Adventures in Free Legal Aid #1
“You have to be sure…”
He said it with the glint of peevish smile.
“Sure about what?”
I’d realised he did not like me about two or three minutes into meeting. He looked at me with an expression he seemed to have trouble holding, sometimes it would be blank and ambivalent. Other times, as he would ask deliberately antagonising questions, a strange leering smile would stretch.
“Sure you’re absolutely telling the truth.”
It seemed like we were in two different meetings as the friend I had brought along as partial interpretor appeared oblivious to situation as he spoke to us both in two completely differing manners marked by which way he turned his head.
“What? About what?”
He fidgeted hard and fast with a pen and shuffled it from the table to his hands to near his mouth where he was beginning to let the leer slip.
“About what happened.”
The smile slipped between his fingers.
“But I just told you want happened!”
“You had just better be sure.”
“But I am, I just told you everything.”
I began to get up to leave, but my companion stopped me and asked him what he meant. The broad grin disappeared the moment he turned back to her and began to tell us,
“You just had better be sure about what happened. If there is any room for you being wrong, you will be punished.”
This seemed wrong. I had been attacked. I began to question him and as he replied, he pressed his hands together to help his points.
“You see in Finland, some of the judges are very racist. Not all the judges, just some. If you take a case and they feel they can find any modicum of doubt against you. They will want to punish you for taking the case because you are foreign.”
This seemed both wrong and strange.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
The smile swelled up.
“Well, it’s not all judges, but some are very racist. You would be foreign, in the system, seeking to use the system-”
I had to interrupt.
“To use the system? Because I was attacked?”
Broad now, Cheshire.
“They will see you in the system as an insult. Like you are tricking, especially if it is against a Finn.”
He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
“But, I was attacked.”
It looked visceral.
“Unless it is without a doubt, totally closed. Because they are racist, they will want to also teach you a lesson and it is not unheard of that they will give a foreign person a charge or prison sentence just for being there. So, you had just best be sure.”
He smiled broadly.
I left shortly after.
This was my first visit with Mooseville Free Legal Aid.
The name of the lawyer can be supplied upon request.
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