It doesn’t feel like a year has gone by but it’s almost exactly one year since I logged into the Swindon Crown Court system and watched the judge dispense his sentence. Tim – the man who used a youth counselling agency to gain access to children – was given a twenty two year custodial sentence, and told he must serve a minimum two thirds of it.
It was victim B, who is better at maths than me, who pointed out that meant fourteen years minimum in jail. Fourteen is how old I was when I met Tim, and fourteen was now the number of years he would be behind bars.
Over this last year my feelings and thoughts have had time to settle and evolve, and to me this year anniversary is so much more than simply a year of Tim’s sentence served. It’s the first year I haven’t needed to google him. For the first time I don’t need to see if results come up. I don’t need to reassure myself that nothing has happened or been reported. Now I can say the court process and eventual sentencing has given me something I couldn’t have thought to ask for … peace.
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