April

by Paul

  ‘Give us a call if you need anything,’ Dave said, with a smile. Coral and I both knew then that we’d always be able to rely on them, long after April’s name had disappeared from the front pages of the newspapers, which gave us a crumb of comfort.

  When we got back to the cottage, Ryan Parry and Emma Foster, two reporters from the Sun newspaper, visited. After much deliberation, we’d decided to give them the first post-trial interview, which was to be run over the next three days in the newspaper. We’d already had a few chats with them and we felt we could trust them with our story. We knew the interview would be hard but we were desperate to make sure April was remembered not just as the victim of the most brutal of crimes, but as the daughter we knew and loved – our darling little girl with her gorgeous, big, brown eyes and huge heart.

  The previous weekend, Ryan and Emma had visited us in Machynlleth and a photographer had taken pictures of our house and April’s bedroom. Both Coral and I had found this very hard and even the photographer had been in tears when he saw April’s teddies stretched across her empty bed. The Sun had offered to pay us for the story and, at one point, I’d found myself crying, wondering if we’d sold April out. But after many emotional conversations Coral and I decided to accept the newspaper’s offer of a financial reward. Not only did we want to tell our side of the story after being silent for so long, we also had to think of our family’s future. With neither of us able to work, we’d spent many a sleepless night wondering how we’d support Jazmin and Harley as they grew older.

  As Jazmin was studying media at college, the newspaper had also offered her an internship in exchange for our cooperation. These opportunities are obviously few and far between, and we knew how good a work placement with the biggest newspaper in the country would look on Jazmin’s C V. All things considered, we felt we couldn’t turn the offer down, but it didn’t make things any easier.

  We’d handed over treasured family photographs of April. There were pictures of her as a tiny baby, covered in wires in her incubator and being bathed in the mixing bowl, and others from when she was a little older, at birthday parties and on days out.

  ‘She was our little princess,’ Coral had sobbed to Ryan and Emma, as they’d looked through them. Despite her pain, she’d managed to speak articulately and movingly about our daughter. ‘She was always smiling and laughing and so full of life. Even though she had cerebral palsy and other health problems, she didn’t let it stop her. She was our little fighter from the beginning.

  ‘No one can ever replace her. Even though she was a tiny little thing, she had a huge presence. Our lives will never be the same without her. Her death has shattered our entire family.’

  ‘Today has pulled me apart,’ I wrote in my diary that evening. ‘I cried from start to finish. It hurts so deeply. My pain at having lost April doesn’t lessen with time. Things just seem to get tougher and, in moments like this, I’m so tired and so, so sad. I try to do the best for my family but I wonder if I’ve done the wrong thing. I miss my April. She was my dream little daughter.’

  On the day of the verdict, the process was a lot less formal than the statements we’d given on the court steps, and Ryan and Emma made us feel at ease. While we’d touched on April’s childhood and the day she’d been taken from us in our previous conversations, they now wanted to hear all about our reaction to the verdict and the sentencing. Neither of us was in the mood to hold back.

  ‘Bridger is just a monster,’ I told them. ‘He was prepared to do or say anything to wriggle out of what he’s done. He has done such an awful thing and yet he couldn’t own up, even with all the evidence stacked against him.

  ‘He honestly thought it was worth the risk; that he could get away with it. It was just a sexual fantasy for him at the end of the day, and our April paid for it with her life.’

  ‘He’s put a hole in our heart,’ Coral added. ‘He ripped a happy family apart. He’s evil.’

  They asked us how we’d feel if we were ever to come into contact with Bridger again. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I could feel the anger that had been bubbling inside me for eight long months coming to the surface.

  ‘Bridger has never had one thought for our family or what we’ve been going through,’ I found myself saying. ‘He’s just a coward, an evil coward.

  ‘If I was ever put face-to-face with him I don’t think I could bring myself to talk to him. I’m pretty sure I’d just strangle him.

  ‘He picked on a five-year-old little girl who had health problems and couldn’t defend herself against him. How could anyone do that?’

  Coral was in tears so I put my arm around her and tried to console her. ‘He’s taken everything,’ she wept. ‘He’s taken my little girl from me, he’s destroyed our family in one go.

  ‘And he hasn’t just wrecked our lives; he’s wrecked the lives of our other children. Our friends, our neighbours have all been hurt by this. It has hurt loads of people.’

  Of course, April’s body still hadn’t been recovered, and Ryan and Emma wanted to ask us if we had any hope of finding the rest of her remains. After the verdict had been announced, it had emerged that Bridger had confessed to a Catholic priest called Father Barry O’Sullivan that he’d dumped our little girl in the River Dovey. Father O’Sullivan had been asked by the prison to counsel Bridger but had been left so traumatised by their conversations that he’d needed therapy himself. However, on account of the forensic evidence, Bridger’s claim had been largely dismissed by the police, who were still convinced he’d cut up her little body and scattered the remains.

  ‘Lots of people have questioned him, but he’s refused to tell us all along where her body is,’ Coral said. ‘If he’s lied to police, barristers and the judge, there’s no way he’ll tell me where my little girl is. Now he’s been found guilty he could tell us, but he hasn’t.’

  After the interview was finished, we posed for pictures and recorded a video for the newspaper’s website. When Ryan and Emma left, we packed up our things before going for a pub meal with my mum, Dai, Fil and Jazz. We had just finished our dinner when one of the customers in the pub noticed us and came over to shake our hands.

  ‘Mr and Mr Jones,’ he said. ‘I was so pleased for you today. Let me buy you a drink.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ I replied. This man was amiable without being overbearing, like some of the people who cornered us in the street. It was still strange to be recognised but nice to know the public were behind us.

  Jazmin, Fil and I played some table tennis and pool while my mum, Dai and Coral went back to the house. Coral was exhausted and needed an early night. When we got back to the cottage around 10 p.m., I felt drained. I went to write in my diary and the tears started to flow. The conviction was like a massive weight being lifted off my shoulders but there was still a huge hole in our lives.

  ‘It’s been a long, hard but good day,’ I wrote. ‘Coral spoke so well and so clearly. I’ve never been so proud of a woman in all my life.

  ‘The law has sentenced Mark Bridger to the maximum. We couldn’t ask for any more but in a way we’re still disappointed with the end result. I don’t think he’ll ever suffer like we have, but it’s good to know he’s away for the rest of his life. I’m glad to get it over with but now I just have a numb feeling. Coral and I will just have to rest now and take stock of our situation and think about what to do next.

  ‘We just can’t thank everyone enough for all their help: Dyfed-Powys Police (what a team), the search teams, the locals in Mach, the CPS, the jury and the judge, friends, family and our country for their support. We thank them all from the bottom of our hearts.

  ‘I love you, April Jones – we all love and miss you. Dad xxx.’

  11

  The Aftermath

  I thought I’d sleep like a log on the night after the verdict, but I was actually pretty restless. Coral didn’t get much rest either and we both got up early. There were so many thoughts running through our heads that it was hard to
switch off. Above all, we both wondered how we’d readjust to normal life now the trial was over. For eight months our sole purpose had been to get justice for April. Now we had achieved that, all we were left with was our overpowering grief.

  It was a beautiful morning, so we had breakfast outside our little cottage before packing our things into Dai’s van. On the way home, I noticed that the newspaper billboards outside every newsagent and convenience store bore April’s name. Even though we’d been in the media spotlight for almost a year, it was still strange seeing our daughter’s name plastered everywhere and our faces on the front pages of the newspapers. Thankfully, the Sun article was sensitively written and we were both happy with the end result.

  We got back to Machynlleth by mid-afternoon. Harley was away for the weekend with a friend’s family and Jazmin had gone out for a few hours with my mum and Dai, so the house was deathly quiet. Both Coral and I were fighting back tears as we stepped over the threshold and the dogs ran to greet us.

  The lack of sleep had begun to catch up with Coral, so she went for a nap while I walked the dogs along the riverside. Enjoying the sunlight on my face, it felt good to be outdoors again. It hadn’t felt natural to me being cooped up inside all day.

  As ever, my thoughts turned to April. The next thing Coral and I would have to consider was our little girl’s funeral, but we didn’t know when her remains would be released to us. Even when they were, all we’d have would be a few tiny bone fragments. Coral had told the Sun that she feared going to her grave without knowing where April was, just like Winnie Johnson, the mother of the Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett. I’d begun to accept that this was a strong possibility.

  Coral and I had also begun to discuss the idea of a campaign against child pornography. Although we’d been warned about the indecent images before the court case, we’d had no idea of the extent of Bridger’s vile obsession until we’d attended the trial. Quite frankly we were horrified at how readily available such depraved material was online. We were left in no doubt that the disgusting content Bridger had accessed in the lead-up to April’s abduction had fuelled his sick fantasies.

  We were bemused that his online activity hadn’t been picked up before April was taken, as he’d viewed so many illegal pictures, but not as bemused as we were about the fact he’d managed to access these images in the first place. We had no idea why the major search engines, such as Google and Bing, which was owned by Microsoft, didn’t have proper safeguards in place to automatically filter such disgusting content, to ensure it didn’t appear in search results.

  We didn’t buy the idea that they weren’t capable of this – these were some of the biggest corporations in the world, with billions of pounds and scores of experts at their disposal. If they didn’t clean up their act, Coral and I believed we needed to get tough with them and hit them where it really hurt – in the pocket. We saw no reason why the law couldn’t be changed to ensure they’d be liable for huge fines if they didn’t do enough to stop paedophiles successfully searching for illegal images.

  We weren’t naive; we knew that ridding the internet of child pornography wouldn’t be enough to stamp out paedophilia completely, but we hoped it could go some way to addressing the problem. We mentioned this to Ryan and Emma from the Sun and they agreed to help arrange a meeting with Dr Sara Payne, a high-profile campaigner against child abuse who wrote a regular column for the newspaper.

  Like most parents, we were horrified when Sara’s eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted in the summer of 2000, while she played near her grandparents’ house in Kingston Gorse, West Sussex. Sarah and her brother Lee had been playing hide and seek but, after a short while, Sarah fell over and hurt herself. She decided she wanted to go back to see her grandmother, Les, who had stayed at home, as she was tired after cooking a large family meal. Lee tried to run after her and had only taken his eyes off her for a second when she disappeared.

  After seventeen tortuous days, Sarah’s little body was found in a field around fifteen miles from where she was last seen alive. The story was on the front page of newspapers for weeks and was the leading item on all the television news bulletins. I’d just moved in with Coral and, along with the rest of the nation, we watched in horror, unable to imagine the agony of this poor girl’s family. We never dreamed that one day we’d understand their pain more than anyone ever should.

  Following a large-scale police investigation, a paedophile called Roy Whiting was charged and later convicted of Sarah’s murder. In an excruciating twist, it transpired that Sarah’s brother Lee had seen Whiting waiting in a white van yards from the beach just moments after he’d lost sight of his sister. Whiting had grinned at Lee, who had no idea that Sarah was inside, then waved as he drove off to abuse and kill her.

  After the trial, it emerged that Whiting had been sentenced to four years in prison for sexually assaulting another eight-year-old girl five years previously. Shortly after he arrived in jail in 1995, he was assessed by a psychiatrist, who deemed him likely to reoffend. Despite the fact Whiting refused to attend a sex offenders’ rehabilitation course, he was released after serving just over half of his sentence – meaning he was free to abduct and murder Sarah.

  When Sara discovered this, she was naturally distraught and decided she had to act. With the help of the now-defunct tabloid newspaper, the News of the World, she began to campaign for a law that would give parents and guardians controlled access to the Sex Offenders’ Register. At the discretion of the relevant authorities, this would allow adults involved in the care of a young person to check whether individuals who came into contact with the child had any record of sexually abusing young people. This was partly modelled on the Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act in the USA, more commonly known as Megan’s Law. It was informally named after a seven-year-old girl, Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered in 1994 by a neighbour with previous convictions for sexually assaulting children.

  In 2011, after a decade-long fight, Sarah’s Law – known officially as the Child Sex Offender Disclosure scheme – was finally introduced in the UK, by which point Sara had become one of the most respected campaigners in the country. She was awarded an MBE for her work in 2008, which was followed by an honorary doctorate from the Open University in 2012. She has also served as an adviser to the UK government.

  When we met Sara in London on 4 June, Sarah’s Law had already helped concerned adults identify hundreds of convicted paedophiles who had access to children close to them. Sara had been absolutely unwavering in her determination to have the law changed, and we knew her advice would be very useful if we wanted to drive through our own changes.

  Ryan and Emma arrived in Machynlleth in the early afternoon of the Monday following the trial. They had asked us if we’d like to bring Jazmin and Harley to London with us and we agreed this would be a good idea. We’d spent so much time apart from them over the last month that we decided it would be nice to do something as a family. We also thought the change of scenery would benefit us all.

  Jazmin and I travelled with Ryan in one car, while Coral and Harley went with Emma in another. The journey took over four hours and this gave both Coral and me a chance to speak to the reporters about the campaign. We arrived at our hotel around 6.30 p.m. and, shortly afterwards, we were taken out for a meal.

  Over the course of various discussions throughout the day, Coral and I had told Ryan and Emma that we’d like to start a petition against the child pornography that seemed so readily available on the internet. The Sun quickly agreed to give us its backing and we agreed on a few key objectives.

  There was one thing on which we were absolutely clear: we wanted it to be made illegal for search engines to return links to content which depicted any kind of child sex abuse, and we wanted the companies involved to be liable for substantial fines if they didn’t comply with the legislation we proposed. Very quickly, we began to refer to this as April’s Law.

  We decided that we als
o wanted to make it compulsory for internet companies to help fund policing of the web, and we wanted the government to dedicate greater financial resources to clamping down on illegal images of children online.

  In our view, the combined funds would allow them to employ technical experts to identify abusive images and people searching for child pornography. We also wanted on-screen warnings for people who viewed this content, to make browsers aware of the nature of such websites before they entered them. Coral suggested that if a person was caught trying to access the same illegal website on a second occasion, the police should be notified immediately and an investigation launched.

  We met Sara in a coffee shop across from our hotel early the next morning. I was slightly surprised to discover she was on crutches. She greeted us warmly and was very open about her health problems, telling us she’d been paralysed down her left side after suffering a stroke several years previously. As we sat down and ordered drinks, we learned just how much she had been through since Sarah’s death. Sara and Mike had been childhood sweethearts but the grief of losing their much-loved daughter had torn their marriage apart. However, while they were in the process of separating, Sara discovered she was pregnant with their fifth child, Ellie, who was now nine. Despite all of the obstacles she’d faced, Sara had flatly refused to give up and remained wholeheartedly committed to campaigning against the sexual abuse of children. This only cemented our admiration for her.

  When the conversation turned to the campaign, however, I took a bit of a back seat. It was important for Coral to talk to Sara as much as she could, mother to mother.

  Coral recalls:

  Although Sara immediately struck me as friendly and sympathetic, my overriding memory of her is of her fire. I was in awe of her determination and resilience. We immediately felt her presence when we walked into the room. It was clear she was no softly spoken shrinking violet. Life had dealt her so many cruel blows, but every time she had come back fighting.