This piece describes sexual violence, mental ill-health and self-harm
I have a diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, acute anxiety and depression. I have been misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I have been in and out of prison for 25 years. The English prison system didn’t help me, it just harmed me.
It made existing mental health conditions worse and, even when I was literally crying and begging for help, I was told I was not a priority and not worth it. The contractor said I was a remand prisoner, so my needs did not fall within their contract. Judges knew about my mental health disorders and they ignored them – I was considered so dangerous I had to be imprisoned, but I have never been convicted of a violent crime or physically harmed anyone.
Judges just ignore pre-sentencing reports, so what is the point? It is just a tick-box exercise for forensic ‘experts’ to get rich, when they charge upward of £5,000 for these reports. They meet you once for less than 2 hours. How much can you learn about a person’s state of mind, and make decisions that will affect their liberty and the rest of their lives, in 2 hours?
Judges, psychiatrists, and the police don’t realise how much harm and how much trauma they are causing by the name calling and violent language they use, particularly against women. I have been called deceptive, deviant, manipulative, controlling – the judge was using language that he was not trained to use, he is not a psychologist and most have very little experience outside the cloistered lives of the hallowed residences and the inns of court.
I remember not wanting to be ‘mad’ from a very young age. Mental health issues have ravaged my family, on both sides for as long as I can remember. My grandma was prone to weeks of crying, depression and ‘hysterics, and had a medicine cabinet full of multi-coloured tablets. They were useful, when I took my first overdose aged 13. As I swallowed the pills, I wondered if I would wake up. I remember wishing I would not. Then there was my aunt, my father’s sister who was raped as a child. She ground her teeth until her gums bled and had other nervous conditions. My father was always paying for her to see Harley Street specialists. She was like a little bird, watchful, pert, so sensitive, you just wanted to protect her. She wasn’t built for this world.
I remember feelings of disassociation starting very young, floating outside of my body as it was repeatedly violated by older men who were related to me, the ones who were meant to protect me. The people meant to safeguard me, my own parents, turned a blind eye. This is a deeply rooted cultural failing, incest is common in my community and many women are ignored if they complain about rape or sexual advances from male relatives. It is normalised.
I have lived in a trauma quake, every event I remember from my childhood is a traumatic one, but you don’t realise the impact at that age, this was my ‘normal.’ Into my teens and as a woman, I created a life that was exciting, glamorous, dangerous and explosive. Relationships didn’t last, I abused my body with drugs, sex, everything to fill the hollow left by the years of abuse. I couldn’t trust anyone – my default position was to hurt people before they could hurt me.
Ending up in prison was the natural next step. There was no care or love in my childhood, my mother is cold and emotionally undeveloped and hates her children. She passed on her own trauma and isolation from her own childhood. The shame and the disbelief engulfed me the first time I went to prison. My father was a brick, but he was an alcoholic so his ability to stay present and understand how much trouble I was in was met by throwing money at any problems I found myself in. No one believed it; my home, my family, my whole existence looked so perfect and everything was in place for me to have a great future, coming from a privileged background. Prison was not part of the life plan.
The trauma of prison was just another layer on top of years and years of trauma. The violence, the degradation and the absolute indifference to my deteriorating mental health. They all knew. A court-ordered psychiatrist’s report had confirmed serious mental health disorders but I was always told I was not a priority, that there were people with a more acute diagnosis than me.
I watched women self-harm so badly, they cut to the bone, flesh hung off their arms, blood poured like rivers. I started to self harm and took other women’s medication, because the antidepressants I had been put on did not touch the sides of my anxiety and pain. I was in physical, visceral pain. My skin hurt, the nerve endings in my scalp felt electrocuted, frazzled. I took an overdose of antidepressants, but no one batted an eyelid at the awful women’s prison I was in. It was just an inconvenience for them to have to call an ambulance out.
Practically every woman I met had mental health issues and being caged, the constant clamouring of steel doors and jangling keys, screaming officers who didn’t know how to deal with trauma, all compounded our fragility and ability to cope. Friends hung themselves, died from overdoses, died in their sleep, years too soon. Lives half lived and futures stolen by a brutal and vicious system. There was no rehabilitation, it was just boredom, impacted by more boredom. The same grey walls, the same smell of desperation. Everyone knows prison doesn’t work but it is big business, a big employer, building prisons is profitable.
As soon as one woman left or died, there was no room to mourn or feel the loss. They were replaced by another number, another woman to fill the void. People leaving, being released, dying, the prison service just forgets, their memories covered over, like drowned bodies covered silently by water.
I am taking legal action against CNWL NHS Foundation Trust because they let me get worse. C-PTSD is treatable with the right therapy, in a safe and trusting environment. Their staff were unhelpful and harmful and I don’t want other women to go through what I have gone through. My life is almost over, intimacy is impossible, my relationship with my children and my family is completely destroyed. If I can spare one woman from what I went through, it will have meant something.
The outcome I want from my legal case is for judges to understand the harm they are causing, for the commissioners at the Ministry of Justice to commission contracts that are being monitored properly, that women are being cared for, not just dumped in prisons where they are literally left to waste away.
Our next hearing date is on 1 June, so I really need people to look into their hearts and ask what prison is for. Is it to harm and punish people, or to help and make us better? If you think it is to help and make people better, you are being lied to and deceived – that doesn’t happen. If you want change, then please support the campaign set up by The View so we can get an updated psychologist’s report to describe the harm I have suffered as a result of not getting any help and to fund a powerhouse legal team, Alan Barker from Mike Mansfield QC;s chambers and literal heavyweight Tim Gir, from Sanders Witherspoon. I feel we can win this and make a difference to the way women are treated in the criminal justice system and to shine a light on the systemic injustices and failures in the system that are obscured by people with vested interests.
Mr Gir says, “I have worked for many years with offenders in the Criminal Justice System and many of them have mental health problems. Many are stuck in a pitiful circle of offending, poor mental health leading to repeat offending and then prison. Too many people are serving time because they are unwell rather than bad. Misdiagnosis in a case like this exposes a breach in the credibility of the system that I am sure so many work hard to prop up. We will help Ms. L to achieve restoration for the damage caused to her, so we appeal to everyone to please donate whatever you can to support her case.”
Fiona Anderson, an independent social worker with over 25 years experience in the state and private sectors, who is on the advisory board of The View added, “I think we have to change the narrative of what it means to experience systemic trauma and institutional violence against women in 2021. When it’s all said and done, who benefits from Ms. L’s injustice? By challenging the institutions which caused her so much harm, she places herself at risk of being traumatised all over again. Given all that she has been through, I am amazed at her strength and fight to carry on.”
Find out more about Ms L and The View’s campaign here.
Image credits: Dan Meyers and Jerome