Declan robbed in the Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre
This morning at 8.45am Declan’s number one bag was robbed in the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre – while he was at the counter being served breakfast by kitchen staff. All our personal documentation (passports, birth and marriage certificates, degrees, diploma, educational certificates, references, driving licence, etc.), original documentation relating to Declan’s case in the European Court of Human Rights, stationary, non-prescription medication, our money (about £20), four £5 phonecards (see blog of 26 March “We are seeking to raise £4,000”), personal photographs, Declan’s only shirt for the summer … all robbed. (Fortunately, we retain copies of all European Court-related documentation, passports, and other documentation on memory sticks and DVDs.)
The Dellow opens its gates at 8.30am, and until 9.30am is only available to those who are verified rough sleepers, so most are regulars, really. The place is pretty quiet for the first 20 minutes or so and there are always nuns, staff and volunteers around about the place – in fact, in over a year and a half we are not aware of any robbery having taken place in the canteen of the premises. Declan reported the robbery at reception, where he was told to write it up. So we went straight to Brick Lane police station.
Does Declan know who did it? Most certainly. In fact, in the police station he gave a description of not only what was robbed but the only way it could have been robbed and by whom. The matter will be investigated, a police officer informed us, and gave us a crime reference number (4215697/08), but not a copy of the statement.
With certainty, Declan was robbed in the few seconds a day when our bags are out of the line of sight - when he has to deal with the kitchen staff of the Dellow. I was in the washroom. All the rest of the rough sleepers, about six or seven, had also left their bags at their usual tables and most were queuing with Declan (no-one queues for food with bags); yet, Declan’s main bag was the only bag taken - and from a place in plain view and covered by CCTV. Unfortunately, when Declan got back to the table it took him a couple of minutes to realise that one of our six bags was gone and, indeed, had been spirited out of the canteen.
So from tomorrow I am back begging in Liverpool Street station. We don’t even have the money to buy a couple of Big Issues (a magazine sold by homeless people throughout the UK on registered street pitches), and Declan will have to wait now to send his second Request for Priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court to the European Court of Human Rights by registered post (£5), which he had intended doing this morning - Declan has yet to receive notification from the Court as to whether his application of 8 September 2007 has been declared inadmissible or the case communicated to the Government: his most recent letter from the Court, dated 22 November 2007, states that it was unnecessary to consider his original request for priority because the Court would be examining his application “shortly, possibly by the end of January 2008”.
Undoubtedly Declan is having a bad run of luck: last Saturday he was assaulted in the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November 2006, the first time he has been assaulted there. His second request for priority, which I will upload later this afternoon, will be further updated with the robbery this morning and the fact that I have been forced into begging. It already includes, among other things, the attempts over the last few weeks by the City of London Police to move us out of the porch to beyond City boundaries, as well as several incidences of harassment and intimidation in the Dellow Centre of late.
This second request for priority includes as suppoting documents letters of complaint about the Dellow Centre that Declan has written to the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who is also Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, to which the Dellow Centre belongs, arising from our concern that we may be barred from the premises through no fault of our own. We were, after all, barred from the Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission on 18 June 2007 due to concerns about their safety following an unprovoked assault on me by a homeless woman in the canteen of that premises (crime reference no. 4217341/07).
