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TRIGGER WARNING: This is a very explicit account of violence, by police and other authority

figures, with references to sexual assault, mental illness, psychosis, 'hearing voices', victim-blaming,

and lots of Bad Things.

Please think carefully about whether you want to read it, it is disturbing.

Background: I was camping at a festival. I'd seen someone the day before who had sexually assaulted

me a few years previously, and who I hadn't seen since. I'd told the festival organisers about this,explaining when I did so that I hear voices and have a schizoaffective diagnosis, since I thought that

was why the man had targeted me I wouldn't be believed. The festival organisers, in particular an

off-duty police sergeant who was working as a site manager, had interpreted my anxiety about seeing

this man again as a sign of 'madness'. Lots of things followed, but at the time this story begins, I was

back on site, asleep in my tent.

Since people are going to make assumptions: the festival was a religious event, I don't use drugs or

alcohol, I belong to a pacifist religious group and have no history of violence, I had been in hospital

once, twelve years previously, and my only contact with mental health services was seeing my GP

once every two months.

I was woken up muddle-headed from my medication at about two in the morning, to feel a pair of

hands grabbing my ankles through my sleeping bag. A few seconds later my friend landed in my tent,

grabbed me in a hug, and started shouting. There was a lot of shouting going on outside. I felt myself

sliding out of my tent and more hands grabbing me through my sleeping bag, then my sleeping bag

was unzipped. I was dropped from a few feet onto the cold wet grass, wearing just my thin Lycra

thermals. I did not understand what was happening. I could only see lots of black Army boots, and

thought this must be to do with the man who had assaulted me, who was ex-Army. I screamed and

screamed, but it was hard to breathe with so many people grabbing me and holding me down. I was

being dragged across the wet grass towards a white van with the back door open, and what looked like

an upright glass coffin in the back. I tried to wriggle away from the people holding me, screamed for

help, and tried to crawl under the van so I could hide. My arms were twisted round very painfully, so

that my hands were back to back level with my shoulder blades, and I was lifted off the ground, then I

felt someone putting handcuffs on me. I could see the people who were grabbing me, about twelve or

so, wearing dark clothes. There was a circle of maybe a hundred or two hundred people from the

festival standing around in a circle watching what was happening, some shouting, some crying, and a

small boy at the front looking straight at me absolutely terrified, clutching his father's hand. I was

dropped and picked up several more times, once with someone just grabbing my handcuffs and lifting

me right off the ground without supporting my weight at all, which was incredibly painful. After what

might have been ten or fifteen minutes of my struggling and them pushing my body through strange

painful contortions, I was shut in the glass coffin thing and the van doors slammed.

I was terrified, and kept screaming and trying to break the coffin apart. Now I was in the van I could

see that the people there were wearing police uniforms, which did not reassure me at all. Some of

them were shouting at me but I could not hear anything. Twice in the journey the handcuffs came off

my slim wrists, they were much too big for me. The first time, the police opened part of the coffin,

and jumped on me again, eventually forcing me down with my nose on the floor of the van, my arms

pulled back behind me so they were vertical over my head, my shoulder blades feeling as though they

were about to separate, and screaming from pain instead of fear now. I wasn't even trying to fight

then, I just went floppy and dropped to the floor when the coffin was opened, but I was getting so

jerked around that I must have looked as if I was trying to get away.

At the end of the van trip, I was dragged out of the van and slammed down on a concrete floor, againwith my arms twisted back and above my head, but this time there were even more police and some

of them were leaning their weight on my back so I could not draw breath. The police were talking to

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each other for some time.

I was dragged along the concrete floor to a corridor lined with doors. Through one of the doors there

was a cell, with a thin blue mat on the floor. I was pushed face down onto the mat, cuffed with my

arms twisted painfully up again, my head held down with my face pushed hard into the mat so I could

not see anything or breathe. First people felt me up, touching me all over through the thin lycra

thermals I was wearing. Then they started to strip me. First they took out my hair elastics, and mysocks. Then they flipped my body onto my back, and reached down the front of my thermals to cut

the elastic waist tie. I screamed for them to stop, and shouted that I was only there because the bastard

who assaulted me had made up a lot of lies. Then I could not scream because one person was holding

my throat and choking me and another was leaning on my stomach. One policewoman paused briefly,

I know she heard me, then carried on. They pulled off my leggings first, pulled my legs apart, ran

their hands up my inner thighs to look inside my vagina. After about a minute the policewoman said

'We've seen enough now'. Next they felt around under my top, groped my breasts, and pulled the top

off too. I was picked up and slammed face down again, they twisted my arms up again, put handcuffs

on, then put ties around my ankles and knees, things like seatbelts covered in velcro which wrapped

round and round.

As I was so tied up that I could barely move, fewer people were holding me now. It was cold in the

concrete cell now I couldn't wriggle any more, and smelt of shit, piss and vomit my face was a foot

from a metal toilet pan. I was too exhausted to scream any more, and was gasping for breath as I was

still being held face into the mat, with someone twisting my arms up and leaning on my back. I was

shaking uncontrollably and my muscles kept cramping and going into spasm, but I couldn't move to

ease them. I waited. After some time I started crying, and then I couldn't stop, even though I couldn't

breathe for choking on my own snot. I was covered in icy cold sweat and shivering.

Eventually they stopped holding me, though I could barely move and kept shaking and twitching. My

arms didn't want to co-operate with being by my sides, my shoulders wouldn't move properly, I felt

like one big bruise, especially my forearms from being dragged by handcuffs.

After some time they took the handcuffs off, and just one police officer was left, sitting in the cell

doorway. More time passed, and they took the ties off my knees, then after more waiting from my

ankles. The police officer at the doorway changed, and I was given a plastic cup of the worst tea I

have ever had, but it helped my throat so I drank it anyway.

Eventually someone else came. He said that he was the Custody Sargent, and that I was being held

under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act, and that I could be held for up to 72 hours three days.

He said I could have someone told where I was, but I could not remember any phone numbers, and of

course I did not have my mobile because I had come in with just my thermals. I told him that I wouldneed medication urgently, which I usually took at nine every morning without it I get a very bad

headache and physical symptoms, then I start hallucinating. I also said I would need vegan food, and

that I would like to see a doctor because lots of me hurt after being pulled around. He wrote these

down then went away.

I waited. More police officers came and went from my cell door. I was very frightened. The one thing

that definitely makes my voices bad is stress, and they were very very bad in that cell. I had no way of

getting away, no access to most of my usual coping strategies, no distractions, no emergency

medication, too cold and scared to sleep or even stay still for long. I knew that the only way I could

get out was by staying calm and pretending everything was fine, but I also knew that a normal

reaction to being dragged out of bed and locked in a police cell would be to panic. I tried to do yogaand stretching, sang hymns, prayed, and did mindfulness exercises. Some of the police were friendly

and would chat to me, some of them would just stare or look away or fiddle with a mobile phone.

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I waited and I waited. Eventually light started coming through the glass bricks in the cell wall.

Someone in a 'Reliance security' uniform brought me a little plastic tub of cornflakes and milk I

don't eat animal products, but I'd not had food for more than a day so I tried to eat dry cornflakes, but

they hurt my throat too much. I waited some more. More horrible tea. I asked one of the friendlier

police officers if he'd turn around so I could use the smelly cell toilet in some privacy. He did, but I

wasn't allowed toilet paper. I waited some more. One of the hardest things was how disorientated Iwas in a strange part of the country, without knowing anything about the building or town I was in,

completely detached and unreal.

My voices were almost unbearable, at home I'd have gone to A&E at this point, but now I couldn't

even talk back to them because I knew I had to convince people I was 'sane', and I knew if I started to

panic I wouldn't be able to stop. There were none of the distractions that I use to block the voices out.

I didn't get my meds, and started to get the headache. I was feeling more and more panicky and

claustrophobic and disorientated. I waited. After a while, I started shouting and banging my head on

the concrete wall because I desperately needed to get out and get away. Some more police came in,

and the custody sergeant came. He kept telling me the mental health team would be there 'soon'. I

asked him for a Bible, and he found me a Gideon's Bible with the cover torn off. I tried to stoppanicking, and practiced mindful walking around the cell, then read the psalms and prayed.

I waited fourteen hours for the mental health team to arrive.

The mental health team decided that I was understandably upset and distressed by the situation, which

was aggravating symptoms of my long-term mental illness, and agreed with me that the best treatment

would be a proper meal and a sleep. I wasn't having a 'mental health crisis', and they were very clear

that I didn't need to be sectioned in the first place. I was immediately discharged with no follow-up

other than my usual GP appointments. The Section 136 will show up on enhanced CRB checks for the

rest of my life, and might well stop me following the healthcare profession which I am training for.