HUSH - Book - Page 21
HUSH – Breaking the Silence | Victim Support Scotland
Because of COVID it was like we were a nuisance to
them, bothering her, the pathologist that is. It felt like,
“Hurry up. Go and tell us if it is him or not.” Me and my mum
went in. My mum was shaking. I was holding her hand and I
was just being fine, trying to be fine... We went in and it was
just a normal room and then it's the fear. It's that nervous,
horrible, sick feeling in your stomach, not knowing what
was going to come up.
Then the picture came up and it was just horrible. It
didn't look like him at all. He looked really, really bad. It was
in black and white, which somehow made it worse. What
they did to him. He looked sore, like he was sleeping, but it
was just really, really painful. You just wanted to give him a
hug.
My mum was shouting, “Get it down. Get it down.” She's
hugging into me, but it's hard because I want to see more. I
wanted to know what they did to him. It was messing with
my head because it's horrible to watch but I'm wanting to
know everything because no one has told us anything.
That night when I was going to sleep and I was closing
my eyes, the same picture was coming up. I didn't know
that would happen. I'd close my eyes; the picture would
come up and I'd wake up. It's the picture you see when you
close your eyes. It's there ingrained, something you can't
take away and nobody would be able to take that away, the
feeling that someone could do that to someone.
‘You get this snobbery towards
people that get killed. It’s only
people that are from a scheme
or a bad area that get murdered.’
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I went straight into police mode because I always
wanted to be a police o cer, so I knew you need to give
them all the background. You have to try and prove it, and
just keep everything together. The process, it is all very
checklist, so the police can tick off boxes. Nothing is victim
or family centred or friendly or anything. It's like, “We need
to do a job” and it's very cold.
The liaison o cers were very thorough, and they tried
to tell us things in a nice way, but it was still, “We need to do
this because of this, this, and this.”
The days after I wasn't able to grieve like a normal
death. I've experienced those, being able to grieve and have
your peace. I remember one woman who said something
terrible. She said, “he was just like a teabag on the ground
when I saw him.” I couldn't register this, but then she didn't
just say it once, she said it three times. Oh, that was hard.
And the Facebook comments too. They were all supportive,
they were all nice. But it was just everyone being nosey and
not realising this is a person and not your TV show. In a way,
it was their entertainment.
You get this snobbery towards people that get killed.
It's only people that are from a scheme or a bad area that
get murdered. Like, you should have known it was going to
happen because you are from that area. When you study at
school you get told all these statistics and you feel like it's
your fault because of where you are from, who your friends
are and where you live. Then you start believing it yourself.
We've had to remind ourselves that no, the only people
to blame are the people who did it. Nobody else. I wrote
down this quote “You can imagine not to grieve for your
loved one, but then to be told in the depth of your grief that
your own loved one was responsible for their own death is
cruel to be told.” *
*Taken from Anne Williams, speaking on the Hillsborough Disaster.