In the third of my series of posts where I help our MP to get to know his constituents, tonight I talk about Mary, a pensioner who was attacked last year.
Dear MP
Today, a man was sentenced to life imprisonment for raping Mary in her own home.
I met Mary late last year after she’d been rehoused away from the home and the area where she was attacked.
Mary is a no-nonsense talking pensioner who was attacked in the middle of the night by a man who had been preying on lone women living in ground floor flats and bungalows in the area. Mary was his seventh victim.
The day before the attacker was arrested, I’d had a visit from the serious crimes division of the police as they thought he may have been visiting food banks or my food sharing Hut.
I’d seen the CCTV images of the attacker and read the description which said he was quite short – about 5′ 6. I felt sick when the detective asked me if I coukd think of anyone who fit the description because I had reason to believe that someone of that height, build and age had been involved with the teenage daughter of one of the families I was feeding.
The detective e mailed me the next day to say they had made an arrest but it was not the person I had suspected.
It was a few months later that I saw a post on Facebook from Mary, the lady who was attacked. She was thanking the local people for all the help they had given her when she had moved into the new house.
I messaged to ask if there was anything she was short of as I always have goods donated and she said the only thing she still needed was a lamp for her bedroom.
We spent about an hour chatting when I took the lamp round and this is when I found out that the counselling support she’d been promised had never materialised. Two weeks later I messaged her to ask if they had now been in touch and when she said they hadn’t, I contacted the Police to ask if they could chase it up.
Two more weeks later I contacted Mary to check that the counselling support had finally been in touch. They hadn’t.
You may remember that I took part in a demonstration outside County Hall in Preston last year to protest at the cuts to funding for domestic violence and rape counselling services across Lancashire. In spite of our protests, the cuts went ahead and many of the specialist services were lost.
So let me just clarify what the cuts really mean. A pensioner, living alone is raped at knife point in her own home. Her attacker pleads not guilty and claims that she invited him in. And there is no one to help this lady understand what happened and how she should begin to come to terms with it. The very least that Mary should have expected is that someone from the counselling service contacted her within 7 days to offer some support.
I hope that finally, tonight, knowing her attacker is behind bars, Mary will feel a little safer in her bed.
Many thanks for reading this
Gill x
