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   -= abuse in set-up situations and in public -=   
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   Strangers in the street have recognized me on sight many times, and shown   
   awareness of the current thread of abuse. To give you one example, in 1992   
   I was seriously ill, and a manager at work somewhat humorously said that   
   "it wasn't fair" that people were bullying me. A few days later, I attended   
   for the first time a clinic in London as an outpatient, and on my way out   
   was accosted by someone who asked if "they had paid my fare", with emphasis   
   on the word "fare". He repeated the word several times in this different   
   context; that they should have paid my "fare", each time emphasizing the   
   word.   
      
   For two and a half years from the time their harassment started until   
   November 1992 I refused to see a psychiatrist, because I reasoned that I   
   was not ill of my own action or fault, but through the stress caused by   
   harassment, and that a lessening of the illness would have to be consequent   
   to a removal of its immediate cause, in other words a cessation of   
   harassment. I also reasoned that since they were taunting me with jokes   
   about mental illness, if I were to seek treatment then the abusers would   
   think that they had "won" and been proved "right". Remember, the constant   
   theme of any persecution is, "we must destroy you because you're X",   
   whether X is a racial or other attribute. In this case the X was "we   
   persecute you because you have brain disease". The similarity of this logic   
   to Nazi attitudes to the mentally ill is striking.   
      
   The same manager who'd said "it wasn't fair" asked me in winter 1992 why I   
   didn't seek help from a psychiatrist; was it, he asked, because "they would   
   think they had won" if I sought treatment? That was something I'd never   
   said at work... again, taken separately it proves nothing, but many such   
   things over a period of months proves conclusively that people in the   
   company knew what was going on, and in quite a lot of detail.   
      
   Usually harassment in public lacks the level of finesse of "paying your   
   fare". Most people's imagination does not go beyond moronic parroting of   
   the current term of denigration. That is not surprising given the average   
   level of the abusers; if they do not have the intelligence to distinguish   
   wrong from right then neither will they have the capacity for anything   
   other than mindless repetition of a monosyllabic term calculated to fit   
   into their minds.   
      
   The first incidents of verbal assault in public were in again in the summer   
   of 1990, although they increased in frequency and venom with time. In July   
   1990 the first public incident occurred on a tube train on the Northern   
   line. Two men and their girlfriends recognised me; the women sprang to my   
   defence, saying "He looks perfectly normal, he doesn't look ill". Their   
   boyfriends of course knew better, and followed the party line; one of them   
   made reference to an "operation", apparently to work at the tube station   
   but implicitly to a visit that I had made to hospital a couple of weeks   
   previously.   
      
   In August 1990 going home from college, soon after getting on a tube train   
   at Gloucester Road I was followed by a group of four youths, who started a   
   chant of abuse. That they were targeting me was confirmed by other people   
   in the carriage, one of whom asked the other "who are they going on at, is   
   it the bloke who just got on?" to which the second replied "yes, I think   
   so". I was tempted to reply, but as in every other instance the abusers are   
   enabled in their cowardice by physically outnumbering the abused; any   
   confrontation would result in my being beaten up, followed by a complaint   
   to the police that "he attacked us", and of course he's ill, so he must   
   have been imagining that we were getting at him. Shitty, aren't they?   
      
   But the shittiness of the four youths on the tube train is as nothing   
   compared to the episode on the National Express coach to Dover in the   
   summer of 1992. While going on holiday to the Continent I was verbally set   
   upon by a couple travelling sitting a few rows behind. The boy did the   
   talking, his female companion contributing only a continuous empty giggling   
   noise. He spoke loudly to ensure other people on the coach heard, always   
   about "they" and "this bloke" but never naming either the abusers or the   
   person he was talking about. He said "they" had "found somebody from his   
   school, and he was always really stressed at school". They must have dug   
   deep to find enemies there; perhaps someone who dropped out of school,   
   someone who didn't do too well later, who was jealous and keen to get their   
   own back? The boy also said "he was in a bed and breakfast for only one   
   night and they got him". By a not unexpected coincidence I had been in a   
   B&B in Oxford a week previously, which had been booked from work; other   
   things lead me to the conclusion that the company's offices were bugged for   
   most of the 2 1/2 years that I was there, so "they" would have known a room   
   in the B&B had been booked. (But I'll bet "they" didn't tell the company's   
   managers their offices were bugged, did they?).   
      
   After a few minutes of this I went back to where they were sitting and   
   asked where they were travelling. The boy named a village in France, and   
   the girl's giggling suddenly ceased; presumably it permeated to her brain   
   cell what the purpose of the boy's abuse was.   
      
   This and other set-up situations are obviously calculated to provoke a   
   direct confrontation which would bring in the police, with the abusers   
   claiming that they were the ones attacked. Again in 1992, outside the   
   house where I was living in Oxford I was physically attacked by someone -   
   not punched, just grabbed by the coat, with some verbals thrown in for good   
   measure. That was something the people at work shouldn't have known   
   about... but soon after a couple of people were talking right in front of   
   me about, "I heard he was attacked". The UK police have a responsibility   
   for preventing assault occurring, but they do not seem to take any interest   
   in meeting that responsibility. I suppose their attitude is that harassment   
   does not come within their remit unless it involves physical assault, and   
   they will only become involved once that happens. That is of course quite   
   the wrong attitude for them to take, but as I now understand, the police   
   investigate only the crime they wish to investigate; if they do not take   
   your complaints seriously then there is nothing you can do to make them   
   take action.   
      
   770   
      
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)