(As this is from a highly intelligent academic and former senior professional who could be identified by what he writes here I have changed some of his text to ensure that he remains anonymous and safe from further persecution. Editor.)

The story begins:

I've poured the following into the keyboard and hope that it makes sense.

Having undergone lengthy (advanced academic) training myself, I know for certain that probation and police officers have not acquired either the knowledge or the skills to equip them to intrude into other people's minds, especially their sexual privacy. I also know from my personal experience of both that they think they do. William Osler, the father of modern medicine, said "The greatest ignorance is the conceit that a man knows when he does not know." Nowhere is this more apposite and true than in the case of probation officers and police officers who pretend to 'expertise' in 'sexual deviance'.

(A close family member) had been dead for only a matter of weeks when my home was raided before dawn on a cold winter's morning. I had been quietly depressed, for much of the previous two years, watching this (family member), who I loved so deeply succumb to an aggressive cancer. But I was soon to learn that cancer, which has no consciousness or morality, cannot be cruel - only human beings can be. A posse of brawny police officers invaded my home, rousing my wife and children from their sleep in alarm as they raided my study and began placing my computer, CDs and papers into evidence bags. One young female officer stood out: she and her colleagues had clearly been told to remain polite - it was known by then (though not to me) that a significant number of people suffering these horrific dawn raids had committed suicide after accusation. But she struggled to conceal her contempt and hatred, and was curt and sarcastic, despite the fact that I was disintegrating before her eyes.

I knew instantly that my professional career, which had taken me most of my adult life to achieve, was now irretrievably over. I was carted away to the police station and held overnight before interrogation, unable to speak to my wife and children or my work colleagues. The duty solicitor, who attended, a rather pleasant young woman, told me in solemn tones that I would almost certainly be facing a custodial sentence, and it was highly inadvisable for me to fail to cooperate with the police, as sentencing would thereby be considerably more severe.

I quietly resolved that I would, as soon as I was able, commit suicide. The prospect terrified me at first, but gradually became a source of peace and even serenity. I feared that I would lose my loved ones (my livelihood and my home - the home I had happily raised by beautiful children in - would, I knew, have to be relinquished). With my income gone, and my prospects of re-employment obliterated, there was no way of maintaining the mortgage.

Although deeply shocked and massively traumatised by what had happen, it did not take long for my wife and children to stand foursquare behind me. But this complicated my suicide plan - to proceed would be to betray their love and bravery in a terrible way, but to go on existing with an irredeemably shattered life seemed utterly impossible.

I was forced to undergo two interviews with a probation officer shortly after my release from police custody; she who was to compile a pre-sentencing report for the court. I met a brittle, unsmiling woman, who maintained a frosty countenance bordering on contempt throughout the meetings. I was completely in pieces, still grieving for my (family member) and massively traumatised by the catastrophic change in my life, and wept and sobbed uncontrollably through much of the interviews.

She told me that she thought I should not have been granted bail and should already be in custody. In her second interview with me, she told me that she thought I should expect to spend seven years in prison. She also told me with great certainty that I had a duty to tell my extremely fragile, elderly mother, whom she had never met and knew nothing about, that I had accessed 'child abuse images' and would be going to prison for a long time (my mother was in an advanced state of dementia after suffering repeated transient ischemic strokes).

I had the impression throughout, however, that this woman was slightly afraid of me - probation officers are more used to interviewing illiterate and intellectually limited unfortunates, not highly educated professionals. She appeared completely oblivious to my unconcealable distress and did not appear to be remotely concerned that I may be actively suicidal (which I was). I noticed a kind of hard gleam in her eye, and the faint presence of what I can only describe as a sadistic smile, features which might have been ignored by many but which my professional background helped me to detect. I sensed that along with fear, she was also deriving a measure of satisfaction and even enjoyment at my demise. I will never forget her; I can see her stony, merciless face to this day, years later, even though I would prefer not to.

I later found from my solicitor that this talk of years in prison was pure nonsense. A so-called professional had simply used her time with me to give vent to socially sanctioned disgust and outrage - the sort of behaviour that would in any other context be considered grossly 'un' professional. However, at the time, these interviews pushed me beyond the obstacle to my suicide plan (the effect on my wife and children). If I was to be sent into a tomb for the living for years, I would lose them anyway, I reasoned, and it was probably kinder in the long run for me to spare them the public shame and distress of the whole business by exiting this world at my own hand.

While my wife was at work and the children were at school, I drove to a secluded spot I'd found and sealed a hose pipe over the exhaust of my car with duct tape, pushing the other end in through the front window. It was a sunny, cold morning, and as I let the engine run and the gases fill the cabin, I realised that this was going to be the last glimpse of this world I was going to have.

I don't really know and can't really explain what happened next. Perhaps the whole thing was taking longer than I'd expected (I'd imagined losing consciousness within minutes). The gas smelt repulsive, but it may have been far less toxic than I had thought because of the powerful catalytic converter on my car. Anyway, I started to almost hallucinate the faces of my wife and children as I sat there waiting to slip away, so vivid were my mental pictures of them. I could do nothing to push them out of my mind and I eventually began to feel that terrible sense of betrayal again. I stopped the engine, opened the doors, threw up on the grass and sat alone in the fresh air for what seemed like an hour or more, silent tears burning my cheeks throughout. So, I can't even top myself successfully, was all I could think. In retrospect, I'm almost tempted to say that something beyond me stayed my hand that day; my wife and children were not ready to lose me yet and it was arrogant of me to suppose that they were, and to leave them in hell whilst I drifted peacefully into oblivion.

I was gaoled, even though two prominent (professionals) with decades of clinical experience between them had written far more learned and informed reports than the probation officer (who seemed to wish that I could be executed). The (professionals) explained that my professional conduct had always been exemplary throughout my career, that there was no evidence to suggest that I had ever been anything other than a loving and supportive father, that I had never posed a danger to any children whatsoever and that my pursuit of erotic images was a misguided and reckless attempt at self-repair and had nothing whatever to do with any intention or desire to sexually exploit minors. They both knew me well, having supervised my work for several years. They attempted to make a case for distinguishing between people who consider erotic fantasy as a mere prelude to action, and people who looked at images (like myself) for completely different purposes - to try to counter or at least temporarily escape from a chronic depressive trend. My attempts to re-create feelings of youthful exuberance, youthful potential, erotic playfulness and innocent pleasure had paradoxically ended by threatening my life.

All this was to no avail. The probation officer's report carried far more weight with the judge, even though she was vastly less qualified than the two (professionals) who had both, independently of each other, strongly advised against custodial sentencing for such a vulnerable man. I was sent to gaol for six months and placed 'on license' for three years and the SOR for seven. My children were prevented from coming to visit me during much of my incarceration, as I was deemed by the authorities to be a risk to them, even though not one professionally competent person had assessed me as such (I certainly do not include probation officers or policemen in that category). There was also not the slightest shred of evidence to justify such an assertion, and abundant evidence to the contrary.

The children were desperate to know how I was; my eldest son dropped out of school completely. While I was detained, they lost the home they had grown up in and had to move to much more modest accommodation. They were not free to talk to anyone other than their mother and their grandparents (my wife's mum and dad), who were fantastic but could not ease their distress.

While in prison, I was confined to a tiny cell with another prisoner for up to twenty hours a day sometimes for the whole day (usually when there staff shortages). I managed to hold myself together somehow or other during my confinement in the 'tomb for the living', but experienced a massive breakdown almost immediately upon my release and reunification with my family.

I was rapidly forced into attending an SOTP upon release, which I found coercive, narrow-minded, intrusive and profoundly destructive. Compulsory attendance to that and the weekly meetings I was compelled to undergo with a female probation officer massively exacerbated my depression, keeping me in a dangerously suicidal state of mind over a protracted period. I was effectively being forced to agree with something that I knew to be untrue - that all people who accessed prohibited images of minors constituted a real and present danger to children.

The female probation officers who conducted the SOTP and the female probation officer I had to meet individually were rigid, dogmatic and highly coercive, constantly threatening to 'breach' people who disagreed with the thrust of the programme or with the hysterical ideology of victimology governing their beliefs. To be breached would risk a recall to prison. Incidentally, while I detest misogyny, I think it virtually inconceivable that women - offenders or not - would be compelled to undergo any form of sexual 'programming' by two male therapists.

No attempt was made to treat the men compelled to attend the group as individuals, even though I could tell early on that everyone there had radically different personal histories; everyone, after all had been offically designated a 'sex offender' and would have to endure the same treatment - a curious designation, incidentally, for a group of rather gentle, quiet men who had not had sexual contact of any sort with anyone beyond their own sexual partners. Failure to attend or comply with everything would result, in my case, in return to prison (that threat would only be lifted upon expiry of the three year license). No friendships or contacts of any kind beyond the confines of the group meetings were permitted.

Even though my license has expired, I am told that a new ruling by the Court of Appeal means that I will have to remain on the SOR for life. I am subject to highly intrusive home visits from Public Protection Unit police officers each year, who assail me with degrading questions about how often I masturbate, have sex with me wife, and what I think of in my sexual imaginings. I am also asked to show my internet history and let the officers peruse my emails and files. I feel I have absolutely no privacy, and I fear and mistrust the officers because I know that the database version they have constructed of me is far more real to them than I am as a real person. I cannot complain about the sometimes mocking and scornful attitudes displayed by these so-called 'professionals' because I am certain that no one in officialdom will either believe me or care about my grievances.

I have spent most of the last six years in recurrent struggles against an insistent wish to end my life (and I hasten to add that I never once, before all this happened, contemplated suicide). The people who drive my in that direction are Public Protection Unit Officers, who are superficially polite but subtly scornful and even at times openly mocking. No one is in any danger from me, but I feel deeply endangered by these officers. A very small but inestimably precious group of loved ones keep me alive, although I no longer fear death.

The sentence and the lifelong registration requirements effectively mean that I am already socially dead, despite my having highly prized qualifications and skills. I have been totally unable to find alternative employment and I rely now on a small occupational pension, having been forced to take early retirement or starve a few years back. I face a lifetime of poverty and I truly dread the arrival of old age, whereas once I imagined a productive and secure retirement.

One truly evil consequence: the trauma and the continual intrusion has inculcated a pernicious form of self monitoring. Before all this happened, I hugged my children spontaneously whenever they were in distress or needed support. Since my release from prison, I haven't hugged them once. A physical estrangement, which I know we all find distressing, has been placed between us, my beloved children and me, because I am now terrified about how such spontaneous affection and support will be construed by the authorities.

From where I'm sitting, this certainly feels like cruel and unusual punishment.

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