Dad wants new law to be legacy for Pearl
IN PAUL Black’s home in the village of Heolgerrig in Merthyr Tydfil stands a shrine dedicated to his daughter, who should have turned eight in September.
“It’s a way for Beatrix (his daughter) and Ace (son) to remember Pearl and know
again after Prime Minister Rishi she was their big sister,” the tattooist and Sunak committed to looking at the actor says. “loophole” in the law which Paul Days ago Pearl’s name hit the headlines claims robbed his family of justice after tragedy struck.
In August 2017 a runaway car killed 22-month-old Pearl. Her father was walking her home from a trip to the park. Just like parents do every day. And then she was gone.
Pearl was crushed after Andrew Williams’ Range Rover rolled down a private driveway and hit a garden wall which then toppled onto her.
An inquest in 2018 heard how the handbrake of the 2.6-tonne vehicle had been applied at two out of six ratchets and was in neutral – not enough to secure it on the steep driveway.
“It was a lovely, crisp day. She had a little Peppa Pig jacket on, she was only up to my knee, love her,” Paul vividly recalls of his final moments with his eldest child. “And then gone, she was gone. I had to redact the details from my evidence in court to protect my wife.
“She couldn’t sit in the inquest and listen to it, she was downstairs watching the coverage on her phone.
“I watched the life drain from her. How do you ever get over that? You don’t. I’ve gone through two years of intensive EMDR (a type of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder abbreviated from eye movement and desensitisation reprocessing therapy) and I still suffer intense and acute PTSD.
“Others, like people who go into the army and come back with trauma, have signed up for that. I didn’t sign up for this. I watched my little girl disintegrate away from me and there’s been no recompense. Not a jot.”
Coroner Andrew Barkley formally recorded Pearl’s death as accidental and said the tragedy was caused by “driver error”. But the Crown Prosecution Service ruled out criminal action against Mr Williams, determining that the case failed to meet the evidential test required for a prosecution.
Paul says at the heart of their failed attempts to push for a prosecution has been a “loophole” in the law under the 1988 Road Traffic Act, protecting the owner of the vehicle from prosecution because the car was not secured while on private property rather than public land. Ever since,
Paul and his wife Gemma have been calling for a change in the law so driving offences which happen or begin on private land can be prosecuted.
“To leave a truck unattended like that in neutral with no handbrake can put people in grave danger and is unforgivable, and yet as it stands if it happened again on private land, or started on private land, the vehicle owner would get away with it again,” Paul said, reflecting on an important few days for him and his family in bringing the story back into public consciousness in the hope that what they call “Pearl’s Law” can change court powers.
In Prime Minister’s Questions last week Labour MP for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney Gerald Jones asked Mr Sunak to meet with him and Paul and Gemma on the matter. The Prime Minister responded: “I’m incredibly sorry to hear about Pearl and my thoughts, and I know the whole house’s thoughts, will be with Gemma and Paul. I will make sure the honourable member gets a meeting with the relevant minister on the legislation as quickly as possible.”
Paul said: “I’m more encouraged than I’ve ever been since Pearl died that something will come of this now. It’s been hard because it’s brought everything back to me like it was yesterday, but I’m so glad it’s being looked into again and I have to thank Gerald for that.
“It’s not every day the Prime Minister reads your name out in the House of Commons. It’s given me a second wind. I want everyone to know about this story and to know we’ve not stopped fighting. I’d crawl to number 10 if it meant it’d leave a legacy for Pearly.
“I’ll never get closure from this but I want something to show we’ve done something in response to this. It’s taken Gerald, who has been fantastic, three years to get this to parliament.
“He’s been tireless in his efforts to help us, and it feels closer than ever now. It can be my little girl’s legacy because she didn’t have a chance to do anything else in her life.”
Pencil sketches of Pearl, Beatrix, now five, and Ace, six, take pride of place in the lounge of Paul and Gemma’s home which is covered in pictures of Pearl. “She’s all around us,” Paul continued. “I want Beatrix to know, even though she wasn’t born when Pearl died.
“She often asks about Pearly and asks about her dying. It kills me every time. But I’d rather it that way. There’s no way Pearl will be forgotten in this house and I’m committed to making sure she’s not forgotten around the UK.”
It’s impossible not to notice how drastically Paul’s appearance has changed since the final day of Pearl’s inquest in 2018 when he bravely addressed the press outside Pontypridd Coroner’s Court. In the months following Pearl’s death he shaved his head and admitted to taking steroids. He got more tattoos too, which he saw as a form of therapy.
“I was preparing myself to go to prison, I’d given up on my life,” he remembered. “I got as big as I could so I could handle myself inside. It was my children who saved me. I looked at Ace one day and thought: ‘No, this has already taken my daughter. I’ve got to be there for my son.’
“They mean everything to me. I don’t say luck a lot because I never get any in my life, but when we went for the scan when Gemma was pregnant with Beatrix and they told us we were having a little girl I collapsed to my knees. I’m not a religious person but many people told me she’d been sent to us, and I did reflect on that. She is a light in my life. She’s so naughty and stressful, but if it wasn’t for her and Ace I’d be a mess.”
On the day Pearl died Paul threw Ace into the road away from the oncoming vehicle to save him. He recalls how Ace fell on his head, and how he has blamed himself for Ace’s struggles, eventually diagnosed last year as autism.
“He has recently been diagnosed with autism and for the first time in my life I allowed myself to think it might not be my fault,” Paul said.
“He’s seven in January and since we got the diagnosis he’s been coming on leaps and bounds. I had a meeting with his teacher the other day and he’s top of the pops.
“He uses echolalia at home but his teacher has told me he’s been having little chats at school, which was overwhelming to hear. He went to Bluestone last week and went down a zip line with his sister, which I’d never have thought he’d have managed. Every day is something special.”