Has top cop Cressida no shame at all?
THE monster that is Wayne Couzens took more than one life the night he raped and strangled Sarah Everard and then set her body alight. He also stole the lives of the family who adored her – mum Susan, dad Jeremy, brother James and sister Katie. Yes, her brave, broken-hearted parents still live and breathe. They still get up every day and put one foot in front of the other but the life they once enjoyed, a life full of hopes and dreams and happiness, now lies dead alongside their beautiful daughter.
How can they ever know “normality” again when they must live with what they now know? They can’t unsee the evidence of what Couzens did to Sarah before he killed her. They can’t unknow the gruesome details of her final moments. That knowledge will haunt them until their last breath.
And if all that wasn’t enough, in burning her body Couzens deprived them of one last look at her. He stole their final goodbye.
Yet, despite all that, the Everards found the courage from God knows where to face down Couzens in court. It was the last thing they could do for Sarah and so, with every last ounce of strength, they demanded he look them in the eye while they told him what he had taken from them.
The gutless Couzens was no match for their courage. Eyes pinned to the floor he couldn’t look at them – at their loss, their pain. And if this creature has a shred of a conscience it’s to be hoped that in the years ahead when every day of what is left of his miserable life will be spent in the company of THE most depraved killers and paedophiles, what he heard from Sarah’s family in that courtroom will haunt him.
People say time heals – it doesn’t. It just allows people like the Everards to get through the days, the weeks, the months that stretch endlessly in front of them. They exist hoping that one day there might be something more – they might laugh again or experience something that passes for happiness. But till then what happened to Sarah will continue to rip at their broken hearts. So when people talk about a murder – it’s never just one life that has been lost.
What about Couzens’ two children who were in the house when the man they called Dad was arrested? They had no idea this man they loved and trusted as their protector was a coldblooded killer yet they will grow up in the shadow of that, be tainted and shamed by it. They, and his wife Elena, will always be “the pervert killer’s family”.That’s the lifeWayne Couzens’ evil has condemned them to.
And because life is what it is, the anger at what Couzens did will eventually fade.We will push him to the back of our minds and move on. But Sarah’s family won’t.Their wounds will remain gaping – and THAT’S what murderers do to families
So when the Metropolitan Police chief Cressida Dick says: “I’m sorry”, it just doesn’t cut it. Couzens was allowed to prey on women while serving in HER force and on HER watch.
Women must be able to trust the police and the tragic irony here is that the Met’s first ever female police chief has failed to protect them.
Since Sarah’s murder women officers have spoken out about how sexist the Met is and how it needs cultural change and Dick isn’t capable of making it happen.
She had the chance after the disastrous Operation Midland which ruined many innocent lives – again on her watch. And she didn’t. So I don’t trust her to change it now.
And if she continues to cling on in the face of the increasing clamour for her to quit – then she shames the Force she professes to love and every decent officer in it.
NB: Wondering why Craig’s beautiful wife, Rachel Weisz, wasn’t at the Bond premiere? That old chestnut “work commitments” was trotted out to explain her absence. But surely she could have taken a day off for the finale of her husband’s Bond career? Maybe, like the rest of us, she’s had enough of Old Grumpy Pants!
I’M not understanding the outcry over government plans to reduce the threshold at which students repay their tuition loans from £27,000 to £23,000.
First, students SHOULD shoulder some of the cost of their education. Second, if they’re not earning more than £23,000 after three years at university then perhaps they shouldn’t have gone.
The average salary for a supermarket worker is £31,000 and, as hard as that job is, you don’t have to spend three years at uni and incur massive debt to do it.