The Story of Lee Rolf #3 Stonewalled – 2011 onwards.

It was after a visit to his sister’s grave at Woodingdean cemetery – sometime in 2011 – that Lee and a friend cycled back in to Brighton via Sheepcote valley.  ‘The cemetery is in the valley just up the hill from Sheepcote so for some reason we took the path down to the location of the explosion.  I hadn’t been there in over 40 years’.  By now the location of the old tip had been more or less erased by a two meter cap of earth and the planting of gauze bushes and subsequent bramble growth.  Today this area is designated as a nature reserve.

‘It all came flooding back’, Lee tells me, ‘It wasn’t just the memories, this time questions started forming in my mind’.   It seems, from that moment, all Lee’s attempts to understand why there had been an explosion raised more questions than answers.  What caused the explosion? (combustible gasses trapped under ground?)  Did the council know of this possibility? If the ground was sometimes on fire did the council not have a duty to ensure kids didn’t play there?  And when the council did close the tip why were there no signs to warn the public of possible dangers?  What purpose are the ‘boreholes’, positioned around the nature reserve?  – are they releasing gas otherwise in danger of building up below surface?  Why had the tip been deemed safe enough to become a green space for nearby residents to enjoy? (he certainly wasn’t the only person asking these questions)

Inevitably, Lee’s belief that the explosion caused the mental and physical damage he’s suffered ever since nagged at him as each new question formed in his mind.  For example, if it was a methane ‘flashback’ ignition this could easily be the cause of his hyperacusis and a host of other conditions associated with PTSD.

Lee contacted his MP Simon Kirby and alerted him to the possible implications of contaminated ground.  At first Simon Kirby was concerned and keen to help. Lee imagines that Kirby might have pulled a few strings. Either way, after the former landfill site was closed in 2008, worries that travellers would move on to an unsafe site had lingered on. A firm of geotechnical and environmental engineers were commissioned by the council to conduct a survey.  The report’s findings were reported to the council in November 2011.  In its introduction the report states the survey’s purpose as rooted in the welfare of “a group of travellers/van dwellers” who have moved on to Sheepcote Valley…” The survey was – it said – to advise the council if “the site poses a risk to people currently living on the site”.  With regard to one chemical – benzo(a)pyrene (itself a by-product of combustion), the conclusions to the report state ‘there is no “safe” level’ and that ‘exposure at any level could increase the lifetime risk of contracting cancer’ and that, in one area, contamination was “60 times” over the maximum permitted level for residential use.  And yet, simultaneously, the report concludes that ‘acute exposures’, since no-one permanently resides at this location, would ‘probably be statistically undetectable’ (see excerpt above).

Lee feels that Simon Kirby’s concern over the troubling link between site contamination and kids caught up in an explosion veered away from this and toward a negative view of Lee himself.  It was to be the advent of a growing suspicion in Lee’s mind that services, officialdom and elected representatives will always, sooner or later, see Lee as vexatious and shun him. 

Lee readily accepts that, initially, it was probably Simon Kirby who helped prompt an NHS offer of psychotherapy for PTSD.  However, soon after the therapy began in 2012, Lee recalls learning that Kirby had been phoning and, apparently, haranguing the therapist.  ‘It was after one of the early sessions of EMDR treatment that my therapist became uncharacteristically agitated’ says Lee, ‘he said something like ‘why is your f***ing MP contacting me all the time?’’  Of course, the MPs persistent communications may have been out of heartfelt concern for his constituent (persistence being occasionally mistaken for ‘vexatious’!) However, the events that followed formed an impression in Lee’s mind which doubtless amplified his sense of doors slamming shut.  Coincidentally perhaps, the therapy sessions were then paused abruptly and, thereafter, Kirby’s office seemed reluctant to communicate with him.  At first, says Lee, the office gave excuses about workload but then emails were ignored and it felt to Lee that his phone calls were bluntly terminated.

Be they correct or hyper-sensitised impressions, for Lee, doors slamming shut on him continued. In May 2012 the NHS psychotherapist assisting Lee writes to the council’s Head of Projects and Strategy at Townclean/Townparks (responsible for Sheepcote Valley) asking if his patient could meet with relevant officers.  Lee shows me the letter (excerpt above). 

An unproductive meeting with BHCC Head of Projects and Strategy follows.  But Lee’s longing to explain why the explosion matters to him is left unsatisfied (many would argue that the council simply cannot go down this road).  In an email from BHCC dated 20th June 2012 Lee is reminded  ‘there are no records regarding the incidents you mention, and no one to my knowledge who worked on the site then is still around today’.  Attempts to raise both the explosion and his ongoing health issues continue across the years that followed and right up to the present day.  At times Lee’s scatter gun approach – multiple emails, numerous officials copied in, frequent use of GDPR ‘Data Subject Access Requests’ (DSARs), understandably place council employees in an impossible position. For a few, perhaps, the provide an easy excuse to typecast Lee as unhinged, uneducated and aggressive.

My observation is that the public are vulnerable to this kind of treatment every day.  From the council’s side staff coping with a deluge of persistent communications from hundreds of residents is an everyday reality. In Lee’s case, to be dyslexic and untrained in letter layout as well as suffering poor mental health opens up the possibility of harried staff inadvertently veering toward prejudiced responses. 

That Lee seems to ‘bite the hand’ of the professional services trying to help him is so obviously a by-product of his years long efforts in seeking but never perceiving progress.  These experiences have led Lee to conclude – some might call it a paranoid or conspiratorial conclusion – that the system is against him.

It’s debatable but many of us would agree, however eccentric or poorly his communications are, Lee’s persistence in contacting officials is in itself quite rational.  It is, at times of stress, no different to experiences we’ve all been through when attempting and continually failing to be heard (for instance, that umpteenth conversation with call-centre staff when our despair results in being scolded – please don’t use that tone of voice with me sir). Indeed, Lee’s therapist, seems to know this when politely inferring that officials really should break with procedure and accept Lee’s invitation to meet him and hear his story (see above extract from therapist letter of May 11th 2012).  Lee’s therapist doubtless knows that reasonable, rational demands drive us crazy when they’re continually rejected but also knows that Lee’s mind is troubled and the perception of being shunned further aggravates his mental health. For officials to meet Lee, he says, ‘might be therapeutic’.

To Lee, council officers seem tin-eared to all this.  I sympathise with Lee. Many know Lee has poor mental health but appear to pick and choose when they take this on board.  If the cold legal language accusing Lee of being a constant nuisance could revert to warmer ways of acknowledging the various mental health conditions he suffers it would avoid allegations of ‘discrimination’.  I sympathise with council staff (phone duty staff for whom persistent calls become untenable have precious few options).

However, officially speaking and by its own definitions, for senior council officials to sweep aside Lee’s requests and directly accuse him of making ‘vexatious’ demands via a ‘high volume of e-mails’ which are ‘hard to follow and are repetitive in their nature’ exposes the council to the charge of “disability discrimination”.  For senior officials to do this when they possess full knowledge of Lee (knowledge that explicitly informs them that irritating and high frequency emails and phone calls is a manifestation of symptoms of his conditions) is disappointing to say the least. But it also exacerbates Lee’s poor mental health.

In February 2017 Lee came as close as he ever would to the kind of meeting of key professionals he’d been asking for all along. Unknown to Lee, they assembled at his surgery to focus on his case.  Evidently this was not a meeting at the Sheepcote Valley location where Lee had hoped to relate his story to them. Thus, with Lee not invited and any therapeutic value squandered, there was no opportunity for Lee to clarify his concerns.  Although his GP and other key health and social care professionals were present, it seems, from notes of the meeting, the council’s senior lawyer framed the meeting in terms of litigation risk.  At his request Lee was later sent summary notes that conclude with ‘from a legal point of view there is no prospect of a public apology [my emphasis] or compensation as the statutory time limit for this has now been exceeded’. Intriguingly, the notes begin with ‘Lee is acknowledged to have had a traumatic childhood, including a reported incident in Sheepcote Valley where he was apparently involved in an explosion’.   

Lee’s wants three things (although he expects none to be given him).  First, he wants to be awarded a tailored, funded care plan for his future health and well-being (i.e. he wants recognition that the explosion on a council run site and failures in the council run care system merit services that address the deleterious consequences of both).  Second, Lee wants recognition that it’s perfectly reasonable to be motivated by civic concern over contamination levels and reasonable too that he has sought answers over what happened to him as a child.  And third, he wants an apology of the sort institutions or governments occasional give on behalf of administrative failures past and present. In a simple, human sort of way Lee would like a few council and medical service officers to meet him at Sheepcote Valley and hear him describe what happened, perhaps say a few words in response.   

As things stand Lee interprets the lawyer-led council approach as an affront.  In April 2017 Lee’s complaint that the Council has unreasonably restricted contact between himself and officers/councillors rises to ombudsman level and is rejected.

His case (and that of his brother Chris) seems extraordinary but may well be commonplace if only we knew. Despite the damage he carries, with all that he can muster, somehow, one man mounts his own relentless campaign.  Last year I said to him something along the lines, ‘give up, it’s not working’. I’ve said things like ‘its making it worse Lee – its making you worse!’  Each time the placid, eminently likeable Lee Rolf smiled just a little and said ‘I can’t’. 

Lee is, quite literally, fighting to defend himself. In psychological terms we might say that Lee has been obligated to do this ever since those who were supposed to protect him (at first his mother, thereafter the authorities) failed to do so (instead their actions harmed him). In other words, Lee is compelled to defend self much as any of us would if we felt constantly under attack. The worst of the damage occurred in Lee’s past but, like an open wound, it cloys at his present.

Although things appear permanently stuck, I have no doubt that there is a way to break the log-jam. When I met Lee and listened to him it felt as though he might end up crushed under the weight of his own experiences. Without raising expectations too far, helping him tell his story and publicising across his city is surely the first stage in breaking the log-jam? A lightening rod perhaps for some other decisive thing to happen – another log pulled out, then another. For now we wait – there are people reading these extracts who can help. In the final release (August 28th 2020 moved to November 2020) and subsequent postscripts I will keep this story updated.

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Be sure to read extracts #1 and 2 if you haven’t already. The whole of Made in Brighton: The Story of Lee Rolf with introduction, conclusion and footnotes will follow. Thank you to all who’ve commented here and on various Brighton Facebook groups where Lee has shared (notably Brighton Past). These comments – some from people who grew up with Lee – are priceless to Lee and have boosted his spirits immensely.

Copyright c Adrian Hart 2020