Not really an unreasonable but more a dilemma and I’m not really sure why this has spooked me so much. I think it has brought things back.
Ten years ago I lost everything and had to start again after two bereavements and then losing my home. I found myself living in a council flat in a scary tower block with a violent criminal above me who had been housed there from prison and made everyone’s life hell. He broke into other residents flats and ransacked their homes but people were in such fear nobody did anything. He always seemed to target new residents that moved there and eventually it became my turn to be targeted. It started with verbal abuse and then quickly escalated into full blown harassment. He was extremely volatile and I was alone and terrified. After weeks of being intimidated I told the housing officer I was afraid of him and that’s where things went from bad to worse. He was enraged that I spoke to the council and assaulted me to shut me up then terrorised me out of my home for being a ‘grass’. He burned my doormat and pissed up my door then threatened to kill my cat. Every day I opened my curtains to find food and dog shit smeared all over my windows. Reporting it just made his behaviour a million times worse. I used to sit in the dark at night and hide behind the curtains. I was afraid to move in case he could hear me. Eventually he went to prison again for attacking someone else but the relief was short lived as he was released after a few months and his friend who lived in the same block kept letting him back in to hound and bully me. Out of desperation to get away I applied for a mutual exchange miles away and escaped to start again somewhere new.
For the last ten years I have lived my best life and have had a decade of peace and happiness and in many ways going through all that was the catalyst to turn my own life around. I actually thought he would be dead years ago because he was so heavily involved in drugs and looked almost on deaths door back then. To be honest I had forgotten that episode had happened. Then last week I opened my social media and guess whose photo appeared on my feed? He has done something terrible to someone else and there’s a police hunt going on several miles from where I live. There was a public appeal and the police were asking for anyone who could name the person in the photo. It was him. Older, but 100000% unmistakably him.
I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing and felt like I couldn’t let someone else go through what I endured. A few other people gave his first name. I replied anonymously and gave his full name thinking I would hear nothing more about it. The officer investigating the crime has now private messaged me asking if I have a phone number he can talk to me on and if I would be prepared to give a formal statement explaining how I know his full name for evidential purposes. But that would make it obvious to him where they got his name from. Maybe I just should not have told them anything but I was so angry that he had gone on to do something even worse. I couldn’t bare to think that after I escaped other people continued suffering and now he’s done something even worse. I felt I had to say something to help them put a stop to his reign of terror. My gut is telling me I can’t jeopardise ten years of peace by risking him finding out who it was that confirmed his name. I told them I need to remain anonymous as I’ve already relocated once to escape him but the thought that he is still destroying lives horrifies me.
I have to walk away and just not say anything more for my own safety and peace of mind don’t I ? Why did this have to appear on my feed ten years after I escaped that unbearable man? Why couldn’t he just stay metaphorically dead and buried? It feels in one respect like I now have an opportunity to right a massive wrong and get justice not just for myself but also help someone else get justice but at what cost? He won’t even remember me after all this time. I’m not even a distant memory to him. But at the same time I don’t really want to remind him who I am either in case he decides to come looking for me again.
All the asked for was the name. They already know he was at the crime scene. There was no indication they wanted statements or anything else.