When a Whatsapp Message Changes Your Life ⋆ By Forever Amber

TRIGGER WARNING: this post contains references to child abuse In March 2019, my mother-in-law's ex-partner - a man I thought of as my father-in-law, even although he wasn't Terry's dad - was jailed for three years, for child abuse. It took the jurors just 30 minutes to find him guilty of what the judge described as "depraved and despicable acts" towards two children: our niece and nephew. Their story, of course, is not mine to tell: so suffice it to say that we're immensely proud of these two young people, both for having the courage to speak up in the first place, and for the way they've handled themselves over the last three, horrendous years, as we waited for the case to finally come to court. They've been amazing: and we will never stop telling them that. Our part of the story, meanwhile - well, that's what I'm here to talk about today. Because finding out about 'X', as I'm going to call him, and what he'd done, was the start of the kind of story I never thought I'd have to tell - because I just didn't think it could possibly happen. Well, you don't, do you? Child abuse, paedophilia - these are the kind of things you hear about in the news, but can't imagine happening in "real" life - or I couldn't, at least, I had the kind of safe, sheltered upbringing that I'm starting to discover is actually pretty rare. I didn't worry about the monsters under the bed: I knew the monsters weren't real, and that, even if they were, there would always be someone there to save me from them. So it didn't even occur to me that there might be a monster lurking in our midst: that someone I thought I knew - someone I'd invited into my home, and spent birthdays, and Christmases, and days out with - might have this entirely secret, hidden part to his personality: a side so dark that when the list of charges were read out in court, everyone in the gallery cried. I knew, of course, that these things happened: I just didn't know they could happen to US - to our family, to people we loved. I didn't know it was possible to be so entirely wrong about someone: to not see, or somehow sense, the danger they presented, and step in to stop it. I didn't know the monsters were real - and, most frighteningly of all - were seemingly "normal" people: the ones you live with, work with, or exchange pleasantries with when you see them in the street. But, of course, they are. They really, really are: and there's nothing more frightening than that. * We found out on a Monday: Monday, December 28th, 2015, if you want to be exact, It had been a cold but sunny day, three days after Christmas: Terry and I had done some shopping, and gone out for lunch, and now we were curled up in front of the TV, working our way through the last of the Christmas chocolate, and enjoying what was to be our last vaguely normal evening for... oooh, three years? Slightly more? I was deep into an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians ( Look, I like seeing what they're all wearing, OK? And their kitchens. But I digress...) when I heard Terry's phone beep with a message alert. I thought nothing of it at first, so, it wasn't until a few minutes later that I suddenly realised Terry was acting kind of oddly, and that, rather than replying to the message, was just sitting there, silently staring at his phone, with a strange expression on his face. "Is everything OK?" I asked, fully expecting the answer to be yes, of course everything was OK: it was just a client, or some other work-related issue that could really have waited until tomorrow morning. Instead, Terry simply stood up and silently handed me the phone, before walking into the kitchen, which he started cleaning with the kind of fervour I'd normally associate with... well, me, really. I'm the one who cleans when I'm stressed, and yet, there was Terry, frantically wiping down surfaces as if his life depended on it. So unusual was this, that I just kind of sat there and stared at him for a few seconds, before finally looking down at the phone in my hand, to see what had bothered him so much. It was a message from his sister, which had been sent to Terry and his brothers. (Terry is the youngest of 5.) "I have something really upsetting to tell you about X," the message began. "And I don't feel I can tell you over the phone..." And that's when the floor caved in underneath us: or that's what it felt like, anyway. There are no words, really, to describe what it's like to find out that someone close to you is a child molester: and, worse, has abused people you love. In fact, it was so unthinkably awful that the only thing I could say for the first few minutes was, "Oh my God," on repeat. There was shock, of course, and sadness. There was anger, and there was a horrible, sick feeling in the stomach, that didn't go away for weeks. Most of all, though, there was guilt. How could it have happened? How did we not know? What should we have done differently? How could we have prevented it? All of these thoughts, on an endless loop, that continues to this day. Because, the fact is, we didn't like X. No one did, really. He was a difficult, manipulative man: the kind of man who could go from being the life and soul of the party, to refusing to speak to anyone for days on end, for no apparent reason. He blamed these episodes on the depression he'd suffered for most of his life, and, because of that, he largely got away with the mood swings and the sudden descents into sullenness. "He can't help it," we told ourselves when we'd turn up for a family dinner, to find that X had retreated to his room, having refused to acknowledge Terry's mum's existence for the past three days. "It's the depression: he's not well." And, I mean, I have no doubt that he WASN'T well. His moods, however, could be impossible for Terry's mum to deal with, and, one day, when he hadn't spoken to her for two full weeks, she called Terry in tears, and asked him to come round and help her ask X to leave. Terry went, of course, but in the confrontation that followed, X begged to be allowed to stay, and Terry's mum relented. That was over a decade ago. X never got over it - and never forgave Terry for what he saw as his part in the whole thing: in fact, I'd go so far as to say that he blamed Terry for it, choosing to believe (Wrongly, of course) that Terry must have encouraged his mum to ask him to leave, and that she wouldn't have done it without him. He nursed this grudge right up until the day he finally WAS forced to leave: a fact which will become important later on in this saga. On December 28th, 2015, however, it mattered only in the sense that we didn't much like him. We knew he was difficult. We knew he was moody. We knew he sometimes treated Terry's mum badly, but that she had repeatedly told us that she wanted to stay with him, and we had no choice but to respect that. We did NOT know - or even suspect - that he was a paedophile. I mean, of course we didn't. Because you can be unpleasant, and sullen, and all kinds of awful, really, without being dangerous, and the fact that you don't really like someone doesn't mean you're going to suspect them of harming children. Should we have, though? Because, honestly, in the days and weeks that followed Terry's sister's revelation, that was the thought that kept coming back to haunt us. I think it probably always will. It was certainly the thought that kept us awake most of that Monday night, as we messaged back and forth with Terry's siblings, trying to decide what we should do next. Our niece was adamant at that point that she didn't want to involve the police: she just wanted to make sure she never had to see X, ever again, and that was obviously our main priority. There was one thing, though, that everyone agreed on: that, whatever happened next, we were going to have to tell Terry's mum, and confront X. And, the next day, that's exactly what we did. * Towards the end of 2016, Terry and I had a CCTV security camera fitted on the front of our house. The reason? This guy. Last week, we added another three cameras, including a Ring doorbell. Reason? Once again, this guy ... and what happened immediately after the revelation I wrote about in this post, and in the weeks and months that followed. To say 2016 was not our year would be the understatement of the century. Before I get to that, though, I have to first of all go back to the final days of 2015, and the morning after the message that changed our world... That morning, Terry and I got up early (To be honest, I don't think either of us had slept much...), and headed straight to Terry's brother's house, where we were joined by my sister-in-law, and two of her children. (I should probably add here that the "children" in question were in their mid-teens and early twenties at the time I'm writing about here, and are both now young adults: they'll always be ''The Kids" to Terry and I, though, so I'm just going to keep referring to them as that, so it doesn't get too confusing...) At the same time, Terry's other brother and his wife got into their car in Kent, and began the 500 mile journey to Scotland. We had no idea what this day was going to bring, but at least we knew we'd be facing it together: which was something, at least. At this stage, our niece was adamant that she didn't want to involve the police: she just wanted to know that she'd never have to see X again, and that was our immediate priority. Which, of course, meant we were going to have to tell Terry's mum what had happened. It sounds simple when you put it like that, but of course, it wasn't at all. How do you tell someone that the person they've spent the past 16 years with - shared a life, and a home, and a thousand other things with - is a child molester? It's just unthinkable, really, but we knew it had to be done - and, ideally, as soon as possible - and, after a short discussion, we decided the best way to do it would be to bring her to Terry's brother's house, and break the news as gently as possible - and away from X. Even this seemed pretty much impossible, though. X was a jealous, possessive kind of man, who didn't like being left alone, and required constant attention from his partner. He particularly hated it when Terry's mum attempted to see her children without him: for years, we assumed it was just part of his nature - now we wonder if he was just always wondering what they were planning to tell her when they got her alone. We knew it would be difficult to get her away from him, but we also knew that if he was present when we broke the news to her, the situation could get really nasty, really quickly. So, not long after we'd all arrived, Terry made the short drive to his mum's house, calling her when he was parked outside to tell her to quickly grab her coat and join him - he wanted to take her out for a few hours. Terry told me later that night that driving back to his brother's house with his mum was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life. He knew that he was driving her, not to a quick coffee date, as he'd told her, but towards news that was going to totally break her heart ... which, of course, it did. "There's something wrong," she said to him, as she got out of the car at Terry's brother's house. "Is it X?" "It's always X, mum," said Terry, grimly, as they walked towards the house. And then it began. I sat in the kitchen with the kids, while Terry, his brother and sister told their mum what they knew. It was horrific. I mean, that particular piece of news was hard enough for us to hear, the night before. For Terry's mum, though, it was literally life-changing: not only did she have to find out that her beloved grandchildren, who she absolutely doted on, had been abused for many years, she also had to face the terrible fact that the man she'd trusted, and lived with for all of that time, was the person who'd harmed them. I can't even imagine what that must have been like for her, and, as you'd imagine, she was completely and utterly devastated: in fact, I don't think she stopped crying for the next two weeks. I'll say it again: It. Was. Horrific. But it was only going to get worse. The first thing Terry's mum said when she'd calmed down enough to speak to us, was that she wanted X out of her house - like, NOW. So, once again, Terry got back into the car, this time accompanied by his brother, John. At the last minute, my sister-in-law called X's sister, who was the only member of his family he was close to, and, having given her only the briefest of explanations, asked if she'd mind being there when Terry and John arrived. This was Terry's mum's suggestion, and it was a good one: not only because it meant there'd be at least one witness to whatever was about to happen, but because, when she met Terry and John outside the house, it turned out that the sister had brought her (adult) son along with her. (We were all really concerned that X might turn violent when he was confronted, and this guy was tall and burly, which ... well, which didn't hurt, basically.) When they walked into the house, X was sitting in the dark, watching a football game on the TV. Without saying anything, Terry picked up the remote, and switched the TV off. "I've got some bad news for you," he said, without preamble. "We know what you did to . Mum wants you to leave." Now, I don't know about you, but I'd assume that an innocent person being confronted with an accusation like that would have a pretty strong reaction to it. I'd expect confusion at first, certainly, but after that, probably anger, outrage - any one of a dozen different emotions you might feel if you were accused of something SO serious you could go to jail for it, AND told you were being kicked out of your home. Actually, though, X just sat there, staring into space. He did nothing. He said... nothing. Which, of all of the scenarios we'd gone through in our heads when we were trying to work out how to handle things, was pretty much the LAST thing we'd expected. "Are you not even going to deny it?" asked his sister, incredulously, when it became clear that the reaction everyone had expected was not going to come. He did not deny it. In fact, he went one better than that, and, having stared into space a while longer, X finally spoke, "I will admit to one thing," he said... before going on to admit to one of the incidents the kids had told us about. He tried to put his own, bizarre spin on it, of course, but that admission, combined with the lack of any kind of denial, was the reason Terry and his brother ended up in court earlier this year, giving evidence for the prosecution. It's the reason, in fact - or ONE of the reasons, actually - we ended up having to increase the security of our home, and why we're currently living in fear of his release from prison, next year. (Under Scottish law, any sentence under four years is automatically halved: X got 3 years... which means he'll be out next August.) X had always hated Terry. I think he'd always hated ALL of us, to be totally honest, but he particularly disliked Terry: mostly because of the confrontation I talked about in my earlier post, but also because I think he always suspected that Terry would one day be his downfall. Now here he was, walking into his home, and telling him to leave: it was never really going to end well, was it? As it happened, though, that particular episode didn't end quite as badly as we'd thought it might: no, the real trouble actually came later. On the day in question, however, X went (fairly) quietly. There was some arguing and blustering, of course, once he'd found his voice again. There was a bit of incoherent ranting, which included the crazed accusation that Terry had made the whole thing up, and somehow persuaded the kids to lie about it, purely to get rid of X: which... yeah. Well, I DID say he hated Terry, didn't I? There was a panicked phone call to Terry's mum, and, finally, there was some violent banging on our nephew's car door (He'd driven there after Terry and John had left: not because he wanted to be involved in the confrontation, but purely because he wanted to see X leave with his own eyes...) as he left the house, suitcase in hand. And then he was gone. We weren't quite naive enough to think things would be easy from that point on: we absolutely knew they wouldn't. We did, however, hope that the very worst part was over, and that we at least wouldn't have to deal with X again. We were very, very wrong. * After X left, Terry's mum started cleaning. Actually, that's not quite true: after X left, Terry's mum cried almost non-stop for around two weeks. For her, it was almost like a bereavement: in fact, harsh though it sounds, it would almost have been easier for her if it was. If he'd simply died, it would have been terrible, of course, but it would at least have been uncomplicated: she'd have grieved for him, but she'd at least have had some form of closure - some possibility of one day moving on. As it was, though, she still lost her partner of 16+ years... but in such a way that it was impossible to grieve, or feel sadness, or to have any kind of closure at all. So, instead, she cleaned. To be totally honest, completely gutting a house - and then redecorating it, which came next - was the very last thing any of us felt like doing at the time. It was, however, understandable. X was gone, and Terry's mum wanted every last trace of him gone, too, so, day after day, the family all got up and headed round there to help: a task made even harder by the fact that X had been something of a hoarder. One bedroom was absolutely crammed with his stuff - some of which hadn't even been unpacked since he moved in. Every other room, meanwhile, was filled with traces of him: and Soula wanted every last but of it gone - the sooner the better. So we cleaned and we cleared, and we cried, and, once we were done, Terry's mum was left with a home Marie Kondo would be proud of, a freshly decorated spare bedroom (Which could actually be used as a spare bedroom for the first time in years: until then, it had been too crammed with X's junk to fit a bed...), and a huge pile of boxes filled with stuff we had no idea what to do with. The fact was, when he left the house that December night, X had absolutely nowhere to go. He'd been in low/no contact with the vast majority of his family for as long as anyone could remember, so he made a few phonecalls (We know this from the family members in question, all of whom contacted Terry's mum to offer their support: that fact alone says a lot about the kind of man he was, I think...), and, when no one would take him in, he did exactly what we'd expected him to do: he drove straight to the nearest hospital, and had himself admitted to the psychiatric ward. I obviously have no idea how, exactly, he did this (You can't generally just ask to be admitted to hospital here: you need a referral from a GP...), but I DO know it wasn't the first time X had spent time in that particular ward.. and I also know that he was to remain there for the next six months. Six. Months. During that time, our niece and nephew decided they did want to contact the police about what had happened (X was apparently walked out of the hospital in handcuffs in order to attend his police interview...), , Terry's mum flew out to Greece to meet her newest grandchild there, Terry and I arranged for all of X's stuff to be taken into storage, dropping the key off with a nurse at the hospital he'd fled to, and life gradually started to get back to normal. Then the threats started. It started with abusive, and then threatening, comments on my blog: which came as a huge shock to me - not just because X had never shown even the slightest interest in the blog in all the years I'd known him (He did use Facebook, but claimed to be completely computer illiterate other than that...), but because we'd also been told he was, at that point, still in a locked psychiatric ward, where he was apparently barely able to function, let alone spend his time reading women's lifestyle blogs. All the same, there was absolutely no doubt that the comments came from him. There were just two to start with, and any doubt that they'd come from X was immediately removed when Terry called the hospital, and X admitted to a nurse there that, yes, he had a phone they hadn't been aware of, and had been using it to post comments on my blog. Seriously, you could not make this shit up... X promised the nurse that he wouldn't comment on my blog again. We assumed that was the end of it: then, a few weeks later, we learned that X had finally been released from hospital ... and, almost immediately, the comments started again. (The comments in question have long-since been removed, but one that particularly sticks in my mind was left on this post, about blogging. Why did X take exception to a post about blogging? Because the succulent in the photos I'd used to illustrate it was one he'd given to Terry's mum's years earlier, and which she'd passed on to me when she was busy trying to remove every trace of him from her home. Honestly, when I took the photos, I wasn't even thinking that the plant had once belonged to X: I just thought it looked nice in the photo, little realising that he would see it and be utterly incensed by it. But he was. Like really, REALLY incensed. Who would've thought an innocent succulent would cause so much drama?) Now, I should say here that, under normal circumstances, I obviously wouldn't contact the police to tell them someone had been posting nasty comments on my blog. (With that said, this actually wasn't the first time I'd had to do it, amazingly enough ... but that's another story for another time, if anyone particularly wants to hear it...) In this case, though, the comments were threatening as well as abusive, and given that X was now out of hospital, and apparently living back in the local area, where we could bump into him at any time, they were pretty disturbing to us, really. Honestly, I was pretty scared: not just because of the nature of the comments themselves, but because I knew X, and what he was capable of. This wasn't just some random, anonymous blog commenter, who'd decided they didn't like my shoes or whatever: it was someone who knew where I lived... and who was making vague threats against both me and Terry. Taking all of that into account, we figured we should at least let the police know about it: not because we expected them to do anything about it, necessarily, but just in case it was relevant to the case they were already building against X, in relation to our niece and nephew. When I called them, I gave the officer on the phone a brief outline of why I was calling, and didn't really expect it to go much further than that. Much to my surprise, though, the police took the situation much more seriously than I'd expected: to the extent that, within a couple of hours of calling them, Terry and I were sitting at our kitchen table, giving statements to two friendly officers. (Who had to laboriously copy out every word of the offending blog comments by hand, poor souls...) During our conversation with them, we asked the two officers what they thought we should do to get X to stop contacting me via the blog. I hate to admit it, but by this stage, I was honestly a bit of a wreck: I blamed myself for somehow managing (Albeit unintentionally: as I said, I had absolutely no idea he'd have access to my blog in hospital, or that he'd even know how to access it if he did...) to goad him into threatening us, and I was so horrified by it all that I honestly just wanted to delete the blog completely, to stop him using it to get to me. (Also, I had to give the police print-outs of the posts he'd commented on, and, well, let's just say I've never been embarrassed by what I do for a living, but I DID find myself wondering why I couldn't just have decided to blog about, I dunno, current affairs, or the weather, or something. WHY?) The police advice was a bit less drastic than that, though, thankfully, and the officer advised us to send him a single text message, clearly stating that we didn't want any further contact from him, either via the blog, or by any other method. If he continued to contact me after that, we were told, it could count as harassment, and the police would have grounds to speak to him about it. Terry sent the message while the police officers were still with us, having shown them it first to make sure it was OK. (It was literally just one line, using the wording the police had given us...) About two minutes later, his phone beeped with a response: it was X. And he was NOT happy. In fact, his message to Terry was much more explicitly threatening than the ones he'd posted on my blogs - so much so, in fact, that the police officers took one look at it, then immediately stood up. "Well, it looks like we have our grounds to arrest him," one of the officers said as they left. And they did. We had no idea where X had gone when he left hospital - we still don't - but it took the police officers just two hours to track him down and arrest him: they called to let us know once they had him in the back of their car, and Terry and I sat there staring at each other silently, not knowing whether to feel relieved or terrified. X spent that night in the cells. All of his electronics devices were seized and sent off for forensic analysis (Apparently, even although he'd admitted to posting the first few comments on my blog, and it was very obvious that the rest had come from the same source, they still wanted to make sure they had hard evidence that it was him...*), and he was formally warned not to contact either me or Terry again, before being released the next morning. Did it work, though? Well, to date, there have been no further comments on my blog from X, and no text messages to Terry, either. It was not, however, the last we were to hear from X: but that, too, is another story for another time... (*We didn't ever hear anything else about this, despite repeated requests for information, and he was never officially charged with any offence in relation to it. ) * It took three full years for the case to come to trial. In that time, I'd estimate that X appeared in court almost a dozen times in total - each time pleading innocent, and each time succeeding in having the trial date postponed for yet another month, mostly (as far as we know) on mental health grounds. By the end of that time, we'd honestly all but given up hope of the case ever being heard: in fact, it had reached the stage where, rather than one of us going to the courthouse in person in the hope that a trial date would be set, I'd just call them at the end of the day and ask what date the case had been continued to THIS time. Finally, though, the trial date was set for February 2019, and Terry and his brother, John, both received letters telling them they'd be called to give evidence - in both cases relating to the day they'd asked X to move out of their mum's house, and the admissions he'd made during the ensuing confrontation. First, though, our niece and nephew were called to give their evidence, with our niece going first, and giving her evidence from behind a screen. The court was closed to the public for this part of the trial, for obvious reasons, but my sister-in-law went along to lend her support, and messaged us during the lunch break to say they were all sitting in the court's cafe... with X sitting right opposite them, apparently attempting to stare them all out. Terry and I were so shocked to hear there was no procedure in place to keep the victims and the accused separate at this point, but nope: X - who could've chosen to sit as far away as possible in the near-empty cafe - chose to sit as close to his victims as he could, and, well, that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the man, really. The next day, Terry and John were both called as witnesses. For this part of the trial, the court was open to the public, so I went along with Terry, and sat in the public gallery with our nephew while Terry and John gave their statements. (One moment of levity there when Terry was asked to give his age, and couldn't freaking remember it. Which is just SO TERRY.) The way the court is laid out, the stand is right next to the gallery, which meant that, the entire time we were sitting there, X was just a few metres away, albeit with his back to us, and behind glass. He didn't move, or show any sign of emotion at all while Terry and John gave their evidence, though, and, once they were done, they both joined us in the public gallery while the judge issued some instructions to the jury, then adjourned the court for lunch. In order to leave the gallery, we all had to file out past the stand, where X was still seated. I deliberately looked away as we passed him, but Terry - who was the last to leave the room - didn't... which meant he was the only one of us who saw X turn towards him, look him right in the eye, and clearly mouth the words, "YOU'RE DEAD," at him as he passed. "You have to tell someone," I told Terry, as soon as we were out of the courtroom, and he'd told me what had happened. "Because I'm pretty sure he's not allowed to threaten witnesses like that ..." "It's his word against mine, though," said Terry. "No one's ever going to believe he'd be stupid enough to say something like that during his own trial!" Nevertheless, he headed off to track down the public prosecutor, while the rest of us went down to the cafe ... where, sure enough, X joined us a few minutes later, once again choosing a table directly opposite the one were all sitting at, even though there were plenty of others he could have taken instead. (I should probably add here that the location of this particular court made the cafe inside it the only real option for us here: there just wouldn't have been time to go elsewhere and be back in time for the trial to resume, or we definitely would have...) Not wanting to have to look at X while we were eating - or, indeed AT ALL, really - I took a seat with my back to him, as did our niece. My sister-in-law and nephew, however, were sitting facing him, and almost immediately saw him raise his hand and slice it across his neck, in that threatening, "You're dead" gesture we all used to use as kids, but which X apparently considered appropriate to use as an adult, while facing the people he'd abused, and their family members. Nice guy, right? Terry, meanwhile, had managed to find his way to the prosecutor's office. He really wasn't expecting much from speaking to her, but, to his relief, as soon as she opened the door, she beckoned him inside. "You don't even need to tell me why you're here," she said, "I saw what he said to you in court: we're just trying to work out what to do about it... " (Apparently it's not all that common for the accused to threaten a witness from the dock, then: imagine!) At least ONE thing was going our way then: Terry didn't have to convince anyone that X had threatened him, because the lawyer for the prosecution had actually seen him do it. The question now, was whether that fact could be put in front of the jury without prejudicing the case, or whether it would have to be a separate charge against X. While the lawyer mulled that over, Terry rejoined the rest of the family downstairs in the cafe, which had started to fill up by this point. There was now a long line snaking right past X's table, and, as I was too scared to go and stand in it, Terry and his sister went up instead, to get us all some food. While they were gone, I kept my back to X, and continued chatting with the latest occupant of our table: a woman who'd come over and introduced herself as another witness, and who we'd invited to join us. She was, it turned out, a nurse at the hospital X had managed to have himself admitted to when he left Terry's mum's house, and she'd been called as a witness because, while he was in her care, X had apparently made some admissions to her about what had happened. "I actually gave my evidence yesterday," the woman told us. "I just came back today because I want to see him be sent to jail: the man is evil." And, as if to prove it, at that moment, the part of the queue Terry and his sister were standing in drew level with X's table, and... "Oh my God!" the nurse - who'd been sitting opposite me, so facing X - said. "He just threatened to kill your husband! I saw him do it!" Sure enough, by the time I turned round, X was on his feet, gesticulating wildly at Terry and his sister, who were both just standing there in shock, somehow managing to stay calm as X continued to rant. I stood up, not really knowing what to do, but thankfully, as I looked around the room, I saw a police officer standing just a few metres away: the poor woman was just waiting in line to buy her lunch (The police headquarters are in the same building as the courthouse, which made it even more astonishing that X would think it was a good idea to start having a go at Terry there...), but she'd obviously heard the raised voices, and, by the time I reached Terry, she'd got there first, and was trying to calm X down, and work out what the hell was happening. I joined them just as X started to sit back down at his table, but, as soon as he saw me, he stood up again and started pulling faces at me, in the most childish way possible - and, yes, right in front of the police officer. I mean, FFS: you literally could not make this up. I swear to God, I wasn't going to say anything - I really wasn't. I was just going to calmly explain to the officer that he'd threatened us before, and ask for her help, but as I launched into my explanation, he continued trying to taunt me (Waggling his fingers behind his ears, and stupid stuff like that, which I can't even believe I'm writing about, to be totally honest: it was just totally surreal to be attending this man's trial, and watching him threaten people right in front of the police...), and finally I snapped. "Just ^%&^ off, X," I said, witheringly. I'm not proud - and, of course, the police officer was not impressed - especially given that it now seemed pretty obvious that she was going to be missing her lunch - so I got sent back to my seat like a naughty schoolgirl, X got told to sit down and shut up, and Terry headed back to the procurator fiscal's office: this time accompanied by his police officer friend, and the nurse, who'd seen what X had said to him. (I know, sounds like the start of a bad joke, right? If only...) After a lengthy debate, it was decided that, serious though X's behaviour had been, none of it could be mentioned in front of the jury, for fear of prejudicing the case. Instead, as soon as the trial was adjourned for the day (Which happened not long after lunch, as all that remained were the closing statements...), X was once again arrested (IN A FREAKING COURT, FFS.) (Sorry, I STILL can't get over the fact that he managed to get arrested AT HIS OWN TRIAL...), and charged with threatening a witness/ attempting to pervert the course of justice / something else relating to threatening to kill someone, which you'd think I'd remember, but which has actually just blended in with all of the other Bad Things X Has Done. GOD. "You'll get a letter with a new court date," the police officer who'd charged him told us, "And you'll probably all be called as witnesses: they take threatening witnesses really seriously, so it's likely to be another jury trial. So THAT was something else to look forward to. Awesome. Anyway. The next day was the final day of the trial and all that was left was for the judge to make some closing statements to the jury, before they adjourned to discuss their verdict. As I'm sure you'll all know from TV/ the movies, or possibly even real life, if you're very unlucky, there's no way to know how long a jury will debate their verdict in a trial like this: it could be hours, or it could be days, so the court officials advised us to go home, saying they'd call us when the jury returned. We didn't though: and it was a good job, too, because it took them just 30 minutes - THIRTY MINUTES - to return a unanimous verdict: GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS. We all cried. Actually, even the police officer stationed at the side of the court told us later that he'd shed a few tears listening to our niece give her evidence: it was THAT bad... and while I'm deliberately keeping X's victims out of this story as much as possible, for the simple reason that their story is not mine to tell, I'll just add here that they were amazing, and we were so, so proud of them both: not just for the way they conducted themselves during the trial itself, but for their bravery in coming forward in the first place. I can't even imagine what they went though, and how hard it was for them, but I do know that, as the verdict was read out, it finally - FINALLY - gave us all some sense of justice. It wasn't to last, though. The sentencing was set for March 11th, 2019. Terry, Max and I were booked into Eagle Brae, in the Highlands, on that date, and while we briefly considered postponing our trip, so we could attend the sentencing, we ultimately decided that X had stolen enough good things from us already, so we headed off to the Highlands, and my parents went to the sentencing in our place, along with Terry's family. Three years. He got three years: four, if you count the one-year probation he'll be under once he leaves jail. Three years, which, under Scottish law, was automatically reduced to just 18 months: 18 months, which end this Saturday - although, according to the letter our nephew had from the court last month, he's likely to be released two days earlier, for "good behaviour". Yeah, I know. We have no idea what he may or may not try to do when he's released. What we DO know, however, is that, whatever happens, we're on our own with it: because, a few weeks after he was charged for threatening Terry in court that day, Terry got a letter from the procurator fiscal saying they would not be taking the case to court. Their reasoning here was that, as X was already in jail at that point, and any further sentence he received would run concurrent to the existing one, it wouldn't be in the public interest to hold another trial. Great. We appealed the decision, of course, but our appeal fell on deaf ears, and the only advice we were given was to wait and see what happens, basically - which is super-reassuring, as you can probably imagine. So, we have CCTV surrounding our house. We have a police "marker" in place (Or so we're told, anyway: I don't really have a lot of faith in that, to be honest...) on our house, which apparently means that if the police receive a call from us, it will be flagged as a priority, and officers will automatically be dispatched. And other than that? Nothing. Of course, it may well be that nothing will be needed. It may be that X will finally have learned his lesson, and will emerge from jail a changed man, who will simply slink off somewhere and never be heard from again. But I doubt it. And all we can do is wait and see...

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