April

by Paul

  ‘April was a fighter from the word go,’ Coral added. ‘And I promised her I would do this for her.’ By now her voice was breaking and she was struggling to contain her emotions. ‘I said I’d help other children so another family doesn’t have to go through this.’

  She began to cry, so I took her hand in mine, willing her to go on.

  ‘It’s not just us,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s their brothers and sisters. It affects them, too. I think the government should put more pressure on these companies because I promised April I would fight. If people see something that isn’t right, they should contact the police so these people can get some help themselves before another child is killed or abused. I’d like to get David Cameron involved as he could be an ambassador for this fight.’

  ‘So you want to meet David Cameron?’ Tessa asked.

  ‘Yes, I’d like to meet him and put our points through to him,’ Coral said. ‘Paul and I would like his help. He’s a dad, too. We’d like him to back us and help get the law changed in April’s name.’

  At the same time, Tia Sharp’s biological father, Steven Carter, was interviewed in the Channel 5 studio in London by another presenter, Emma Crosby. Although we had never met him in person, we were heartened to hear that he agreed wholeheartedly with our views on online child protection. He, too, believed the government needed to work with the internet companies to find a solution to the problem.

  ‘We will never get over what happened,’ he said, during his interview. ‘All we can do is prevent this from happening again.’

  ‘As a bereaved parent, what do you want David Cameron to do?’ Emma asked him.

  ‘He needs to ban it,’ he replied. ‘There should be no opportunity for these people to set up pages or put these images on the internet. If we’re able to trace IP addresses, why aren’t we tracing these people who are doing this?’

  Little did we know how seriously Channel 5 News would take our fight. The following day, a journalist from the programme was covering the G8 Summit in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland, where David Cameron was meeting with other world leaders. He was allowed just a few minutes to speak to the Prime Minister and chose to ask him if he’d be willing to meet us. The Prime Minister agreed in principle. A few weeks later, we received a call from the Sun, who had also been pressing for a meeting. One of their reporters had managed to get David Cameron’s office to commit to spending a morning with us on Friday 19 July.

  Of course, this presented us with a bit of a dilemma. Both Channel 5 News and the Sun wanted exclusive access to the meeting and our loyalties were divided, as we believed they’d both played an equal part in helping make it happen. We wanted as much coverage of the campaign as possible to raise awareness of what we were trying to achieve, but we knew we needed to keep the various media outlets we’d worked with on our side if we wanted to make as big an impact as we could. There were lots of crossed wires and confusion, which made an already stressful situation more stressful as we didn’t know much about managing the media. Eventually, after a few fraught phone calls, the Sun and Channel 5 News agreed they would both attend. We were glad they were willing to cooperate.

  We got to London around 7 p.m. the night before the meeting but it was a blisteringly hot evening and we found it hard to sleep in our hotel room, even with the air conditioning. We got up early and some chaperones from the Sun were waiting for us in the hotel lobby, along with Natalie and David, who would also attend the meeting.

  We had a few pictures taken, before being ushered through security and upstairs into the same room where we had met Claire Perry a few weeks previously. The Sun took photographs and Channel 5 News did some filming, before they left us alone with the Prime Minister.

  David Cameron spoke very gently to us. He addressed us by name, listened intently to everything we said and made all of the right noises. But, like Claire Perry, he was a true politician, and he never fully committed to anything.

  I asked him how likely it was that the government would pass a law which would make internet companies liable for huge fines if they allowed people access to images depicting child abuse.

  ‘Everyone knows the Tia and April stories,’ I told him. ‘We never want another family sitting here having suffered the same thing.’

  ‘This is an incredibly difficult thing to get right,’ he said, meeting my gaze. ‘We are looking across the board – nothing is ruled out, including passing laws. There’s not enough being done to find these images and those responsible for putting them there. That should be step one and we are going to do more of that.’

  I asked him how they planned to deal with the search engines which were allowing these images to be shared.

  ‘Targeting firms that let people upload the pictures is crucial,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘But the problem is there are some words that you might put in with an innocent explanation that can lead to horrible images.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Then there are people – including the hideous killers you have come face to face with – who are putting in appalling words to get appalling images.’

  ‘If a website is reported, its IP address should be blocked,’ I replied, firmly. ‘Why can’t they take this stuff off the internet? Kids are getting killed, raped, abused and messed up for the rest of their lives. What’s their excuse? I think it’s money. They have the technology and they can do this. If we could get a law for Europe, then that would be a good start.’

  ‘It’s a triangle,’ Natalie added. ‘The people uploading it, the people letting them upload it, and the people looking for it.’

  We chatted for around half an hour in total. The Prime Minister promised us he would try and influence the big internet companies using diplomacy. If that didn’t work, he told us, he would consider looking at passing a law.

  We’d always known that this meeting wouldn’t provide an instant solution to the problem but when the Prime Minister left – shaking our hands firmly as he exited the room – we were left wondering if he had really taken our concerns on board or whether he was simply paying us lip service. Every day that action was delayed was another day paedophiles were free to trawl the internet for the depraved images like those which led to April and Tia’s deaths. We were desperate to prevent another tragedy but it was like a ticking time bomb.

  ‘The clock is ticking against him,’ I told James Beal, the Sun reporter who’d accompanied us, once the Prime Minister had gone. ‘Every day it’s delayed there are more people getting fuelled up on this. It would break my heart if someone was in this situation again.’

  We then had another brief meeting with Claire Perry. Coral and I told her someone had posted a picture of a child with a huge inflatable penis on one of April’s Facebook sites and that it had taken Jamzin just five minutes to find it. She looked completely taken aback and we could tell she didn’t quite know what to say.

  We then got a taxi back to our hotel, where we had a quick debrief with the Sun before heading to catch our train home. As ever, coming home to a house without April in it was heartbreaking. Coral went to visit friends, while I took the dogs for a walk up the hill where I’d tied my ribbons. I couldn’t stop the tears and it was a few hours before I found the strength to go back home again. As I sat crying with my head in my hands, it was hard to believe I’d been sat across from the most powerful man in the country just a few hours earlier. Our lives had become unrecognisable, even to us.

  ‘Running around is very tiring,’ I wrote that evening. ‘It takes a few days to recover. I’m very emotional and I find myself tearful for a few days but then I tend to be OK(ish). It hurts me to think about what should have been but isn’t because of one cruel man.

  ‘I love you, April. Dad xxx.’

  A few days later, David Cameron made a speech at a conference organised by the children’s charity NSPCC. We didn’t get a chance to hear it in full until a few days later, but we’d got to grips with its main points before Channel 5 News called round to ask for our reaction to it.

  In
short, the Prime Minister said that major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing would have three months to introduce stricter measures to block child abuse images online. Experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre would be given more powers to examine secretive file-sharing networks and there would also be a database of banned images to help police track paedophiles.

  ‘There are some searches which are so abhorrent, where it’s absolutely obvious the person at the keyboard is looking for revolting child abuse images,’ the Prime Minister had told conference delegates.

  ‘In these cases, there should be no search results returned at all. Put simply, there needs to be a list of terms, a blacklist, which offer up no direct search returns.

  ‘So I have a very clear message for Google, Bing, Yahoo! and the rest: you have a duty to act on this, and it is a moral duty. I simply don’t accept the argument that some of these companies have used, to say that these searches should be allowed because of freedom of speech.

  ‘On Friday I sat with the parents of Tia Sharp and April Jones. They want to feel that everyone involved is doing everything they can to play their full part in helping rid the internet of child abuse images. So I’ve called for a progress report in Downing Street in October with the search engines coming in to update me.’

  For me, it was difficult to know how to feel. On the one hand, this seemed like a step in the right direction but, on the other, it felt like so much more could be done. David Cameron had essentially given these companies a stay of execution until October and it was still only July. Was he bowing down to these companies because of how much money they had? Both Coral and I knew how quickly Bridger’s vile obsession had got out of hand. We could only hope that history didn’t repeat itself between now and then.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Coral said, emphatically. ‘If we don’t start fining them, this will happen again. He’s being too soft on them.’

  On Channel 5 News that evening, Emma Crosby grilled the Prime Minister on his speech, asking him if he was really convinced he’d been tough enough on the internet companies.

  ‘Will you be able to look Coral and Paul Jones in the eye in eighteen months and say you’ve done everything you can?’ she asked, pointedly.

  ‘I’ll be able to look them in the eye and say we’ve taken some good steps forward,’ he replied, carefully. ‘I don’t think we will have done everything that some campaigners will want, but I think we will have made lots of really big steps down the road that will help parents, that will help children and that will reduce the amount of child abuse that takes place and is posted online.’

  She then asked him how the discussions with the companies involved had been.

  ‘Of course they’ve been heated, because these are important issues,’ he admitted. ‘I’m not trying to get into a massive great fight with a bunch of businesses. We talked to them about what is possible and we made some really good steps forward.’

  Channel 5 News had also asked some of the internet companies for their reaction to what the Prime Minister had said. Perhaps predictably, none of them wanted to give interviews on the subject. We thought their silence was extremely cowardly. What did they have to hide from us?

  Coral was very emotional in our own interview and it was hard for me to watch. Once the camera crew had left, she admitted to me that she felt David Cameron had used some of our words and ideas but wasn’t willing to properly take on the might of such big, powerful businesses.

  However, we were slowly coming to realise that, in politics, nothing moves quickly. I remembered our meeting with Sara Payne and how long she’d fought for Sarah’s Law. We had a long road ahead of us. In a few short weeks, we’d made some progress but the fight was only just beginning. We’d done as much research as we could and we were trying to keep our heads above water with all of the technical terms and jargon but, no matter how hard it got, we wouldn’t give up.

  ‘I don’t understand why everything takes so long,’ Coral said, exasperated. ‘If this had happened in an MP’s family I bet they wouldn’t be taking their time over it.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘We’ll just have to hope that they do what’s right eventually.’

  Before April was taken, we’d have laughed in the face of anyone who suggested we’d one day be sharing a table with some of the country’s most powerful people, speaking about a political campaign. It was never a life we would have chosen for ourselves – we were hundreds of miles from Westminster and the hustle and bustle of parliament in more ways than one. Travelling exhausted us and we weren’t impressed by fancy restaurants and posh hotels. We’d both have chosen a quiet walk along the beach with the children over hobnobbing with politicians any day. But, now, we didn’t feel like we had a choice. This path had been chosen for us.

  That evening, I opened April’s bedroom door and felt the tears sting my eyes.

  ‘This is all for you, April,’ I said softly.

  13

  The House of Horrors

  While we tried to focus on our campaign against child pornography, we also had to think about picking up the pieces of our lives. We might have looked like we were holding it together to the outside world, but behind closed doors it was a very different story.

  Sara Payne has often said that she felt like two people in the aftermath of her daughter’s death. In public, she was the brave bereaved mother, the campaigner who was determined to do anything she could to stop another family going through the hell that hers had been – but once the television cameras had stopped rolling, she could barely bring herself to get out of bed. We were beginning to understand exactly what she meant.

  Sir Richard Branson, the chairman of Virgin, had read about April’s death and kindly offered us a free family holiday to Orlando, Florida. We were very grateful to him and it was good for us to get away and spend some quality time together as a family, away from the distractions of home.

  We hadn’t bargained for how hot and humid Florida would be in the middle of August, though. It was peak season, as it was the school holidays in so many places all over the world, and the parks were extremely crowded. Coral struggled to cope with the congestion, although she tried to put a brave face on in front of the children, who seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  When we arrived home, the local council was renovating all the houses on Bryn-y-Gog and our kitchen had been ripped out. Of course, we’d had lots of advance warning that this would be happening, but coming home to such upheaval only served to make us even more stressed and tearful. Perhaps now all the hype surrounding us was dying down, we had more time to be alone with our thoughts.

  ‘Over the last week I’ve struggled with my emotions,’ I wrote in my diary, a few days after we arrived home. ‘I’ve been very tired today. Coral has been very down as well – a mixture of jet lag and the house being turned upside down as our kitchen is being refitted. It’s also been very quiet. Not many people are calling and we feel a little let down – now the show is over, we’re on our own.

  ‘I walked my dogs up over the hill today and cried at the top. I think it’s my place to let off steam and just think and have a cry. I’ve been crying most nights lately. Sometimes just a few tears, sometimes a lot.

  ‘I love you, April. Dad xxx.’

  Around this time, Coral decided to go to the doctor. She was already on strong medication for depression but her situation was becoming intolerable. She’d always been so fiercely independent but, almost a year on, simply leaving the house filled her with dread. She couldn’t go anywhere on her own and she was fast becoming a prisoner in her own home.

  After a few appointments, she was diagnosed with agoraphobia. We were glad we at least knew what the problem was, but the diagnosis didn’t provide a miracle solution. Instead we both continued to see our counsellors, knowing that this would at least help us sort through the messy thoughts that continued to live in our heads.

  It was at this point that I decided to stop writing in my diary
every day. It had been a lifeline for me throughout the investigation and the trial, but I began to realise that forcing myself to write every evening was making me pick over old thoughts, often unnecessarily. I couldn’t bear to throw it away, but I decided to keep it in a drawer so I could still write if I felt the need, or if there were any major developments.

  I suppose I was beginning to come to terms with the idea that we might never get closure. It was highly unlikely that Bridger would tell us where the rest of April’s remains were and it was even more unlikely that he’d ever admit what really happened on the night she vanished.

  Early on in the investigation, Coral had asked Dave and Hayley if there was any possibility we could visit Bridger’s house. April had almost certainly died there and my wife thought it would help her feel closer to our daughter.

  I wasn’t so sure. After we’d seen the pictures of the cottage in the lead-up to the trial, with the arrows pointing to the spots where traces of April’s blood had been found, I’d imagined the hundreds of horrific things that could have happened within those four walls. I had no desire to see the cottage for myself, but I knew how important it was to Coral and there was no way I’d let her go there alone.

  We’d first asked our FLOs about this just after Christmas but the final decision rested with Andy John. He’d asked us to hold off until the trial was over, as the house was still a crime scene and he didn’t want to risk contaminating it. He was also concerned that we might be called as witnesses and, if we’d been allowed to see key evidence before the court case, Bridger’s lawyers could argue that he hadn’t had a fair trial.

  Once the court case was over, we raised the issue again. There were still some legal issues that had to be resolved and the police couldn’t give us access to the house until Bridger decided whether or not to appeal his conviction. However, a few weeks after we returned from Florida, we got a call from Dave, who told us that we’d now be able to take a trip to Mount Pleasant if we wished. Keen to get it over with, we arranged to go with him to the cottage later that same week.