.29 p.m.
I do begin to wonder what it is about aspects of the system when comparing rights for victims and perpetrators. I maybe don’t sleep well these days, but a phone call at 10.29 means trouble to me. I get so uptight, worried …..and it turns out to be routine for SERCO. Well to me it’s not bloody routine and I don’t approve. I do think there should be a cut-off time for phoning the victims who are the ones that are to be protected. It’s a reminder to me and worst of all just before I go to bed that this is the protection that is required from the heinous deeds of a serial sex offender and no matter what I can’t get away from that fact …..not even at 10.29 on a Friday night.

This so pisses me off it’s untrue. Why am I now having to live like this when it’s my right to make my own life choices that are normal for any decent person? Do I really want to live like this? Why did the cop who came to do the security check say to me, “if you see a car coming or people you don’t know, go inside and lock the doors.” Because Carruthers is labelled as a dangerous man. I know he's dangerous man. I experienced his deviousness and his perverted behaviour at first hand. I still have the medical problems from his afternoon attack.
It’s all because of the ‘nice policeman,’ serial rapist and sex offender, they let out of prison after only 7 years and 4 months with no break between being in secure prison accommodation and being released straight into the community. The ‘nice policeman’ who still says he ‘didn’t do it;’ the man that insists he was ‘set up.’ Oh yeah, for heavens sake why would anybody want to set him up and not any other cop in the force? how can a set up man lose a court case, criminal appeals and two SCCRC appeals? The conviction rate for rape is pathetic and the number of cases that get to court is tiny when compared to the number of reported rapes. The process a victim has to go through is meticulous by the investigators and then the prosecution and defence pre-cognition agents have their go pre-trail.
Carruthers says ‘set up,’ interestingly it turns out by a vast number of women who didn’t know each other, were from all different areas in his old force region where he 'served the community/protected the public as a policeman (perhaps bar Stranraer …why no victims from Stranraer?), and 38 women found by Lothian and Borders Police came from a period of 20 years of his known offending period?
And now this phone call at this time of night to one of his victims…..

There’s been more instances this week of the obvious inequality between treatment of victims and perpetrators that I could relate to you ……..but I need to go and calm down, take my pils, try to calm the PTSD symptoms from this late phone call, try to stop it turning into flashbacks and then nightmares again intruding into my sleep, make a cuppa and get this in perspective and realise that the SERCO people are just doing their job and they seem to think that victims and perpetrators are all the same and disturbance within their hours is immaterial to either party. It’s probably fine and rubber stamped in their rule book. Maybe there's something urgent with the monitoring system? The installation man said SERCO personnel are allowed to go to a house up until midnight. Not this one!
Remember, you don’t get a choice in what happens to you when you’re a victim. Perpetrators of crime, violent criminals have choices and they know the outcomes if are caught …..especially the now disgraced police inspector who spectacularly abused his power with devastating and tragic consequences for his victims.