Pariah

I woke up early this morning feeling extremely fed up of being a Pariah. The novelty wears off after a while when the whistleblower stigma sticks on you from here to eternity. As my family repeatedly tells me - I am often treated far worse than a criminal by many people. For a number of years, I have gone back over my own behaviour and re-examined issues to review how things could be adapted. I am certainly not perfect by any means. No matter how nice you are to some people, they always return back to be curt or mean in some way. I suppose it will appear as though I pick fights with people - when in reality they are merely defenses by me essential to preserve my reputation and/ or livelihood. Before I became a whistleblower, everything was certainly not like this. I came to the conclusion after a lot of soul searching that people throughout history who have been "different" have always been disliked. Perhaps this is human behaviour.

Whistleblowers are often tarred with the reputation of having a difficult personality or being unreliable. I suppose, I am difficult to authorities because they can't walk over me. Otherwise, I have always considered myself to be considerate, attempted to be kind and have done everything with the utmost integrity. I did come to a point where you simply have to accept that those who you build friendships with will one day simply leave because of various reasons related to whistleblowing, or the stigma attached to it.

I know that has happened repeatedly, people are friendly and that line is often drawn at the point of discovery that you have a past as a whistleblower. It makes no difference to them that you are a evidence based established whistleblower. I discovered that I cannot control the ideas, behaviours of other people. I also came to the conclusion that to survive, one must adapt to the terrain in front of you. One of my adaptations is to keep a broad distance between myself and people in general. I believe some of my friends find that frustrating but I hope they will understand it better when they have read this. Self preservation to me is vital. I have to watch out for that because no one else will. For this reason, it is extremely easy for me to cut a relationship and just move forward - because I try not to look back to episodes of negativity. Negativity becomes superbly toxic.


Adapting to circumstance is my talent but there comes a time when the Pariah effect becomes really quite tiresome. I am normally fairly happy within my sector of friends. They accept me, we have fun, they know about my past and we have no problems. The problem arises when I approach the outside world in my efforts to earn a living or to progress forward. That is when the Pariah effect hits you. I am not sure which of the Ten Commandments I am supposed to have breached by whistleblowing but there we go. This shows the episode of whistleblowing spilling into the rest of your life.

Last night I wrote a very stern email to someone who decided to withdraw their contact on the grounds they felt my past made me an untrustworthy or unreliable commodity. It is getting tiring writing these emails or communicating in this way. I have done it so many times in the dim and distant past, it has now becoming a bit like ground hog day and terribly boring. Much of the reactions on this blog is all about how I as a whistleblower dealt with the kind of mobbing or bad behaviour traits from others. On occasion, it may not be the best way but at the time it is probably the only way.

I suppose the reputation is that we are supposed to be crumpled human beings with no ability to defend ourselves. Most do not expect us to bite back and when we do, they appear surprised or shocked. Indeed, this has happened to the 2 doctors at Worcestershire Mental Health Trust [ my ex trust] who now find themselves knee deep in a GMC investigation for lying to them about me.

To them, it is some kind of big surprise that this has happened. I believe the words" I was well disposed to Dr Pal" from a Dr Will Monteiro is supposed to make me feel better. So hang on, he lies to the GMC, lies to the court, places me in real jeopardy which I extract myself from, ruins any chance any junior doctor may have in challenging the GMC and now expects me to believe he is well disposed to me. Sometimes I do worry about what planet these men live on. They chose to collude with the GMC, they chose to lie and now they are shocked that the matter has come to haunt them. I am a great believer in equalising karma and I am not the kind of person who is going to sit around and be pushed into a victim situation. In my view, I have a brain and I use it. If people behave badly towards me, they cannot expect me to be kind towards them. This is not a legitimate expectation. I do move on and on occasion, I do bite back while I am moving on so they think twice before they behave badly towards the next doctor. I believe this the the beauty of caring very little about those that feel they can victimise you. It is a bit like hitting them on the snout with a rolled up newspaper. When you do that, the entire world is shocked, refers to you as a trouble maker but renders the bullies fault free.

I recall a particularly hurtful episode 2 years ago when my last post in Worcestershire Mental Health Trust was continued by me solely because I didn't not wish to place Dr John Doran [Consultant] at any inconvenience. There was a lot of work to be covered and JD required assistance - so I stayed on. And no good deed goes unpunished of course. I worked hours and hours without pay on some occasions to complete the backlog of work. This of course makes no difference in the end because all your good deeds sink far deep into the water and the only red light flashing in their mind is that you are a whistleblower.

Dr John Doran was of course the ultimate coward. I was soon to discover this in glorious technicolour. As soon as he became aware of who I was [ thankyou GMC], he avoided me like the plague, stopped responding to my emails and essentially kept silent. It was as if overnight I had changed into a one eyed monster or something. John and I had a number of discussions about the past and the future and we always got on reasonably well. He gave me a large Christmas present in 2006 and told me he appreciated my work. Then all of a sudden, there was nothing. John did nothing. He though happily watched me sinking.and wrote nothing in support of me at the GMC.

The GMC investigation [ which I was subsequently cleared from] was far too much for him. While the Trust quite happily made all kinds of subsequent false allegations that they were never able to sustain, Dr John Doran just stayed on his Evesham pad watching the spectacle. It is a bit like getting hanged while your consultants watch on.

So, the most unfair episode about this is this - you bend over backwards for some people, you do your job, you never do anything unfair to them, they subsequently shit on you from a great height. Having done so, they request that you simply sit and around and accept the status quo. When you refuse to accept it and defend yourself, they then have no understanding of why you are defending yourself. I find this kind of behaviour to be that of lowlifes and fairly disgusting really. Few people have the decency to be kind or decent as human beings. They all insist that because you are a whistleblower, they will somehow contribute to the long running punishment meted out on you. Both the consultants at Worcestershire Mental Health Trust had choices. They had the choice not to engage with the GMC. They did not take this option. Instead they took the option of lying and scheming - thinking that the GMC will somehow give them the reward of the Golden Egg. Little do they understand that the GMC Goose is a highly dangerous one and has no allegiance to anyone but themselves.

This behaviour pattern by my last Trust is a broadly typical for all whistleblowers. It is a kind of Lets Get the Whistleblower Party. My only saving grace was that I was cleared and extracted because I move ten steps faster than your average person or lawyer. I had the evidence of their lying ways because I predicted it would happen. I have absolutely no pity for any of them. They deserve all that is thrown upon them from a great height. They should simply be pleased that I haven't taken them to court to strip them naked and that is only because I can't be bothered with boring tiresome people that become toxic to your life in the end.

That is human behaviour for you - that is what people do when they discover you are a whistleblower.

The only thing for the whistleblower to do is simply draw a line and move on. I suffer from mild irritability to this kind of behaviour these days. When I was younger in the past, it was far more difficult to deal with. In time you just adapt to circumstances, to people and to the world.

I have spent far too many years concealing the fact that was a whistleblower. I had to accept that this is part of me and coming out with the word "whistleblower" stapled upon your head is a bit like admitting that you have a condition as bad as HIV. I certainly know organisations like the Royal College of Psychiatrists treat me as such while doctors with criminal records are treated more sympathetically. For the last three years, I have watched the Royal College of Psychiatrist bend over backwards for a doctor with a criminal record and high level evidence of proven dishonesty. They have encouraged him onto the ladder of Associate Specialist. How quaint of them! In the meantime, they can be caught searching for me like a bunch of snivelling snakes - printing material out and researching me online [ good job we have logs]. What they don't wish to do is research or search for this dishonest doctor who they have promoted to Associate Specialist status. Thanks to the Royal College of Psychiatrists we can all have faith in mankind! Their behaviour of course flies in the face of their compulsion for citing God as an excuse for their behaviour. Perhaps their compulsive habit of dialing 666 while quoting God isn't going down well these days.

So as a whistleblower, you can expect to be scrutinized, stropped naked, investigated repeatedly, questioned, considered unreliable, considered untrustworthy and considered a liability. All of these are not something the whistleblower asks for - it is simply a legacy and price of raising legitimate and valid concerns. While many members of the public have the ablity to be kind, the medical profession are yet to evolve to develop such things as empathy, kindness or an understanding of humanity. Most exist in their ivory tower hoping that everything they do will be effective and that all whistleblowers will eventually disappear.

Anyhow, those are the realities of whistleblowing - the Pariah effect never dies. You just have to learn to live with it. All human beings can adapt to circumstances. I certainly have.