From report to court, part seven – Days in court

The defence barrister, Ms Nadia Chbat, managed to obstruct the rescheduling of the trial for another two months. It wasn’t until the Judge summoned her back to court where she faced potential ramifications for her behaviour, that the medical reports magically appeared. Unsurprisingly, Tim was found both mentally and physically capable. The judge asked Ms Nadia Chbat if there would be any more delays, and she replied, “We have no more applications to make.” A trial date was set for February 2024, almost four years since I first called the police.

We rebooked flights and accommodation, this time ignoring the CPS guidelines so the trip was shorter and cheaper. Our departure date started looming and I was expecting further obstruction from the defence. Even though I was still being told that Tim wouldn’t change his plea, I couldn’t fully believe he would put us through a trial. But the day came to board the plane, and everything was on schedule.

My husband, sister, friends, all did their best to keep me occupied and engaged, but I was snappy and easily drifting off into my thoughts. I had jetlag, and lack of sleep due to stress. I was eating properly for the first time in a month, mainly due to all the comfort foods of home being available to me. Day one of the trial was supposed to be legal arguments and opening statements, but, having run out of applications to make (obstruct the trial), Ms Nadia Chbat who specialises in representing rapists and paedophiles, who’d had seven months to prepare for the first trial date, and ten months for the second, decided on day one, to object to the charges. In my opinion, another shameless attempt to delay and disrupt the trial.

The day was taken up with barristers for the defence and the prosecution, sat on their laptops in court, Googling which charges were appropriate. Hearing that, I closed my eyes and sighed. Not only could I see the defence tactic of further obstruction, the fact that even the prosecution had to literally Google the charges, did not fill me with confidence. The judge dismissed both barristers, telling them to figure it out, and report back to him in the morning. Highly trained and experienced professionals, being treated like naughty schoolkids. I opened a bottle of wine, white, so it wouldn’t stain my lips, and managed to drink enough to pass out and get some sleep.

I was thinking about court before I woke up. I was dreaming about the trial, it weighed on my mind as soon as my eyes were open. There wasn’t any part of me that wanted to do it. There was a lot of me that wanted to run away and hide in a cupboard, but I had no choice. If I, a grown man who’s well supported couldn’t do this, how could the kids that Tim had, and would abuse. I couldn’t stomach food, so had cigarettes for breakfast. My husband pottered around me with his shoulders slightly down, the way he does when he knows I’m on a knife edge, but wants to care for me even though I’m being an arse.

It was a miserable grey day, but I had sunglasses on all the same. I had this gut-wrenching fear I’d see Tim, and I knew if I did something in me would break. We parked in the multistorey carpark, and I looked around at the other cars like somehow I’d know if one of them was Tim’s. I scuttled out of the car park, wanting to rush, but not wanting to be any further away from my husband than I had to be. I know my husband is a kind and gentle man, it’s one of the reasons I love him, but I also know he’d do nearly anything to protect me, and in that moment, he was my security blanket.

I was classed as a vulnerable witness. Which meant I was able to use the back entrance to the court. It was a little steal security gate in a non-descript wall. It was opened by a cheery faced man in his 50’s, who told us we’d need to wait for security to come down and screen us. We stood in the secret court garden, a place for ‘vulnerable witnesses’ and also for the staff to smoke. We were scanned with a metal detector, our bags were thoroughly checked, and the bottles of water we brought were opened and sipped from, before we were escorted to a witness room and shut behind a door.

Tim was in the building somewhere, and even though in theory he couldn’t get to where I was, I couldn’t relax. I was visited by Ross and a woman representing the CPS, the first person from the CPS I met who seemed to be competent. Witness services brought me coffee and allowed me back into the little garden when I wanted to smoke. Lunchtime happened on schedule. I didn’t leave the building as I knew Tim would. Then court sat again for the afternoon, and I sat in my little room. It was almost three o’clock when Ross came in and told me I could go home. The barristers had wasted another day arguing about charges, and there wasn’t going to be time to see me.

I was enraged. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to have to be on the witness stand, but I didn’t want to have another sleepless night and go through everything again the next day. But I also didn’t have any control, so we went back to the AirB&B.

I started using a mantra of, “I have no control or influence” and would chant to myself whenever I lost control of my thoughts, or lost myself in my thoughts. Obviously I wanted to have influence, and I would have given anything to have some control, but chanting it to myself made me accept that being in a position of helplessness, didn’t mean I was in a place of danger.

The next morning was much the same as the day before, except I had slightly more umph. The more the defence barrister messed around, the more determined it made me to do my part. If all they had was stall-tactics and silly games, then it was nothing but an attempt at intimidation.

We arrived at court at 10:30 as instructed, an hour later than the previous day. We were ushered in the back door and out of the drizzle without a security check and joked about being regulars.

“Oh, security don’t want to come down again after waiting for you earlier,” said the witness services man.

It turned out that shortly after the normal time a witness would turn up, 9:30, someone called into witness services to say I was at the back gate and wanted to come in. Not being familiar with my voice, security had gone down and stood waiting for me for twenty minutes before going back into the dry.

We hadn’t called, and the only person who knew I would be in court, and didn’t know I’d be coming in an hour later, was Tim. And the only way I can see he could get the private number to witness services, is from Nadia Chbat, the specialist in helping paedophiles and rapists escape justice.

The only thing I can assume is her delay tactics are designed to add so much stress to victims and witnesses, that they pull out of the trial. Knowing that Tim, of all people, was making phone calls pretending to be me, gave me a feeling of being prey in someone else’s game.

After we settled into the same witness room, Ross came in with the same competent CPS representative as the day before, and a woman in a black court robe. I was introduced to my barrister, for the first time. The conversation was brief, and rather uninformative, I think it was more so I’d recognise who the prosecution was when I was on the witness stand. The conversation was brought to an end by a voice on the tannoy system calling all parties to court room one. That didn’t include me.

Four years of waiting, two court dates, two letters to summon me to court, and two trips to the UK for those court dates, ended as a court usher appeared in the door to my waiting room. He had a sincere but unenthusiastic smile and wore the same style robe as my barrister, but for some reason on this guy, it made him look like a Game of Thrones character. The witness services man gently clapped his hands together and said, “This is it then.”

I stood, steeled myself, held a shaky hand up to stop my husband from hugging me. “Don’t, I’ll cry.” Even looking him at him as I spoke made my eyes sting with tears. Leaving Jon in the witness room, I followed the usher towards court room one.