The Sentencing – Consequences of my abusers actions

I closed my book with fifty pages to go. I was reading Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah, and I didn’t want the ending to be clouded by the feelings that were building inside me. It was 16:44, a little over two hours before I had to log into the court video link. I’d been receiving texts for nearly two hours about what was going to happen. The lead detective, my sister, friends, even my husband, who texted so he wouldn’t disturb me.

Sentencing was due to start at 11:00 in the UK, which was exactly dinner time for me in Malaysia. The build up to this day was a six-week roller coaster, starting with the verdict that for a few days made my world seem both empty and overfilled. That was followed by a slow realisation of what had happened, both in court and in my life. The pieces of that jigsaw had started to fit together to make an image that I wasn’t afraid to look at anymore. Then as things levelled off and I found a new normal, the date of the sentencing crept up on me. I thought I was doing okay with it all, until three days before when a friend spoke out of turn, causing a massive over reaction from me. I apologised and steadied myself.

This was the ending. Four years since I called the police. Twenty-eight years since I’d first met Tim, and this, the sentencing, was an ending. Not a closure for me as such, but the closure of a chapter. No more being told what to say by the CPS. No more drifting off into my inner monologue, playing both sides of confrontations in court. No more sleepless nights where Tim who’s been living in my head for decades, can control my thoughts and fears. I’d no longer have to worry about where he was, or what he was doing, or the worst of all, coming face to face with him by some freak coincidence.

I’d only found out that morning I could watch the sentencing live. I woke up to texts and an email from Ross, my detective, to say the CPS had asked if I’d like to watch. Reading the messages gave me a fear that had no home. Tim would be in court, or online, either way, on my computer screen. He wouldn’t be able to see or hear me, I would be able to view only. But I’d be able to see him, moving, blinking, breathing, being a real human being, not the monster in disguise he’d become in my mind. And now it was only two hours before I clicked the link, and proceedings would begin.

I logged into the court system, and sat in a virtual holding room waiting for proceedings to start. When the screen clicked to life, there he was, Tim, but older. He was in a little room with a security door behind him, wearing a prison issued grey tracksuit top, and he was looking at me.

He took up a third of the screen, the same eyes I remember staring blankly at the camera, it felt like he was looking directly at me. The panic it triggered made me reach for a tissue and put it over my camera just in case it turned on.

As The judge talked about the sentencing notes from the prosecution and defence, I couldn’t help but watch Tim, sat there blinking, but not moving. His face was impassive, but I know that face. I may not know it as an old person with a beard, but I know it all the same. There was a mixture of emotions hiding in plain sight. Discomfort and fear being the obvious ones. I’d been told that he spent the entire trial, sat in the dock staring straight ahead without a single reaction, and now I was seeing it. I knew as the judge continued Tim would react, he was going to hear what Alfie and I had written as impact statements. He’d have to listen to what his actions had done to our lives.

The prosecution barrister started reading my statement, and I watched Tim as my words came out of my barrister’s mouth. He listened to how my life was altered in ways that I still struggle with. Issues with alcohol and drugs. Problems with mental health. Difficulty in forming and maintaining personal relationships. A suicide attempt and a mental breakdown. Tim didn’t move in his seat, he didn’t look down or away, he just stared forwards and blinked slightly more, but that was it. He either didn’t care, or wasn’t bothered by what he’d done.

Words Ross had said to me, days before the start of the trial, played over and over in my head. “He doesn’t care about you.” When Ross said that, I’d reacted badly, but now, seeing Tim not care, I’m glad Ross had said that. My eyes burned with tears as the realisation of my own insignificance dawned on me. I didn’t matter, I don’t matter. This man, those actions, the years of my life spent around him, the decades of ramifications, and it was never about me. This part of my life that was so personal and private, it wasn’t mine, it was his, and yet I’ve carried it all these decades for him.

The judge spoke about the era of the offences and how it was a different time, it was harder for us as gay teens, how we were looking for support and solace, and how Tim used our vulnerability to groom us, prey on us. He said how Tim taking us to pubs, clubs, giving us money and gifts, and providing accommodation to us, was manipulation designed to make it so much harder for us to object to his sexual advances. He went on to say how Tim had remorselessly prioritised his own sexual gratification over our welfare, when what we needed was guidance. “You still haven’t shown one iota of remorse.”

I was in floods of tears. Wiping my face with one hand and scribbling notes with the other. I’d been seen. I’d been understood. These organisations and people that Tim had taught me would never care, cared. They understood that life for me as a young gay man in the ‘90s was hard. They appreciated that I was led down a path by Tim’s selfish desires. I was heard and recognised, and that was almost too much for me to be able to process.

Tim blinked at the camera as the judge said, “I’m sentencing you for at least ten rapes, seven of which were on boys under sixteen. And further at least six occasions of you performing oral sex on boys under sixteen.” He started rattling off the sentences for each count against Tim, and his words washed over me as I heard, nine years, four years, eight years, thirteen years, twelve years, nine years, followed by, “to represent your overall offending, the sentence is one of twenty-two years.” And he has to serve a minimum of two thirds.

I’d thought five years would be enough to satisfy me, and the judge had said twenty-two. The number wouldn’t fit in my brain. I’d been alive twenty-one years when I met the man who is now my husband. I quickly did the maths in my head, and came up with a minimum sentence of fourteen years. The age I was when I met Tim and he took away my future. And that’s how long he was going to be in prison for.

The court was adjourned, and people started dropping off the video link. Tim and his barrister were going to stay on, and as each person disappeared from my screen, there were less and less people between Tim and me. I scrabbled to see the computer mouse though my tears closed the connection. He was gone, and I was alone again. That was until my phone started beeping with messages from Alfie and Ross.

Alfie and I had a quick phone call, and Ross and I texted but I needed to see Jon, my husband. He was in the kitchen keeping himself busy, and I just stood there, I didn’t know what to say. I was feeling every emotion, and none, all at the same time.

I existed, I mattered, never again would Tim be able to do what he did to me, to someone else. But there was grief too. Less this time compared to hearing the verdict. I’d just watched him have no reaction to what he’d done to us, and what his future, or lack thereof, was going to be. He’d be unlikely to ever leave prison, and part of me was hurting about that because I did that to him.

Jon hugged me, and as I stopped shaking, he pulled back and said, “I haven’t cooked, should I go and get McDonalds?” I couldn’t help but laugh. It was such a real-life thing, so simple, and yet so perfect. The four years of investigation and trial were over, my life could now step forward with silly things like getting over salted junk-food, and Tim’s not caring about me, made sense.