For 12 years I’ve been pointed out to hundreds or thousands of security guards and others in 13 countries in Europe (every country I have visited in the last 12 years). I don’t KNOW this because it’s never been confirmed to me directly, and in fact explicitly denied countless times. Instead, security guards (and police) ‘let me know’ by such things as deliberately standing by my check out till and walking away as soon as I’ve been served, craning their necks to look at me when I’m being served, or theatrically twisting their heads as though to look past me, or even stand with their backs turned to me. And then they deny, or the companies that employ them deny, that they have any knowledge of me or are paying me any particular attention, and that any odd behaviour I experience from them (such as standing facing my check out line every time I visit a particular supermarket) is simply ‘co-incidence’.

This is in the context of the authorities apparently not having the resources to keep even known and dangerous jihadists and the like under surveillance.

And my life had been devastated by paranoid schizophrenia BEFORE this.

In fact, as far as I can tell, this all started from behavior on my part 12 years ago that was the result of a mental health relapse brought about by the Met Police, probably deliberately (including by already going around shops and showing my photograph to staff and encouraging them to bully me).

Indeed, as the behavior of neurodiversity champion and disability rights advocate PCSO Victor Finch seemed to suggest at Gatwick Airport, I deserve to be gaslighted in 13 different countries by thousands of police officers, security guards, and others, because I get paranoid and slightly visibly agitated (sometimes) at being gaslighted in 13 different countries by thousands of police officers, security guards, and others.

Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you for being paranoid…I guess.

And if they are, then you deserve it.

For being paranoid about it.

Up until this blog, I have had absolutely nobody to relate these things to, to discuss them with, or to seek advice or simply comfort or sympathy from. Not one person on Earth. I have tried contacting and making complaints to the stores in question where these experiences with security staff and even non-security staff, such as Boots or Tesco or Sainsbury’s, happen, and my complaints have been dismissed as paranoia and for the most part ignored altogether (i.e. not replied to) for a number of years. (Although in most cases, I then get increased aggression and bullying from the staff in the stores I have complained to, as though my complaint was passed on in some form).

I then contacted anti-torture charities. Quite a number, in fact, including all the leading ones such as Amnesty International. And again, mostly my e-mails were ignored completely, or in the small handful of cases in which I received a reply, quite rudely dismissed. (The French Amnesty International contact actually told me to stop spamming, and Kevin James of leading British anti-torture charity Redress, told me much the same).

In 2018, I tried contacting a few legal firms, and again either my e-mails were ignored altogether or tersely dismissed. In the words of XXX XXXXX, in XXX, ‘I don’t have a case’, and in the words of two leading UK firms that specialize in human rights cases and legal cases against the police, who both replied in almost exactly the same way as each other, my case is ‘too complex’.

According to Carla Ferstman – the former director of Redress – one of the leading anti-torture charities in the world, if I have any ‘concerns’ about being gaslighted on a near industrial scale by the Met Police in 13 different countries for 12 years, I should seek advice at a Citizen’s Advice Bureau, because Redress ‘has only a limited mandate’. Carla is now one of the chief advisors at the UN regarding the United Nations Convention Against Torture which specifically and clearly prohibits psychological torture by the State.

So in 12 years, not one fellow human being appears to have any sympathy for what I’ve had to endure. At times, I’ve literally started to believe that I must be in some kind of solipsist hell, given that it’s surely impossible I could be living in a real world with fellow human beings in which I can be clearly, deliberately, and slowly psychologically tortured to death (or into complete insanity) by the Met police, and not only can I do nothing about this, but nobody, nowhere, ever, will display a shred of sympathy or even acknowledgement of it being at least morally or legally dubious.

Apart from one person.

Several years ago I rang Sainsbury’s customer care to ask why my complaints (by e-mail) were being ignored. I briefly told the lady who answered an outline of my case – that I was a paranoid schizophrenic and I was being pointed out to security guards in a number of Sainsbury’s stores all over London who would then mock me for ‘not liking to be looked at’. She actually broke down in tears and was weeping over the phone almost uncontrollably. It happens that she had a sister who had paranoid schizophrenia, and immediately recognized that – in her words – ‘well that wouldn’t help your symptoms would it?’.

Still, there was nothing that this lovely customer care lady could do, other than promise that she would pass my complaint on to her superior.

If it wasn’t for that person, I would have no evidence or reason to believe, after 12 years of this, that anyone anywhere would even recognize that what I am being subjected to is wrong, or that my treatment raises the slightest issue of moral or legal concern. In fact, that anyone, anywhere, would even make sense of what I was trying to describe.