Brain illness meant April Jones’ father forgot his beloved girl was murdered
THE mother of murdered April Jones has revealed how her husband “forgot” his daughter’s death and had to be told of it again after suffering brain damage.
Coral Jones was forced to retell the horrifying news of the five-year-old’s death to her husband Paul after a virus damaged his memory.
April was snatched from outside her home in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, in 2012 before being murdered by local paedophile Mark Bridger who was jailed for life.
Coral yesterday said Paul, 49, asked why his daughter had not been to see him as he recovered from a severe case of encephalitis, a potentially lethal brain condition.
She said her husband had recognised the youngster in family photos used to jog his memory and asked: “What happened to April?”
Coral, 46, said: “I had to tell him she was no longer with us and that she’d been killed.
“He broke down. It was an awful conversation because he was so emotional and it was so hard for me to speak about it.
“I couldn’t go on, I just couldn’t tell him any more. It was like reliving it all over again.”
Coral said Mr Jones’s illness had come as a blow to a family already suffering from the trauma of losing their young child.
She added: “How much more can my family take?
“I’ve already lost my daughter and now I have lost my soulmate and my rock and I feel so alone.
“Paul is the only person who can truly understand the pain I have felt over losing April.”
Mr Jones is understood to have fallen ill about 18 months ago and has had to spend more than a year in hospital recovering. He was training to take part in a triathlon to raise money for the Missing People charity when he developed flu-like symptoms and was later diagnosed with encephalitis.
The infection and resulting brain swelling led to the loss of memory of most of the past decade, although Coral said he remembers some of the people closest to him.
She added: “Paul is so frustrated by his condition and that fills me with fear. He’s been through enough. Learning the awful details of how April died once is horrendous enough. He loved her so much I can’t let him go through that again.
“I don’t know what he’d do if he knew the truth of what had happened to our little girl.
“Yet I know everything could come flooding back further down the line and I worry it will drive him even deeper into depression.”