Camilla backs African women facing abuse
THE Duchess of Cornwall wilted in the 96F (35C) heat yesterday as she backed a crusade to empower women in West Africa.
In an echo of the Duchess of Sussex’s promotion of feminist causes, Camilla championed groups aiming to stop girls from undergoing child marriage and female genital mutilation.
Camilla, 71, is a long-standing campaigner on issues such as A DRUG-ADDICT music student who stabbed his mother to death at the £1million converted chapel they shared was yesterday given a life sentence.
Thomas Fisher, who suffered from paranoid delusions, had admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility at an earlier hearing.
Lewes Crown Court was told that police found his mother Fiona Fisher dead at the five-bedroom Victorian home in Crowborough, East Sussex, on April 27 after being asked to check on her welfare.
The 51-year-old former L’Occitane shop manager had been killed by a single stab wound to the chest, detectives said.
At Lewes Crown Court yesterday Fisher was told he must be treated in a secure psychiatric hospital.
Police found his mother’s body after friends and family became worried when they had not heard from her.
Fisher showed no emotion throughout yesterday’s sentencing hearing.
He appeared in the dock flanked by a custody officer and a psychiatric nurse as relatives and friends sat behind him in the public gallery.
Devastation
Handing the 23-year-old a minimum two-year term before he can be considered for parole Judge Christine Laing QC described his mother as someone who lived her life “as fully as possible”, adding that it was “almost unbearable” to read of the family’s devastation in victim impact statements.
She said: “For reasons not easy to fathom, for a number of years you held her responsible for the problems in your life.”
Fisher was due to stand trial for murder last month but the proceedings were postponed when the prosecution decided to accept an alternative guilty plea for manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
Alongside the life sentence he was handed one-month concurrent sentences for fraud after using her Marks & Spencer Mastercard, driving without a licence and driving without insurance.
He was made the subject of a hospital direction under section 45A of the Mental Health Act.
Earlier the court heard that Fisher, who was under the care of a psychiatrist while on remand, had kept a journal in the run-up to the killing which highlighted his state of mind.
Matthew Jewell, prosecuting, said that Fisher had also been examined by violence against women in Britain. In The Gambia 64 per cent of the population still practise female circumcision even though it was outlawed in 2015.
“It’s very, very important what you are doing,” she told a campaigner in the predominantly Addict Thomas Fisher kept a journal in the run-up to stabbing his mother two separate psychiatrists who had drawn up reports.
Mr Jewell said: “A journal or diary that was being kept by the defendant, both psychiatrists conclude that it offers significant insight into his state of mind leading up to the events.
“That is the type of evidence that is not open to challenge.”
At the time of her death, Mrs Fisher’s devastated family described her as “irreplaceable”.
Mr Jewell told the court that the original murder charge had been the “subject of consideration” but after consultation with counsel and the family it was decided that the plea to manslaughter was “acceptable to the prosecution”. Muslim country. At the start of a nine-day tour of Africa, Camilla and Prince Charles visited a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery to honour Gambians who fought in Burma in the Second World War.
The Duchess was shaded with an umbrella as she wore a £29.99 Royal British Legion Women of the War poppy brooch.
Charles, who will be 70 on November 14, met several veterans of the fighting.
Yorro Keira, 96, of the Royal West Africa Frontier Force, told the Prince of his struggle to cope on a single pension of £6.85.
He said: “We suffered in the war. We get no help.”
Charles hailed the country’s decision to rejoin the Commonwealth after the ending of 22 years of dictatorship.