But for the grace of God go I

In truth my life has been remarkable,

The following story I am about to divulge is “all facts no cap” the fact that I’m still standing is a miracle and I consider myself blessed and destined for greater things. Otherwise, why else would I still be here?

I guess you can call this story my personal testimony on God’s grace in my life.

For you to understand this story, you need to understand that my parents were prominent members of the Sierra Leonean community in London. You need to understand the power and bond of that community and west African culture.

I was born in London and grew up in a council flat. I lived with my parents on the ground floor and the  grown up son of a family friend had a girlfriend who lived on the second floor. I believe he was 28 at the time.

We’d see him from time to time. From here he’ll be referred to as Sam. And his mum as Auntie Eleanor. Because we knew him so well, we’d say hello whenever we saw him. It was a casual relationship based on a loose affiliation.

When I was 13 I moved from London when my dad became a priest, to a small town called Hedge End in Hampshire. The most important part of that to note is geographically, was that this town was outside the M25.

When I was 16 and doing my GCSE’s my dad came to pick me up from school one day with a frown on his face, which was unusual. He said Auntie Eleanor’s son had been in a bit of trouble and was going to come and live with us for a few months.

“Bit of trouble” means that he had actually been accused of the violent rape of his ex-girlfriend.

As the story goes, he was about to go to Sierra Leone the next day to go and marry a new woman (of his mother’s choosing, not quite an arranged marriage, but flirting with the line because his mother was very controlling.) When his ex-girlfriend asked him if he could do her a favour and put up some curtains for her. All this we have established is true. This was the bit we knew at the time of taking him in.

What happened next was he arrived with a knife and raped her at knifepoint. He then took the knife and dropped it into a drain in the next town. This we did not know at the time.

He was arrested and he swore to his parents that he was innocent. At his bail hearing, as he was otherwise a model member of society, he was granted bail providing he did not contact the victim (very important point) and he remained under police surveillance and outside the M25.

Which is where the Mother-Smith family come in. We were the only black people the family knew outside the M25 otherwise, Sam would have spent the next 6 months in prison.

So yes, you guessed it I spent from January-May of my GCSE year with a bona-fide rapist sleeping in the next room and knew nothing. For the most part we kept living our normal somewhat happy lives, still had Sunday roasts. Did nothing different. It would have been fine, until…

Sam got depressed. As he got closer to the trial date which was set for July, he got more and more agitated, took a knife to his room to try and harm himself. It was the scariest and longest 2 minutes of my life when my dad went upstairs to get it off him. I was sure the nimble 28 year old would knife my poor, trusting, mid 50’s father. He didn’t thankfully.

But it kept getting worse. He got more and more agitated until eventually, he did something really stupid.

He wrote to the victim.

He didn’t just write to the victim, he wrote the ugliest, nastiest confession letter of all time. Glorying in the violence of what he’d done, shaming her and giving the police details they otherwise would have never had (like where he dropped the knife)

Then we get to good old fashioned British bureaucracy. The original crime was committed in London, which is under the Metropolitan Police. What he did constituted a breach of bail, which was up to Hampshire constabulary to arrest him. But even though he was physically in Hampshire and therefore under their jurisdiction, it was contended that because he wrote to the victim and the victim was in London, it was the Met’s problem. This went on for A WEEK. Where we lived in a house with a known rapist, who we couldn’t get rid of because we were part of his bail conditions, and was a danger to himself. All this despite living 2 minutes from a police station. It was quicker to go to Hedge End Police station from my old house than it was to get milk or bread from the Co-Op.

Did I mention that I had to sleep on the floor of my parents bedroom  for that week now that my parents found out this guy was a legit rapist?

Did I also mention that that particular week was the week before the start of my GCSE exams?

Did I mention that on the morning of my first 2 exams (physics and RE) Hampshire constabulary finally pulled their fingers out and at 5 am arrested him?

Yeah. I survived via God’s grace.

And the results were, that for my 2 exams on that day RE and Physics, I got 100% and 97% on those particular exams respectively.

Did at any point my parents think to call the school for special circumstances? No.

When I got all my results, was I particularly rewarded for performing under extreme pressure? No. My parents took it as read that I would do well in my exams, completely forgetting the horrors we went through. I laughed when other people got money for doing well in their GCSE’s. I think I got a meal out.

That’s not to slag off my parents, that’s just the facts of the case. They expected me to perform well and I did.

Sam was convicted of the rape of his victim in the July. The entire Sierra Leonean ex-pat community in London watched that trial as he was the son of a prominent community member. My dad and his mum Auntie Eleanor had been the founders of the charity, Sierra Leone Fellowship. My dad was the first president, my Auntie Eleanor the second and longest serving.  That and his mother had character assassinated the victim, saying she was jealous because her son was going to marry another woman and bitter because he only wanted her for “one thing”

As it turns out, Sam had confessed to his mother just before his bail hearing, she didn’t believe him, and so she let her rapist son sleep in the room next door to her best friend’s daughter for 5 months. That, is a different level of savage and I don’t really know how my parents coped.

The moral of the story is you can be too soft. So don’t even put your family through a hint of danger if its just as a favour to a friend. That man could have raped me and destroyed my life, and my parents would have had to live with the fact that they bought him into the house. Be careful.

Grace and courage.

Annetta Mother-Smith.