A Response to Anon@5.34

(See Dancing on Someone’s Grave is One Thing..)
(See Comments section)
To Anonymous at 5:34:
(Because the first was rather curt)

FWIW I have a lot of respect for some of JHL’s views. I wholeheartedly agree with him when he asserts that ‘We (ex-prisoners) are as human as our victims.’ I just find it odd that he extends the right to be viewed as ‘human’ to every single prisoner and ex-prisoner except Felicity Jane Lowde and (maybe in time) The McCanns.

You ask why I am on this woman’s ‘side’. I don’t regard this as a matter of sides. It’s not a game. It’s not a George Bush post 9.11 ‘With us or Against us’ kind of situation. Felicity Jane Lowde certainly wouldn’t think I’m on her side. I believe she has a serious mental illness and needs urgent help. I’ve been in and out of hospital a fair bit and I’ve seen this kind of situation. I even remember someone with very similar delusions to Felicity Jane Lowde – secret services, connections to government figures – all delusions of grandeur. IIRC one of the newer neuroleptics took the edge off her fear. But I could still see the anguish on her face. Her terror terrorised me. I firmly believe that this woman was genuinely afraid – that her inner world had turned into an inner hell. And it’s kind of hard to escape from yourself. But that doesn’t mean I can’t feel sympathy for the victims. After all, it didn’t matter to Rochester whether The First Mrs Rochester was mad or bad. The consequences for Jane Eyre and Rochester were still the same. Mad or bad, she was still dangerous.

I’ve more to write but this is kind of draining.)>

I just couldn’t let it lie..

‘A case study in madness’?

This ‘Dan Hart’…is he a psychiatrist as well as a fine arts graduate? And if Ms. Lowde is indeed a ‘case study in madness’ then that makes the lynch mob on here about a thousand times worse than she is. A case study in hypocrisy, methinks. There’s a bit of Matthew Hopkins in all of you.

These people make you proud to be British, don’t they?

It’s worth noting that, in the States, attacking someone for being mentally ill is regarded with as much disapproval as attacking someone because of their race. And we have the audacity to mock them for their perceived lack of sophistication.

PS: BellaCat is really fat again 😎

It’s not the band we hate…

It’s their fans.

In response to this:

Don’t get too complacent. I’ve seen exactly the same behaviour by your compatriots on Usenet. But yes – these people are slightly deranged. Some of them actually believe that denigrating someone over the internet is more reprehensible than battering an old lady to death with an axe. Strange days indeed.

I recall one particular case in which the ‘culprit’ was a guy from Madison County, Wisconsin. However, I do not remember anyone criticising his physical appearance or suggesting that part of his rehabilitation should consist of performing sexual favours for the opposite sex.

I can’t imagine why that could be.

Can you?

Gott im Himmel…

…does it ever end?

Stolen Car
Beth Orton

You walked into my house last night
I couldn’t help but notice
A light that was long gone still burning strong
You were sitting
Your fingers like fuses
Your eyes were cinnamon

You said you stand for every known abuse
That was ever threatened to anyone but you
And why should I know better by now
When I’m old enough not to?

While every line speaks the language of love
It never held the meaning I was thinking of
And I can’t decide over right or wrong
I guess sometimes you need the place where you belong

Some may sing the wrong words to the wrong melody
It’s little things like this that matter to me
Others feel that you should stand
For every known abuse to hand
And all the things that they could never see

You said you stood
For every known abuse that was promised to anyone like you
Don’t you wish you knew better by now
When you’re old enough not to?

When every line speaks the language of love
And never held the meaning I was thinking of
And I can’t decide over right or wrong
You left the feeling that I just do not belong

One drink too many
And a joke gone too far
I see a face driving a stolen car
Gets harder to hide
When you’re hitching a ride
Harder to hide what you really saw

Oh, yeah, you stand
For every known abuse that I’ve ever seen my way through
Don’t I wish I knew better by now?
Well I think I’m starting to

When every line speaks the language of love
And never held the meaning I was thinking of
And I’ve lost the line between right or wrong
I just want to find the place where I belong
Why should you know better by now
When you’re old enough not to?
I wish I knew better by now
When I’m old enough not to

Beth Orton Stolen Car lyrics
Courtesy of http://www.tiny.cc/P3cQB

Publish and Be Damned

Just another point. Ms North, you asserted: ‘As to whether she is mentally ill, I just don’t know. The court didn’t seem to think so.’ The Courts? You mean the District Judge. Well, this may astound you but district judges are neither omniscient nor infallible, nor are they mental health professionals. Neither, for that matter, are the prison officers whose job it was to observe Lowde. Many mentally ill women are left to languish in gaol because the system simply is not equipped to deal with them. The ‘special hospitals’ are designed to deal primarily with male offenders. The fact that the District Judge chose not to take psychiatric reports into account says more about the lack of care available for mentally ill women than it does about the state of Ms Lowde’s mental health. See, the personal really *is* political, even more often than *you’d* think.

BTW, if Ms Lowde doesn’t suffer from any kind of mental illness does that mean she has been libelled by the many bloggers who asserted that she was? And do you condone or condemn the prejudice they exhibited towards the mentally ill during the course of their ‘battle’ to bring Ms Lowde to ‘justice’. You may detach yourself from such comments but the fact that you failed to condemn them speaks volumes.

Why Does This Bother Me?

Two scenarios present themselves:

Let’s assume that Ms Lowde is mad. Stark staring bonkers. This would mean that she was not responsible for her actions. That we are essentially punishing someone for being ill. OTOH let’s assume she is bad. `The most evil and cunning woman to have ever walked the earth. That would mean that she was allowed to persecute her victims for nearly a decade until she finally targeted someone who was deemed worthy enough to be granted the protection of the state. The bedrock of democracy is equality before the law yet in this case one victim among many is granted more protection because of factors which should never have influenced the decision to prosecute: her recent misfortunes and, quite possibly, her gender. Ms Lowde’s other alleged victims were, by all accounts, men. The establishment, it would seem, cannot extricate itself from the simplistic, polarised view of woman as victim and man as perpetrator but it can just about cope with ‘woman on woman’ crime.

This Is So Fucked Up…

This is the first account I have encountered that even makes an attempt at being objective. This whole sorry episode reveals what people really think of the mentally ill. To call it a ‘witchhunt’ is an understatement. Another blogger castigated Ms. Lowde for what he called her ‘evil deeds’. On his own blog he called her a cyberterrorist. In another post he defends a former IRA RL terrorist. In what kind of moral universe can the former possibly be seen as worse than the latter. These people really terrify me.

http://tinyurl.com/2zbryv

Scroll down for this quote:

‘Don’t get on the soapbox about the Criminal justice system being soft on murder. Your (sic) soft on cyber stalking. Then again you are a bully.’

Madness. Absolute madness.