WHERE’S THE JUSTICE?
Mother must pay £ 40k legal bill of daughter’s killer
FURY erupted last night as a heartbroken mother was told to pay her daughter’s killer £ 40,000 after losing a legal bid to force him to reveal where her body is buried.
Marie McCourt has been ordered to pay Ian Simms’s legal fees after a High Court bid to stop his release from prison failed.
Mrs McCourt, who has campaigned for a law which would deny parole to killers who refuse to disclose the location of their victim’s body, said “it seems unfair that I have to pay his costs but that’s what’s happened”.
Stamina
She will rely on donations from the public during a fundraising campaign. She fought the Parole Board decision to release Simms – unless he told her where daughter Helen’s body was dumped.
MPs declared how the case highlights how criminals are often put before victims.
Pub landlord Simms was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 16 years in prison, for the murder of Helen McCourt, 22, in 1988. But he has refused to reveal where he disposed of Helen’s body after ambushing and strangling her as she walked home from work.
Mrs McCourt said she was grateful to people who contributed to the fundraising page.
She added: “Prisoners get legal aid. But people like myself – ordinary people – don’t have the kind of money to take it to a High Court.
The only thing we can do is go to a GoFundMe.”
Mrs McCourt, 77, said she now lacked the “energy, stamina or funds” to carry on her court battle.
She said: “I don’t believe I can take this legal fight much further. It’s almost killing me.
“To carry on would just put my family and everyone else through the wringer again.” Simms was released in February after 31 years behind bars.
Marie challenged the decision in the High Court, but this week Lady Justice Macur and Mr Justice Chamberlain wrote in a judgment: “We have great sympathy for Mrs McCourt’s plight. But we have concluded the panel’s decision involved no arguable public law error.”
Tory MP Philip Davies said: “This shows how the criminal justice system is weighted in favour of the criminal and not the victims. It is a complete outrage.”
Labour’s Conor McGinn, who is Marie’s MP, said: “The Justice Secretary needs to intervene to show Marie and other victims that the Government is on their side.”
IT IS highly iniquitous. Marie McCourt, whose daughter Helen was murdered by pub landlord Ian Simms in 1988, made a High Court bid to stop his release from prison. It failed, and she now has to pay his side’s £ 40,000 court costs.
This is an appalling outcome against a grieving family who have been sorely insulted by callous Simms, who has never revealed where he hid Helen’s body.
It adds to the growing public suspicion that we live in a society where the good are punished and the bad rewarded – and illustrates how expensive it often is for victims and their families to get legal help. As it turns out, Mrs McCourt has recourse to a crowdfund that will be used to cover those costs. But it surely isn’t right that wellwishers have had to fund justice.
Let’s hope Mrs McCourt’s proposal for Helen’s Law finds success – her Bill aims to deny parole to killers who won’t disclose the location of their victim’s body – and that by doing so, future justice will be done.