Joanna Simpson’s family are right to be worried – too many violent offenders slip through the cracks of a service that is there to keep us safe.
Long before he killed her, Joanna Simpson’s husband had secretly dug what would become her grave. The couple were separated and in the final throes of finalising their divorce when Robert Brown, a British Airways pilot, battered his wife to death with a hammer as their two young children cowered in a nearby room. Joanna, who had become frightened of her controlling husband, was only days away from what should have been the last court hearing to end their marriage. Brown buried her in a secluded corner of Windsor Great Park in a makeshift coffin he had prepared earlier, and then the following day called the police.
In court, he didn’t deny killing her, but claimed that he had temporarily “just lost it”. The defence maintained that he had suffered from an “adjustment disorder” brought on by the stress of the divorce, which had made him lose control but disappeared again shortly afterwards. There were gasps in the courtroom when the jury acquitted him of murder; the judge, observing that Brown had clearly “intended to kill”, and had prepared thoroughly beforehand, sentenced him to 26 years for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. But, having served nearly half his sentence, Brown will be automatically eligible for release on licence later this year – unless Joanna’s family succeed in the campaign they’re launching shortly to stop that happening.
Suella Braverman’s announcement this week that police will have to treat domestic violence as a national threat, like terrorism, is a welcome move from the home secretary after a spate of disturbing, high-profile cases. But it also shines an awkward spotlight on what happens long after the police, courts and prison service have supposedly done their job.
Hetti Barkworth-Nanton, a friend of Joanna’s family and chair of trustees at the domestic violence charity Refuge, has pointed out that the organisation regularly hears from survivors “who don’t get told when perpetrators are coming out of prison, don’t get told when they get bail” and live in fear of their ex being released. Under Braverman’s reforms, domestic abusers should now be watched more closely; a pilot scheme could see offenders electronically tagged, banned from going near the victim’s home, or made to attend behaviour change programmes. People convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour will be subject to joint police and probation supervision on their release, as physically violent offenders would be. But as Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, has said, it will work only if there’s the money to actually make it happen.
