A slightly nervous Dido entered the Witness Box. Being on the floor of the court was a very different experience from sitting in the public gallery.

“Please repeat the words on the card,” said the Bailiff.

Dido took a deep breath. It was time for her debut performance in a court of law.
"I swear by almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

Dido had her hand on an old bible. While she wasn’t a religious person, she took these proceedings very seriously. It was her duty to do this. Her entire life for the past six, nearly seven years, had been building up towards this moment.

Mr Prescott, the CPS Barrister, started to question Dido. At first, the questions were about her time before she was taken and mutilated. Nothing was left out, including how her father trained her to pickpockets on the Southend-on-Sea seafront and pier.

He zeroed in on her time as a pickpocket.

“Ms Pleasance, you have admitted that you are a criminal. Picking Pockets, or ‘dipping’ as you put it, is a crime. Why did you do that?”

“Well, I was a child at the time and below the legal age of criminal responsibility. I was trained by my father to lift wallets. The proceeds of my dipping were used to fund the family crime business. I was never a party to that bit of their lives. As far as I know, my parents fled to the USA very soon after I was kidnapped from my family home. I hasten to add that neither of the defendants, to the best of my knowledge, had anything to do with that.”

Her response caused a bit of a titter from the public gallery. Fox remained impassive. Dido could see him preparing to battle her. She had closed down that line of attack on her past before it could be opened up and used against her.

Then he moved on to when she was mutilated and then transported to Fox’s home. After that, her first Video was played for the court.

Fox immediately objected.

That led to lengthy and sometimes agitated conversations between the Judge, Mr Prescott and Mr Fox. The judge sent the jury out of the court, just so they could remain impartial. After almost twenty minutes of further argument, the Judge announced his decision.

“I want to see the video. If I judge that it is acceptable, then it and the others will be admitted into evidence. If it is not acceptable, then I will instruct the jury to disregard everything in the video.”

Fox tried to object but was told in legal language to shut up. There had been plenty of time before the start of the trial to both view the statements made by Dido and for him to raise objections as to their validity as evidence. The look that Fox gave the judge was one of pure hatred. His first attempt at grandstanding had failed. The Judge was wise to his tactics of delay, delay, distract, deflect and delay from his time as a ‘brief’ for some of the worst criminals in the county.

Dido’s first statement was shown after Mr Prescott explained the timeframe for the video to the court. He emphasised that it was made a long time before Fox was identified as her captor-in-chief and that it was recorded before she changed her appearance.

The court watched a raw and much younger Dido explain in sometimes gory language what had happened to the boy that she once was, and how Dido came about. It also explained how she met John Proudfoot. The video ended with Dido crying as she described her first encounter with the man, later identified as Jonathan Fox and how he sodomised her within an hour of her arriving at the place where she would be kept under lock and key for more than five years.

The judge ruled that the evidence was admissible, and the jury was brought back.

Before proceeding with the evidence, the judge addressed the jury.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I have ruled that the series of video statements made by this witness is admissible as evidence. I have viewed the first one, and whilst I find parts of it very disturbing, I view it as an important piece of the case against the defendants. They will have their chance to refute the claims made in the video under cross-examination.”

This time, the video was played, and the jury and the people in the public gallery were able to see it thanks to the large TV monitors that were placed around the court. There were a few audible gasps from the public gallery when Dido talked about what had been done to her body before she was trafficked to Fox. Several members of the jury wiped their eyes during the showing. Fox just glared. He was steaming mad.

Some of the reporters in the gallery were jury-watching. The reports that they would post later in the day would state that several of the jurors stopped watching it before the end. Two of them had actually shed a few tears. Dido had the jury in her hand.

For Dido, it was the first time she’d seen it since that day when she’d gone to John and told him that she was ready to talk. It made her uncomfortable, not because of the content but because of her delivery. She’d never spoken of what happened to her before, and it showed.

“Ms Pleasance,” asked Mr Prescott after the showing was over.
“Is there anything you would like to add to that part of your story?”

“Not really,” said Dido.
“I just sat in front of the camera and talked.”

“Was it scripted?”

Dido shook her head.
“I had no notes. All I had were a few things in my mind that I wanted to say. Ok, towards the end, I rambled a bit, but that is because I was still finding my way. Being kept locked up for all that time affected my development as a person. In many ways, I was still a pre-teenager when I recorded that video. I might have been physically a teenager, but I was later told by a psychiatrist that my years of imprisonment had delayed my mental and emotional development by years.”

“How did it feel to be sodomised that first time?”

Dido glared at the Barrister.
“How would you feel? One day, you were a child, and then you were nothing but a sex object to be used and abused as your captor wanted. For months, I was almost in a daze. I kept wondering ‘why me’ and what I had done wrong to make all this happen to me. One day a big fat slob made me suck his penis. It was awful… Not because I hadn’t done it before but because he stuck his finger up his ass first and then wiped his shit all over his penis before stuffing it in my mouth. I was as sick as a dog after he’d done his thing. Fox punished me for telling him to ‘fuck off, I’m not going to eat your shit again’. That man never returned. From that moment on, I just accepted that these men would do whatever they wanted to do, and I had to accept it. After a bit, I learned to switch off mentally while they got their kicks. I have since learned that this behaviour is not uncommon amongst prostitutes.”

He addressed the court.
“I’d like to show the court the second video recorded by Ms Pleasance. This one was recorded some three months later and after she had coloured her hair.”

The clerk prepared to show the video.
Before the viewing started, the Barrister asked,
“Ms Pleasance, who was it who suggested that you change your appearance and why?”

“The person who did that was John Proudfoot. He is a retired Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. Now that I look back, I can safely say that he saved my life. His gentle persuasion and reasoning eventually got through to me. My teenage tantrums were like water off a duck’s back to him. I want to make it clear that he never made any demands of me. That includes anything sexual. It just never came up after I said to him when we first met, ‘I don’t do head’. He laughed it off. He gave me space and the freedom to come and go. But I should stop there as I talk about this in the video.”

Her words, ‘I don’t do head’ caused more reaction from the public gallery and, importantly for the case, from the jury. Again, she had closed down a line of attack for Fox.

The next video was played. This dealt with her search for the man who had kept her captive, as well as her relationship with John Proudfoot. It ended with Dido saying, ‘Sorry, John. I didn’t mean to drop you in it like that.

His reply was never heard.

The Judge called a halt for lunch soon after.

Dido returned to the witness box after eating a prepared lunch in a quiet room near the courtroom. Only Mr Prescott, the CPS Barrister, visited her, but only briefly. His visit was ostensibly to boost Dido’s morale, but he found her in good spirits.

“Please resume your questioning, Mr Prescott,” said the Judge as proceedings got underway again.

“Thank you ‘My Lord’.”

He addressed the court to remind them where he was in his questioning.
“Before lunch, we saw the second video made by Ms Pleasance. It described how she went, in her own words, ‘panhandling’ around the city of London in an attempt to identify her captor. At this point, she did not know the name of the man who was keeping her prisoner.”

“Objection,” said Fox as she stood up to address the court.
“There is no proof that the witness was ever abused.”

After a small yet identifiable shake of the head, the Judge said,
“We are here to prove that one way or another, amongst many other charges. The jury will make the final decision, as you well know. If I were to insist that I had a penny for every time a witness or even a barrister omits to use the word ‘alleged’ in court, I could have retired years ago.”

He addressed the Jury.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury. Mr Fox raises a good legal point. As I said, it is not uncommon for a witness to assume that an offence has been proven before it is. The omission of the word ‘alleged’ should not be construed as anything other than an omission by someone who is not a legal expert. Until you give a verdict to the court, any of the offences which are included in this trial are assumed to be alleged.”

“Objection Overruled.”

Once again, Fox didn’t look very happy. The CPS barrister took that as a sign to proceed.

“As I was saying, Ms Pleasance went on a search for her captor. Things that she’d overheard while a captive indicated to her that the captor had business dealings in the City of London. I’d like to play the next video, which describes how she came to identify the person who had held her captive for so long.”

Fox was halfway through standing up to object to possibly leading the witness. He had assumed that Mr Prescott was about to use his name. He didn’t, so there was no reason to object to ‘The prosecution is leading the witness’. As no name had been mentioned, that avenue was closed. This was one of the things that Dido had prepared for with the CPS.

The video was played, where Dido explained how Fox had been identified by accident. At the end of the showing, Mr Prescott introduced, as evidence, the photo that Dido had taken on the South Bank.

“Ms Pleasance. You allege that one of the people in this photo is the person who held you captive for so long. Is that person here in the court today?”
He gave her a copy of the photo. The photo was also displayed on the large TV screens in the court.

Dido suppressed a grin.
“Yes. The person in the photo is sitting right there in the court. Jonathan Fox. He was the one who kept me prisoner for years. By prisoner, I mean locked in a small cell for every hour of the day of the week, apart from a brief exit for a shower once or twice a week. That is worse treatment than any prisoner in our most secure prison gets. If that is alleged, then fine. It is true. If I am lying, then please arrest me here and now for perjury. From reports in the media, the details of the cell where I was held have been presented to the court. If that cell was in one of our legal prisons, there would be human rights cases by the dozen filed to stop that inhumanity. The practice of ‘slopping out’ was ended years ago in our prisons. I had to use a bucket that was emptied once every two days, except at weekends. It did not matter to Fox. I was there, and he profited from my presence and inability to say no to the demands of his clients.”

Dido wisely stopped before saying that he had also sexually abused her during that time. She’d learned from Fox himself that you should not volunteer information when it is not needed. She had broken it a bit, but Dido felt that the jury needed to know just how restricted she was. Her first video had already dealt with the sexual abuse by Fox and others.

Dido’s definitive identification was, for many of the reporters, a big nail in Fox’s coffin. They would report that at the moment he was identified, he could not look at Dido. Instead, he was appearing to scribble away on a legal pad. The appearance of trying to look unconcerned at being identified was right out of his very own defendant’s playbook. The CPS Barrister noticed this and said,

“Ms Pleasance,” said Mr Prescott.
“The accused, Mr Fox, appears not to be concerned at your identification. Do you have any idea why that should be?”

“Objection,” cried Fox.
“The question calls for speculation on the part of the witness.”

“My Lord, I think that Ms Pleasance has an answer for the objection that would put my question in context.”

“Ms Pleasance?” asked the Judge.

“I am a student of Criminology at the University where Mr Fox is a professor. He is or was one of my lecturers. In one of his lectures to my class, he described a case in this very court, Crown vs Sullivan from 2014, where the defendant was briefed to look unconcerned when a positive ID was made in circumstances just like this. There is an excellent report from the next edition of ‘The Guardian’ that describes it perfectly. The person who gave that advice was none other than Mr Jonathan Fox.”

“My Lord, I happen to have a copy of that article to hand,” said Mr Prescott.

The Judge was having a hard time keeping a straight face.

“Mr Fox?”

“Objection withdrawn,” he said and sat down.
Once more, he glared at Dido. She smiled back at him. He’d walked right into the trap that she and Mr Prescott had laid for him.

Dido gave answers to questions from the prosecution for a total of eight hours spread over two days. It ended with her telling how she came to attend the university and learning to be in the same room as the man who had kept her prisoner for so long.

Fox continued to object to sometimes small things that were quickly dealt with by the judge.

Near the end of the day, Dido was asked,
“How did it feel to finally be in the same room as the person who had allegedly abused you for years?”

“That first day was hard. Almost every fibre in my body wanted to pay him back for what he’d done to me right there and then.”

“Mr Pleasance, did you at any time consider taking the law into your own hands and exacting some form of physical revenge against the accused? After all, once you knew his name, it would have been very easy to just … I don’t know, knife him in the back on the tube?”

“Mr Prescott, I did consider it more than once, especially when he gave me a D- mark on one of his assignments simply because I mixed up the references I’d used. If I had succumbed, then it would be me sitting in the Dock rather than an alleged child sex trafficker and alleged paedophile.”

Her remarks went down well with the jury. Two were reported as ‘chuckling’. Fox growled.

“Yes, I could have cut his penis off, made him eat it and then killed him right there and then, and yes, I would probably be in the dock myself for taking the law into my own hands. Thanks to the lessons I’d had from former Chief Superintendent John Proudfoot, I was able to resist those urges. After the first few days, it became easier, but my intention to see him on trial like he is today never wavered one little bit. Every lecture and tutorial he gave was valuable preparation for me being here today giving evidence against him. In those lessons, he would almost boast about how he had won a case. I have also read the transcripts of all the cases he defended here and at Southwark Crown Court. They have been invaluable in helping me overcome my hatred of him for what he did to me over the years I was held captive. One of his most-used quotations in his lectures was ‘Unpreparedness is a sure-fire way to lose a case’. I have spent years preparing for the moment when I can tell the world what he and his son did to me. Technically, I should have used the word ‘allegedly’; but to me, it was real and personal. Those facts will remain with me for the rest of my life.”

By the time Mr Prescott said,

“I have no more questions for this witness, My Lord.”

Fox had not won any of the points he objected to. Dido was physically and emotionally drained.

The Judge called for a 15-minute adjournment to allow Dido to collect her thoughts. It was now that all her own mental preparation for the trial would come into play. The whole case hinged upon how she could deal with his inevitably barbed questions. She had alluded to that preparation in her testimony, which wasn’t in the plan. It might come back to hurt her. Only time will tell.

[to be continued]