A Legal Persecution

My friend Farah

There are few more tormenting calls to receive than one from a prison payphone; especially for people who have been on the other side of that wall. For all that we in freedom enjoy by way of seamless and absurdly simple communication is denied prisoners. Information squeezes through the bars in sporadic fragments.

The caller was Farah. I once called her "a well dressed piranha", and when describing her tend to say "a force of nature". She is a whirlwind of obstinate positivity who sweats and bleeds to provide help and support to the marginalised, especially female ex prisoners.

To hear her talking with her words intermingled with the background echoes that comprise the soundtrack to prison life was a shock – if not a complete surprise. For Farah has been arrested for that most nebulous of crimes, "harassment".

In this case, the harassment comes from calling out a man who was pestering both Farah and her girlfriends for threesomes. The man is a husband, father of five, and a Church Warden. You can even download his homilies on the sanctity of family life from the church website...if you can stomach the hypocrisy.

Sick to the gills with his pestering and general shoddy need, Farah dropped the bomb on him by tipping the nod regarding his behaviour to his family. All is fair in love, war, and fending off pervy guy's who can't take no for an answer.

And so yer man had Farah arrested. Seems he boasts of his police contacts, the local Commanders he has influence with. Coupled with the copper in charge of the case being staggeringly stupid or malicious, this is a combination of malevolent potents.

Which may explain why, on a case of petty harassment at issue, armed police went kicking in doors across London to find Farah over a bail condition issue. In these cynical times, having a Mediterranean hue and a name like Farah hints that one should be extremely worried about being within sighting distance of a cop with a rifle.

That crisis resolved, the perjury begins to flow from our lothario's Church. One of the esteemed clergy swears blind he had a conversation with Farah on Day X regarding our letch; a conversation whose content doesn't flatter Farah. So it is provident that Farah was actually 150 miles away at the time, train tickets and CCTV nailing this smarmy vicars lies.

Farah has spent years building up her business, the services she delivers to empower women. She acts while others talk themselves into exhaustion. And now, in speaking to one of her contacts, our sex obsessed pseudo-clergyman accused her of breaking her bail conditions – no contact with matey or his family, friends, etc. The cheeky git even tried to have Farah prohibited from contacting anyone in the Church of England; the Judge thought that as ridiculous as I do.

Nevertheless, in emailing a contact to happens to know our protagonist Farah finds herself arrested for breach of bail and dumped in HMP Bronzefield. From where I received her call. It was a desperate plight – the prison decided to play their usual games and hadn't put the number for her lawyers onto the prison phone system. Meaning Farah was isolated and unable to challenge her detention.

A man who can't keep his zipper under control; a man highly respected in his congregation; and a man with good police contacts....lining up every nasty trick he can to try to deflect from the reality that he's a perv and cheat. Farah will prevail, and if this ever comes to court every sordid email and text will be held up for our mockery. The lies will be uncovered, the legalisms stripped away to reveal that far from Farah harassing her pest, this pest has found a way to use the law to harass Farah.

More anon...