Providing counselling & psychotherapy in W.Yorkshire.
Mindfulness Teacher.
Passions include mindfulness, compassion, equality, humanity, HAES and my children.
There used to be a body, the Health Education Authority whose purpose was to promote evidence based health advice. But they got cancelled and now the consequence. #health https://t.co/y1CihPhjOL
Laughter is anti-inflammatory. Crying is regulating. Hugging is immunoprotective. Singing is vagal toning. Dancing is neurogenic.
Joy is a biological necessity.
“Dear migrants, before I say another word to you, I want to bow before your dignity.
You are not numbers or case files.
You are people, with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.” - Pope Leo
Basic humanity that is so rare these days
😱😱😱 And just like that, it’s completely VANISHED from the media.
A sitting congressman, Ted Lieu, said on the record the Epstein files are being blocked because they show Trump raped and threatened to kill children.
Lets make this viral again 👇
The tide goes out, but it leaves behind seashells
and polished stones as proof that the ocean was there.
Missing someone is just gathering the treasures the
tide left behind in your heart. - Aurela Leafsong
~ Just beautiful!
The video that burned the last bridge to normal life for me. Three years ago. Why do you and I carry this girl's buffet of pain while so many others shrug: 'So? That's just war.'
A young girl on a hospital floor. Twisting and turning in excruciating pain. Both legs reduced to bloody stumps. Wild eyed. Perhaps screaming inside ‘what did I do?’. Her butt burned off. Her genitals seemed burned as well. Covered in dust. We know there is no water. We know there is no anesthesia. Folks who had the last bit of empathy and human dignity squeezed out of them by forces unknown comment: ‘Her parents voted for Hamas.’ or ‘So what? Hamas did the same on October 7th’. To be fine with the most extreme variant of pain a human being is able to feel all inflicted upon someone who hours ago was just a blossoming young girl who had dreams and aspirations and wanted to learn and grow surrounded by her loved ones.
Will she survive? Will she go through the worst hell a person can go through for the next three or four days? Alone, with the screaming of others wounded like her drowning out her own screaming? Dying alone in a hospital turned into complete pandemonium, wishing her parents would show up… My dear fellow human beings, this is what we are allowing and there are people using what little intelligence and creativity they have to tell us that this is the right thing to do, that in fact it is to be applauded.
How has our savage species survived for this long?
A rape case was dropped 13 days before trial.
Years later, an independent review found it should have gone ahead.
But by then, it was too late.
Here's why that matters.
A woman reported a rape.
Three and a half years later, she was preparing for trial.
Then the CPS dropped the case.
The reason? A sexsomnia defence.
The case would never be heard by a jury.
Most people thought that was the end.
It wasn't.
She requested a Victim's Right to Review.
An independent Chief Crown Prosecutor reviewed the decision.
The conclusion was extraordinary.
The case should never have been dropped.
In fact, the review found it was more likely than not that a jury would have convicted.
But there was a devastating problem.
The CPS had already offered no evidence in court.
Double jeopardy meant the case could never be reopened.
The decision was found to be wrong.
The outcome could not be changed.
So she sued the CPS.
The CPS apologised.
They paid damages.
They changed policy.
And today, there is a pilot scheme that gives victims an option for a review before rape cases are dropped.
That woman was me.
My case can't be put back before a jury.
But others shouldn't have to hear that a case should have gone to trial only after it's too late to do anything about it.
That's why I'm campaigning for victims to have a review before cases are dropped.
And for the current pilot to become permanent.
Not after.
When it's too late.
#RightToBeReviewed #VictimsRights #JusticeMatters
SHE REPORTED RAPE AT WORK
Jan Cruickshank (@LittleJanhere) came to me this week with her story and a file of evidence she has spent years building. What she went through is one of the most shocking workplace cover-ups I have come across.
Jan worked as an apprenticeships officer at the Construction Industry Training Board @CITB_UK. Shortly after she started, a male colleague began subjecting her to sexual harassment that lasted over three years.
Explicit texts. Exposing himself to her at a hotel. Sending her an indecent photograph. A phone call during which he committed a sexual act while she was on the line.
In March 2015, at a conference in a Highland hotel, he came to her room and raped her.
Jan reported him. CITB believed his version instead. He claimed they had been having a consensual affair for three years and that Jan was hitting back because he had ended it. He was put on gardening leave for one week. Then he came back. He was also allowed to continue visiting schools while the investigation was ongoing.
CITB then launched a campaign to remove Jan from the business entirely. Two separate internal whistleblowers later confirmed this was deliberate. CITB's own legal team had calculated that a trial would cost them seriously.
So they chose to destroy her credibility instead. An HR investigation was initiated with the outcome already decided before it concluded. Jan was eventually sacked. The stated reason was misuse of company time by having an affair.
Her criminal case was dropped after @PoliceScotland were told by CITB that the relationship had been consensual. That lie closed the case.
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority looked at the evidence independently and reached a completely different conclusion. They awarded Jan compensation as a victim of serious sexual assault.
Jan took CITB to an employment tribunal. They offered her 15k pounds. She refused. She eventually settled for 60k pounds and refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
She said there was never any way she was going to agree to be gagged.
In November 2024, SNP MP Seamus Logan @SeamusLoganMP raised her case in the @HouseofCommons. He told Parliament that Jan had been pressured into a settlement far below what she was owed and that the man she accused was never held to account.
CITB responded with one line saying the matter was settled and they had nothing further to add..
A tribunal ruling recently reported as thrown out with no prospect of success has since been overturned. That decision has not yet reached the press.
Jan is now represented by well know to some of us John Robertson, the same investigator who stood beside Glenn Cottingham Smith before his death and who is currently fighting for my friend John Galajsza in his case against Barclays.
Jan asked herself one question:
"How did a woman who reported sexual misconduct at work end up spending the next decade fighting to defend her own reputation and reclaim a life that was stolen from her."
She was not broken. She documented everything. She refused the gag. She is still standing.
If this story made your stomach turn, share it. Jan has been fighting this alone for ten years.
The least we can do is make sure the right people see it. If you believe cover-ups like this should have consequences, put this in front of your network.
One share might reach the person who finally makes the difference.
Let's help her to be heard!
Sources: @Daily_Record Dec 2018 | @CNplus Nov 2024 | @BylineTimes Aug 2024