Crime & Deviance

I wanted to go to Newcastle Thunder's final game of the season (their record ever victory; 98-6 over West Wales Raiders) & the second day of Durham's final County Championship game of the season against Middlesex. Sadly, my financial situation prevents me from attending either, on account of being ripped off by someone I once thought of as a friend, as I shall explain -:

I suppose each and every regional dialect boasts its own particular and indeed peculiar foibles and idiosyncrasies, either in terms of usage, meaning or collocation, but a few of our local Tyneside phrases have really been making me take a step back and think just recently.  For example, why do we call shopping “messages?” It’s not as if we are told something when buying provisions. Also, in football why do teams win or lose, but “play a” draw; what possible reason do we have for changing a verb into a noun when the meaning remains exactly the same?

Lastly comes the question of location. I’ve always found it weird that Scotch people “stay” rather than “live” somewhere, as to me it emphasizes an almost transient quality to domesticity that probably goes back to the Highland Clearances. Or something. On Tyneside, we do the exact opposite by suggesting our home is not just a physical entity, but a concept akin to the German notion of heimat when we ask each other “where do you belong?” Whenever I’ve been asked such a question, I’ve not simply responded by saying High Heaton, where I’ve been a homeowner for over 20 years, but instead, voluntarily gone into tortuous detail about the shameful secret of my Gateshead upbringing, giving an answer along the lines that I was brought up in Felling, but haven’t lived there since I went to University and have never felt any sense of belonging to that place.   

Am I giving a truthful response? Geographically and chronologically yes. However, while I was undeniably born Southside, I do not feel any emotional or familial connection with the place or have the sense that is where my roots lie, probably because of the unimaginable hell that my childhood was. Frankly any thoughts about Felling or Gateshead inspire not affection, but a profound feeling of revulsion. Similarly, I’ve often said that questions about my national orientation, not just my ethnicity, must return to rural county Cork, which my grandfather and two of his brothers exchanged for Felling in the early 1930s. In the way that trans people have always instinctively known they were assigned the wrong gender at birth, so is it with my supposed nationality. I’ve never felt English, much less British; having always known my ethnicity was Irish. Certainly, when it comes to the choice between identifying with the birthplace of Paul Gascoigne or Roy Keane, I know that the Rebel County is where my allegiance would always lie, partly it must be said because of the discomfort I feel when exposed to some of the prevalent attitudes of this region.

I have written in exhaustive detail about the problems I have with Alpha male, testosterone fuelled, authoritarian populists, especially if they are bald. The True Geordie isn’t bald, but he is a tragic victim of the North East macho culture that he pitifully though unsuccessfully seeks to embrace. Yet, underneath all his bellicose bluster, he’s just a frightened little boy in a behemoth’s body. Rejected by his father, brought up by a constantly disapproving mother, he sought to adopt an ultra-aggressive persona from his early teens, which manifested itself as incessant, intimidating hatred towards women. Without doubt he is a misogynistic bully. His first stint at college ended with him being asked to leave after repeated incidents of threatening behaviour and homophobic language towards his openly Lesbian Sociology lecturer. Then he failed to complete an apprenticeship because he couldn’t cope with being given instructions and not being indulged. Back at College, he was thrown out after barely a term for aggressively browbeating and berating his petite and gentle Psychology tutor, as she’d failed his plagiarised assessment. God knows how he has ended up as an internet phenomenon, but whatever money he possesses will not insulate him from an all-pervasive sense of being a failure. He will not be happy, I guarantee that. I can only predict a bad ending for the lad. No loss if it comes to pass mind…

We already have too many angry, worthless, masculine bullies on Tyneside. The other week, returning from Monday 6 a side with my mate David 1, we saw a hideous example of macho misogynistic domestic violence up the West Road. Travelling down Silver Lonnen towards Cowgate, a 4x4 in front of us suddenly veered off the road and came to a halt on the pavement. The front passenger got out, went round the other side, wrenched the driver’s door open and began belabouring the person at the wheel with his fists. He was only stopped by another driver springing from his vehicle and knocking the thug down with a single blow. As good citizens, we came to a halt in front of the 4x4, by which time the bully and a young woman who emerged from the rear passenger seat had made off down Lanercost Drive and the avenging driver had also left the scene.

Checking the 4x4, we saw the victim was an elderly lady, who had suffered severe facial injuries at the fists of her attacker; two black eyes, numerous cuts and abrasions. Depressingly, the perpetrator was her son. The young woman with him was his partner, who he’d recently been in court for beating up. I phoned 999 and the reality of Police budgetary limitations became obvious as it took 10 minutes for my call to be answered and about 20 minutes for a PC in a van to arrive. The whole time we waited, I talked to the poor victim, calming her down. She was in both physical and emotional pain; nobody deserves to suffer in that way. The only positive from this event is that she has agreed to press charges against the evil thug she gave birth to; David 1 and I were happy to give statements to support any prosecution. I don’t care about being called a grass, if I’m removing scum from the streets. All my life I’ve stood up to bullies and so I’m not going to allow them a free pass any time soon. 

My main worry about the chances of success when attempting to eradicate the macho culture of violent heterosexual men in our region is not the inadequacy of the institutionally corrupt Northumbria Police Force, it is the abject quality of the so-called professionals who are supposed to monitor the criminals, specifically the standards of those employed by the Probation Service, especially when contrasted to those superb and selfless heroes who are Social Workers, such as my dear departed friend Ken Sproat. Can Probation Officers really be trusted to behave in an ethical and moral way in their professional lives if they have repeatedly struggled, or chosen not to do so, in their private life?

Back in January, another friend of mine called David 2 was at his lowest ebb. His reckless behaviour, specifically problem drinking and repeated emotional abuse of his partner who is a wonderful person and whom he claimed to adore, resulted in the self-inflicted disintegration of his life. Totally understandably, she threw him out after he’d gone on yet another mammoth drinking session, consuming 28 bottles of red wine over a 3-day period and having the kind of appalling on-line self-implosion that makes social media such a dark place at times. As well as repeatedly going on solo benders, at her expense and timed to coincide with her business trips abroad, he engaged in provocative, self-pitying, reckless social media behaviour, consciously or unconsciously designed to make her feel bad and him to appear as the victim, whenever she was away with work. Considering her job takes her to the likes of China, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand on a monthly basis, the very last thing she needed was another raft of his depressingly repetitive drunken, debauched mind games, spanning thousands of miles and many time zones, all intended to gain the attention he was sulking about being deprived of when she was off earning the money to keep him in the manner to which he’d quickly grown accustomed.

Without getting too Freudian about this, David’s problems all stem from abandonment and rejection issues relating to his childhood that seem to manifest themselves in an inability to deal with being alone. Of course, he has not sought any therapy to deal with these problems, as he somehow believes that once he’s feeling better, the whole thing can safely be forgotten about, showing the kind of narrow, narcissistic view of the world he has, whereby other people’s feelings simply aren’t considered.  If this were the only sociopathic tendency he exhibits, things would be almost manageable; many people are thoughtless egomaniacs. However, there is more to his complex anti-social behaviour. Equally problematic is the fact he is an uncontrollable liar. He struggles to know what the truth is; he compulsively tells white lies, ostensibly to make the listener feel safe, but often to paint himself as the victim. Not only that, but he tells different stories to different people, meaning that reality is an elusive concept. Unfortunately for David 2, these compulsive, unconvincing lies all too often come back to haunt him.

At the time of his meltdown, he had recently started work as a Court Usher, a dull but cushy job, after approximately six months, indolently lazing about, happily living off his partner’s earnings in the house she’d paid £300k for. Somehow, amidst his alcohol-fuelled public disintegration, he resigned or was sacked from this sinecure; as his lies are so complex and detailed, it’s often difficult to know what the truth is with David, especially as he is able to convince himself that his lies are the truth. Whether he’d wanted to or not, he had comprehensively burned all his bridges and, aged 44, he was holding onto a place in society by his finger nails because of his own reckless, selfish, abusive behaviour. That, in a nutshell, was the irrefutable truth of his personal circumstances.

David 2 was my friend; a very close friend in fact. I couldn’t let him sink any lower, so with the usual vultures gathering, I offered him a roof over his head, so he moved his belongings and his 3 cats into mine in February. As I live at Laura’s 90% of the time, this was no real hassle for me and, or so I thought, the least I could do. I felt a duty of care to someone who was spinning out of control. Despite him leaving the heating on 24/7 and upgrading from Free View to the full Sky Sports package, I didn’t charge him a penny in rent or bills until he found temporary office work at the end of March. This hitherto undiscovered work ethic was a bone of contention with his ex-partner. She has a very high-powered, stressful executive job that requires worldwide travel.  In 2017 David quit his previous permanent post at North Shields Job Centre because he didn’t like it and basically lived off her for 6 months, without it bothering his conscience. Now, when he’s had her financial rug pulled from under him, he quickly finds work. She was understandably appalled by this, as it proved once again he’d been emotionally and financially abusing her. Of course, if you point this out to David, he will deny the reality of the situation as he has a basically inability to accept any responsibility for his actions.

Fair play to him though, he’s not had a drink since this business and he stuck at the temporary job, meaning he was able to pay his rent diligently each week in arrears, while looking for other work. He somehow managed to secure a position as a trainee Probation Officer, presumably by sending in a severely edited CV, starting in early July. As I was for his temp work, I acted as his personal referee and wrote about him in glowing terms, as that’s the person I knew him to be at that time. Suffice to say, his subsequent conduct has made me feel a fool for standing by him when everyone else had washed their hands of his tiresome conduct. Here’s what I said -:

I have known the applicant as a friend since 2005. Throughout that time, I have found him to be a tremendously gifted, articulate and uniquely compassionate person, who always embraced the opportunity to learn and develop his interpersonal skills with both hands. He has demonstrated a thirst for knowledge, a passion for debate and the natural ability to understand complex concepts with ease. Consequently, it is clear to me that David has the requisite intellectual ability to be a Probation Officer.

As regards his personal and inter personal skills, David’s unfailingly accurate written work and the precise and cogent way in which he is able to explain difficult ideas and concepts are of paramount importance for someone who wishes to go in to such a person-centered profession. Not only that, but his empathic nature, demonstrated in his private and working life among his peers, show he is ideally suited temperamentally and emotionally to the Probation Service. I wish him all the best and recommend him unreservedly to you.

It must have worked, as he began his new job on Monday 2^nd July, having paid me his last weekly amount on Friday 29^th June. I next received a payment on Friday 31^st July, which was clearly July’s rent in arrears, but since then I’ve had nothing from him; not a penny piece. He loved his new job, to the extent of, injudiciously sharing confidential paper work about his clients. Reflecting on this, I feel sure Sunderland Probation Services would be interested to know that David 2 is treating client confidentiality and the Data Protection Act with such reckless abandon, though I wouldn’t seek to inform on him.

Bearing in mind how happy he said he was, both with work and his domestic situation, having expressed a stated desire to remain at mine until the end of the year at least, it was something of a shock when he told me, by text, on Sunday 19^th August he was moving out almost immediately and he did so by the end of the month. Clearly, I didn’t expect a month’s rent in lieu of notice, just the money he owed me. I didn’t charge him for the Sky Sports package he’d ordered that I had to beg to cancel or the hole he’d smashed in the back door for the now useless cat flap he’d installed without my permission, as he’s taken his three moggies with him. As everyone knows, I’m skint and could desperately do with that money, so I sent him an email as I don’t have his new address -:

I’ve been through all my financial dealings with you, which I’ve attached as a PDF for your information. As far as I recall, you moved in on or around 19th February. The first payment you made to me was for £104 on 23rd March. I regarded that as payment, in arrears, for the week beginning 19th March. Every Friday from then until 29th June, you paid between £100 and £117. The total for this was £1,780, or £111.25 per week to include rent, all bills and a share of the Sky TV package.

On 2nd July you began your new job. As you were being paid monthly in arrears, we decided that the same arrangement would apply for you. Therefore, on 31st July, you paid £500 for July’s rent IN ARREARS. This is the last payment I received from you. Therefore, you still owe me August’s rent. I would be grateful if you settled this amount immediately.

To summarise, this is my understanding of the situation regarding your residence -:

19/02 – 18/03: No rent or bills charged

19/03 – 30/06: Rent paid weekly in arrears

01/07 – 31/07: Rent paid in arrears on last day of month

01/08 – 31/08: No rent paid, and property vacated 25/08

I look forward to your prompt payment of the £500 outstanding rent.

Best wishes,

Not only did David refuse to discuss the matter, having already claimed he’d paid this rent, though he clearly has not, he then blocked me on Facebook and WhatsApp, as well as ignoring all calls and texts. As I didn’t know his new address, this meant I was effectively up the creek without a paddle and seriously out of pocket. The worst thing, even more than the £500 down the shitter that I would give my eye teeth to have at this moment, is having lost a friend I’ve known for a decade and a half; someone who I kept off the streets when he was at his lowest ever ebb, as I saw his welfare as my moral responsibility. He himself decided that he had been the wronged party in this whole sorry narrative, with me now being cast in the role of bad guy by the narcissistic Walter Mitty style character who has scammed me for five hundred quid.

To bring us up to date, when I was cycling up to the cricket club for work on Sunday 16^th September, I saw David 2’s parked car on Princes Street in North Shields; as it’s a leaf-green Skoda it tends to stand out. I took two photos of it and emailed them to him saying that as I’d serendipitously discovered his general location, perhaps he could sensibly talk to me about his debt. Sadly, he was unable to act like an adult and accept responsibility for his actions by agreeing to do this. Instead he phoned the Cops to say he was intimidated by my conduct. Ludicrous enough, but even worse he told his ex-partner that I had vandalised his car and that Northumbria Police forensics were examining it for finger prints to enable them to identify me as the culprit. This is the same Northumbria Police who are so short of resources they leave someone dialing 999 on hold for 10 minutes. Now, seriously, what kind of nutter comes up with a story like that? Who did he think would swallow such an incredible tissue of horse shit? The really disturbing thing is that he has probably convinced himself this actually happened.

I like to think I’m a good citizen; for instance, following the Silver Lonnen incident, David 1 and I had cause to stop on Jesmond Road at the end of the Central Motorway, to help a young lady who’d come off her moped in the wet conditions. No fuss, no drama; we just helped out and went on our way like a modern day Starsky and Hutch on a far from typical Monday evening. We’d solved those problems ourselves, without recourse to the 5-0, but the dodgy lodger’s fairy story was something else. I was furious with him when I learned of his stupid lies, so off I went to Middle Engine Lane to talk to the Poliss about David 2’s conduct. This young flatty was dealing with it and explained, very calmly, that the unpaid rent was a civil matter; I knew this and we both know I can’t afford to take him to court to recover the debt, even if I go down the route of Malfeasance or Misfeasance in a Public Office. At least the copper promised he would warn David 2 as to the consequences of telling further lies about me vandalising his car, or any other story he makes up. In all seriousness, such inveterate lying, especially from someone in the Probation Service, does not auger well for his future professional life, never mind the chaotic wreckage of his personal life.

Obviously, I’m going to write the money David has effectively stolen from me off to experience, even if I’m so short of cash at the present time I won’t be able to pay any of my bills on Monday 1^st October. My monthly outgoings are over £500, while my income is around £400; my new middle name is poverty. I must say that looking at the situation quite dispassionately, I truly feel I am as much of a victim of crime as the woman beaten up by her son on Silver Lonnen. The irony is, David 2 could well find himself in the role of moral guide for that violent thug, and that can’t be right.

Then again; I don’t think this tale I’m about to tell you is right either. I’ve said on numerous occasions I have little or no faith in Northumbria Police, either individually or collectively; I think they’re fundamentally corrupt, hideously incompetent, staffed by cretins on the bottom rungs and infested with aggressive, mendacious bullies from middle management upwards, with a few shining exceptions it must be said. They’re used as a political tool to maintain order and social compliance rather than seeking to uphold justice and the rule of law. Worst of all, they collude with ultra-right-wing vigilantes to bring about questionable convictions.

As a victim of child sexual abuse myself, I know exactly how devastating the consequences can be for an innocent child tortured and humiliated for a sordid pervert’s gratification. Northumbria Police didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory when the appalling catalogue of abuse Operation Sanctuary uncovered was almost compromised by the force’s willingness to use a self-confessed paedophile as a paid informer. That said, unlike the questionable tactics and dubious motivation of organisations such as Dark Justice or Guardians of the North, at least Babylon have some legal justification for their actions.

Vigilantes attract the highest levels of approval from those supporters of authoritarian populism who parade their depressing list of reactionary opinions like badges of honour; anti Islam, pro Brexit, vehemently militaristic, Royalist, instinctively transphobic and conspicuously patriotic. They tend to be white, middle aged, poorly educated, living in current or former social housing and alienated from the contemporary social milieu. In the past, such “conservative with a small c” sectors of society would write into Points of View or gossip on buses about the decline of modern society and harking back to a mythic golden age of Empire. Technology, specifically the internet and social media, has changed that; right-wing crackpots are given as much credence as any other journalists. The lumpenproletariat all have smart phones these days. Witness the hysterical, and utterly incorrect, response to the jailing of convicted football hooligan and mortgage fraudster Stephen Yaxley-Lennon earlier this year. It is of no surprise that Yaxley-Lennon was jailed for a contempt of court that was ostensibly about protecting victims of child sexual abuse, but was actually unadulterated Islamophobia.

The big surprise about authoritarian populists is that they have one major exception to their slavish worship of figures of social control; they almost all hate the police. Undoubtedly, the class interests that the police serve are those of the bourgeois who seek to exploit and oppress the working and underclass. Despite their excessive shows of patriotism, the working and underclasses are held in contempt by their masters, who use the police as the first response attack dogs of social control. At this point, the principle of divide and conquer comes into play; authoritarian populists hate the police and by definition and extension, the CPS and judiciary, who are seen as protecting the interests of a Venn diagram hydra which consists of asylum seekers, refugees, Muslims, terrorists and paedophiles. In such circumstances, opportunist vigilantism, as practised by Dark Justice and Guardians of the North, is seen as doing the work that a hostile police force won’t. Interesting, the lumpenproletariat, hamstrung by the poverty of their aspiration, do not accuse immigrants and asylum seekers of stealing their jobs, but of stealing their benefits; the workless are also the thoughtless.

It should be a matter of surprise to absolutely nobody with an ounce of understanding of the concepts of false consciousness and hegemony, that almost the entire adult population has less comprehension of the English legal system than Josef K had of his prosecution. These days, if a complaint is made of a non-violent nature, the police will investigate it in an almost bureaucratic fashion. This means rather than battering down front doors at 6am, except to lift the odd slumbering smack dealer for the benefit of local ITV news cameras, the police will generally contact the person alleged to have done wrong, interview them, perhaps under caution but generally not, then let them go. After this, they may take more statements, examine evidence brought to their attention or decide no further action is necessary. Only if they think a crime has been committed will they then get the person under investigation back in and take a full statement. The whole lot then goes to the Crown Prosecution Service who decide if it will go to court on the basis that a prosecution has a reasonable chance of success (there’s enough evidence and the witnesses are reliable) and is in the public interest (it isn’t a dementia victim swearing in the local shopping centre, for instance). 

In short, police don’t prosecute people and arrests tend not to happen until the end of any investigation, providing the person under investigation is somewhere between compliant and cooperative. Standing up for yourself is a real no no, as most ordinary bobbies I’ve had dealings with are as thick as pig shit and go off the deep end if anyone gives them any lip. Any kind of assertive behaviour will get you hoyed in a cell and subject to the full Charles Bronson meets Hannibal Lecter treatment. Returning to the mechanics of case management and potential prosecution, it is the case that most people have never been taught, or gone out their way to learn, about this full process. Of course, the Bourgeois State has evolved and held on to power by propagating a conscious policy of misinformation and miseducation towards the working classes. Once you understand how things operate, you will want to change the social order; that truth is self-evident. The real reason the police don’t arrest every person who commits a crime is partly the lack of resources, because of the cuts foisted upon us during a decade of neoliberal austerity, but mainly because they don’t actually know that many crimes are happening.

Someone I know vaguely, an acquaintance but no more, David 3, is currently under investigation following a sting by Dark Justice and Guardians of the North. The allegation is that he had been communicating with who he believed to be a 13 year old girl in an internet chat room, but who was actually one of the self-styled paedophile hunters assuming this role for whatever gratification they get from it. The conversation turned sexual and he is alleged to have forwarded an obscene picture and agreed to meet up for some sordid assignation. However, he perhaps thought better of this and didn’t keep his promise. You’ll have seen on the news a whole litany of these depressing tales before; shaky camera phone footage of lonely inadequate men hiding their faces in train stations when confronted by the ones who’ve lured them into this trap or marginalised, unkempt loners crying on their grimy front step when they learn vigilantes not 15 year old boys wanting sex have chapped the door. Those cases are dealt with quickly; jail time and pitiful mugshots on local newspaper websites accompanied by lurid Press Association reports.

You know I speak here as someone who knows what it is like to be digitally penetrated and genitally stimulated without permission by adults thirty years older than me. I am a real person; a real, actual, physical victim of sexual abuse. Someone who lived with the guilt, shame and self-loathing caused by sexual abuse for more than 40 years. Those sexual and social deviants entrapped by vigilantes who have almost groomed them, haven’t abused any living person in these instances. Yes they may have acted on their urges and fantasies before and they may be likely to do so in the future, but that is because their instinctive sexual response, as encoded in their DNA, is to find young, possibly pre-pubescent children to be sexually arousing. This is wrong; it is malign and it is deviant. It is a defect in their genetic make-up, personality and thought processes. They must be treated to ensure they do not abuse children; the cure may be drugs, it may be therapy and, in the case of inveterate or unapologetic abusers, it may be incarceration. All courses of treatment should work towards rehabilitation and the protection of children as first principles.

In the case of David 3, he was traced by the vigilante hunters, presumably through his phone number and the vagaries of the dark web or a helpful insider from a mobile network, which seems a disproportionate response to standing a date up, but there you go. The police were present when he was confronted. He voluntarily attended the station and gave a statement. After this he was released and the investigation remains on-going. He has denied the allegations and volunteered an explanation. Whether guilty or innocent, his life has been torn apart; nobody else’s has. There isn’t, as far as we know, a young and vulnerable victim who has been used and abused by a vile, predatory monster. And surely that is crucial?

As someone who has suffered at the hands of paedophiles, it does not seem right to me that as a society we seek to punish people for their private sexual urges and fantasies. Similarly, we should not tolerate such desires; not only is it illegal, but it is wrong on every level and damaging to the victim beyond words. We should, in my opinion, seek to learn from these sexually dysfunctional beings exactly what it is that provides their motivation and mind-set, then use the knowledge to firstly prevent further abuse and secondly treat actual or potential offenders. Only if the case is discontinued will David 3 have the opportunity to piece his life back together. If he is innocent, I will shake his hand. If he is guilty, I will try to forgive and try to understand what motivated him to behave in this way, but only if he shows contrition and a clear wish to undertake treatment to modify his thought processes and negate such sexual fantasies.

When reading the Facebook pages of both Guardians of the North and Dark Justice, the chorus of dreadful spellings and worse grammar by those who have acted as cyber judge, jury and executioner for someone who has not been charged with anything, I feel sickened. Violated by the hatred and bloodlust of those who seek vengeance served ice cold.  It truly leaves me in despair at our world that such terrible responses to potentially terrible crimes are seen as proportionate. There is no sense of how justice must be seen to be done and I guess that’s a whole lot worse than a former pal conning me out of half a grand.

What really worries me though is whether devious sexual predators should be chaperoned by those whose own sociopathic tendencies are as equally pronounced, though directed in different ways. At the end of the day, it seems both criminal and Probation Officer are interested only in their own personal needs, wants and desires. That frightens me.