What courage it took to stand up to Mr Big’s cynical stunt
It was a classic reality tV trick. You know the sort of thing – the smiling programme host comes over all warm and sympathetic before ambushing the sorrowing guest with a bombshell. ‘Guess what – we’ve found the person who hurt your family and they’re right over there, waiting to come on and make with the hugs and healing! Come on, guys, let’s play nice. Give us the Big Reveal – and help this show hit the headlines again!’
Except it wasn’t the cheap ruse of a daytime tV studio set. this event took place in that global centre of power, the White House, where the grinning host was none other than Donald trump. the President’s guests were Charlotte Charles and tim Dunn, the grieving parents of teenager Harry Dunn – killed when his motorcycle was mown down by the wife of an American diplomat driving on the wrong side of the road in Northamptonshire.
When Anne Sacoolas evaded justice by claiming diplomatic immunity and fleeing the country, Harry’s divorced parents, united by grief and a burning need for justice, flew to the States to urge her to return to Britain and face the consequences.
I’ve watched the footage of Charlotte and tim in America several times. there they are, undaunted in a bright American tV studio, and then talking across the Atlantic to ItV’s Good Morning Britain – an ordinary woman with bright-blonde hair and facial piercings, and a thick-set man with specs and tattooed arms. they’re everyday Brits unused to throwing their weight around.
But how impressive they are in their selfcontrol, their dignity, their conviction. It was that quiet determination which made the meeting between the ‘little’ people and Mr Big so powerful and so symbolic. On one side, you have two parents still in shock but filled with righteous indignation and a sense of what is just.
there is no bitterness towards the woman who killed their son; instead a reasonable and actually compassionate belief that it would be the honourable thing for Mrs Sacoolas to set an example to her own family and return to face up to her actions on that terrible day in August. Who in the world could say they are wrong?
On the other side, you have Donald trump and his assembled sidekicks, plus the cameras waiting to snap POtUS as the Great Mediator. Capture the moment – and capture Harry’s mother and father, too.
For what was this but an attempt to railroad two people into abandoning their stance that it would be wrong to meet Mrs Saccoolas until she had agreed to do the right thing? But then the ‘ordinary’ British couple became truly extraordinary. they said ‘No’ – three times – to trump’s choreographed suggestion that they meet Mrs Sacoolas who, it turned out, was waiting in the next-door room.
HONEStlY, I doubt that I would have had the courage to defy that whole set-up – wouldn’t most people be overawed just by being in the White House? But Harry Dunn’s parents were bigger in spirit than their surroundings. Unintimidated by the pressure put on them by trump, they refused to take part in this cheap photo- call, this trick designed to make the President look good.
tim Dunn has described how he felt watching his ex-wife speak to trump: ‘Charlotte was so strong – I was so proud. Mr trump was listening, I don’t think he dared interrupt her. I like to think he’s an honourable man and that he will keep his promise to try to find another way to move things forward.’
With similar generosity, Charlotte Charles told how trump held her hand during the meeting, agreed that he would do the same – and she felt that he was sincere. Good for her to have such faith.
Nobody can guess what will happen next – although the President’s bullish national security adviser Robert O’Brien was heard to declare loudly: ‘She’s not coming back [to Britain].’ Meanwhile, trump has promised to look at other options and Boris Johnson has (of course) praised Charlotte and tim’s stand – though, yesterday, trump claimed Boris had asked him to arrange a meeting between Harry’s parents and Mrs Sacoolas.
But there is one thing we can be sure of. the President of the United States has been forced to see that no power on this world can trump a parent’s sense of burning injustice – or a mother’s love.