| The Dream Solution
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- "We want to protect others because we've been through it"
by simon rogers
Big Issue
Don't believe everything you read in the press. "According
to the newspapers, this," mrs taylor gestures around her
family's pleasant, but modest terraced forest hill house, "was
our £100,000 family mansion."
She looks out of the back door towards a small pond at the bottom
of a tiny garden. "That was our 'swimming pool'. And he,"
she waves at duke the doberman, "he was our 'devil dog'.
I mean, he was only seven months old."
Duke, the by now fully grown devil dog looks up forlornly before
putting his head on my lap. Nobody escaped unscathed in the taylor
household - not even duke.
When the police burst in at 5.40am one summer morning in 1991
to arrest ann taylor's young daughters michelle and lisa, it traumatised
the puppy so much that to this day he goes wild every time anybody
comes into the house wearing a hat or helmet.
It had a rather more serious consequences for michelle and lisa,
then aged only 21 and 18. Michelle spent two years in prison and
lisa one for a crime they did not commit - the brutal murder of
bank clerk alison shaugnessy, whose husband john had been having
an affair with michelle.
The sisters say they were imprisoned because the press coverage
of their trial was biased and prejudicial. They're now going to
court, in the first case of its kind, to make the legal system
acknowledge this.
If they win, it could change the way trials are reported in britain
forever. The sisters want justice against the newspapers which,
they say, stopped them getting a fair trial.
They are the first ever people to take the attorney general to
court to force him to prosecute newspapers under the contempt
of court laws, something which he refused to do after the trial.
"During the time we were in prison we put our trust in the
attorney general to do the right thing and curb the excesses,
but he didn't," says michelle.
Not surprisingly, the taylors aren't terribly keen on journalists.
Our interview is the first time both women have ever talked in
detail about their lives after prison and about why they are willing
to step back into the limelight over a point of principle.
Before they will see me, my journalistic credentials are thoroughly
"checked out" by mrs taylor to make sure "you are
who you say you are". Paranoid? Not when you look at how
the sisters became the plaything of the media.
Joking around in their parents' kitchen, wearing jeans and t-shirts,
michelle and lisa look just like any other london girls. You could
bump into them in tesco's or on the street and not pay a second's
notice.
Which is the point: They are just like anyone else. It's just
that what happened to them was so out of the ordinary. Balancing
next door's baby ("we all help each other out round here")
in one hand and gesturing with the other, ann taylor can remember
all the dates and times perfectly.
"We weren't allowed to sit in court in case we were later
called on to give evidence, but we got the papers every day,"
she recalls. She read with mounting horror as her daughters' lives
were taken apart and they were accused of jointly stabbing alison
54 times in a frenzied attack.
Their main alibi was not used in court, when one of michelle's
workmates, who was going to testify they were with her at the
time of the murder, retracted her evidence. She had been threatened
with a conspiracy to murder charge by the police.
According to the press the sisters were crazed jujitsu experts.
In fact they had given it up years earlier at a preliminary level.
Selective parts of michelle's diary were read out to the court
and repeated later in distorted, inexact reports by the tabloids.
Taken as a whole, her diary shows a young girl coming to terms
with the collapse of her first serious relationship - by the time
alison was murdered, michelle's affair with john shaugnessy was
all but over.
But taken in parts it became one of the pillars of a flimsy, circumstantial
case. Old entries from 1990 which said that michelle dreamed of
alison disappearing were taken out of context.
The experience has taught michelle, now aged just 24, a lesson:
"Never to write anything down again." "I was so
embarrassed in court but i just expected them to read the whole
thing and see what it was really about," she says. "I
thought 'everyone's going to know the diary means nothing'."
The taylor sisters were unlucky enough to be tried in the summer.
It was the height of the newspapers' silly season, when there
wasn't much news around. A sensational murder trial was every
tabloid news editor's dream, and the papers went to town.
Video clips were found from the shaugnessy's wedding which showed
michelle, like all the guests, kissing the bride and groom on
their way out of the church. The tabloids ran pictures of the
film slowed down so it looked as if michelle and john were involved
in a full-blown french kiss.
These were placed under screaming headlines like 'cheat's kiss'
and 'judas kiss'. This 'evidence' was inadmissible in court but
was good enough for newspapers trying to outsell each other with
increasingly gory details.
These were tactics later defended by the then sun editor kelvin
mackenzie, who denied breaking any court rules. Mr and mrs taylor
were under almost constant siege - one reporter from a national
tabloid exploded in a rage at their house because they wouldn't
sell their story.
But ann kept her faith in the legal system. "It was strange,"
she says, "but i just hoped that when the defence started
it would be put right." Both sisters, who hadn't seen the
papers, shared that optimism.
"We didn't expect to be convicted. We thought everyone would
know we were innocent," says michelle. |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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