More detailed version below:
Shortly after I left school an older girl who was friends with a friend started talking to me online. She commonly text me that she saw me at college or nearby which I found a bit strange, one day she was sitting in her car waiting for me to walk past at lunchtime and tried to talk to me as if this was planned and she had some sort of obsession with me. Over the next few years we would speak online although she had a boyfriend who became her husband. She would ask me to edit her photos to change her appearance, message her sister in law to wind her up and she gave me her Facebook password and said I could go on it. In general she had fun annoying people online and encouraged me to do so. Eventually we met up 3 times as friends and it got slightly intimate, I was led on and fell for it. She then blanked me and I was confused and wanted answers so I kept contacting her. I also went on her Facebook with the password she had given me to try and find out what she was saying about me. When her husband found out she tried to make it out that it was me who wouldn't leave her alone and she told the police and showed them all of my messages and that I had been on her Facebook account.
This is where the new "snowflake" laws come in, where any unwanted activity such as messages or phone calls can be classed as harassment and any more than two instances of this can be classed as stalking (easy for the CJS to manipulate and produce results one-sidedly). At this point we stopped talking but 4 months later the police turned up at my door with a warrant without any sort of warning. I was arrested and charged, over 20 electronic devices taken from my house (some not belonging to me) basically for online harassment to girl who in the past wouldn't leave me alone. She took advantage of my autism (poor social awareness) and manipulated me into reacting by sending lots of messages and when her husband found out she was messaging me she made a cover story that it was me that wouldn't leave her alone. The case went on for 2.5 years. This was due to the huge task of getting police technical experts to go through terabytes of data on my devices to prove it was me who sent the messages and accessed her Facebook account. I was made out to be a criminal in public and had great anxiety and depression from how much this was costing me and what the outcome would be. I had graduated from university with a Master's degree in engineering and had been working for almost 2 years but this is when I could no longer cope and lost my job.
There were many reasons why I did not look for another job. One of these was that I could have over £10k in legal, technical and psychiatric bills to pay for the ongoing court case. I made a counter complaint to the police showing how the complainer had messaged me 50 times in a row previously and had followed me and even showed her driving past my house, the disclosure of the password and evidence of her messaging my friends asking where I live on top of much more. She even visited places where I had put photos and took pictures in the same locations and posted hidden messages for me throughout the case, but the police kept hiding this and only focused on what I did back to her. In my opinion they would look stupid and lose a conviction if both of us were made out to be as bad as each other. I went through police commissioner complaints procedures and they always found a way to explain my counter complaint away. Eventually they used a loophole where they categorised my case as domestic because the legislation is very open to interpretation and allowed them to only prosecute the "primary aggressor". I put in another complaint asking how can it be domestic if I have only met her 3 times and she is married to someone else but this also got nowhere. My logic was that if the "victim" continues to gravitate towards the "harasser" then how can this be unwanted attention or even in the public interest and deserving of the money spent on it?
The prosecution also broke their own rules when the legislation said that in the case of a domestic, the full details of the counter allegation should be included in the narrative given to the judge. Obviously they did not do this and my side of the story was brushed under the carpet. My lawyer kept reminding me that what she done to me was irrelevant to my charges and that the best option would be to plead guilty to everything, including things which had nothing to do with me, because it was a better option than to face witnesses in court who could potentially lie or cry. He said the judge would not be happy to listen to such a long and nonsense case and would blame me for it and that I had no chance in applying logic to the court case as it would backfire and be seen as "victim blaming" as obviously, the male is always the only one in the wrong in a case like this. My lawyer managed to get a technical expert and psychiatrist to help with the defence through legal aid costing thousands. The psychiatrist basically said that autism could not be used to explain my actions of accessing her Facebook account or messaging her sister in law and that I ought to have known better even though she had basically gave me instructions to do this which I still had in evidence, yet no one was interested in this.
This complainer had also gone out of her way to get her sister in law and another girl to report me so I was arrested for a second time a year later for messages from years in the past. Again the charges were causing fear and alarm by sending messages on social media (they weren't even threatening or extreme), and editing photos without permission (although the original complainer had repeatedly asked me to edit her photos).
My case was basically "online trolling" to someone who had done the same to me. My lawyer described it as being a nuisance to the complainer and those around her but not necessarily what a reasonable person would consider criminal. I think in a logical way, so I was thinking along the lines of; this person won't leave me alone so if I react by demonstrating similar behavior to what they have done to me, then I have logical reasoning and if I do upset her with messages then I will receive some sort of warning, that it wouldn't make sense for the CJS to spend tens of thousands prosecuting me for something so petty without warning when the complainer has done the exact same to me, and then costing the public tens of thousands more in the tax I now do not pay. The government invested a huge amount in my education to receive a Masters degree but now the public will never see the benefit of me using this to contribute to the economy.
I pleaded guilty and was convicted of stalking (basically offending someone online as they seem to have redefined the word). I had to meet with a social worker to prepare a sentencing report and in this I was asked why I caused fear and alarm by messaging the complainer's family, I explained that she had asked me to and that she had also wrote to my friends and family first, however this was just ignored, along with my other explanation of the reason why I went on the Facebook account was because the password was previously disclosed which I still had live messages of, so I did not expect this to be a crime.
The sentence I received was a lot of community service and supervision for 2 years, so it would be difficult for me to cope with working as an engineer and deal with all of this having autism, the appointments and the criminal record. I have been claiming benefits since this happened and will not be contributing to the country, paying my £30k student loan or any income tax back to the public. I will never use my brain to contribute to the country as an engineer. At community service I worked alongside other criminals who had been convicted of violent or immoral offences and this rubbed onto me thinking more like a criminal after coming from an educated background. The supervision I receive is a huge waste of time and money where I am basically made to meet with a clueless social worker 20 miles from where I stay regularly who has no understanding of the case and constantly ridicules me as if I'm some sort of danger to women although he is not really sure what to do with me and agrees that it is a waste of everyone's time.
I had absolutely no warning or idea that what I done would amount to criminal charges. I tried to fight this every step of the way but got nowhere with my multiple complaints. I easily have over 100 pages of emails and letters back and forth between me and my lawyer and the complaints to various public services. The polce took a high value of laptops, phones, PC's with my mine and my family members personal data, items not relevant to the investigation and even items that did not belong to me and took almost 3 years to give them back, again breaking their own guidelines.
My eyes have been opened to how badly the country can screw you. Seriously, in the state that the economy is in with income tax vs. public spending deficits you would think the priorities would be elsewhere. In my opinion from what my lawyer said, the politicians like to come up with pet project new laws to look like they are solving the countries problems to collect their paycheck, in my case "online trolling". The CPS and Police must abide by these laws and in some cases are not left much professional judgment because they need to make examples out of people to maintain their statistics and produce results. Having autism and poor social awareness (to not notice that I had upset someone), I was an easy target. I live in a rural area where not much happens in terms of crime. My case kept them busy and spent a lot of public funds to ensure that they will maintain their funding from the government and be able to keep themselves in a job. There are no winners, certainly not the public interest or economy in which the whole point of them is, the only winner is those employed in the public sectors fulfilling their own agendas to look like they are needed and keep their job. This is what is known as an availability cascade and stems from the media publicising some very, very unlikely but high profile cases which causes an overreaction and disproportionate public spending to go into, which only causes further and bigger problems down the line.
The CJS itself is very one-sided and twisted in the favor of the prosecution where logical explanations are ignored and everything is used against you, more simple and cost-effective solutions such as a social worker referral or police warning are not used at the earliest opportunity. I tried to calculate the huge cost of this case and it was something like £90,000 of public funds for offending someone online who had basically done the same to me, hardly proportionate to the impact on the economy when the whole case was in someone's selfish interest.
In my opinion the psychologist which prepared my report was too scared to testify that autism could fully explain my behavior despite it being fairly obvious this was the case. It is my understanding that with ASD we struggle to read other people, in other words the effect our behaviour is having on someone, and being all online makes it even harder to realise you have upset someone when this type of behavior which was once a mutual exchange of banter in the past. The other point being that I had written instructions in social media messages asking me to do certain things such as log onto her Facebook or edit her photos, and then I got charged for doing them. My lawyer also insinuated that the judge was would not throw the case out or pass a minimal sentence for fear of being ridiculed in the newspapers. Before this I had no history of any legal issues. I often read other local crime stories in the newspaper and usually find that violent and much more serious offences from repeat offenders are given lighter sentences than what I received, or some similar cases end up with the accused person being admonished without any punishment. There are real domestic cases which entail no supervision for the offender whereas my "3 meetings relationship domestic" has been used to fill a gap in the statistics.
After the case the complainer found out my address and wrote to me to say that she was sorry and didn't mean it but wanted to get revenge on me after I broke our "indescribible connection" and betrayed her basically.
I fought this with complaints at every level but did not get anywhere. I was basically told that there was nothing I could do except pay a lawyer tens of thousands to pursue a judicial review to see if decisions made during the case were lawful or not. 8 months into my 2 year supervision order I am still constantly being reminded that I am a criminal on an almost weekly basis, having to deal with the stress of the incompetent probation service.
I do not want you to feel sorry for me as I am coping in life, I just want to share my experience of the hidden corruptness whilst trying to be as neutral and unbiased as possible in what is quite literally the shameful criminal justice system.