invisible woman
SUNDAY THOUGHTS
I think, after more than 20 years of loyal marriage, I have finally broken up with the British state.
Unfortunately, it has not moved out.
It still collects my taxes, regulates my professional life, maintains records about me and occasionally sends me correspondence through government lawyers.
We are also involved in four sets of civil proceedings.
So, strictly speaking, this is not a clean divorce.
But something important has changed.
I no longer expect the relationship to be repaired.
And that, strangely enough, has made litigation considerably easier.
Recently, I read a LinkedIn post by another litigant in person describing an encounter with a judge. The judge had apparently remarked upon the litigant's calmness and courage.
The author raised an interesting question: what happens to people who do not possess the same legal knowledge, confidence or emotional resources when they find themselves confronting the state?
It stayed with me.
Because when I began litigating against the Ministry of Defence in 2025, I was not particularly calm.
I was angry, humiliated and struggling to understand what had happened. I still believed that if I explain well enough, if I scream loud enough, I will be heard and the state would change its behaviour. Usual mistake of a woman, who believes in relationships.
Today, I approach these proceedings rather differently.
To explain the transformation, I need to borrow a metaphor from psychology.
Not because governments have personalities.
But because institutions can sometimes behave in ways that are disturbingly familiar to anyone who has experienced a controlling relationship.
I. THE STATE AS A NARCISSIST
First, a qualification.
A government department cannot be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. It has no childhood trauma, unconscious fantasies or fragile ego in the clinical sense.
It has procedures, records, employees, legal representatives, incentives and an institutional interest in defending its decisions.
And that is precisely why the comparison interests me.
Psychologists use the term DARVO to describe a particular defensive pattern: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
The person confronted with an allegation denies wrongdoing, attacks the credibility of the person raising it, and presents themselves as the injured party.
I am not suggesting that every government defence amounts to DARVO, or that my allegations have already been proved. Public authorities are entitled to dispute claims and defend their decisions.
But the underlying communicative pattern offers a useful way to examine what happens when an institution stops discussing its original conduct and starts discussing the complainant.
Consider my experience.
In June 2025, a restriction was recorded against my escorted entry to Northwood, a British military headquarters hosting NATO's Maritime Command.
I was not notified of the restriction. Never, even now.
When I eventually discovered it as part of the MoD's defence to my Judicial Review proceedings I brough in October 2025, I wanted to know who had made the decision, what information had been used, what power had been exercised and whether the information was accurate.
As stated, the Ministry of Defence's Summary Grounds of Resistance, filed on 13 November 2025, supplied some interesting propositions.
Paragraph 14 states that no UK decision-maker had determined that I was a threat to national security.
Paragraph 28 describes matters concerning my own access as “parasitic upon Cdr Pastor's access”.
Paragraph 39 maintains that my place of birth was an “unarguably relevant” factor in access-related decision-making.
Paragraph 44 asserts that I suffered no “grave, or any, adverse impact”.
These are the Defendant's legal submissions, not judicial findings.
And they do not automatically contradict one another. A precautionary access restriction does not necessarily require a formal national-security threat finding.
But they left me asking remarkably elementary questions.
If the restriction was merely derivative, why was a specific instruction recorded against me?
If my birthplace was relevant, what did that fact establish?
And if the restriction had no adverse impact, why was the Ministry defending its basis in court?
These were questions about the original decision.
Then the conversation increasingly became about my behaviour.
On 14 March 2026, I sent a separate pre-action letter raising Equality Act and human-rights issues.
The response of 27 March treated it through the framework of my existing judicial review and questioned whether it raised a distinct challenge. It also warned that any new claim arising from the same matters could be met with an application to strike it out as an abuse of process.
I subsequently issued the Equality Act claim.
An internal Northwood email dated 23 March 2026, disclosed to me months later, had meanwhile characterised my further complaint activity as “increasingly vexatious in nature” and an apparent attempt to “circumvent the established process”.
In August, the Government Legal Department described my repeated requests for information and clarification in the judicial review correspondence as “grossly disproportionate”.
Those are very different formulations from an answer identifying the origin and basis of the restriction.
Of course, there may be legitimate reasons for a lawyer to object to repeated correspondence or insist that procedural questions be brought before the court. The volume and form of communications can matter, including for costs.
But that still leaves a separate question: have the substantive issues been answered?
I have since developed a name for one particular mechanism: issue substitution.
A person asks why an individual restriction was created.
The institution explains that military premises are subject to access control.
A person asks what personal information was communicated to another police force.
The response addresses whether officers were generally entitled to attend the incident.
A person complains about an allegedly inaccurate account.
The conversation moves to the number, tone or persistence of the complaints.
The substituted question may be legally relevant.
But it is not necessarily the question originally asked.
The most revealing feature of this pattern is that the institution can become increasingly concerned with the conduct of the person seeking accountability, even while the underlying decision remains contested.
And there is a further irony in my Equality Act proceedings.
In March, GLD questioned whether my proposed separate claim raised anything distinct.
By August, the Ministry's lawyers were describing the claim as requiring extensive documentary work and consultation with multiple stakeholders, potentially including Spanish governmental bodies.
The Defendant requested further time to prepare its Defence.
I initially agreed an extension.
Later proposals escalated to an application seeking another 63 days. In October, a further application requested another 28.
The Ministry's need for time may have been genuine. My proceedings involve several institutions, different jurisdictions and extensive documentation.
But the contrast is fascinating.
A claim first presented as insufficiently distinct had become a substantial exercise in obtaining documents and instructions.
And the claimant's requests for clarification had simultaneously attracted adverse characterisations.
I do not know what the courts will ultimately decide about the underlying conduct.
That is why we have courts.
But I know what happens psychologically when the original question disappears behind arguments about the person asking it.
The person can become trapped in an endless effort to demonstrate that they are reasonable enough to deserve an answer.
Which brings me to the other half of the relationship.
II. THE CITIZEN AS AN EMPATH
I am using empath as a metaphor, not as a clinical classification.
In a controlling relationship, a person may continue trying to make the relationship work long after the other party has stopped engaging with their actual concerns.
They explain.
They clarify.
They produce evidence.
They try again.
They assume that if they can only find the right words, the other person will finally understand.
I recognise that pattern in my early relationship with the state.
For many years, I regarded British institutions as fundamentally reliable.
I am a British citizen and a solicitor of England and Wales. I understood the principles of public law, administrative fairness, professional responsibility and accountability.
My underlying assumption was simple: if a mistake had occurred, a properly informed institution would want to correct it.
So I explained.
Then I explained again.
Then I sent another letter.
Then I produced more documents.
I was, in effect, trying to restore a relationship in which I still believed that sufficiently clear communication would produce a fair response.
That was my state-centred life.
Not because the state was my actual partner, but because I was giving its expected response far too much influence over my emotional life.
When I began my first judicial review in October 2025, the documentary picture was incomplete.
I knew that something consequential had happened. I knew I had not been told about the decision affecting me. But I did not yet possess some of the official documents, internal correspondence and review material that later helped me understand the sequence.
My initial legal position was therefore less fully evidenced than the one I can present today.
And I was angry.
The anger was understandable to me. I experienced the events as an injury to my dignity and autonomy. I also experienced powerlessness.
But anger did not fill the evidential gaps.
It did not identify the decision-maker.
It did not establish the legal basis.
And it did not make my initial claim stronger.
I had to learn something rather uncomfortable.
Feeling wronged is not the same as proving that a particular legal wrong occurred.
That distinction changed everything.
During 2026, additional records emerged. I obtained the Service Police Complaints Commissioner's Review Wye. I examined what RAF Police officers had reportedly told Hertfordshire Police. I received further institutional correspondence. The Spanish press published accounts of the sexualised “Red Sparrow” nickname allegedly used about me in military circles.
The press reports are not proof of the whole chain of institutional decision-making, and the legal significance of each document still has to be tested.
But the material gave me a more substantial factual record to analyse.
By the time I issued my Equality Act claim in April 2026, my approach had already changed.
The subsequent judicial review concerning the Service Police Complaints Commissioner, and my data-protection proceedings against Hertfordshire Police, followed the same increasingly documentary approach.
I no longer wanted a ministry to agree that I was a good person.
I wanted the relevant decision identified, the evidence disclosed where legally required, the applicable law examined and the contested facts determined through proper procedures.
That is a fundamentally different relationship.
Here is another example.
On 2 October 2026, the Government Legal Department asked whether I would agree to another extension of time for the Equality Act Defence.
My reply took four minutes.
One word.
No.
Not an angry essay.
Not a demand for emotional recognition.
Just a procedural decision.
I subsequently filed a witness statement explaining my position, the chronology and why I considered the further application inadequately supported.
The court, not my emotional reaction, would decide whether the extension was justified.
That is what I mean by transformation.
I did not stop caring about the legal issues.
I stopped expecting the Ministry to satisfy an emotional need to be understood.
The distinction is enormous.
There is another consequence.
I no longer feel the personal loyalty towards these institutions that once made public service attractive to me.
That does not mean disloyalty to the law, to the public, or to the safety of the country of which I am a citizen.
It certainly does not mean that I intend to assist a foreign state or act against Britain's interests.
It means something much less dramatic.
I no longer want to build my professional future inside institutions whose culture and conduct I have serious, unresolved objections to.
I submitted two applications for opportunities at MARCOM and still want to know what happened to them.
Not because I am desperate to work there. I do not want to work in an environment, where the culture of sexualised dehumanisation of a woman thrives. Basically I do not wan to work with "f**ing perverts", as I publicly called MARCOM officers, who nicknamed me Red Sparrow and whose superiors refused to acknowledge my complaint about it. I do not think that after this exchange we would have healthy and respectful professional relationships.
But I still want an accurate account of how those applications were handled, particularly given the questions surrounding the records maintained about me.
I have also been approached by recruiters encouraging me to consider roles in the Ministry of Defence's legal environment.
I declined.
My professional assessment of the culture described in the documents and correspondence I have encountered makes me unwilling to join it. I do not want to work in a department, which is not regulated by an independent and impartial regulator, disregards the Code of Conduct and when questioned about the conduct of their lawyers, refers the complaint about the lawyer to the same lawyer who is the subject of the complaint, and that lawyer dismissed the complaint against them on the ground that this is actually a litigation correspondence.
Those are my personal decisions, not findings about every employee or the whole organisation.
But my decision not to work for a department does not extinguish my right to seek accountability from it.
Nor does citizenship require admiration for a government's conduct.
A state may legitimately expect compliance with applicable law.
It cannot reasonably expect personal affection, employment loyalty or unquestioning acceptance of every official explanation.
That is the emotional separation.
The institutional relationship continues where legal rights and obligations require it.
The imagined relationship — in which I keep trying to earn the state's understanding and approval — has ended.
And that is when the real recovery of autonomy begins.
III. THE SURVIVAL GUIDE. How to litigate against the state without allowing the litigation to become your entire life.
I am not offering a formula for winning a case.
I am offering a method for remaining capable of living while a case continues.
I am a qualified solicitor, although I conduct my own proceedings as a litigant in person. I know that many people facing the state have neither legal training nor the resources to obtain specialist representation. I was declined by 8 major UK law firms specialising in Human Rights and Public law, including my own firm. "Lack of sufficient resources".
People harmed by the state, who decided to divorce it, should not have to possess extraordinary personal courage to challenge the abuser.
Courts have responsibilities concerning fair participation. And represented people need many of the same disciplines as litigants in person.
This is what I have learned.
Rule 1. Stop asking the institution to validate your reality.
Do not organise your litigation around getting the Defendant to admit that you are reasonable, respectable or deserving of sympathy. They will never do that. If even they said that in their own paperwork produced in a different department. They will simply say, like in my case, "whilst this department is part of the MoD, their findings are not relevant in this case". They would forget that in their previous submissions to the same court in the same case they have actually relied on the same findings in parts, which they think supported THEIR pleadings. But the parts of the same findings, which support YOUR pleadings are not relevant.
Concentrate on identifying the legal question.
What decision was made?
Under what power?
On what evidence?
What legal duty was arguably breached?
What remedy can the court grant?
Prepare for the inevitable fact that the other party will never agree with your interpretation.
That does not prevent a court from examining the evidence.
Rule 2. Separate the insult from the legally relevant act.
They will call you vexatious.
They will put labels on you.
They will attack your sanity, competence and status.
Your natural response is to defend your identity.
But a litigant must ask a different question.
Was the description entered into an official record?
Was it circulated?
Was it relied upon?
Did it affect a decision?
Does any legal right to correction, disclosure or redress arise?
An insult may be emotionally offensive without being independently actionable.
An apparently casual label may become legally important if it is used as information in an institutional process.
Do not let the emotional force of the word replace the analysis of what was done with it.
And remember: being informally described as vexatious is not the same as being declared a vexatious litigant by a court.
Rule 3. Treat the case like a mortgage.
A mortgage is a serious financial obligation.
You do not improve your financial position by waking up every morning and becoming emotionally outraged that another payment is due.
You establish the amount, the deadline and the method of payment.
Litigation requires similar discipline.
Maintain a procedural calendar.
Record every deadline and court order.
Keep correspondence, evidence, submissions and hearing preparation in separate, organised locations.
Identify the next necessary action.
Complete it.
Then return to your life.
Not every letter requires an immediate response. Not every disagreement requires an application. And not every new document belongs in every proceeding.
Make the litigation part of your life same as brushing your teeth. Make it your daily routine.
Litigation should have a place in your diary, not unlimited access to your mind.
Rule 4. Replace emotional argument with testable propositions.
Compare these two approaches.
“The Ministry is deliberately humiliating me and refusing to admit the truth.”
And:
“Paragraph 10 of the Defendant's November 2025 grounds records a restriction created in June, whereas section 10 of its October 2026 extension application describes the restriction as subsequent to the August incident. I ask the Court to consider that chronological difference.”
The first communicates a feeling and an allegation about motive.
The second identifies documents, propositions and a question capable of being examined.
The second does not require the judge to share your emotional experience before engaging with the issue.
This is not a guarantee of success.
It is simply better analytical discipline.
Rule 5. Never confuse a procedural outcome with a personal outcome.
An extension application may be refused.
A disclosure request may succeed.
A point in a witness statement may be accepted.
A court may also decide against you.
Each development has procedural significance.
It does not determine your worth as a person.
Equally, losing an application does not prove that the institution acted properly in every respect.
Learn what the order actually decides.
Then identify its legal consequences.
Then look at Rules 1 to 4 and think if you can do something about it.
Rule 6. Stop conducting imaginary trials in your head.
What if the judge misunderstands me?
What if the Defendant produces another explanation?
What if the court rejects my argument?
What if the institution has more resources and better lawyers?
These are possible risks. Some require practical preparation.
But endlessly rehearsing them does not produce additional evidence.
A useful approach is to prepare for identifiable outcomes: success, partial success, refusal, further directions or an appealable decision where the law permits.
Know the applicable deadlines and available options.
Then stop.
You do not have to experience tomorrow's disappointment today.
I think about this in terms of a phrase from one of my songs: It Has Already Happened.
Whatever harm the state did to you, IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. Do not allow the state to harm you again, this time by your own mind.
The past cannot be changed by rehearsing it again and again.
The future cannot be decided by rehearsing one's fear of it.
What remains available is the next informed action.
Rule 7. Do not mistake emotional detachment for procedural passivity.
You are entitled to disagree.
You are entitled to refuse consent.
You are entitled to challenge evidence and seek appropriate court orders.
Being calm does not mean being compliant.
But neither does autonomy mean ignoring procedural rules or court directions.
The rules of law are not the same as an institution's preferred narrative about itself.
Obey the former.
Test the latter.
This is particularly important when a government defendant is involved. The Crown and its lawyers are subject to the applicable procedural framework, just as claimants are.
Rule 8. Understand the costs of being right.
Litigation consumes money, attention, energy and time.
The Civil Procedure Rules require parties to help the court deal with cases justly and at proportionate cost.
That obligation applies to the claimant as well as the defendant.
Before making an application, ask whether it advances a necessary issue, whether there is a less burdensome route, and what costs or procedural risks it creates.
A perfectly legitimate grievance can still be litigated inefficiently.
A strong argument does not become stronger merely because it is repeated twenty times.
Sometimes the most effective communication is a short, focused letter.
Sometimes it is silence until the next procedural step.
Rule 9. Keep the public narrative separate from the legal case.
Public-interest journalism and litigation are different activities. Actually, it is an art. There are lawyers who specialise in this art, and actually I am currently building my expertise in this field. This is fascinating.
In court, establish admissible facts, legal grounds and the relief sought.
In public, explain why a documented issue matters beyond the individual case.
Do not assume that publicity proves or damages your claim, or that an empathetic or embarrassing headline will improve or damage your legal position.
Test is and do not take anything automatically into your own account. When the Spanish press reported, in most sensational terms, that MARCOM officers nicknamed me Red Sparrow, the likely intent was to humiliate me. I took it as the quality of the source and asked all institutions involved - the UK and Spanish MoDs as well as the NATO, to account for the provenance of this nickname and its possible influence on any possible security decisions made against me and my former partner. Whilst the nickname publication was loud, silence was the response to my inquiries. Such lack of accountability may become an argument in your case. Maybe even context or evidence.
Check confidentiality, personal data, privilege, reporting restrictions and any risk of prejudice before publishing litigation material.
And never confuse your own account of an event with a judicial finding.
For me, this distinction has allowed the Invisible Woman project to develop beyond the original dispute.
It is becoming an inquiry into administrative decision-making, institutional accountability, documentary contradictions and Legal AI.
The proceedings are part of the evidence base.
They are not the whole story.
Rule 10. Convert the experience into something that belongs to you.
This is the most important rule. It transforms the trauma into the resource.
A difficult experience does not automatically make someone stronger, wiser or more creative.
Nobody needs injustice in order to acquire a personality.
But people can sometimes use the work required to confront a problem to develop capabilities that remain valuable after the problem has ended.
My litigation forced me to work with complicated evidence from multiple jurisdictions, understand interacting complaints systems, compare institutional narratives and organise substantial amounts of information.
I learnt how to use AI to support that work. I do it on expert level.
That developed into a much broader intellectual interest in Legal AI, information asymmetry and institutional reasoning.
The media coverage prompted me to develop a publication project.
I began writing essays, working on a book and expanding my creative work.
I also make music.
Not everything I create has anything to do with the Ministry of Defence. Quite the opposite. My AI models deals brilliantly with matters in commercial and company law, commercial disputes, Public relation matters and simply organise my life, improving the quality of it and allowing me to enjoy it fully. They challenge my thinking, boost my creativity and allow me to create new universes.
And that is rather the point.
I did not choose the circumstances that brought these disputes into my life.
I can choose what capabilities, research and creative work emerge from dealing with them.
The litigation may ultimately produce a judgment, a settlement, a dismissal or some mixture of outcomes across different proceedings.
The court will decide what the court is competent to decide.
But my professional and creative development need not be contingent upon those decisions.
The final separation
The most interesting moment in recovering from a controlling relationship is not necessarily when the other party apologises.
Sometimes there is no apology. Actually I do not expect that the institutions, or people within these institutions, which harmed me, would ever apologise. True narcissists never apologise as they are always right, right?
It is not necessarily when you obtain a definitive explanation. It is also highly unlikely, unless there is a human within this institution, who would take this step, but we all know what usually happens to whistle-blowers.
Sometimes important questions remain unanswered.
And it is certainly not when you manage to make the other party feel as powerless as you once felt.
It is when you realise that the relationship no longer defines who you are.
That is the transformation I recognise in my relationship with the state.
The British government can remain a defendant in my proceedings. The Spanish government of some NATO officials may become defendants later.
Their legal representatives can continue advancing their case.
The courts can make decisions with which I agree or disagree.
I will examine the evidence, meet my procedural obligations, challenge what I consider necessary and deal with each outcome according to its legal significance.
Then I will write another article.
Or work on another AI architecture.
Or compose another song.
And perhaps have some coffee.
The state has become part of my experience.
I intend to make that experience useful.
And today's song is ODYSSEYA
Unfortunately, it has not moved out.
It still collects my taxes, regulates my professional life, maintains records about me and occasionally sends me correspondence through government lawyers.
We are also involved in four sets of civil proceedings.
So, strictly speaking, this is not a clean divorce.
But something important has changed.
I no longer expect the relationship to be repaired.
And that, strangely enough, has made litigation considerably easier.
Recently, I read a LinkedIn post by another litigant in person describing an encounter with a judge. The judge had apparently remarked upon the litigant's calmness and courage.
The author raised an interesting question: what happens to people who do not possess the same legal knowledge, confidence or emotional resources when they find themselves confronting the state?
It stayed with me.
Because when I began litigating against the Ministry of Defence in 2025, I was not particularly calm.
I was angry, humiliated and struggling to understand what had happened. I still believed that if I explain well enough, if I scream loud enough, I will be heard and the state would change its behaviour. Usual mistake of a woman, who believes in relationships.
Today, I approach these proceedings rather differently.
To explain the transformation, I need to borrow a metaphor from psychology.
Not because governments have personalities.
But because institutions can sometimes behave in ways that are disturbingly familiar to anyone who has experienced a controlling relationship.
I. THE STATE AS A NARCISSIST
First, a qualification.
A government department cannot be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. It has no childhood trauma, unconscious fantasies or fragile ego in the clinical sense.
It has procedures, records, employees, legal representatives, incentives and an institutional interest in defending its decisions.
And that is precisely why the comparison interests me.
Psychologists use the term DARVO to describe a particular defensive pattern: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
The person confronted with an allegation denies wrongdoing, attacks the credibility of the person raising it, and presents themselves as the injured party.
I am not suggesting that every government defence amounts to DARVO, or that my allegations have already been proved. Public authorities are entitled to dispute claims and defend their decisions.
But the underlying communicative pattern offers a useful way to examine what happens when an institution stops discussing its original conduct and starts discussing the complainant.
Consider my experience.
In June 2025, a restriction was recorded against my escorted entry to Northwood, a British military headquarters hosting NATO's Maritime Command.
I was not notified of the restriction. Never, even now.
When I eventually discovered it as part of the MoD's defence to my Judicial Review proceedings I brough in October 2025, I wanted to know who had made the decision, what information had been used, what power had been exercised and whether the information was accurate.
As stated, the Ministry of Defence's Summary Grounds of Resistance, filed on 13 November 2025, supplied some interesting propositions.
Paragraph 14 states that no UK decision-maker had determined that I was a threat to national security.
Paragraph 28 describes matters concerning my own access as “parasitic upon Cdr Pastor's access”.
Paragraph 39 maintains that my place of birth was an “unarguably relevant” factor in access-related decision-making.
Paragraph 44 asserts that I suffered no “grave, or any, adverse impact”.
These are the Defendant's legal submissions, not judicial findings.
And they do not automatically contradict one another. A precautionary access restriction does not necessarily require a formal national-security threat finding.
But they left me asking remarkably elementary questions.
If the restriction was merely derivative, why was a specific instruction recorded against me?
If my birthplace was relevant, what did that fact establish?
And if the restriction had no adverse impact, why was the Ministry defending its basis in court?
These were questions about the original decision.
Then the conversation increasingly became about my behaviour.
On 14 March 2026, I sent a separate pre-action letter raising Equality Act and human-rights issues.
The response of 27 March treated it through the framework of my existing judicial review and questioned whether it raised a distinct challenge. It also warned that any new claim arising from the same matters could be met with an application to strike it out as an abuse of process.
I subsequently issued the Equality Act claim.
An internal Northwood email dated 23 March 2026, disclosed to me months later, had meanwhile characterised my further complaint activity as “increasingly vexatious in nature” and an apparent attempt to “circumvent the established process”.
In August, the Government Legal Department described my repeated requests for information and clarification in the judicial review correspondence as “grossly disproportionate”.
Those are very different formulations from an answer identifying the origin and basis of the restriction.
Of course, there may be legitimate reasons for a lawyer to object to repeated correspondence or insist that procedural questions be brought before the court. The volume and form of communications can matter, including for costs.
But that still leaves a separate question: have the substantive issues been answered?
I have since developed a name for one particular mechanism: issue substitution.
A person asks why an individual restriction was created.
The institution explains that military premises are subject to access control.
A person asks what personal information was communicated to another police force.
The response addresses whether officers were generally entitled to attend the incident.
A person complains about an allegedly inaccurate account.
The conversation moves to the number, tone or persistence of the complaints.
The substituted question may be legally relevant.
But it is not necessarily the question originally asked.
The most revealing feature of this pattern is that the institution can become increasingly concerned with the conduct of the person seeking accountability, even while the underlying decision remains contested.
And there is a further irony in my Equality Act proceedings.
In March, GLD questioned whether my proposed separate claim raised anything distinct.
By August, the Ministry's lawyers were describing the claim as requiring extensive documentary work and consultation with multiple stakeholders, potentially including Spanish governmental bodies.
The Defendant requested further time to prepare its Defence.
I initially agreed an extension.
Later proposals escalated to an application seeking another 63 days. In October, a further application requested another 28.
The Ministry's need for time may have been genuine. My proceedings involve several institutions, different jurisdictions and extensive documentation.
But the contrast is fascinating.
A claim first presented as insufficiently distinct had become a substantial exercise in obtaining documents and instructions.
And the claimant's requests for clarification had simultaneously attracted adverse characterisations.
I do not know what the courts will ultimately decide about the underlying conduct.
That is why we have courts.
But I know what happens psychologically when the original question disappears behind arguments about the person asking it.
The person can become trapped in an endless effort to demonstrate that they are reasonable enough to deserve an answer.
Which brings me to the other half of the relationship.
II. THE CITIZEN AS AN EMPATH
I am using empath as a metaphor, not as a clinical classification.
In a controlling relationship, a person may continue trying to make the relationship work long after the other party has stopped engaging with their actual concerns.
They explain.
They clarify.
They produce evidence.
They try again.
They assume that if they can only find the right words, the other person will finally understand.
I recognise that pattern in my early relationship with the state.
For many years, I regarded British institutions as fundamentally reliable.
I am a British citizen and a solicitor of England and Wales. I understood the principles of public law, administrative fairness, professional responsibility and accountability.
My underlying assumption was simple: if a mistake had occurred, a properly informed institution would want to correct it.
So I explained.
Then I explained again.
Then I sent another letter.
Then I produced more documents.
I was, in effect, trying to restore a relationship in which I still believed that sufficiently clear communication would produce a fair response.
That was my state-centred life.
Not because the state was my actual partner, but because I was giving its expected response far too much influence over my emotional life.
When I began my first judicial review in October 2025, the documentary picture was incomplete.
I knew that something consequential had happened. I knew I had not been told about the decision affecting me. But I did not yet possess some of the official documents, internal correspondence and review material that later helped me understand the sequence.
My initial legal position was therefore less fully evidenced than the one I can present today.
And I was angry.
The anger was understandable to me. I experienced the events as an injury to my dignity and autonomy. I also experienced powerlessness.
But anger did not fill the evidential gaps.
It did not identify the decision-maker.
It did not establish the legal basis.
And it did not make my initial claim stronger.
I had to learn something rather uncomfortable.
Feeling wronged is not the same as proving that a particular legal wrong occurred.
That distinction changed everything.
During 2026, additional records emerged. I obtained the Service Police Complaints Commissioner's Review Wye. I examined what RAF Police officers had reportedly told Hertfordshire Police. I received further institutional correspondence. The Spanish press published accounts of the sexualised “Red Sparrow” nickname allegedly used about me in military circles.
The press reports are not proof of the whole chain of institutional decision-making, and the legal significance of each document still has to be tested.
But the material gave me a more substantial factual record to analyse.
By the time I issued my Equality Act claim in April 2026, my approach had already changed.
The subsequent judicial review concerning the Service Police Complaints Commissioner, and my data-protection proceedings against Hertfordshire Police, followed the same increasingly documentary approach.
I no longer wanted a ministry to agree that I was a good person.
I wanted the relevant decision identified, the evidence disclosed where legally required, the applicable law examined and the contested facts determined through proper procedures.
That is a fundamentally different relationship.
Here is another example.
On 2 October 2026, the Government Legal Department asked whether I would agree to another extension of time for the Equality Act Defence.
My reply took four minutes.
One word.
No.
Not an angry essay.
Not a demand for emotional recognition.
Just a procedural decision.
I subsequently filed a witness statement explaining my position, the chronology and why I considered the further application inadequately supported.
The court, not my emotional reaction, would decide whether the extension was justified.
That is what I mean by transformation.
I did not stop caring about the legal issues.
I stopped expecting the Ministry to satisfy an emotional need to be understood.
The distinction is enormous.
There is another consequence.
I no longer feel the personal loyalty towards these institutions that once made public service attractive to me.
That does not mean disloyalty to the law, to the public, or to the safety of the country of which I am a citizen.
It certainly does not mean that I intend to assist a foreign state or act against Britain's interests.
It means something much less dramatic.
I no longer want to build my professional future inside institutions whose culture and conduct I have serious, unresolved objections to.
I submitted two applications for opportunities at MARCOM and still want to know what happened to them.
Not because I am desperate to work there. I do not want to work in an environment, where the culture of sexualised dehumanisation of a woman thrives. Basically I do not wan to work with "f**ing perverts", as I publicly called MARCOM officers, who nicknamed me Red Sparrow and whose superiors refused to acknowledge my complaint about it. I do not think that after this exchange we would have healthy and respectful professional relationships.
But I still want an accurate account of how those applications were handled, particularly given the questions surrounding the records maintained about me.
I have also been approached by recruiters encouraging me to consider roles in the Ministry of Defence's legal environment.
I declined.
My professional assessment of the culture described in the documents and correspondence I have encountered makes me unwilling to join it. I do not want to work in a department, which is not regulated by an independent and impartial regulator, disregards the Code of Conduct and when questioned about the conduct of their lawyers, refers the complaint about the lawyer to the same lawyer who is the subject of the complaint, and that lawyer dismissed the complaint against them on the ground that this is actually a litigation correspondence.
Those are my personal decisions, not findings about every employee or the whole organisation.
But my decision not to work for a department does not extinguish my right to seek accountability from it.
Nor does citizenship require admiration for a government's conduct.
A state may legitimately expect compliance with applicable law.
It cannot reasonably expect personal affection, employment loyalty or unquestioning acceptance of every official explanation.
That is the emotional separation.
The institutional relationship continues where legal rights and obligations require it.
The imagined relationship — in which I keep trying to earn the state's understanding and approval — has ended.
And that is when the real recovery of autonomy begins.
III. THE SURVIVAL GUIDE. How to litigate against the state without allowing the litigation to become your entire life.
I am not offering a formula for winning a case.
I am offering a method for remaining capable of living while a case continues.
I am a qualified solicitor, although I conduct my own proceedings as a litigant in person. I know that many people facing the state have neither legal training nor the resources to obtain specialist representation. I was declined by 8 major UK law firms specialising in Human Rights and Public law, including my own firm. "Lack of sufficient resources".
People harmed by the state, who decided to divorce it, should not have to possess extraordinary personal courage to challenge the abuser.
Courts have responsibilities concerning fair participation. And represented people need many of the same disciplines as litigants in person.
This is what I have learned.
Rule 1. Stop asking the institution to validate your reality.
Do not organise your litigation around getting the Defendant to admit that you are reasonable, respectable or deserving of sympathy. They will never do that. If even they said that in their own paperwork produced in a different department. They will simply say, like in my case, "whilst this department is part of the MoD, their findings are not relevant in this case". They would forget that in their previous submissions to the same court in the same case they have actually relied on the same findings in parts, which they think supported THEIR pleadings. But the parts of the same findings, which support YOUR pleadings are not relevant.
Concentrate on identifying the legal question.
What decision was made?
Under what power?
On what evidence?
What legal duty was arguably breached?
What remedy can the court grant?
Prepare for the inevitable fact that the other party will never agree with your interpretation.
That does not prevent a court from examining the evidence.
Rule 2. Separate the insult from the legally relevant act.
They will call you vexatious.
They will put labels on you.
They will attack your sanity, competence and status.
Your natural response is to defend your identity.
But a litigant must ask a different question.
Was the description entered into an official record?
Was it circulated?
Was it relied upon?
Did it affect a decision?
Does any legal right to correction, disclosure or redress arise?
An insult may be emotionally offensive without being independently actionable.
An apparently casual label may become legally important if it is used as information in an institutional process.
Do not let the emotional force of the word replace the analysis of what was done with it.
And remember: being informally described as vexatious is not the same as being declared a vexatious litigant by a court.
Rule 3. Treat the case like a mortgage.
A mortgage is a serious financial obligation.
You do not improve your financial position by waking up every morning and becoming emotionally outraged that another payment is due.
You establish the amount, the deadline and the method of payment.
Litigation requires similar discipline.
Maintain a procedural calendar.
Record every deadline and court order.
Keep correspondence, evidence, submissions and hearing preparation in separate, organised locations.
Identify the next necessary action.
Complete it.
Then return to your life.
Not every letter requires an immediate response. Not every disagreement requires an application. And not every new document belongs in every proceeding.
Make the litigation part of your life same as brushing your teeth. Make it your daily routine.
Litigation should have a place in your diary, not unlimited access to your mind.
Rule 4. Replace emotional argument with testable propositions.
Compare these two approaches.
“The Ministry is deliberately humiliating me and refusing to admit the truth.”
And:
“Paragraph 10 of the Defendant's November 2025 grounds records a restriction created in June, whereas section 10 of its October 2026 extension application describes the restriction as subsequent to the August incident. I ask the Court to consider that chronological difference.”
The first communicates a feeling and an allegation about motive.
The second identifies documents, propositions and a question capable of being examined.
The second does not require the judge to share your emotional experience before engaging with the issue.
This is not a guarantee of success.
It is simply better analytical discipline.
Rule 5. Never confuse a procedural outcome with a personal outcome.
An extension application may be refused.
A disclosure request may succeed.
A point in a witness statement may be accepted.
A court may also decide against you.
Each development has procedural significance.
It does not determine your worth as a person.
Equally, losing an application does not prove that the institution acted properly in every respect.
Learn what the order actually decides.
Then identify its legal consequences.
Then look at Rules 1 to 4 and think if you can do something about it.
Rule 6. Stop conducting imaginary trials in your head.
What if the judge misunderstands me?
What if the Defendant produces another explanation?
What if the court rejects my argument?
What if the institution has more resources and better lawyers?
These are possible risks. Some require practical preparation.
But endlessly rehearsing them does not produce additional evidence.
A useful approach is to prepare for identifiable outcomes: success, partial success, refusal, further directions or an appealable decision where the law permits.
Know the applicable deadlines and available options.
Then stop.
You do not have to experience tomorrow's disappointment today.
I think about this in terms of a phrase from one of my songs: It Has Already Happened.
Whatever harm the state did to you, IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. Do not allow the state to harm you again, this time by your own mind.
The past cannot be changed by rehearsing it again and again.
The future cannot be decided by rehearsing one's fear of it.
What remains available is the next informed action.
Rule 7. Do not mistake emotional detachment for procedural passivity.
You are entitled to disagree.
You are entitled to refuse consent.
You are entitled to challenge evidence and seek appropriate court orders.
Being calm does not mean being compliant.
But neither does autonomy mean ignoring procedural rules or court directions.
The rules of law are not the same as an institution's preferred narrative about itself.
Obey the former.
Test the latter.
This is particularly important when a government defendant is involved. The Crown and its lawyers are subject to the applicable procedural framework, just as claimants are.
Rule 8. Understand the costs of being right.
Litigation consumes money, attention, energy and time.
The Civil Procedure Rules require parties to help the court deal with cases justly and at proportionate cost.
That obligation applies to the claimant as well as the defendant.
Before making an application, ask whether it advances a necessary issue, whether there is a less burdensome route, and what costs or procedural risks it creates.
A perfectly legitimate grievance can still be litigated inefficiently.
A strong argument does not become stronger merely because it is repeated twenty times.
Sometimes the most effective communication is a short, focused letter.
Sometimes it is silence until the next procedural step.
Rule 9. Keep the public narrative separate from the legal case.
Public-interest journalism and litigation are different activities. Actually, it is an art. There are lawyers who specialise in this art, and actually I am currently building my expertise in this field. This is fascinating.
In court, establish admissible facts, legal grounds and the relief sought.
In public, explain why a documented issue matters beyond the individual case.
Do not assume that publicity proves or damages your claim, or that an empathetic or embarrassing headline will improve or damage your legal position.
Test is and do not take anything automatically into your own account. When the Spanish press reported, in most sensational terms, that MARCOM officers nicknamed me Red Sparrow, the likely intent was to humiliate me. I took it as the quality of the source and asked all institutions involved - the UK and Spanish MoDs as well as the NATO, to account for the provenance of this nickname and its possible influence on any possible security decisions made against me and my former partner. Whilst the nickname publication was loud, silence was the response to my inquiries. Such lack of accountability may become an argument in your case. Maybe even context or evidence.
Check confidentiality, personal data, privilege, reporting restrictions and any risk of prejudice before publishing litigation material.
And never confuse your own account of an event with a judicial finding.
For me, this distinction has allowed the Invisible Woman project to develop beyond the original dispute.
It is becoming an inquiry into administrative decision-making, institutional accountability, documentary contradictions and Legal AI.
The proceedings are part of the evidence base.
They are not the whole story.
Rule 10. Convert the experience into something that belongs to you.
This is the most important rule. It transforms the trauma into the resource.
A difficult experience does not automatically make someone stronger, wiser or more creative.
Nobody needs injustice in order to acquire a personality.
But people can sometimes use the work required to confront a problem to develop capabilities that remain valuable after the problem has ended.
My litigation forced me to work with complicated evidence from multiple jurisdictions, understand interacting complaints systems, compare institutional narratives and organise substantial amounts of information.
I learnt how to use AI to support that work. I do it on expert level.
That developed into a much broader intellectual interest in Legal AI, information asymmetry and institutional reasoning.
The media coverage prompted me to develop a publication project.
I began writing essays, working on a book and expanding my creative work.
I also make music.
Not everything I create has anything to do with the Ministry of Defence. Quite the opposite. My AI models deals brilliantly with matters in commercial and company law, commercial disputes, Public relation matters and simply organise my life, improving the quality of it and allowing me to enjoy it fully. They challenge my thinking, boost my creativity and allow me to create new universes.
And that is rather the point.
I did not choose the circumstances that brought these disputes into my life.
I can choose what capabilities, research and creative work emerge from dealing with them.
The litigation may ultimately produce a judgment, a settlement, a dismissal or some mixture of outcomes across different proceedings.
The court will decide what the court is competent to decide.
But my professional and creative development need not be contingent upon those decisions.
The final separation
The most interesting moment in recovering from a controlling relationship is not necessarily when the other party apologises.
Sometimes there is no apology. Actually I do not expect that the institutions, or people within these institutions, which harmed me, would ever apologise. True narcissists never apologise as they are always right, right?
It is not necessarily when you obtain a definitive explanation. It is also highly unlikely, unless there is a human within this institution, who would take this step, but we all know what usually happens to whistle-blowers.
Sometimes important questions remain unanswered.
And it is certainly not when you manage to make the other party feel as powerless as you once felt.
It is when you realise that the relationship no longer defines who you are.
That is the transformation I recognise in my relationship with the state.
The British government can remain a defendant in my proceedings. The Spanish government of some NATO officials may become defendants later.
Their legal representatives can continue advancing their case.
The courts can make decisions with which I agree or disagree.
I will examine the evidence, meet my procedural obligations, challenge what I consider necessary and deal with each outcome according to its legal significance.
Then I will write another article.
Or work on another AI architecture.
Or compose another song.
And perhaps have some coffee.
The state has become part of my experience.
I intend to make that experience useful.
And today's song is ODYSSEYA
