Sergeant bullied me into changing my account
A SPECIAL constable has revealed how she was bullied by police into changing her statement about the Hillsborough disaster.
Debra Martin, 52, said there was a ‘major conspiracy’ by officers to conceal the truth from the families of the 96 victims.
Her original statement, made in the weeks after the disaster, revealed that she had cradled dying fan Kevin Williams, 15, who opened his eyes and called out ‘Mum’, before dying in her arms shortly before 4pm.
But because her account of what happened contradicted the original coroner’s insistence that all those who perished
were dead by the now discredited 3.15pm cut-off time, she claimed she was harassed into changing it.
Miss Martin, a dental nurse, told the new inquests that former sergeant Julie Appleton forced her to remove details of Kevin’s final moments and sign a new version. Sgt Appleton strongly denied the allegations.
Last night Miss Martin said that while she had been ‘broken’ by what she witnessed at the semi-final between Liverpool FC and Not- tingham Forest, the actions of the police later ‘destroyed’ her. ‘By the time she [Sgt Appleton] visited me the third time it was pure aggression,’ she said. ‘Hillsborough broke me, but the police destroyed me.’
Miss Martin, from Sheffield, said: ‘She just kept coming back, making me out to be a liar and continued to belittle me until I gave in and agreed to sign a new statement that she had written.
‘She completely changed certain words and deleted many things so that it wasn’t really my statement at all in the end.’
Miss Martin added that she felt relieved the truth was ‘finally out’. She said: ‘It has been incredibly difficult being the lone voice for so many years. I was ignored and the police tried to brush things under the carpet but this was a major conspiracy to cover things up. ’
Fiona Nicol, a PC who was on duty during the disaster, said she feared senior officers would ‘throw us to the wolves’ if she spoke out against them.
Miss Nicol, 52, told the inquests that senior officers intimidated junior colleagues by peering over their shoulders as they wrote up their accounts of what they had witnessed.
Miss Nicol, who was seen on CCTV pulling 14- year-old victim Adam Spearritt out of the crammed pens, before trying unsuccessfully to revive him on the pitch, said the scenes she witnessed would live with her for ever.
She said: ‘I always kept quiet because I was afraid. I thought they were trying to blame and scapegoat us and if the opportunity had come they would throw us to the wolves.’
Miss Nicol told the new hearings in Warrington, Cheshire, that she had felt ‘extremely intimidated’ by a senior officer, who questioned her description of the central pens behind the goal being ‘full’, so she changed it to three-quarters full.