‘I don’t want my son at my funeral in chains’
Mum of ‘Scarborough slasher’ pleads for him to be released
In Gail Burns’ living room hangs a sign which reads ‘forever, my mother’.
But with her lungs in terminal decline, the pensioner knows she won’t be around forever.
She doesn’t complain. She has her home, her grandchildren and an army of pet puppies to keep her company. But not her son. Jailed weeks before his 16th birthday, Damien Burns, 41, has since enjoyed just 21 months of freedom.
Now nearly a decade into a stretch expected to last under four years, his mum just wants him home before it’s too late.
“I just don’t want him coming to my funeral in chains,” she said.
Burns, dubbed ‘The Scarborough Slasher’, was jailed in 2007 for slashing a teenager’s face in a “terrifying” boozefuelled attack.
A judge told Burns he would serve at least threeand-a-half years of an indefi- nite sentence, yet he is still in HMP Humber almost a decade later.
That is partially because Burns escaped from the Category D Doncaster open prison last year, making national headlines before police found the hulking lag hiding in a wardrobe.
He is next up for parole next August, but his mum thinks he should be home now. “He’s been in for too long now, I just want him back,” said Gail from her Barrowcliff home.
“Damien did what he did, but how much longer does he need to be in prison for?”
She is now pleading for her son to be handed another chance at freedom.
The 68-year-old feels he should be released on a tag where he would be curfewed 24 hours a day to her home, effectively confining him to house arrest, but his mum feels it would at least let her be with him.
Burns won’t be eligible for full release until August 2016, where he will go before the parole board to plead for his freedom.
He will have to persuade the panel in spite of a violent past, which includes convictions for robbery and wounding, and his escape.
His mum claims that he left the minimum security prison last year because he wanted to move back to a tougher jail, claims backed up by statements made in court.
“There was people smoking drugs in one corner of it and others having sex in another,” claimed mum Gail.
“He hated it, he said he’d rather be back in a (Category A) prison.
She adds that her son fears being released into a halfway house or hostel upon his release, adding: “They are full of paedophiles and drug dealers, and these are the people he hates.
“He just thinks they would be setting him up to fail.”
In a letter from prison to The Scarborough News, Burns refuses to open up in detail about his time behind bars, but talks about his past, his love for his family and also his ‘Scarborough Slasher” nickname – which he labels “weird”.
But in the near-three page document posted from his cell, Burns call his mum his “rock and my everything”.
He then signs off with the line “see you on the dark side of the moon... keep smiling, Damien Burns.”
And while his mum is still smiling, she would be happier if her son was home with her in her hour of need, adding: “He’s been in prison pretty much all of his life – I just want him home.”
‘My mum is my rock and my everything’