‘I will not boast in anything
No Yorkshire no Channel Islands no Switzerland
For Christ has given all of this and didn’t say abuse me
I will not be so insecure
Boast about my family
For Christ has given all of this
And I’m as good as you are
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9FG12eTSbI
A few days after the incident in Dorset I went back to Hampshire to stay with friends, I went to see George and Jill to apologize, it took me hours to reassure myself that I could go and see them, and it was a bad idea.
I went to their door and George told me I had no right to be there in Hampshire and why was I wasting my money coming to Hampshire when I had no money, he told me that Jill was sitting in the kitchen shaking because I had turned up, I told him that I had come to apologise, and that I was upset too, that they were hurting me too and I was shaking too, but George was mad angry and chased after me shouting at me, which sent me into complete panic, I ended up being picked up by the police about a mile away, and taken to the police station because they thought I was mentally ill or suicidal.
My car was full of rubbish because I had been so depressed over George and Jill that my car was worse than usual, and I had been incoherent and in a desperate state of mind because of George shouting and coming after me and saying it was all me and that I made Jill ill, in reality Jill has been ill for many many years and made herself ill by involving herself the way she had, and they are both responsible for the mental torture of the boasting when they had been asked to refrain, but I was the one who suffered, suffered terribly for my reaction to their boasting.
The firsy police brutalization courtsey of the Diocese without safeguarding.
I was in a police cell, having been manhandled and bruised because I was frozen with terror, I had never been in a police cell before and was horrified and ashamed, I was sick and sick again in the toilet in he cell, I lay on the cell floor shaking, I had never been in trouble, I had never meant any bad to anyone, and I was terrified of being locked up and trapped, in the early hours I saw a police doctor, and he said there was nothing wrong with me, and the policewoman who had determinedly dragged me to the police station was obviously disappointed, they were going to take me to get my car, which they had moved, but a violent incident broke out at the front of the police station over another person in the cells, his family were gathered outside accusing the police of racism, and so my departure was delayed, I asked the WPC for paper to draw on, she seemed astonished and asked why, I told her it would help me to stay calm, and I drew little pictures.
It was sometime in the early hours I got my car back, it had had little petrol in it and now had even less, this was a great worry as I had almost no money,
I went back to Overton and wrote a letter to Jill, it was a goodbye letter, I told her I was sorry for making her ill and all the rest of it, I think the letter must have puzzled her in some things as George did not tell her that he came after me and went for me. Then I somehow got back to Dorset on almost no petrol and fell into bed, when I finally woke up, I showed my landlady the massive bruise on my leg that was among police inflicted bruises, it was a stunning bruise when it came out, I tried to explain to Janet what had happened, and she told me about when one of her children had got into trouble with the police and they had phoned and asked if he was really dyslexic, she said he got into trouble a number of times, and it wasn’t surprising because of his early childhood.
I didn’t really recover from how nasty and brutal the police had been, especially as I had done nothing wrong, they were vicious and injured me, apparently for the crime of sitting in my car feeling upset, and distressed about George and Jill and being autistic and not knowing how to respond to them when they startled me sitting there.
And this incident that injured me, was used against me by the police in Winchester in 2010 and 2011 to treat me as if I was mad and did not need protection against the Diocese’s interference in my life.
I completely fail to understand why the police are allowed to violently punish someone for being distressed and what it acheives apart from more distress. I was not severely traumatised, by all my experiences.
I got an email from the Lihous in reply some days later saying that they did not consider the friendship over, nothing was said about George going for me, he obviously kept it very quiet, and so this tortured friendship remained there, half dead and distressing, with me unable to cope with it, Jill invited me to come and stay with them for a weekend, and I didn’t ask if she had gone barking mad, I just said no, I did not know she didn’t know about George, I did know I loved them and I was very damaged and my heart was breaking and that without their input I could not heal this relationship.
And they never did meet me halfway, they prayed about it, undoubtedly, but it was difficult to get them to talk with me about it, the only time Jill was willing to talk was shortly after the turned down invite when they continued to invite me, and I went to stay with them, but I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t settle, I couldn’t be in the same room as George, I was scared of him, and I kept being sick. I wanted to be there in the village though, I hated weekends in Dorset, and I loved to be at church, I loved the worship and loved to see the other people there, especially my friend J, she was always full of light and joy and smiles, she prayed with me and laughed with me and we discussed God and faith, J. is sweetness and light, she is an angel.
Isn’t it funny how the Diocese and Deanery have tried to blot out, destroy or omit these good friendships during their public destroyal of me?
Jill did not know what was wrong when I ran away from George and was sick, Jill did not understand, so I told her it was about how George had smashed me down, and she had had no idea about it, she spoke to him when he got home from a meeting, and he muttered an apology and that was it, thinking about it, I do not fully understand my reaction because with FM’s rage I did not react as sharply, but I think the fact that I loved George (in the same way as I loved Jill) and I didn’t love FM, made a difference, and George was always a rock, a calm, solid person, I had trusted him, made a difference.
I also think George hiding what he had done and then muttering a very empty ‘sorry’ when Jill confronted him also left me shocked and without any faith in him.
The added trauma of the police incident on top of that left me very anxious and panicky.
But though we tried, the relationship was broken from then on, I was not comfortable with George after that, I couldn’t let him hug me, it was always a strain letting a man hug me anyway, neither (names redacted) ever hugged me, I think apart from *** occasionally hugging me hello or goodbye, no man hugged me.
But the struggling friendship was on a downhill spiral and I make no pretence of not contributing to it, especially as I poked fun at George’s ‘Telly-worship’ sermons at church, where his preaching included everything he had heard on the news, right or wrong, other nonsense from TV programmes, with all the latest scares and buzz-words, I asked questions about why the church were encouraging people to be frightened and affected by worldly nonsense, why drag it into the church where Christ is King and the media shouldn’t be? Why take people’s mind from fear of God to fear of the world? Of course my blunt comments were not great, nor was listening to a sermon of recycled television drivel interdispersed with boasts about the family. But George was not a priest, he was a lay person, so there were many good sermons there too, and excellent worship.
I really did not know what to do with George and Jill, I lay awake every night with my heart breaking, praying, I also didn’t know how to come to terms with what had happened with Paul and , I wrote to Paul and I also went back to try and talk to him, but I never came to terms with the way he had let me down or the outcome on George and Jill, or my debts, I prayed, I prayed and prayed. Please God have mercy.
I continued to have such faith in God, but looking back at the endless ruins of 33 years, there is no sign of God’s love, especially not in the Church of ENgland who have destroyed me.
I was invited to George and Jill’s for Christmas, I accepted as I had been offered some Christmas lambing work on an estate on the Hampshire border, I went to George and Jill’s, I think this was when Nigel and Sheree’s wedding was and then Nigel was retiring.
The lambing was hard work and very anti-social hours, I was exhausted, my friendship with George and Jill was problematic, and this was when Jill and I had a row about how they had discussed me with Paul, they so very obviously had but had denied it, and Jill said she hadn’t wanted to hurt me with it, and I asked why they had lied about it, and why I was being made to look as if I was immoral.
I was really depressed. Jill said how they could have had a grandson to stay if I wasn’t there, and I replied that it was up to them who stayed and I had accepted their invitation and if they wanted a grandson there then I was happy to go.
I went back to college depressed, I had had a minor breakdown trying to look after the sheep and had fled from the job, the hard hard work, though I loved it, did not combine well with the emotional strain of my relationship with Jill and George.
Before I left them I asked them to sit and talk things through and they for some reason picked a time I had gone to bed early and exhausted and said they had sat down there waiting for me to come and talk to them, so there was no sit down and talk (looking back, that can only be a cop-out), I left them to go back to Dorset and told them our relationship was not working so it had to end. The only good thing about that depressing Christmas was that I got a cheque for my lambing work.
The local vicar had got involved in mentoring me through the college, and at first I wondered if I was seeing a replay of the situation with JM, but she was only like JM in that she was overworked, she didn’t understand me and after a few sessions didn’t try to, she instead got me to help her prepare the children in church for taking communion, and got me to do gardening for her and her curate-to-be, I wasn’t too bothered, she gave me with a bit of cash here and there and helping with communion and also various things like the carol service in the old people’s home kept me occupied and useful.
I lost contact with her on leaving college. She was not JM, and her church was too dry for me and I didn’t settle there and they did not understand me, the churches in that part of Dorset were all too dry of charismatic, so I didn’t have a church in Dorset, especially as my landlady said it was a pity to waste time like that, and that the vicar was always too busy wasting time or something. She really didn’t like her. So I continued to be a long distance member of the churches in Hampshire.
I dreamed one night of a light brown church next to a park, the dark pine trees in the park were lashing in the sea thundered beyond, a person was dead and their soul was flying above the church, the dream remained with me. I had never seen St. Andrew’s church before in my life, but that was St. Andrew’s church in Jersey, sometimes I have had dreams of the future during my life, this is not delusional, but also seems to serve no purpose in helping me with my future or avoiding problems.
One day on a farm practical I was wearing wellingtons, and was stood upon by a young bullock, he stood on my foot quite hard, and I tried to move my foot out from under his hoof, and ended up tearing the ligaments in my foot and ankle, the weak ankle, I didn’t realise straight away that I had hurt myself, but then I ended up limping, and with a semi-permentant problem with that ankle, the doctor told me I had torn it, and said to wear a support bandage and that it would take time to heal, and it did.
I hadn’t reported it to the tutor at the time as I really didn’t realise how I had damaged it.
One day I got a letter from Inland revenue with a cheque in it, it was a cheque of enough to pay a few of the creditors missed payments, and the CAB were by now helping to get the payments to creditors manageable as well, so I went and bought some toiletries and some new shoes, I badly badly needed shoes, the pair I had were so worn that I was not walking well at all. I wore my new shoes as I walked down to the ferry port where there were special day trips being advertised, £10.99 trips to Jersey and Guernsey, wow, one up on the boastful overprivilaged, I could go out on the ferry that George and Jill’s family hated travelling on, I could go out across the sea! I could escape the misery of my struggling life in Dorset and go to these much boasted about Islands, and I could boast back! One up on the boastful overpriviledged!
Although I had told George and Jill I didn’t want to speak to them.
I went aboard the boat, most nervous because it was all new, and I was a bit worried about how crowded it would be, It was ok, I found out I could go out on deck, I worried the poor stewards no end by staying out on deck all the way to Jersey, and they kept offering me blankets, it was cold, late winter and the speed of the wind makes it freezing, I love it, it brings my blood temperature down, someone else loved it too, a mysterious man appeared beside me, I am sure to this day I met an angel, he knew me, he knew farming, he knew I was nervous, he was not from the channel Islands or Dorset, but he told me that when I was tired on the way back that I could cuddle up in the play area and no one would disturb me, he was on the ferry to Jersey an on the way back, he was a happy harmless friendly person, and as we parted company at Weymouth that night, he kissed my hand, I cannot remember what it was he said or did that made me think he was an angel, but he helped me to relax and feel confident on this adventure.
I arrived in Jersey, I only had about four and a half hours between arrival and departure. I was amazed at how built up it was ‘You couldn’t see the island for buildings’ and I thought again ‘one up on the boastful overprivilaged, they are boasting about a floating conurbation!’
I walked up to a bus stop and asked a man what time the bus was for St. Lawrence, I wanted a photo of this place that the boasters went on about, so I could silence them by saying ‘this is what you are boasting about?’ yes these attitudes are not great are they? I am an idiot, but anyway, I found out that Jerseymen like to talk, and if you ask one the time they think you fancy them, this is a very real Jersey mentality, and is almost funny.
Well maybe I was exaggerating, but they are a bit desparate and a bit self-absorbed.
I got to St. Lawrence, there was a light brown church, I wondered if this was the church from my dream, it was the right colour, I went to the church but it was locked, a man came hurrying up, and I recognised him from photo’s, I said to him, ‘are you the vicar? Can I look round your church?’ He said ‘it is normally locked by now, but you can have a quick look while I get something from in the church’.
I wrote in the visitor’s book, ‘Nice church but nothing to boast about’.
As the vicar was locking up, he asked where I was from, but I decided not to say, as I was tempted to, I didn’t tell him.
I did laugh a lot once I was away from there though.
I returned to Dorset that evening, I liked some of Jersey but also wondered why the Lihous boasted about it all the time.
During my time in Dorset, I was deeply sad and hurt by the Lihouse and I missed Hampshire a lot.
I used to listen to ‘Goodbye my lover’ by James Blunt, because I rewrote it, as I do.
As you may realise, I write and rewrite songs about practically every situation in my life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVyggTKDcOE
Back in Dorset, I was having more time off college because the other students had to train for a Tractor driving certificate that I already had, I also got a work experience job doing lambing, which both I and my tutors who informed me of the job thought was a paid job, but it wasn’t, but even so, it increased my confidence and and competence a lot, I enjoyed it, and was feeling a bit better, I also did lambing on the college farm and got good reports, it was all good.
the Lihous remained tricky, they never did stop boasting, and so time there was time to be demoralised, and I wasn’t getting to see my other friends enough, so one day Anne asked me if I would like to spend the weekend in L, and I said ‘yes please’, and what I remember was the relief of being in Anne’s house, in the kitchen chatting away, enjoying a cuppa, enjoying a good meal and the most comforting and comfortable night’s sleep in the little room, it was so peaceful, so far removed from the Lihous, it felt like I was home at last.
Me not going to the Lihous at the weekends was my refusal now, not theirs, I brought my friendship with Jill and George to a sad and necessary close, though it was hard, hard beyond bearing, my heart was broken and my whole year at college had been disrupted by the Lihou situation.
I had loved my trip to Jersey, being out on the water for that length of time was thrilling, and despite warnings that it was going to be a rough journey, I clambered aboard the ferry again, and there I was in Jersey again, this time I went to St. Brelades, to the bay, to Corbiere, and to St. Ouens bay, it was when I was up at Corbiere that a strange thought came to me, it was about how maybe in a place like this I could grow away from my nervousness and make some sort of recovery, the thought of being there persisted and grew, the thought about living in Jersey, I was absolutely thrown by this thought, I knew it was not possible because of restrictions on residency and work, how could I move over here?
I was at college and then I was going back to my beloved Hampshire. I got back on the bus at Corbiere, I went down to St. Ouens Bay, something caught my eye as the bus stopped, Nurseries, I wasn’t going to get off there, but I did, I went in, wondering, and ended up talking to the manager and accepting a summer job which he offered, and he also helped me to look for accommodation, though it would be a few months before the job started.
I also managed a trip to Guernsey and even some piano practice in the meantime, just so I could join in the boastful overprivilaged’s conversation at almost their level if I met them again.
At my Birthday, George and Jill sent me a card, I was deeply upset and asked them why when our friendship was over and I had asked them not to make contact, because I needed to go cold turkey! I received no reply, I had blocked George’s email after he went mad, so they couldn’t email me, so the heartache was renewed.
I can’t explain very well, but I have attachment disorder, and this affects attaching, maintaining a friendship and ending a friendship, with everything at extremes and no middle ground. But of course I didn’t know that at the time.
College progressed, with my predicted qualifying grade being merit/distinction or double distinction, the highest grades possible despite my problems. I was amazed, I realised that despite everything I was likely to complete the course and graduate with high grades, that was all that mattered, and there I was with a summer job to go to as well, and then I would continue travelling, and it was excellent that I would start my world travel in the channel Islands and be able to return to Hampshire if being overseas didn’t work, and the channel Islands were very English, so that would show whether or not I was capable of travelling further, I am very able in some ways, but the grim reality of my disabilities weights on me and I am limited whether I like it or not, so the channel islands job was an excellent bit of news for me.
Jill and George came back into my life, slowly and carefully, I felt joyful and also resigned to the pain and distress that came with my relationship with them. I loved them more than I had ever loved anyone, but I was so hurt – and so were they, we tried to talk, Jill tried to say something about ‘could we have a casual friendship’ but she was miswording it, and I was no better, knowing that a ‘casual friendship over such a distance was not possible’ but she explained that she meant could we have a friendship with less contact than before, ie her not phoning me all the time but once a month, and me coming to stay maybe once a month, this is where a huge communication problem had been;
I was more than happy to be phoned whenever they liked and see them whenever they were free, my problem had been the change of boundaries behind my back with no discussion, they had hurt me and I had felt rejected and ashamed and confused, I had thought I was doing something wrong, I never asked them to have me to stay, I had not implemented the phonecalls, Jill had, and she had even got George to order me a new phone when mine broke, in order that she could still phone.
Just compare as I did during that conversation, my then friendships with ( 7 names redacted), they did not phone me every week, I did not phone them every week, but my relationship with Jill and George was different, emotionally charged, raw love and hands on, I went along with them but could not cope, my relationships with the other friends were deeper, less emotional and more steady.
So here we were, ‘friends’ , but I never trusted George again. I stayed over with them, and again despite the agreement for me to stay once a month, Jill wanted me back twice in that month, I said no, I said keep to the boundaries, Lizzie had taught me that because of how I am I need clear boundaries and to keep to them, that is how to avoid getting into conflicts, I stuck to that. When I went back to Jill and George next time, we went to church, and I took part in the service, I helped with the collection, I was a welcomer, I took part in the drama, when I went to sit down with Jill, she was crying, George came up and I looked at Jill crying, looked at George, fled and vomited, apparently Jill was crying because she was emotional about me helping out as I was, but I thought George was going to go mad, so I was frightened.
I was very emotionally strained, passing into the final stage of my course, struggling to make ends meet, and worried about my car, worried about my big move. Then Jill started going on and on about family, she said she had thought that what I had said about wanting to belong to a family meant I wanted to get married, even though she knew from asking before that it was not what I meant, I wanted somewhere to belong, to be accepted and loved, then she started talking about me being part of her family, but by then I was less than delighted with this, having just accepted our fragile emotional friendship, I could not suddenly leap into being family, and her family who she had discussed me with did not like me, her family in Jersey gave her incorrect advice on me, and her other family were there during that conflict and they happily discussed holidays and family in front of me in a way that totally alienated me, Jill could say I was ‘part of the family’ but she could not make it so, she could not make it so in the eyes of her family, and this hurt me, and I tried to go along with her but struggled, I remember when George openly accepted this ‘part of the family’ thing, and said ‘you have to eat all your pudding if you want to prove you are part of the family’.
Jill wrote to me, sending a ten pound note and saying she was looking forward to me being part of the family with her girls; but her girls didn’t like me because they heard one side of the emotional upsets and they never heard mine, and the advice they apparently gave about me did more harm than good.
But I was overwhelmed, and Jill told me I was ill, I told her so was she. I lost control of my temper and wrote to them and said I am not part of the family, George doesn’t like me and I am scared of him, I was still so crushed by what had happened, and things along that line, but my worst hurt was their family, the well-off, talented, gifted family who had everything and talked with Jill and George about me behind my back, I could never be part, just listening to them talking as Jill and George’s son in law sat on the draining board and the boasts about holidays went on, I knew I would be spending many years just hurting and hurting and being an outsider, so I wrote saying no, I was not part of the family, I am sorry for what I wrote, for everything said and done, but I was hurt too, and the church have used all this to condemn me as wicked and convict and ruin me.
Funny how George Lihou tried to lecture me on forgiveness when I did not trust him again, and yet they have been happy to broadcast their unforgiveness of me as part of the defence of the Dean and abuser and wrongdoers in Jersey.
Time was running out, I couldn’t cope with George and Jill and room hunting in Jersey and final assessments at college. Jill kept on about her family even though I had said don’t, she said ‘oh you will see all the family at the glass church in a few weeks as they are all together, I asked her why I would want to see them? And then she was going on about how she had asked her daughter if I could have my post forwarded to the church office, entirely without my say so, her daughter didn’t want to see me, and I didn’t want to see her, so I did not follow that up at all. I told George and Jill that this was goodbye, and that the email was blocked.
College struggled to an end, my tutor seemed to think I was miffed at not getting any special award, as a few awards were given to each class each year, but he was misunderstanding me completely, I had struggled through the year and deserved no reward, I was actually simply completely shattered, I was way beyond exhaustion, I graduated with double distinctions, but though I made arrangements to be there for the awards ceremony, I had to change that to finalise my accommodation in Jersey, it was JM and ******** who I invited to the awards ceremony, and was sad to cancel it.
The wounds from my relationship with George and Jill were raw for a long time in Jersey, they hadn’t had time to heal by the time my abuser got me. Even by the time the abuser had come into my life, Jill and George had reopened the friendship for the second time since I arrived in Jersey, and were continuing things as they were and upsetting me.
They even met the abuser when they were in Jersey with their family and I was already in the abuser’s ‘care’.
These posts about my relationship with the Lihous are full of shame and sadness, I did not need to be re-punished and branded for my reactions to them by the diocese of Winchester.
This post concludes the ‘lets go back’ story of my life from leaving my family to moving to Jersey.
I hope that it shows I am not just the user and abuser that the Deanery and Diocese have viciously portrayed me as, but that my life was a non-stop struggle that was weakening me despite my best efforts, but that I strived to work and get an education and tried to build for the future, which sadly my time in Jersey destroyed.
The Anything and Everything CofE blog 