A Big THANK YOU From Me!

As all charges were dropped and legal fees are now settled, this crowdfunder will shortly be closed.  

Update

I have submitted a number of crime reports, in order to seek justice in respect of what happened to myself and my friends not just at Winsford Pride, but also during the run up to that event and following it, whilst the case was still ‘live’.  

Some of these reports are now being investigated by Cheshire Constabulary and some of them I am still awaiting the initial police decisions on.

I am also seeking to retrieve my data from the police and taking steps to retrieve my property (mobile phone, bodycam and footage), which have still not been returned to me.  Once I have my property and data, I will be in a better position to consider next steps regarding how I was treated and how this case was handled, or mishandled.  

In addition to the police’s handling of the case and how we were treated at this event (Winsford Pride), there are wider, important questions remaining as to how local councils ensure the safety of public events for councillors to attend and observe in the way I did - namely, to ensure child safeguarding measures were adequate; also, wider questions remain around the legality of such public events promoting ideologies they favour, when to do so may create a hostile or unsafe environment for those with protected beliefs or make those events inappropriate for or harmful to children.  

I am pursuing all of these lines of questioning and evidence-gathering currently and will provide further updates on progress with that via my own social media channels in due course.  

My Goal

I want all of our publicly-run events and services across the UK to be safe, welcoming and appropriate for everyone within our communities, including sex-realist women and men, and including children. That is my goal.  So there’s still a lot of work ongoing from my side, as is often the way with these kinds of cases and I will not give up. 

I am picking my councillor work and life back up and able, at last, to start making a positive impact again as a councillor, locally, which feels good.  The way that this brilliant fundraising platform works, none of the funds raised come to me personally - they have paid for the legal costs of defending myself against these charges and I am pleased to say all such costs have been covered.

The financial strain and fear placed upon those having to somehow finance their legal defence in cases like this, especially whilst processing trauma, is immense and potentially life-changing, not just for the defendant but also for their immediate family.  I won’t ever be able to thank you all enough for helping to lift that significant element of the strain and worry off my shoulders.  As an adult human female - one of the biological ones - this has been the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to deal with and I intend to take what I am still learning from this experience to help others who may find themselves in a similar position. 

Why This Work Really Matters

I hope you will continue to follow my work on these critically important and issues, as I have every intention of continuing to use my councillor role to hold the local authority and other public sector organisations properly to account.  Children deserve to have genuinely appropriate family-friendly public events to attend within their communities.  No event, whether financed publicly or privately, should stray anywhere near being a child safeguarding breach. 

Political, contentious ideologies based on unreality, should not be disrupting the protections and dignities afforded to women and LGB people on the basis of our sex, within our society, or making us unwelcome or physically unsafe when attending public events and meetings.  Events and services provided by public sector organisations should be politically impartial, welcoming to all, by default, and should never showcase political ideologies, let alone ones that promote hostile, expletive, sexist, sexualised or abusive messages, as these run counter to their legal obligations to ensure harmony between those with protected characteristics as well as their safeguarding obligations.  In doing so, they risk damaging public trust, by fostering a culture that invites, incites or downplays harm toward those who don’t adhere to the ideology being favoured and promoted. 

My experience hasn’t removed the public sector ideology-capture problem in my own borough, but it has helped spotlight it and provided the basis for future legal work that can help tackle it properly, with a wider potential influence than Cheshire West and Chester.  So I’m going to keep pushing on this front and see if we can turn what was a profound personal negative for me, into a wider positive for all of us.  

I haven’t been put off continuing in this fight with you!  Far from it and your support through your kind donations has helped me feel determined to continue. 

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help in enabling me to get through this difficult period and pick that work back up.

Mandy 

I am pleased to announce that the prosecution against me has been discontinued. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated to my crowdfund, my legal team, my family, and the close network of friends and colleagues who came to my aid. This includes some who were able to help as a result of having had the judicial system weaponised against them too.

I have been subjected to a full six months of anguish and reputational harm by the CPS at the behest of the police, who in turn acted at the behest of activists at this event. Some police officers, including at the most senior level, are now political activists in plain sight, with the power to use our judicial system as a weapon against those deemed to have challenged gender ideology in any way.

I now want to do all I can to ensure those involved in politics are protected from interference and persecution by captured police forces and am looking forward to resuming that work after enjoying the Christmas break with my family.

Thank you all.

My trial is due to start next week but the CPS still haven't disclosed vital evidence, including footage from my bodycam. My legal team have written to the court and my case has now been listed for a directions hearing on 9 December before the trial judge, District Judge Barnes.

Please donate if you can and share this page as widely as possible. Your support is invaluable to me.

A quick update from me to share some really great news - Sarah Vine KC is now leading on my defence case.

It would not be possible to have such a sterling legal team behind me without your generous support and I appreciate every single donation and share.  

My trial is less than two weeks away and I will be meeting with Sarah and my solicitor early next week to plan our approach.  Having never been involved with courts or the justice system before, it's difficult to describe how daunting this all is and it would be difficult to over-state the sense of relief I now feel at having Sarah on-board and in my corner.  Thank you to my solicitors JR Levins for the introduction.

I have a few other special people in my corner behind the scenes too, keeping me going with all of this - a heartfelt thank you from me to them and thank you to all who have left messages on here or have messaged me directly.

We will need to increase the fund-raiser target to cover the full costs of this case, so please do keep sharing the link and expressing your support for me online.  I want as many people as possible to know about this case.  More updates soon!