The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3291 by Angharad Copyright© 2021 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I entered my office on yet another Monday morning. "Diane, could you ask Student health to send someone over to speak with me?"

"Yes, boss, do we need to tell them for what?"

"I suppose we could, abuse and harassment of undergrads especially female ones."

"Is that our concern?"

"Very much so and it's going to become quite a bit more important from today onwards."

"Right-oh, I just wondered if the university support team would deal with most of it."

"I think they were supposed to but I had a call from Debbie last night to say that she discovered someone in the toilets who'd been harassed and was very upset about it."

"Oh, so what are we going to do about it?"

"Stop it, if we possibly can. We have a largely female student body on our courses and I want to make sure they all know where to come to report any problems with sexual harassment or abuse. It's my intention to investigate as many cases as we can and obviously I want input from student health to enable aftercare, counselling, that sort of thing."

"So what will be our role, professor?"

"Setting up a mechanism to help our students feel safe, to minimise a culture of predation or abuse by educating both the men and women who attend here about our policy of zero tolerance, how to get help if they feel it is happening and how we will investigate to stop it."

"But is it actually under our remit, professor?"

"The safety of students is and it is so common in schools and colleges, young women aren't bothering to report it anymore and that has got to stop." I could see she wasn't convinced. "I was abused as a kid, an adolescent and slightly as a woman. I hate harassment and abuse, it can have awful effects upon some youngsters, boys as well as girls. In my case, much of the abuse was from my own father and my headmaster, with violence and humiliation, plus all the bullies in the school. They even marked me as a target by being the only pupil dressed as a girl in a boy's school."

"That's dreadful, didn't your parents complain or threaten to go to the police?"

"No, they had been sold a story by the headmaster, who saw me as gay rather than female. He didn't have a clue. He was still harassing me down here, unfortunately, he happened to retire down here and lived next door to the chap Stella was going to marry. He put old Murray in his place but sadly he died, he was murdered by a quarry owner who'd had their plans to expand the quarry turned down by Gareth, who was the Natural England field officer for Hampshire and Sussex."

"He was murdered?"

"Yes, they put nitro-glycerine in his boiler and blocked the flue. It exploded and blew up his house, though he'd been killed beforehand but left in the house to be blown up as well. Except it didn't happen, the house was damaged but Gareth's injuries weren't consistent with the explosion and I managed to catch the perpetrator and his mother, who accidentally shot her own son instead of me. He died and she was locked up in a loony bin - she kept trying to implicate me in the shooting but I hadn't touched the gun."

"You do lead an interesting life, don't you?"

"I don't want others to go through anything like I did."

"How were you the only one dressed as a girl, apart from you being a girl, in a boy's school?"

"It's a long story, but my friend had dyed my eyelashes so it looked like I was wearing makeup and I bumped into Murray on the way into school. He told me I looked like a girl..."

"But you were a girl."

"He didn't believe in such things and told me as I presenting as a girl I had to wear a girl's uniform."

"So why didn't he just send you to the girl's school?"

"Because he wanted me to stand out for the bullies to attack or abuse me, it also identified me as different, even when I wasn't dressed as a female, though I suppose my hair did that. My hair was down to my bum and the friend who'd dyed my eyelashes also plaited my hair."

"Why didn't you get your hair cut? Wouldn't that have eased your situation?"

"It annoyed my dad that it looked girlish, quite deliberately, but then I felt I was a girl and most of them had long hair. It also became an antagonism to Murray and he responded accordingly. I kept to the rules, It was always clean and tied back, usually in a ponytail occasionally in a plait."

"Weren't you setting yourself up?"

"Looking back, yes I can see that now plus Murray would have been sacked and possibly charged with child abuse, it wasn't just me he used to bully or occasionally get physical with."

"And your parents let him get away with it?"

"Remember my dad also beat me up several times."

"Goodness, Cathy, no wonder you have zero tolerance of bullying and abuse."

"Okay, I shall call student health and ask them to send someone over - now or when it's convenient?"

"What have we got in the diary today?"

"Loads this morning less after lunch."

"What has Debbie got free?"

She consulted her computer, "She's got a space mid-afternoon."

"See if Student health can come over then."

"What if they think we're encroaching on their territory?"

"Depending upon how they told us and what they were going to do to deal with our departmental needs, will depend upon how much I take out of their budget."

"Can you do that?"

"Yes, we contribute through the fees we get from students for their services, if we're not getting the service we need, I'll look to either buy it in from someone else or provide our own. This is going to be a big concern over the coming months and years and I want to make sure we're at the forefront of sorting it. Student health would be advised not to pee me off because I tend to have a bit of clout and the biggest faculty budget in the university." I also hoped HM Government might offer some funding to those who set up schemes quickly. Well, a girl can hope...

"And you're in that sort of mood today," she muttered under her breath.

"What?" I asked hearing most of what she'd said.

"It sounds good, boss."

"Are you sure that's what you said?"

"But of course, professor, would I lie to you?"

"Make some tea afterwards will you?"

"Of course, professor." Then she muttered, "Abuse of students, what about the abuse of secretaries and PAs?"

"Just make the tea," I smirked as I walked back to my office.

I had a light lunch of a salmon and cucumber wholemeal baguette and a yoghurt washed down with still mineral water. The meeting took place with the Manager of Student Health, Debbie and me. It went very well, so no big sticks were even mentioned let alone wielded and we all resolved to speed up the process of those who came with a problem to be referred as appropriate and for their complaint to be investigated. It meant I'd need to employ someone to do the investigating but at least we were trying to improve the situation.

I also had booked a meeting with Daddy for the next day. I wanted the university to adopt a more proactive stance on stopping harassment and abuse. The protocols they had were obviously not working as was the case for most other universities and it was time it was changed.

David had collected the girls as I wasn't home very early, talking to the girls at dinner I asked them if they were harassed or abused by boys, obviously not in school, though sometimes the perpetrators are female and convent schools did have a reputation in the past for either having priests or some of the nuns as abusers.

Church schools don't seem to have come out of investigations terribly well, and my femininity was a target for bullies even in primary and junior schools, though not on the scale of the things that happened at the grammar school, though some of my abusers were girls because they were bigger than I was.

Most abuse is about exercising power over another individual. Most of the time I seemed to have the strength to resist that power and although I got beaten physically I was never actually coerced by them, I resisted and came through it with relatively few problems. The worst thing was my father really beating me up that last time, I really was defeated that time and chose to end it all. Fortunately, it didn't work and I have gone on to become quite successful in my career and also in my private life. I also like to think I've helped the young people I adopted, most of whom underwent some form of abuse or neglect. Jacquie was perhaps the most abused, wrongfully convicted by a bent copper for the murder of his illegitimate son, which was an accident and to which she was wholly innocent. She was raped by staff at the reformatory she was sent to, she became pregnant and was given an abortion by a doctor who wasn't qualified to do such procedures and his butchery destroyed her fertility. He and the chaplain were the two rapists.

Simon and I got the conviction squashed and the bent copper was arrested but I suspect he didn't go to trial because of his mental state. My investigating his part in the prosecution caused him to have a nervous breakdown and he confessed to me instead of shooting me as he'd planned.

We'd finished dinner and Stella and I were clearing up and discussing what I wanted to do at the university about abuse and Stella suddenly said, "Do you think that is your mission?"

"You mean am I on a mission to stamp out abuse - yeah, I'd say I was."

"No, I mean, is this what you are here for. I mean you underwent horrendous abuse at school and at home. So is this why all that happened? To make you a crusader against it?"

"What all the goddess stuff? Nah, I can't see that, I think you're creating correlations where they don't exist."

"I'd have thought there were correlations. You were given the wrong body but a first-class mind. You dealt with abuse in school and at home. You were even forced to dress as a girl on occasions and play Lady Macbeth. It was like you were being trained as a special forces soldier because one day you would stand up in public to call for it to stop."

"I haven't done that, though, have I?"

"But you would, wouldn't you?"

"Maybe - I don't know. My remit is the protection of my children and my family and to stamp out sexual harassment at my university, especially in my faculty. I intend to do just that. Looking beyond that isn't my problem and others will need to stand up and do it elsewhere. I'm only one woman, Stella and I do have limitations."

"Cathy, you are wonderful and never believe in limitations because if you believe it, you can overcome anything. You just need to believe." With that, she gave me a huge hug and left me standing in the kitchen feeling extremely confused.