We feel safer when others have our back

We feel safer when others have our back. We like to feel that should a situation arise or should we get into some sort of trouble or conflict through no fault of our own, our friends, family or innocent bystanders would have our back. After all, we all want to live in peace, so when a situation is other than peaceful, we would expect the general community to set it to rights. It takes a village, after all. For instance there is a news story about a woman who was being followed by a man she didn’t know on a dimly lit street, so she approached a group of strangers pretending to know them. The strangers were initially quizzical about what she was doing, but she quickly murmured to them that the man behind her was following her and she was alone in the dark and didn’t know what might happen. The group quickly realised she needed security and played along, loudly welcoming her like she was a friend of theirs they had stumbled across in the street. They stood around jovially chatting and laughing with artificial familiarity until the man slunk away into the night. They then escorted the woman to the nearest police station, where she made a formal report about being followed by the man, and gave the police a description of him. She was rewarded by her trust in the strangers by their coming to her aid and saving her from having to deal with the escalating situation on her own, warding off any possible consequences had they not helped.

Conversely, sometimes when people don’t try to help it can be very confusing, especially for those for whom assistance is a natural response. In my early twenties I was once walking along the shoreline with some friends in the early evening while staying at one of my friends’ parents’ holiday cottage in quite a remote beach location (his parents weren’t there but had given us permission). There were four or five of us, a couple of girls and two or three guys; while strolling along I heard a yelping sound; looking further down the coastline I spied a puppy being repeatedly thrown by the scruff of its neck into the shallow seawater by two teenage girls. It would fly and tumble through the air and land in the water, then paddle back to the shoreline where the girls would pick it up and fling it back into the water again. Initially I wondered whether it was a game, but quickly determined by the yelps of terror, coupled with the rough manner in which the girls were repeatedly flinging the weakening animal, that they were trying to drown the animal. My heart started racing and I suddenly felt outraged, and told my friends that those girls were drowning the puppy. My friends didn’t do anything so I ran over and admonished the girls, telling them to take the puppy to the vet or a shelter rather than repeatedly throw it into the sea, and how could they do that to an animal that was obviously terrified, and that they had no right to ever own an animal if that was how they were going to treat it. The girls looked at me nonplussed; I don’t recall whether or not they replied, but they walked back towards the beach and away from the shallow water as if to say they relented to my rebuke.

I regret that I didn’t take the dog with me, and I should have, but it wasn’t my place, I was young and naive and my friends didn’t seem to want to get involved. I have many times thought to myself that the girls had probably kept doing what they were doing once I was out of sight, and that I should have done more; these days I would certainly do more, but at the time I was admonishing them on my own and my friends at the time were no help; they didn’t expressly say so but they behaved as though if we weren’t from the area we should perhaps mind our own business. I think we would have had more chance of saving the puppy had we all made a concerted effort, but as I was arguing the case alone I eventually reluctantly dropped it and had to accept the girls returning to the shore as a sign of capitulation and continue on our way. I do regret it, but at the time being the only person intervening I wasn’t ready or able to take the dog from them and walk away with it, and didn’t have the presence of mind to call anyone from there and wait for them to arrive. It was a remote area after all, and we were only passing through.

The point of the story is that I was simmering with dismay and disappointment that my friends hadn’t jumped into the fray with me to insist that the girls stop throwing the puppy into the sea, and didn’t seem to feel as strongly as I did about how cruel it was. I had known them for a couple of years and we had never had to intervene over anything before, so this was the first time such a thing had come up. However I was a taken aback by what I viewed as their passivity; as I say I’m a bit taken aback by my passivity too, but at least I tried.

The wider point is, when people don’t do things you would do naturally it can make you wonder about things, and such doubt isn’t pleasant for anyone. What if we’d been strolling along the shoreline and a gang had attacked one or all of us? The way things were back then, I wonder if we could all have been stabbed dead on the beach and not done anything about it, and whether this only didn’t happen due to the peaceable environment, rather than anything to do with our own resourcefulness.

Bringing the analogy back to the current situation, I have been attacked remotely by a malicious group of fixated and obsessed people, and having grown and developed from the person I was on the shoreline many years ago, I have been much more effective in trying to bring an end to it. I have truly done everything in my power, and would not feel at this point that I have failed in any way to take all the necessary steps to bring the wrongdoing to an end. I have explained innumerable times to the abusers themselves, I have written innumerable times to the police, human rights organisations, and various other groups, explaining that my rights are being terribly violated, I am being tortured and we need to put a stop to it.

In the latter part of this year (2023 at time of writing), I even put up a set of speakers to the window connected via Bluetooth to a microphone headset, so I wouldn’t have to scream like I’m in a Brazen Bull. I began repeating what the abusers are saying to me in my home, and imploring anyone in earshot to help me bring an end to the cruelty that is being perpetrated against me. It is in this manner that I am reminded of the puppy incident. I have met with a strange and inexplicable silence to what I have been trying with all my might to explain. I have made the plight I am in as clear as day, and I don’t think there could be any possibility of confusion about the abuse I am being subjected to, but it has fallen on deaf ears, even as regards the police, who are strictly speaking the only people whose duty it is to save anyone from harm – the rest relying on the empathy and goodwill of others, which I certainly don’t take for granted, but which I am still dismayed at the lack of, considering what I have repeatedly explained the abusers are doing to me, and the fact that I myself am not the sort of person that would ever let such a thing happen to anyone else.

I appealed to family too, and they mostly advise me to relay my concerns to my GP, and don’t help. My late father used to tell me to keep my chin up and be nice to others, and others will be nice to me. He didn’t seem to understand that sometimes others will use you for their personal gratification without you ever having to have done anything to provoke their behaviour. To my knowledge none of my family has ever directly approached the police on my behalf.

Usually friends and family aren’t forced to confront their impotence or lack thereof when it comes to keeping each other safe, because usually friends and family are not subject to protracted assault. Of course I’m sure everyone would like to believe that should the situation ever arise where their friends or family were targeted for any reason, they would intervene in a heartbeat to save their loved ones from suffering, even if only to call the police for help. To be attacked remotely with the technology I have described, in the manner I have described for such a long time has driven a rift between friends, family and I, and anyone else who knows of it, and even whoever might be listening when I speak out of the window of my flat, because we unfortunately have been tested and we are failing to put a terrible wrong to rights, the source and nature of which could not have been described more clearly.

It is very difficult to socialise and interact with people when people are torturing you in a manner you have explained clearly, yet your loved ones don’t seem to be making as much effort to address the issue as you would have if it had been happening to them. It makes a person question a lot of things most people take for granted, such as the strength of their relationship with their loved ones, or the true depth of feeling their loved ones really have for them. That I am being tortured remotely by a group I don’t know through no fault of my own, is being treated like an unavoidably malady I suffer from, like cancer or something such, when it is a deliberate crime being perpetrated by cruel people who could easily be brought to justice if only anyone whose prerogative it is to handle such matters would take the time. My perception of the benevolent public in our free and interconnected society was forced into question when this began happening and it became clear that no one would take the time, even despite increasing and obvious distress and suffering. It is something I still have great trouble coming to terms with. I don’t know how much anyone really cares for anyone else any more, maybe in most cases it’s simply because nothing hurtful has happened to them yet.

Mark Kilroy was a 21 Year old senior at the University of Texas at Austin when he was abducted from outside a bar in Matamoros, Mexico, in March 1989 while on spring break. He was tortured and violated to an unspeakable degree, and then killed by his captors at a nearby ranch.  The ritualistic nature of the killing was ascribed to occult beliefs in human sacrifice providing supernatural protection and immunity for the group that murdered him. I won’t go into details but by ‘ritualistic’ I mean that the group defiled his body parts and things like that. I feel I have been attacked in a similar manner with equally intense savagery by people that simply refuse to see sense, despite that I have described every element of their perverse activities every step along the way, yet my shrieks have fallen on deaf ears and at time of writing I have been left to suffer inexplicable, relentless abuse for seven years. Again, it makes one begin to question how much anyone really cares for anyone else any more, as maybe in most cases it’s simply because nothing hurtful has happened to them yet.