Jacky's Story
We arrived Home from the Philippines not knowing what we would find. We knew the police had searched our house the day after we went away. We called at my mum's on the way to collect Ben the dog. He was not his usual self, but after being put in kennels by strangers and moved about it's not really surprising; even now a year later he panics if anything different happens or strangers come to the house.
On arriving home I was devastated to see the mess: the police had trashed the house, left lights on, and there were dead fish as my mother in law had been taken away and no one was here to feed them. We hadn't lived in this house long so there was a lot of boxes in the loft that hadn't been unpacked; they had all been down and everything had been thrown all over the house. An expensive camera and credit cards were just thrown on the bed. Had we been burgled while we were away would the police have taken responsibility? Lots of things were taken, and there was no list of seized property. To date we have never seen this list at all.
When we phoned the police to inform them that we were back, they were not that interested really and would not see us until Wednesday as they were too busy before that.
On arriving in Inverness, we met with a lawyer who told us to just say 'no comment' to all the questions. We arrived on time and were taken into separate rooms; the officers looked at me as if I was dirt.
The questions were horrible, unbelievable. After a time they allowed me to have a smoke in the yard, but I couldn't get a drink. The questions started again and a couple of hours later they fingerprinted me, took my DNA, etc.
I was then told I would be released, that came about one and a half hours later. I walked around and around Inverness for hours looking for somewhere to stay, it must have been 9 o'clock by the time I found some where, it was dark and freezing and I was very frightened.
When we finally got home late Friday night we were scared to even put the lights on, we slept for a couple of hours and went out of the way very early the next morning.
The next months were horrible, the anxiety of waiting to hear what was happening, the neighbors were ignoring us, the windows and doors were pelted with eggs, and nasty posters put all over the windows. My tyres were often let down and my windscreen was smashed. The garden we had spent hours arranging was now trashed. The worst thing was the local kids jumping in front of the car shouting 'pedophile.
We are both on tranquilisers as we can't sleep.
They say its all over now, but where is the apology, where is the explanation of why it all ended.
What about all the lies that were told about innocent people, what about giving us back our lives?