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But firstly I mean, I wanted to ask you about
your experience of Victim Support
and the Witness Service here at The Old Bailey?
The good thing about
coming inside court every morning
is that I wasn’t able to go through the front.
I could avoid the press and I could also kind of disappear somewhere where I could have a discussion about anything.
Victims sometimes feel that
they are not part of what's happening
in court.
They are not told more or less something about
what the evidence is going to be – so they need
somebody who's supportive
when they come to court and
sit there to
wait to go in
and listen
to what’s happening.
One day after being in court
For maybe about three weeks
I got to the stage where when they were describing
how my son was killed
I couldn’t stay in court
and I was able to call a person up here
to sit with and I sat there for maybe half a day
just talking to this person – which was very helpful
I think it is very important that you have this group of
people who are so supportive and not attached to any part of the criminal justice system
so they are neutral, so you feel free to
just communicate with them without any fear
of what you say is going to go
anywhere else.
Regarding the Witness Service – is it something
you feel should be available to victims and witnesses
across the country?
Yes it should be rolled out to all the courts in the country.
Because again, I’m going back to the early days
when we didn’t know who was going to support us when we went to court.
We didn’t have any kind of understanding
who would show us around or if we needed any
kind of
information. Since I've been here
it’s like if anything I needed to know
or if even say my
Some of my friends came here
in the mornings, I used to
come to the office and would give them the names
of the people who I expect were going to support me.
If somebody came to the door
and their names aren’t there
and they asked for me
they would come down to the court
and ask me if I knew these people
before they let them in.
That’s a valuable service, as far as I’m concerned.
What we find is it’s important to victims and witnesses
not only that the criminal justice system and criminal justice agencies, police and crown prosecution service etc
work as far as possible to deliver justice
but also while they have
contact with the victim
they treat them in a certain way.
In the early days
they weren’t used
a good communication with families
I think they were reluctant that
information that sometimes the families would ask for
wasn’t something they should be able to give.
One of the things which we came up against
very early in our case, is that although you
had two people coming to the house to tell you they are going to support you
and tell you what’s happening
when you asked questions
they won’t answer them.
I felt really disappointed that if you come to my
house and tell me that you’re going to support
me and I need to ask a certain
question and you’re not prepared to answer it.
One of the first thing we wanted to know was what happened?
We were told by a neighbour and his son
that they saw my son and his friend
being attacked down Well Hall Road at night.
We actually rang the stations to find out if there was an incident and we were told no.
So without those people coming and tell us that there was an incident and we hadn’t followed it up by going
down to the hospital we would have been sitting there and waiting for maybe
the next month and wondering where our son was. 0:04:35.080,0:04:37.870f and I don’t think that was a very good situation to be in.
And even after the following morning when these two people
came and we thought they were going to sit us down
and tell us what happened at that incident that night,.
it didn’t happen. And the second day, it didn’t happen.
And then third day, when we wanted to see our son’s body
we were refused. A simple thing like how long are you going to keep my son’s body for?
I was then told it might be a year.
And then the reason is because we have to
wait until we catch the people
who were responsible
and then give them the opportunity to have
their own pathologist do a report before we can let your son go.
To tell a family that you’ve got to keep the victim -
the person who has been killed – for a year – is devastating.
And then another thing which was told that if you bury your son
and they feel that they want to dig him up,
you’ve got no
alternative to tell them they can’t do that.
How do you feel that the media handle
victims and witnesses in these situation?
The media were very slow to pick the case up
And I found that hard to understand
because as far as I am concerned this is a major crime
And if it’s a major crime
we need witnesses. Because I think at one stage I was saying to the people involved
that you should put up a notice board
at the spot
where the crime was committed.
And the reason why that is because there were people
standing
at the bus stop at the time
but actually Stephen got up and ran up the road
and in my mind if I was standing there I would think that the person was okay
and it’s only after
boarding the bus and going up the road that some of those people saw Stephen lying on the ground.
So if those people had a car and drove away home
they wouldn’t have see anything
To remind them that they had actually
seen an incident where the person was killed
What I did….when I was faced…after meeting Nelson Mandela that’s when the media got interested.
When the media got interested and I realised that we had to more or less trying to learn how to
use it. What I then did was look at the people who came and listen to how they
approached the family to see whether or not they were interested in helping
campaigning, to try and get some kind of justice.
I wondered if there
was
any other
comment that
you’d waited to make about
the criminal justice system.
They were talking
about changing
the double jeopardy law
and that just sent
shockwaves
through me
and then I started wondering
if there are people
who felt that the changing of the double jeopardy law
wasn’t a good thing.
I wouldn't be sitting here and talking about
conviction
If it wasn’t for the change.
You said that you built up quite good relationships
with a couple of the journalists
over the 19 years and I wondered if
you built up similar relationships
with some of our volunteers
at the Witness Service
over that time?
Yeah, because there’s about 2 or 3
people who’ve been here since I did the first private prosecution
and I was really pleased to see them because when I came they started to remind me that they were here the first time I came and here the first time and
this shows how dedicated these people are that they actually do this for no money without being paid.
Without some of these people doing what they are doing it would be a very different kind of situation when you come into the court – because there would be no-one to be supportive.