21/01/05 - Sutcliffe's day
out angers relatives
Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
The Guardian
The son of the Yorkshire Ripper's first murder victim
said yesterday that he was "shattered" by the
Home Office decision to give the serial killer compassionate
parole to visit the site where his father's ashes are
scattered.
Peter Sutcliffe, 58, caused terror in the north of England
in the 70s when he killed 13 women and left seven others
for dead.
He was jailed for life in 1981 and sent to Broadmoor,
the UK's highest security psychiatric unit, where he
has been for the past 23 years.
On Monday he was escorted by four hospital guards on
a 540-mile round trip in a prison van to Arnside, Cumbria
where he was allowed to stand for 30 minutes at the
spot where his father's ashes were scattered last year.
The Home Office said yesterday that David Blunkett,
the former home secretary, took the decision to grant
compassionate parole and it was ratified by his successor,
Charles Clarke.
Sutcliffe begged to be allowed to attend the funeral
when his father, John, 81, died of cancer in a West
Yorkshire hospice last year.
But officials, fearful that this would be too much
of a security problem and would draw a media circus,
compromised with the visit seven months later.
A Home Office spokesman said the decision was taken
after a full risk assessment, and Sutcliffe was closely
supervised at all times, adding: "At no point was
there any danger to members of the public."
Harry Fletcher of the National Association of Probation
Officers, said the decision was "reluctantly right"
and Sutcliffe might have had grounds for a human rights
case against the government if permission had been denied.
Keith Hellawell, the former chief constable of West
Yorkshire who investigated the full scope of Sutcliffe's
crimes after his conviction, thought it was humane to
grant him this concession.
He was convinced that there was no chance Sutcliffe
would ever be freed.
But the thought of one of Britain's most reviled mass
murderers being allowed out, even for a day, has stirred
deep emotions among relatives of his victims.
Richard McCann, whose mother Wilma, 28, was the first
woman Sutcliffe murdered, told the Guardian that he
had struggled for years with the question whether Sutcliffe
should ever be allowed out, even for a few hours, and
had come to the conclusion that he should not.
Mr McCann, who was five when Sutcliffe battered his
mother to death with a hammer in October 1975, said:
"When I heard he'd been to the Lake District I
was just speechless. I often go there walking and I'd
hate to think we ever stood in the same place.
"He says he's depressed about his father's death.
I was a week short of my sixth birthday when he killed
my mother and I've suffered bouts of depression my whole
life.
"I've thought and thought about whether he deserves
any compassion and I've decided he doesn't."
Some politicians were angry about the decision. Fabian
Hamilton, Labour MP for Leeds North East, where some
of the victims' families live, said he had opposed letting
Sutcliffe out for his father's funeral and saw no reason
why he should be allowed out now.
But Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory prisons' minister,
said that if the home secretary had refused compassionate
parole he might have lost a very public human rights action,
drawing out the anguish of the victims' families and ending
in Sutcliffe being let out anyway. |
