After the debate?

A three day debate was held at Dumfries Sheriff Court at the end of June. Many decent people stood outside the court outraged by the actions of a convicted serial rapist ex-police inspector who's trying to regain his full police pension. The sob story he's used about his two sons ...well the boys are victims too - both now 'grown up,' as in over the age of 18. These lads are victims of the behaviour and criminal activities of their father. Adam Carruthers chose to do this to them too.

I had always thought that the job of the police was to prevent crime and to protect the public. Carruthers did exactly the opposite - he committed crimes and hurt a goodly number of women whilst he was on duty as a police officer. L&B Police traced 38 victims in their inquiries.

Carruthers arguments are beyond me - violation of his human rights? His actions were entirely his own choice. He will not accept responsibility for his own actions like any decent human being does. In this case I feel that the ECHR could not apply to Carruthers. After all, did he consider the human rights of all of his victims and the effect of his actions on them? Many of his victims will not have a pension due to his atrocious behaviour. Sadly some of them have committed suicide.

A decision on this case will be made by the Sheriff in the autumn, but I have been warned that whoever loses is very likely to take this to the Court of Session in Edinburgh. If this all goes against Carruthers, I am told he is likely to take it to the European Court of Human Rights if his generous amount of legal aid so far granted still allows.

So after the debate ......we all continue to wait. Nothing new there then for all the victims, their families and those decent people who are funding his case through the use of legal aid.

Solidarity

Apologies for no posts on the blog for a while. We've had a very significant birthday to celebrate in the family. I hope we will continue to do so at various times during the rest of the year. That takes priority when it's somebody who is so special.
More recently I've had a bad whack of asthma and am coping with that annoying problem. Two rounds of 'stair rods,' steroids in normal speak, and I'm still fighting the wheezes in spite of all that's being thrown at my lungs. Inhalers and nebuliser are all in full flow - more than my lungs are!

Thanks to Dr Elaine Murray MSP for the motion in the Scottish Parliament on the issue of pensions for convicted offenders, pursued at public expense, who committed offences through their work. I hope this will lead to something positive and change in the future. I know this is a long haul and nothing will happen overnight, but the issue of legal aid for a convicted rapist to fight for a pension when he raped whilst on duty is something that must be followed up until a sensible solution is found. I still can't believe that is has been at the expense of the public purse.

A very firm positive hand of solidarity to Ann Robertson ,43, who was a witness in the recent Grangemouth rape case, held at the High Court, Edinburgh, with two other victims of sexual assault. Ann, a particularly unfortunate rape witness in this court case was ordered to be held in custody overnight by Judge Roger Craik. Why? She broke down in the witness box whilst giving evidence and was so upset she tried to leave. Judge Craik thought this was sufficient reason to lock her up for contempt of court. Ultimately Ann's attacker was found guilty of abusing two other girls at this trial but Ann's rape case was dropped as a result of the trauma she suffered in court giving evidence.

I found that giving evidence at a rape trial was an extremely harrowing experience. I still can't decide if it was worse than the event itself or on a par with it. Talking over horrific details of a very intimate personal assault in front of a lot of strangers is not something that any normal person could be happy with. It is horribly difficult. Like many victims of rape, there are those of us who suffer from varying degrees of PTSD as a result of the offence(s.) Reliving the experience is extremely traumatic and it flipped my PTSD symptoms to extremes before, during and after the trial. I didn't do well in court, I felt a wreck, I had to be excused by the judge at times and drank gallons of water and it seemed like I cried equal amounts in tears and used masses of paper hankies.

Ann, if you read this blog, I really feel for you. It's beyond belief for you to have been treated in this way. Very well done for managing to speak out about the horrific and, I feel, utterly inhuman treatment that you received. You are stronger than you might think and I take my hat off to you for speaking out and for asking for changes as a result of what Judge Craik did to you. In my mind Judge Craik has put the work of rape crisis centres and victim support workers back many years. The statistics comparing reported rapes to convictions is dire enough as it is. Judge Craik has undoubtedly made it a more difficult decision for any future victim to feel able to come forward and to hope to be treated reasonably and with respect.

As for the ongoing disgraced ex-cop Carruthers pension claim against Dumfries and Galloway Council - there was a third preliminary hearing at Dumfries Sheriff Court last Thursday. I do not have an outcome for this latest hearing. I phoned the court to find out and was told that the information could not be released to me. That said, the following night on Lookaround the presenters said a date had been set for the full hearing but they didn't say what it was. So I don't have that date as yet. As we know, victims and council tax payers who are helping to defend this deplorable action taken by serial sex offender Carruthers are being treated badly yet again. People don't seem to count. Heaven forbid he wins, we will have to pay again through our council tax. Double whammy.

Anybody who does have a date for the full hearing, do please leave a comment on the blog and I'll chase it up and then let you all know what the supporters wishing to see a fair deal plan to do next to highlight this atrocious claim funded by public money through Legal Aid.

Pre-conceived ideas aren't good ideas

Sometimes there are those weird pieces of synchronicity, if you believe such a thing exists. An email came through last week about a visiting writer .....and yes, it really was time I got out of the house, faced the outside world and did something for me. Yesterday I went to a talk with my long-suffering, but thankfully, interested in literature carer. It was given by Scottish writer Ewan Morrison. I’d read about his books and to be honest I thought, this really isn’t going to be my thing. Not sex and relationships and as for the idea of his novel 'Swung.' No I thought, this is not for me, but then I'd not read either of his books. However, I’ve found that listening to writers speak about their process is fascinating, gems can come out of these encounters and Ewan was to hold a master class afterwards and my name was down for it.

I’m eager to learn more about writing. I started to write because I needed to. It was my only way of expressing my hurt; my outrage; the bottling up that was waiting to burst; the things I couldn’t say to people; the time after my fluency had left me and my stuttering was really bad and words went AWOL when I tried to engage in conversation, which to be honest was as little as possible.

My writing from that period is not aired and I have it filed away. The only exception being some poetry from that early venture I made into writing which was taken by the police as evidence for the trial against Carruthers. The officers said it was so strong and that it gave compelling evidence that something drastic had gone wrong in my life and that it was caused by a man and heavily indicated what the event was. Drastic it was and yes, life had gone very wrong, that bast..d had raped me and he was a senior policeman. My beliefs and ideas on trust had been blasted into oblivion in around half an hour of sheer hell. Then there was the head injury and my life took a further nose dive.

We arrived early. I got pick of the chairs and we went into a corner at the back where I felt safest. Ewan Morrison wasn’t what I was expecting. Pre-conceived ideas? No Jane, you should have learnt by now that you don’t have pre-conceived ideas; you take things and take people as you find them. If people I meet seem open, honest, kind, up-front that’s great. If they’re any of the negative things then time to buzz off. The man was a delightful character, showed a warm personality in front of his audience.

Ewan’s reading was superb. Not all sex, rampant hormones, and, after hearing his 15 minute extract, certainly not what I thought it would be. He explored an amazing array of issues from one small part of his novel “Distance.” His reading voice was good; it was clear, intonation great. There was a chance at the end for a Q&A session before the master class.

I had a question. I tried to keep it in my head, not be side tracked by other questions and Ewan’s answers. My short-term memory can be such a pain. I managed to pluck up the courage to ask about his process and just got in with the final question. Fascinating answer about the way he doesn’t want to overly analyse his work or else he thinks he’ll be scuppered (at that point I glanced at a university lecturer who is a specialist in critical writing analysis.) Ewan spoke about his way of exploring ideas and working in beginnings, middles and ends right though his work until it builds up into a composite volume.

The master class followed a short coffee break. Great to have this chance in one way I thought as I do need to improve my writing (even if only for the sake of campaigning), but I always get really nervous about this sort of thing. It can be a real exposure of your inner self and although I knew all bar one of the participants there is that inner fear lurking inside me. Ewan discussed beginnings; we looked at some examples of how writers have started novels, he spoke of the three W’s and ‘Chekov’s window.’ Fascinating stuff. Then the exercise, except it didn’t happen. He set us the exercise to be emailed to him, if we wanted to do it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d do it and the issue of ‘want to’ didn’t come into it. With no time to do the exercise Ewan planned for it was on to the ‘book game.’ I suddenly remembered that I’d played this fun and intriguing game years ago in a wee bothy on Mull when the rain hit the windows hard and horizontally one evening. I got home enthused by the mixture of ideas whizzing round in my head. The tape I had from the master class was helpful to listen to bits of. I’ve downloaded it and will play it again when there’s more time.

I looked up more about Ewan on the net at http://ewanmorrison.com/ and it seems there is a lot more to him than the subjects of his novels suggest. For goodness sake, why shouldn’t there be? I found an article he’d written for The Guardian on stuttering. He wrote about how trauma can start it off and how the discussion rages on about the “why of stuttering.” Ewan was a stutterer, so was his father. The extract he’d read to us, a father shouting to his stammering boy on Arthur’s Seat. It all made sense. That’s how Ewan knew so much about stuttering. He’d been through it. The agonies of not being able to say what you want to say, of feeling the word forming, hearing the word in your mind, but the word won’t come out. Crumbs, how did he cope with me in his master class? Was I an awful reminder of his years of stuttering? I hope not. My speech is much improved from the initial head injury, but I have good days and not so good days and yesterday wasn’t the most fluent day. I’ve got to the stage where I can read my poetry fluently, but it takes a lot of hard work. Stress, being tired, my brain slows and then everything goes downhill; the concentration, the clumsiness and the frustration of non-fluent speech and the crappy communication.

Meeting Ewan was helpful to meet to me as a ‘wanna-be’ writer; learning about some of his processes in writing; the master class exercise, the 'book game' and the nuggets from his writing life experiences were all so stimulating. I found today that there was more to him, the ex-stutterer, the man who overcame his barrier and now …..a man who has the most amazing critiques of his novels that, to be honest, I can probably only ever dream about. So often I’ve thought of writing a book about the last dozen years of my life. For now I’m mostly sticking with poetry and writing for campaigning and this baby blog. Poetry suits my attention span and my joy at playing with words in short pieces. Maybe, maybe one day the book on Jane Dearie’s disastrous meeting will be written.