Milly Dowler family: we paid too high a price

Director of public prosecutions says Bellfield trial raised ‘fundamental questions’ about all aspects of victim support The family of Milly Dowler has attacked the justice system for their “truly horrifying” experience during the trial of the 13-year-old’s murderer, Levi Bellfield, saying that they had paid “too high a price” for his conviction. After their angry, emotional statements on the steps of the Old Bailey, Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said the trial had raised “fundamental questions”, which would be examined during a Ministry of Justice review into all aspects of victim support. Surrey police apologised for failings made in the initial investigation when Milly was snatched by Bellfield nine years ago. Earlier the judge who sentenced “cruel and pitiless” Bellfield to life for her murder and kidnap dismissed the jury, which was still deliberating on allegations that Bellfield had tried to abduct another girl, Rachel Cowles, then 11, the day before Milly vanished. Jurors were discharged following what the defence said was an “avalanche” of prejudicial media reports after the Milly verdicts, and the charge was ordered to lie on file. There will be no retrial and the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, will consider whether newspaper and broadcast editors must face contempt of court prosecutions. Milly’s parents, Bob, 59, and Sally, 51, and her sister Gemma, 25, made highly charged statements outside the court on the eve of what would have been Milly’s 23rd birthday. Her father, who like her mother was subjected to brutal cross-examination by Bellfield’s defence, said: “We despair of a justice system that is so loaded in favour of the perpetrator of the crime. “We do not see this as true justice for Milly, merely a criminal conviction. My family has had to pay too high a price for this conviction.” Bellfield, 43, a former club doorman, from West Drayton, Middlesex, denied the abduction and murder of Milly, who vanished while walking home from school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on 21 March, 2002, just yards from where Bellfield was renting a flat. A jury took seven hours to convict him unanimously on Thursday. Surrey police have apologised to the Dowlers, and to Cowles, now 21, for missed opportunities early on in the police investigation which might have led to Bellfield being caught sooner. He went on to murder students Amelie Delagrange, 22, and Marsha McDonnell, 19, and he attempted to murder Kate Sheedy, 18, a convent school head girl. Bob Dowler said the trial had been “a truly mentally scarring experience on an unimaginable scale” and he and his wife both felt as if “we were on trial”. He condemned Bellfield, who refused to give evidence or appear in the dock for sentence, as “spineless and gutless” for hiding behind his defence QC and challenging the testimony of every witness. “Where is the fairness in a system which allows such behaviour?” he said. Starmer said of the Dowlers’ experience: “Those questions require answers and we will be contributing to the review by the Ministry of Justice into all aspects of victim support.” The Crown Prosecution Service said the adversarial nature of the trial system was “designed to test the evidence given by witnesses,” but it would consider the issues raised by the trial. The former home secretary David Blunkett said the case gave pause for thought. “Barristers have to ask themselves the question: are they merely the conduit, are they merely a paid cipher whose job is to do whatever hatchet job they can?” But Peter Lodder, QC, the chairman of the Bar, said: “This was an exceptional case. Whilst, naturally, our sympathy is with the family of the victim, we must be careful to recognise that the right of an accused person to defend himself is absolute.” Milly’s mother, a maths teacher at her daughter’s school in Weybridge, gave vent to her anger and disgust with Bellfield. “I hope whilst he is in prison he is treated with the same brutality he dealt out to his victims and that his life is a living hell.” She broke down after giving evidence, and physically collapsed after the verdict, and described the trial as an “awful experience,” that had violated the family’s privacy. “To actually see that man in court, a man capable of such a vile and inhuman crime, has been grotesque and distressing.” It was unfair, she added, the “length the system goes to protect his human rights” compared to what their family had endured. “For a mother to bury her child in any circumstances is truly agonising, but to bury your child when you know she died in such an appalling way is unutterably awful.” Milly’s sister, Gemma, said: “In my eyes, justice is ‘an eye for an eye’. You brutally murder someone then you pay the ultimate price … ‘a life for a life’. So in my eyes no real justice has been done. Seeing her parents cross-examined “was the worst day of my life”, worse, even than when she heard that Milly’s remains had been found. They had been put through “mental torture”. The way her sister was portrayed “as a depressed teenager has shocked me terribly”. Addressing the Dowler family as he passed sentence, Mr Justice Wilkie said he appreciated the trial process had been “excruciating for them by reason of the issues the defendant instructed his lawyers to raise in his defence”. “I understand that they feel let down by the trial process in that respect. Unfortunately given the nature of the defence it was unavoidable,” he added. Cowles, who sobbed in court as the jury was released, said she was “extremely hurt and angry that some of the media reporting of this case has now robbed me of the chance for justice for what happened in 2002″. The Dowlers said there had been times when the police investigation had left the family “in despair”. Detective chief inspector Maria Woodall said while it was “highly unlikely” that even a perfect initial investigation would have identified Bellfield, Surrey police acknowledged there was “poor initial response” to Rachel Cowles’s allegation of attempted kidnap the day before Milly went missing. The force also admitted that house-to-house inquiries following Milly’s disappearance “although extensive, were not exhaustive”, after it was revealed that they knocked 10 times on Bellfield’s rented flat without response, but did not follow it up. McDonnell’s uncle, Shane, said the family now wanted an inquiry into police handling of the Dowler case to see if lives could be saved. Milly Dowler UK criminal justice Crime Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 24, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.