During all the various delays and humbug of court; including the pompous money squandering, back-scratching scenarios that accompany the ritual abuse of power that is the "system", I never gave up hope of having a fair trial.

Just to put light on the subject, I had two trials, the first took place one year after I was charged and the jury could not reach a verdict after three days on the subject!

So, the system moved into a higher gear, rolled out another trial six months later and this jury took 3hours on a Friday night (of course) to see me put away. The way our system works neatly puts pressure on juries to come to a decision on Friday or face the prospect of continuing to disrupt their lives from Monday, clever yet effective, but it does mean more convictions by default.

On release I have had to fight to return to my family for over two years, more public monies down the neck of the system paid out to all manners of legal retainers, by the "system"!

Three main Judges, two for the trails and one for the family court.

The first judge clearly had a bad smell right in front of him, which he continued manfully to keep his nose from. He was less than happy at the prospect of even my trial starting and gave three quarter of the first day over to the horse-trading which I now understand is par for the course.

The horse-trading, which is not reported by anyone, goes something like this.
My barrister tells me with just minutes to go before the start of the court case, that the prosecution has offered me a much less serious charge to plead guilty to. Thereby reducing the court time, hopefully if you go the way they wish, the judge would be so much more lenient on you.
Of course, the judge is telling the barristers to sort it out, inside his little eerie in the sky, but this is never ever discussed. When you ask what sort of reduction you would get by pleading guilty from said judge, he states that it is nothing to do with him.
What a load of cobblers, the judge will have been reading up on the charges and paperwork, then to find you are only being charged one count instead of six, he will be bound to know!

I was so shocked by this proposal, I actually thought in my fearful state I might take the least rocky road, so as to remain free of prison if I failed to clear my name, as to agree the deal would have meant the strong possibility of avoiding the cells!
I had no real support from my legal team on this, in fact I had the suspicion they would have welcomed the extra days given to their diaries if I had agreed it.

I had the wonderful support of family to be strong enough to resist this disgusting practice. When you are facing the demolishing of all your life and love, you will be at your weakest. Then they offer you a twig. I found out while inside, just how many lads had caved in at the last minute, only to find the sentence nearly the same anyway, because the judge assumed that all the charges stood, in his sentencing.

The true figure will never be available, it would cause the whole system to be shown as corrupt and far less the class leader of justice, it likes the rest of the world to think.

However everyone within the system knows, but in order to keep their own hypocrisies under control, they pretend not to notice. So much for the professional integrity, they are paid vast amounts of our monies for.

I detail this point to explain why the first judge I had the displeasure to come across got no points from me for integrity. He was short-tempered and hostile in the extreme. It did wonders for me to find he progressively reduced the majority verdict he initially required down to saying he would agree a ten to two verdict, He did not get it! Therefore, we had to return on the Monday, and then he had to cancel the trial because the jury would not come to a verdict.

In stark contrast, the second judge was far more expressive and challenging to the combatant barristers. Giving equal slap downs and good responses to obvious witness lies. He also felt I was innocent by his summing up, he did not explain to the jury, however that a police officer lied during my second trail but sent the jury out while he accepted the apologies of the officer. This caused my only defence witness to be labelled a liar before even getting to the witness box. I thought he would bring this into his summing up, so I declined the third re-trial that was offered. I kick myself for not going for it, but then I could have been on bail for longer than I was sentenced to in the end.

I will only say that the third Family court judge had his summery and plan in his hand when he came into the court, before hearing anything! He totally presented the social service side and completely ignored the wishes of all my family. The whole family court system is a "Star Chamber". Nothing so draconian or so biased towards the social services could have been contrived if they had thought up the system.
You are faced with a system that prevents any reporting or discussion of what takes place, or face jail! So how is it ever to be dragged into the light of day, let alone investigated for the abuse of power.

More monies will be wasted as my whole family is going to take this back to court soon. So keep in mine the first court case may not be the last.

As for the quality of the judges, may I be excused from further comment?