How do you politely ask someone to stop victimizing you?
I moved to the apartment in March 2016, dreading that there would be hidden, illegal cameras in the apartment because it had happened to me before. Almost as soon as I moved to the apartment, the conglomerate began to torture me about being able to see me in the apartment. The media published code stories ridiculing me. Corporations and several museums published ads in train stations and on public buses, falsely implying that I was lying on my bed in nothing but underwear, when what was really happening was that I turned off the lights and blocked the door of the bathroom to shower, change my clothes and use the toilet. Celebrities were posting social media, ridiculing my bowel movements, which they could hear because the cameras also have audio. I was ridiculed for having my period. I was ridiculed for having to use the toilet at all.
When I started to have pain and what felt like a urinary tract infection in September 2016, the conglomerate ridiculed me for that, also, calling me dirty, which it had already called me for 7 years. The conglomerate calling me dirty is what started my being victimized by voyeurism in the bathrooms of homeless shelters of psychiatric units, gyms and who knows where else. The conglomerate was calling me a dirty slut in 2010; the voyeurism in showers and bathrooms started at the first homeless shelter where I lived after leaving the Vermont State Hospital in 2011. Everyone else who lived at that shelter was also victimized by the voyeurism, but the conglomerate has never cared about that, either, or about all of the other people whom the conglomerate's promotion of this crime has subsequently victimized.
I knew that they were tapping the cameras and that live video and audio were being broadcast from this apartment. I don't know if the cameras at the last apartment that I had where I was victimized by voyeurism had audio.
I knew that if I said anything about the voyeurism to the property management or if I talked about it online, it would be denied and I'd be evicted.
From March 2016 until November 18, 2016, I said nothing to anyone at the building about the voyeurism. I paid my rent. I paid my utilities. I never started fights or was involved in altercations, verbal or otherwise.
The first picture at this page is of the letter that was sent to me by the property management office on October 25, 2016.
That's a picture of the first email that I ever sent to the property management about the voyeurism, on November 18, 2016.
I knew that the person or people who installed the cameras in my apartment wouldn't have done it if the conglomerate hadn't told them to do it.
I didn't send a lot of emails to the property management about the voyeurism, and none of the emails that I sent were threatening or inappropriate.
That's a picture of another email that I sent to the property management. I had suggested that the property management ask the maintenance person whom I thought was probably the person who had installed the cameras to remove them from the apartment. I had written that he could remove them when he fixed the washing machine, and I wouldn't be at the apartment while he was there. That was one of my many attempts to resolve the issue and have the cameras removed without the property management having to admit that the cameras were in the apartment.
My emails were not answered with written denials; I was the only person talking about the cameras in the email conversations. The property management only ever sent me one email verbally denying that the cameras were in the apartment; soon after that, I was sent a letter from the property management's law firm.
I thought this email was funny:
It was the only email that I ever sent to the property management that talked about physical violence. After I sent it, the office windows were frosted. I took that as a sign that what I'd already been through wasn't being treated as if it shouldn't have happened to me, but as if it were a reason to be afraid of me, even though I'm the one who's being victimized. I stopped using the front door of the building, so I wouldn't have to walk past the office and potentially be accused of being threatening.
What's happening to me is a gross exaggeration of how impoverished people are frequently treated. It's worse because the conglomerate, which is formed of people whom the public is supposed to be able to trust, has promoted crime for 7 years, while pretending that its victims like or deserve to be victimized.
My emails told the property management about what had happened at my last apartment. The emails talked about the voyeurism, about my asking the property management of Braintree Village to remove the cameras, about the property management then sending the police to my apartment, who showed up with two male police officers and two male paramedics who told me that I had to go to an Emergency Room for a psychiatric evaluation. The emails talked about my being involuntarily committed to a mental hospital because of my "false" accusations, and about the eviction letter that was sent to me while I was in the hospital.
Nothing that I said about what had already happened to me seems to have convinced the property management that I don't deserve to continue to be abused.
When you're poor, people are constantly accusing you of wasting their "time and resources." It seems that it doesn't matter that I'm a full-time student or that I had student employment last year or that I have worked wherever I could be hired since the conglomerate started to persecute me in 2010. The time that I have had to spend dealing with the ways that I'm abused also is never treated as if it's time that I would rather have not had to spend dealing with these issues. NOBODY who abuses me treats me as if my time is valuable. The conglomerate has ruined or severely damaged every positive, productive thing that I have tried to do since 2010. I was even scheduled to have an interview for employment in 2010; I wasn't able to be at that interview because a few days before it was supposed to happen, I was taken to the Vermont State Hospital, where I lived for 4 months and was emotionally tortured every day by staff and patients who had heard about how I was being bullied before I was taken to the hospital. I don't know if the hospital has the pages of reports that I wrote about how I was treated. I was fortunate that a few people there helped me; that was some of the worst peril I've been in throughout this horrifying disaster. What do you think it's like in a mental hospital when you say that a staffperson is harassing you? What do you think the staffperson's going to say about whether or not your perceptions are accurate? Do you know what it's like to be in a hallway at night, facing several staffpeople and knowing that what you say or do will either defuse the situation or not, and that, if the situation isn't defused, they will attack you? It has nothing to do with right or wrong; people who are really crazy or emotionally splintered don't tend to be able to avoid being hurt in mental hospitals.
This is a picture of the email that was sent to me from the property management office, on December 22, 2016, the same day that the law firm for the property management sent me the letter accusing me of being the aggressor instead of the victim:
All I had to do was stop talking about the cameras, and they wouldn't have terminated my lease.
This was my response:
As I have said before, I'm sure that the property manager had nothing to do with the voyeurism; my emails were sent to someone else who works in that office. I also can't know if the person to whom I sent the emails knows whether or not I'm telling the truth. I know that someone who is part of the staff at this building installed the cameras and has lied about it, and I'll be homeless at the end of May 2017 because of those lies.
I did contact everyone who's supposed to prevent homelessness for help, including the person at the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership who is responsible for apartment inspections; she told me I'd have to call the police.
Nobody whom I have asked for help knows what to do about voyeurism, including the police. That's why I'm going to be homeless. It's not because the voyeurism is a false accusation. It's not because I did something wrong. It's not because I'm delusional, rude, or demanding. It's because the only people who have awareness about this issue are the people who have been victimized by it, and since most of those people are not wealthy, and most of them are also female, nothing's being done to stop it, prevent it, or prosecute it. The legislatures aren't addressing it. The police departments don't have protocols for investigating it. When someone who is a victim of it talks about it, the people who did it can say that's he or she is crazy, and that's how he or she will be treated.
When I was living at the Pine Street Inn, I tried to tell supervisory people that the bathrooms and showers should be investigated for hidden cameras; they didn't believe me. I spent months telling supervisors at On The Rise that they should search the bathrooms and the shower for hidden cameras; they didn't believe me. The conglomerate has victim-blamed me for years about video that it has seen that was filmed in a bathroom at On The Rise, not caring about all of the other homeless women whose privacy was also violated. I suspect that voyeurism has also happened at the Pine Street Inn; if it has, then it probably hasn't stopped. When I have to move there at the end of May 2017, I won't be able to turn the lights off anywhere; not in the restrooms, not in the toilet stalls, not in the showers, because those are rooms for several people to use and the lights are never off. I will have to do what I did every night that I took a shower at the Pine Street Inn, which is to use some of the 10 minutes that everyone has to shower to change into the shorts and tank top that I wear in the shower to protect my privacy as much as I can, and then to change out of them when the shower is over. I have to put them on and take them off under the nightclothes provided by the Pine Street Inn. They are always cold and wet from the previous night's shower. I will have to do that, and take my shower, during the 10-minute time frame, while a staffperson is yelling at everyone "10 minutes in the shower! Other people need showers! Hurry up!" The conglomerate likes to talk about the body hair that I didn't have the money to have removed and of which it has hours of illegally filmed video, starting from the first homeless shelter where the voyeurism started. I don't even wash my hair in the shower at the Pine Street Inn; there isn't enough time. I wash it in a sink. If I try to shave, I shave one section of one leg per night.
My concerns about voyeurism at those places are also what have caused the supervisors there to think that my concerns about voyeurism in my apartment are paranoid delusions. That's also why I'll be homeless at the end of May 2017. They advocated for me as much as they felt they could, which wasn't a lot, since they think I'm crazy, despite all of the evidence that I'm not crazy that I have given them about so many other things in my life.
Don't underestimate the stigma of mental illness; it ruins more lives than mental illness does. Do you hear what I'm saying, Boston Globe?
That was the property management's January 5, 2017 response to my saying that I have the right to privacy in my home.
It was only after I received that letter that I walked to the police station and talked to the police about the voyeurism. I had never tried to talk to the police before in any state or city where the voyeurism has happened; I didn't think they would believe me or help me, and I was also in shock for so many years about what's happening to me that I didn't know what to say to them.
What was I supposed to say? What do you think would happen to someone who walked into a police station and said things like:
"Media, corporations, governments, celebrities, and anyone else who wants to invade my privacy hack my phone and email and take video of me from illegal, hidden cameras. I have never seen the months of illegal video filmed of me in places where I have the legal right to a reasonable expectation of privacy, but I know that video's been filmed because movies, television shows, music videos, celebrity social media, governments, newspapers, television, and Internet search engines talk about it in code. Google even publishes references to the voyeurism at the first page of the Google website."
What do you think someone's going to say to me if I say that? The conglomerate knows that it's true, but the conglomerate hasn't stopped treating me like I deserve everything that's happened to me since it began persecuting me in 2010. I also don't talk about those things when I'm at crisis units; I know that I can't, because I'll be called delusional by people who don't know it's true even if they want to help me "feel better," and I'll be called delusional by people who know it's true and who want to harass me in the hospital. Even when I try to be in a crisis unit or hospital, it's so that I won't kill myself or because the years of abuse have demoralized me so that I can't think or take care of myself. I don't talk about why I want to kill myself or why I'm on the verge of catatonia, other than to say I'm being bullied.
I also didn't talk to the police about the voyeurism in this apartment before I was given the January 5, 2017 letter because I didn't want the police to conduct a noninvestigation, not find the cameras, and then talk to the property management about it. I thought that would trigger an eviction. When I read the January 5, 2017 letter, I felt that I had nothing left to lose by asking the police for help.
At the police station on the night of January 5-6, 2017, the officers to whom I spoke were nice to me. Unfortunately, the police report that was written and filed by them after I talked to them was not entirely accurate.
Although I moved to the apartment in March 2016, I DIDN'T talk to the property management about the cameras until November 2016. That's a significant inaccuracy, because what the property management has accused me of is harassing the property management with a barrage of accusations, and that's not what happened. I have lived in emotional misery since the day that I moved to the apartment in March 2016, knowing that if I talked about the cameras, it would be denied and I'd be homeless.
The police report doesn't say that what I told the officers is that someone or several people who are employed at the building are the people who installed the cameras. I also never said that anyone at the building searched the apartment for cameras, because nobody ever did. The police report doesn't say what I told the officers, which is that the eviction is retaliation for my having said that there are cameras in the apartment and my having asked that the cameras be removed.
The report makes me sound crazy, and my case was subsequently assigned to a "Mental Health" police officer, who didn't answer my emails for weeks at a time, who didn't really investigate, who didn't find the cameras that everyone who's watching me in my apartment knows are not a false accusation, and whose failure to care that I'm the victim of a crime led the property management's lawyer to threaten me with "calling the constable to have you removed from the building."
The police department's failure to conduct a real investigation to precisely locate and document the cameras left me no choice than to sign this agreement at court on April 3, 2017:
I will be homeless at the end of May 2017. There is nowhere for me to live other than a homeless shelter.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, April 30, 2017 @ 6:29 p.m./edited May 3, 2017 @ 9:31 a.m.
