Officer Wright

September 21, 2014

The sexual harassment and other bullying of me at the Pine Street Inn, by staff and guests, is increasing and accelerating every day.  There are so many guests harassing me every day that it's happening every few minutes.  There is no way to get staff to address all of it, particularly since many of the staff not only tolerate the harassment toward me, not only totally deny that it's happening, but actively participate in it themselves.

Over the past few weeks, a female guest who started harassing me as soon as she got to the shelter a few months ago, and whom it took several weeks of my having to talk to staff people about her to make her stop, has started aggressively harassing me again.  This is someone who was coughing at me right away when she got to the shelter a few months ago, would cough at me every time she saw me, would try to be near me so that she could harass me, started sitting near my locker so that she could try to intimidate me, and was finally stopped from following me around when she walked over to me, sat at the closest chair to me at a table that was two tables away from the open door to the staff office, and loudly said "IT SMELLS LIKE PISS."

That was when they finally told her to leave me alone.  She never stopped looking for a way to get to me, though.  She seemed like she wanted to start a fight with me, either so that she could hurt me or so that she could get me into trouble.  I tried to avoid her.  A few times, between the time when they told her to leave me alone and the past couple of weeks, she seemed to be trying to get me into a situation in which she could accuse me of stealing.  Once, she walked into the restroom when I was there and started talking about her missing pocketbook.  Another time, after I had taken some free books from the entrance of the South End branch of the Boston Public Library and brought them to the shelter and put them, in my locker, she started walking around saying that she had lost some books.  Both times, I told a staff person about what she was doing, that it seemed to me that she was going to try to accuse me of stealing, which I hadn't done or even thought of doing.

She is a sad woman.  As difficult and potentially dangerous as she is, she seems like someone who is warped from never having had anyone help her be the person that she wants to be.  Her attempts to try to do things to make people respect her and like her would be heartbreaking to someone whom she had not tried to bully;  even when they are successful attempts, her incredible ignorance and her desire to impress, rather than to befriend, are painfully obvious.

I don't know why the overall sexual harassment and bullying of me have gotten worse over the past few weeks.  It seems to me, though, that this woman has waited all this time for her chance to begin actively and obviously bullying me again, and that she feels that she now has that chance.  Whenever she sees me, she coughs loudly and repeatedly.  She will sit a few seats away from me and cough until I move.  She clears her throat, coughs up phlegm, does whatever she can do to make a loud and disgusting sound.

To be honest, I got tired of trying to tell staff when people were harassing me.  I got tired of waiting for a supervisor to be in a good mood to get my right to safety and a bullying-free environment respected.  I got tired of hearing "I don't have time to talk to you."  I got tired of hearing "How do you know they're coughing at you?" and all the other lies and denial about the coughing, the Wet Floor signs, everything.  Even though, if I carefully had every careful conversation, there were a few staff people from whom I could usually get help, I got tired even of talking to them.  I got tired of having something to tell them about being harassed, and having to ask them for their help, every time that they worked.  For the past few weeks, I have reported harassment to staff people at the Pine Street Inn less and less often, because I got tired of reporting it, and because I got tired of having staff people rub their noses at me while I was trying to tell them about a guest(s) who was sexually harassing me, and because I got tired of being accused of being the one with the problem, which were the ways that staff people who were never helpful or who were infrequently helpful would deal with my attempts to get help from them.

The bullying of me by the woman whom I described at the beginning of this page was so bad during the first weeks that she was at the Pine Street Inn that staff made sure, during or after the lottery every day, not to give her a bed that was near my bed.  Last night, she had the upper bunk of the bed that was right next to a bed of which I had the lower bunk.  She began coughing loudly as soon as she walked into the sleeping cubicle.  I did not want to get into a situation in which I would get angry and say something to which she would respond by trying to fight me or that she would use to try to get me in trouble with the staff.

I am permanently barred from almost every shelter in Boston, because of issues just like this one.  At no time did I ever start the problem; all of the antagonism was directed at me by guests or staff or both, until I was forced to leave.  For me to be barred from the Pine Street Inn, even for one night, is a serious and life-threatening situation, especially considering that I am stalked at all hours of the day of night, and that a significant percentage of the people who stalk me would probably like to rape and kill me and sell the video of my rape and murder.

I went to the staff person who was the supervisor last night.  Not only did she refuse to help me, the situation turned into her and two other staff people bullying me at the front desk.  I asked her if I could sleep in the lobby, so that I would not have to be near the abusive guest.  I was told "no."  There was a bed away from the abusive guest that the supervisor could have switched me to if she had wanted to; the guest who was supposed to get it hadn't even changed into her nightgown yet.  I saw that guest when I went upstairs, after being bullied by the three staff people at the front desk.

One of the staff people, who was sitting at the desk across from the counter, was looking through magazines that said "LTD Commodities," and "$14.99" on the front.  She left them on the front desk overnight, for everyone to see when they went downstairs in the morning.  She is the only one of all of the staff people at the Pine Street Inn whom I consider to be unreasonable toward me at all times and genuinely dangerous because of it.  She takes issue with everything I say, no matter how innocuous; she has a problem with it when I ask her "How are you?"  She thinks it's insulting.  She deliberately pronounces my name wrong during the lottery.  The other night, when there were two separate incidents by two different guests within a few minutes of a guest pushing the curtain to a changing room aside to see if there were someone in it, rather than looking under the curtain for feet, knocking on the wall, or asking "Is someone in here" and waiting for an answer, I tried to tell her what had happened.  I actually walked out of my changing room and almost walked into her accidentally because she had just walked into the larger room to take the place of the previous staff person, who was NO LONGER IN THE ROOM.  Of course, she saw me walk out of the changing room, so she knew that what I tried to tell her next had just happened.

She walked past me.  I walked up to her and said a friendly and non-derogatory "Hey," and was about to say her name when she said, sharply "My name's not 'Hey.'"  This, from someone who has deliberately pronounced my last name wrong every time that she calls the lottery.  I tried to tell her about the guests who were invading people's privacy.  She told me that I should have told the previous staff person.  I said "It just happened, and you just got here.  I was in the changing room when one of the incidents happened."  She would not listen to what I said, and kept telling me that I should have told the other staff person.

I walked out of the room and told the next staff person that I saw how I was being treated.  The staff person who had mistreated me walked over and started to verbally abuse me some more.  I finally couldn't take it any more and said "You hate me for no reason!"  She said "You'll know when I hate you because I'll tell you that I hate you!"

This is the staff person who, several weeks ago, responded to a man who was standing at the entrance to the Pine Street Inn, clearly and verbally indicating that he was going to beat me up if I went outside, by doing nothing.  She continued to look through one of her magazines.  Then she told me, "It won't be long before someone does hit you, the way you act."

It was a few days before there was a supervisor at the Pine Street Inn whom I felt I could tell about that incident, have it be taken seriously, and not have it be blamed on me.  The supervisor whom I told did seem to take it seriously.

That was several weeks ago.  The staff person in question was then gone for a few weeks; she might have been on vacation.  When she got back to the shelter, she left me alone for a while, and then she began to be as antagonistic and deliberately unhelpful as she was before.  She will even do things to try to prevent me from getting a bed at night, in direct contradiction of what a supervisor has told her to do.

I have never done anything to this woman.  What I have done is to be in her path at a time when many powerful people and forces in the world are telling the world that there is no abuse of me that could be too much or that could go on for too long.

I am writing this at the Apple store, while waiting for help with my phone, which entirely stopped working Friday afternoon.  A young, male Apple employee just walked over with a feather duster to clean the shelf that is behind the row of computers where I am.  I said "Please leave me alone," which he thought was funny.  I can't be without a phone.

Yesterday, the supervisor who was on duty for the afternoon and evening had already responded to my attempt to tell her about yet another guest who has persistently and viciously harassed me since she got to the shelter a couple of weeks ago by immediately and automatically saying "She's not coughing at you.  She's sick, like half the women here."  When, hours later, I tried to get help from her so that I would not have to sleep near the abusive guest (not the one I'd tried to talk to the supervisor about that afternoon) whose bed was next to mine, even if it meant sleeping in the lobby on a mat on the floor or in two chairs pushed together and only being able to sleep from 10:00 p.m. to 4:15 a.m., she told me "No."  To let me sleep in the lobby would have meant that I wouldn't have to be near the abusive guest, and it also would have meant that someone who would otherwise have had to sleep in the lobby could have a real bed for the night.  "No," was her answer.

The truth is, I think that she and every other staff person who acts the way that she does know how difficult what I'm going through is, and they just want to make things so hard for me that I really can't take any more and I either say or do something that gets me barred.  This has all gone on for too long for that not to be true.

The staff person told me that the abusive guest whose bed was near my bed was actually sick, that she had brought papers from a doctor saying that she was sick.  This was followed by the favorite response of every staff person in denial, "She can't help her coughing."

I would not be surprised if whatever papers were (or weren't) brought from the doctor by that guest were used all winter as the excuse for that guest's bullying of me.

I finally decided to try to sleep.

An Apple customer just walked past and coughed at me.  He wasn't the first today.

Apple is going to make a lot of money from sales of its next iPhone, isn't it, with all of its advertising of the SICK, SADISTIC, ILLEGAL videos of me?  It makes a lot of money from all of its sales, no matter what the advertising for them is.

Another Apple customer just coughed at me.

And another just sneezed at me.

I finally decided to try to sleep in the bed that I had last night.  Even though lights out are at 9:00 p.m. and everyone is supposed to be in bed or about to be in bed by then, because of the situation it was 10:00 before I was in bed.  The guest was totally silent until 3:00 a.m.  If she really couldn't control her coughing because she sick, wouldn't she have coughed throughout the night?  I think that she wasn't sure whether or not she'd get in trouble if she coughed right away, since I finally was able to get staff help with her abuse during her first weeks at the shelter.

At 3:00 a.m., her coughing began.  She got up several times and walked past my bed to go to the bathroom.  Then, she sat in her bed and coughed and coughed, coughed and coughed, continuously, until 3:45 a.m., when I finally said "Why don't you remove yourself from the situation."

She said "Why don't you remove me from the situation?"

She wanted to fight me; she has wanted to fight me since she got to the shelter, for no reason other than that she likes to fight people.

I said "Why would I do that?"

She said "You're going to start your bulls--- again?"  What she meant by that was that I am delusional and that I go to staff to tell them about her abuse, which she and the staff who enjoy watching me being bullied EVERY DAY AND EVERY NIGHT consider to be not abuse, but something that I deserve and the fun game that the conglomerate has told them it is.  During the first weeks that she was bullying me a few months ago, she called me crazy, cuckoo, and everything else that is meant to indicate someone who is mentally ill.

I got out of my bed and gathered my things.  She said "You're going to run to staff?  You're a rat."

I said "I'm not a rat.  I am self-respecting."

I went to the staff person who was supposed to be there to deal with issues on the second floor, where the dorm is.  She told me that the guest "can't help coughing" and that I could sit in the lobby if I couldn't deal with it.

When I went back toward my bed, the abusive guest was in the hallway, with her things.  I said "Are you going to leave, or do you want me to leave?"  She didn't answer, and I said "I'll leave.  I already said that I would."

While I was taking the sheets off my bed, the staff person walked over.  The abusive guest went over to her and talked to her, and obviously got support, because then the abusive guest walked over to me and started to tell me "When I cough, you have nothing to say about it."  I told the staff person, about the abusive guest "She bullied me for weeks, and everybody knows it."  The staff person told me to go downstairs to the lobby and be quiet.

This morning, there were so many guests harassing me that I went to the police station.  I told them that the harassment of me at the shelter was getting worse by both guests and staff and that I thought it probably wouldn't be long before somebody hit me.  I said that I thought that what would happen then would be that I could either:

-run away screaming for help, if whoever was hitting me let me run away

-try to defend myself

-allow the person to hit me, while screaming for help


I said that the situation at the shelter was so bad, and so many people are bullying me, including staff, that probably what would happen if I tried to defend myself would be that the person hitting me would be believed if she said I started it, and that, if there were witnesses, many of them would also lie and say that the antagonism was mutual, and then I would be arrested for assault along with my assailant, if my assailant was arrested at all.  I think that is more likely every day, and I also think that more than one assailant are not unlikely to be involved.  The conglomerate HAS MADE A LOT OF PEOPLE HATE ME FOR NO REASON AT ALL!

There were 2 Wet Floor signs in the lobby at the police station.  Two female officers listened to what I said.  The first one, who was the only one who talked, asked me "What do you mean that you're being harassed?"  I knew the conversation was not going to be productive as soon as she said that.  I told her about the nose-rubbing, coughing.  Then I described as much of the situation that I've described with this page as I could, which wasn't much because she kept interrupting me.  As soon as I told her that I had tried, this past week, to be admitted to a psychiatric unit because of the stress of the situation, she nodded; I guess she thought I'd given her the perfect excuse.  She told me to go to the hospital and ask for treatment.  She said "I'm sure that you've heard that before."  She told me that it was my only option.

I asked for her name, which she told me.

How many women try to get help from the police BEFORE they get hit, and don't get the help?  Probably, a lot more than before the conglomerate began its war on women, which, unfortunately, many women don't recognize for what it is.  While the women who don't realize that they're destroying their own place in society are busy harassing other women and refusing to help women who are being harassed even when it's their job to help, the men are taking all the power that women have worked so hard and for such a long time to get.




Copyright L. Kochman, September 21, 2014 @ 1:06 p.m.