Church and State blog: Letter to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Letter to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor

For the record, this is the email letter that Declan sent this afternoon to the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, in his capacity as Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, regarding the Sisters of Mercy Providence Row Charity, of which the Dellow Centre is a part – Declan has in fact written on several occasions to Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor (see blog of 4 July “Second Request for Priority to the European Court”).

Subject: Providence Row Charity

His Eminence Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster

Your Eminence

On 25 June I received an email from your Personal Secretary, Sister Damian McGrath, stating: "I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your email concerning Providence Row Charity. The Cardinal is out of the country at the present time but he will see your email on his return next week."

I can confirm that I continue to wash in the street as a result of harassment and intimidation by homeless people in the Dellow Centre of the Sisters of Mercy Providence Row Charity, which I have been doing every weekday morning since 10 April. Only this morning I made a complaint against a homeless woman for verbal abuse after she shouted at length at my wife and I from the reception desk of the Dellow Centre; this client is known to Mr Mohammed Choudhury, a member of staff of the Providence Row Charity, to whom I made the complaint. (I understand from Mr Choudhury that such a breach of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, while we were attending to our laundry in silence, was rightly ignored by the both of us and reported to him by me.)

As I stated in my initial email letter to you of 21 April, my wife and I are especially concerned that we could be barred from the Dellow Centre ("the centre") through no fault of our own – the breakfast provided by the centre is the only food available to my wife for the entire day; whilst I walk a two-hour round trip every weekday to the Manna Centre (whose building is provided rent-free by the Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark) to avail of the free lunch provided to homeless people there.

I reconfirm the following: (1) on 28 April, I submitted a written complaint to the Chief Executive of the Providence Row Charity, Ms Jo Ansell, against a homeless man for verbal abuse in the canteen of the centre; (2) on 16 May, I reported a homeless man to the Metropolitan Police for racially aggravated harassment in the centre's men's toilets (crime reference no. 4212667/08); (3) on 18 June, I was robbed in the canteen of the centre of all my and my wife's money and documents (crime reference no. 4215697/08); (4) on 24 June, I was informed in Bow Street police station that the case with respect to the robbery of all our money and documents had been "struck out" due to the police being unable to obtain any CCTV footage whatsoever from the centre; and (5) on 30 June, I submitted a written complaint to Ms Ansell against a homeless woman for verbal abuse in the canteen of the centre.

I should again point out that my wife and I were barred from the Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission on 18 June 2007 by the minister's wife due to concerns about our safety following an unprovoked assault on my wife by a homeless woman in the canteen of the premises (crime reference no. 4217341/07). Despite that the Mission website states that homeless people are not "barred or excluded" and that I wrote by registered post to the minister himself and to the head of the Methodist Church in the UK, Rev Graham Carter, neither my wife nor I were readmitted.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

cc Ms Jo Ansell, Chief Executive of Providence Row Charity

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

Letter to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor

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