Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

We all come to this place to speak for the people we represent and give a voice to those who cannot be heard. Today, I rise to speak on behalf of Georgia Williams, a Telford teenager, and her family. Almost exactly eight years ago today, Georgia suffered a brutal death at the hands of a sadistic killer, who repeatedly sought out young victims and groomed and stalked them as he pursued and finally executed a grotesque sexual fantasy. The perpetrator rightly received a whole-life term.

Georgia was 17. She was optimistic, she was fun, she was happy and she shone with life and energy. Full of hope for the future, she had her whole life to live, ambitions to fulfil and dreams to come true. Georgia epitomised what is so good about young people. Her parents, Lynette and Steve, who I have got to know over the years, reached out to me on hearing about the release of Colin Pitchfork because they know the grief and suffering that victims’ families experience and they want others to understand. They want others to know why life must mean life.

Some crimes are so abhorrent and offensive to the moral conscience that society cannot just be expected to accept their perpetrators back in our midst. Society is being asked to forget the crime, forget the victim and forgive the perpetrator. In the most grotesque and heinous cases, why should society be required to accept that the slate must be wiped clean? Why do we insist, just because a period of time has passed, that such crimes must now be forgotten? We are in this place as legislators. We represent the people who put us here and we need a Parole Board that operates under a legislative framework that gives the public and victims trust and confidence.

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and his excellent team for their radical and reforming work. I particularly congratulate them on the action taken on automatic early release for serious sexual and violent offenders. That subject caused much heartache in my constituency and I am grateful for their work on it. I now urge my right hon. and learned Friend to focus on the role of the Parole Board and ensure that it has the full confidence of the public and victims.

No one can begin to understand the terrible grief and devastation that the Williams family suffered, not least because Georgia’s killer could have been stopped before he eventually targeted her. For any parent, losing a child is a tragedy from which they never recover, but to have a child taken in the horrific circumstances that Georgia suffered is a torment and despair that we cannot begin to comprehend.

I will end by sharing the words of Georgia’s parents with the House:

“To hear that Colin Pitchfork, who took the lives of two children for his own pleasure, is to be released, is an insult to the two young victims.

The impact of losing a child is devastating, this anguish is compounded when as parents, you know that those last minutes of your loved one’s life were spent in terror. These monsters destroy more than one life, they destroy whole families.

It has been 8 years of torment for me and my family since Georgia was taken. The impact on my mental health has ruined my life and in turn my family’s—there is no cure for our suffering. Based on my experience as a police detective, I believe Pitchfork will kill again, I’ve seen it all too often.

Victims’ families are forgotten in a short while, but the terror and chaos it causes in our lives goes on. It changes how we live our lives forever—we want to reach out to ease the extreme distress of other suffering families.

Please Lucy, do everything you can for the victims of Colin Pitchfork to ease their families’ suffering.

Keep Pitchfork in prison.

Life must mean life.”