‘Esther Brown’s murder was preventable. This whole system is broken’
Jason Graham was jailed for at least 19 years for the brutal rape and murder of Esther Brown.
After a drunken argument on May 28 in 2021, Graham was thrown out of a pub and went on a furious rampage.
Frail pensioner Esther Brown, 67, did not stand a chance. CCTV captured Brown climbing a wall into a community garden at the flats where Esther lived in Woodlands, Glasgow. He gained access to her attic flat and beat her to death with a wooden chair, stamping on her body and raping her.
The case caused such an uproar a serious case review was ordered to identify how Graham had repeatedly slipped through the net, revealing incompetence in how he was managed both inside and out of prison for previous rapes and violence against women.
The review made 11 recommendations and identified 14 learning points.
Campaigners rejected the review conclusion that Esther’s murder could not have been predicted or prevented.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Russell Findlay said: “Graham’s actions were predictable. Esther’s murder was preventable. She deserved better. The women of
Scotland deserve better. God help the next woman who is targeted by a registered sex offender, of which there are almost 6,000 across Scotland.
“Unless the government acts, we will be here again: another murdered woman, another review, more lessons to be learned, no accountability.
“The content of the serious case review is jaw-dropping, with incompetence at every level of a system that is supposed to protect the public from sex offenders. There is page after page of failings.
“It is a broken system from top to bottom. The report damns criminal justice social work, the police, the Scottish Prison Service and the national health service.
“We learn that Graham has a history of strangling women. However, when he first strangled a teenager, he was not prosecuted. The report says the case was called in court then vanished. How and why did that happen?
“When he strangled a second teenager two years later, what happened to him?
“A year later, Graham inflicted a sustained attack on a 50-year-old woman in her home. He punched, bit, kicked, strangled and raped her. At long last, having amassed many other criminal convictions, Graham was jailed for seven years and six months but, due to automatic early release, he was back out after less than five years.
“An earlier parole bid was refused because he had not taken part in a prison programme for sex offenders. But, when he was automatically released, he still had not done that.
“After release, he was subject to a curfew, but not once did anyone turn up at his home at night to see whether he was there.
“The report calls that ‘self-reporting’; I call it naive and negligent.
“Also, his curfew was eased around Christmas. Who decided any of that was appropriate and why?
“The report says Graham should have had an electronic tag to monitor his whereabouts, but does not say why that did not happen.
“The report exposes a catalogue of mindblowing incompetence, but it fails to ask critical follow-up questions.
“This is about accountability – or, rather, a lack of accountability – that seems to have been allowed to become the norm in many of Scotland’s public agencies.”