Maria, former inmate, Maurice and Sabine

You can’t make them up, the stories that people experience and endure.

Maria spent 6 months in Holloway under completely false and fabricated charges. 14 months later, instead of having had apologies and compensation from the ‘authorities’ concerned, she is fighting an eviction order, after having lost her home and job thanks to and on top of the cruelty experienced…

Maurice came to visit Melissa, because she was looking forward to meeting him, after having spoken to him on the phone once. That was when she was on hunger strike which he has experience with, too.

He knows what it means to ‘be inside’. One lady didn’t want to visit a prisoner, for she didn’t want to be treated like a criminal! It seems completely beyond imagination that innocent people get imprisoned. Just like with cancer: only when we are hit ourselves, do we begin to wake up and care…

I have accompanied Maurice since 2009. Melissa since 2012. They are both ‘Litigants in Person’ or LiPs. Neither by choice! But to find trustworthy lawyers is nigh impossible, especially in the family courts. 

And thus they are forced to operate within the most ridiculous constraints that both prisons impose. If it wasn’t for us voluntary McKenzie Friends, they’d really be in trouble! But McKenzie Friends don’t have legal visits in prison to take papers in and out, as solicitors and barristers can! Only on discretion. But in Holloway I was not allowed any after two legal visits. One wonders why!?… Two Governors have been fobbing us off since February and June.

Maurice was arrested 20 hours after the photo was taken on Wednesday 31 July. Complete stitch up. Not worth going into the reasons. What matters are the constraints he’s undergoing, even though is ON REMAND:

• no visitors or phone calls, only 4 stamps / envelopes / papers
• no photocopying or access to library
• no access to his legal documents.

Since the Affidavit that the Chief Constable Barbara Wilding signed in February 2009, Maurice has been

• arrested at least 13 times – always with charges dropped
• in Court at least 50 times – also without being charged.

He counted these incidents while in prison now, instead of doing Sudoku…

Similarly and worse: Melissa, one of the foreign mothers whose supposedly 6,500 children are in UK ‘care’. Her son is supposed to be adopted – entirely against her will.

No wonder we petition the EU Parliament to Abolish Adoptions without Parental Consent and supported an event outside No 10: Dear Mr Cameron, Take the Lead and Return our Stolen Children. Look at this Dossier of Evidence, if you have trouble believing!

Melissa was supposed to be deported without her son. After having had the deportation ‘stayed’, 2 days before the departure of the plane, she was beaten up by six prison staff.

Since then, all her legal papers have been stolen by HMP Holloway!

Not to have access to phones, to have to send all mail by registered post to be sure it gets out, not to get emails delivered from the Email a Prisoner service is all minor… But: what chance is there for advancing your legal proceedings, let alone WIN your case???

The Judicial Group who wrote this report about LiPs clearly had no prison experience – either in Holloway or in Cardiff…

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• Greenwich private prison HMP Thameside ‘of serious concern’ (london24.com)
• DEAR MR CAMERON, Take the Lead and Return Our Stolen Children (mckenzie-friends.co.uk)
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