Sandhusker
Well-known member
My son got murdered eight year ago. The one that done it is walking the streets'
IT CAN'T be easy to stand up in a room of more than 500 people and talk about the worst thing that ever happened to you. For one man at this public meeting in Greenock Town Hall the challenge is physical as well as emotional. The 27-year-old rises slowly, pushing himself up on crutches, leans into the microphone, and in a halting yet determined voice tells his story.
"My name is Steven Hughes," he says, "and I was attacked with a knife. I had six operations and I ended up losing my leg." He starts crying and breathes out hard. "It's still very hard for me. It's awful hard for my dad and family as well. So…"
He can't go on. Sits down and puts his face in his arms to loud applause. This is the Inverclyde Knife Crime Conference, organised by the Greenock Telegraph and John Muir, a 69-year-old whose 34-year-old son Damian was stabbed to death in 2007. Muir has since campaigned against knife crime and earlier this year argued in the Scottish Parliament that repeat offenders should be given mandatory prison sentences. Had these been in force, he says, his son's killer would have been in jail and Damian would not have died.
Muir is calm and amiable, but has flashes of anger. "My son's lying in Inverkip cemetery," he tells me later, "and before he died he had eight holes punched into him by a mindless thug."
The Inverclyde conference is intended to come up with specific ideas on how to tackle the blade culture in the area; these will be passed on to the Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill. And while it's certainly true that the audience are keen to contribute, the whole event feels more cathartic than constructive. These people are angry, fearful and heart-sore, and for three intense hours they let those feelings out. The organisers were determined that this wouldn't be just another talking shop, and it's not; it's a weeping shop, a raging shop.
The panel on stage includes Muir, a couple of senior police officers, a procurator fiscal, a surgeon who deals with knife wounds, and Jason Trotter, a young man with a scarred face who stills and chills the room with an understated account of being attacked in a pub toilet: "Two men were standing above me. And all I could see was one of them swiping his arm…"
What the panel doesn't have, which might have been instructive, is a violent offender who has turned his life around. It would take a brave man to stand in front of these people and talk about his days with a blade, though. The crowd aren't exactly holding pitchforks and burning torches, but there is a palpable hostility in the air.
That's not surprising. Huge numbers seem to have been touched by knife crime. On the ground floor of this grand hall, some seats remain empty, but that seems appropriate as there are plenty of felt absences. A middle-aged woman in black, two rows back from me, says: "My son got murdered eight year ago. I never got justice, and the one that done it is walking the streets yet."
The fortysomething man right in front speaks about his brother, stabbed to death by a 16-year-old in a fight over stolen lager.
A woman in a grey jumper seated in the balcony talks about the attack on her son. "It wasn't just knives. It was machetes. It was golf clubs. It was a sword. A screwdriver. It was like graffiti all over his body."
Everyone seems to have a story. Even the off-duty police officer who gives me a lift home talks about the time when, before he joined the force, he was stabbed in the chest with a Skean Dhu, "which I don't think the guy was carrying for patriotic reasons".
Criminologists talk about the "ripple effect" of violence, meaning it is not only the victim who is harmed but all those close to them. In Greenock town hall it's almost possible to see the effect pass through the crowd in great sickening waves.
Dozens of seats are filled by family and friends of Darren Pyper, a 14-year-old from Gourock who died when an artery in his leg was severed. His attacker, 64, died of a heart attack while on remand. The family feel they have been denied justice and have come tonight wearing T-shirts with Darren's smiling, unageing face on the front.
"If they take a life they should do life," says the boy's grandmother, Anne. "A life sentence is exactly what we're doing. We have to suffer for the rest of our lives because we don't have Darren here."
Scottish media reports about knife crime tend to focus on Glasgow and its peripheral housing schemes, but the towns and villages elsewhere are not immune. People are cut and killed in places like Renfrewshire and Ayrshire too, within sight of rolling fields and looming islands. At the very moment this conference is taking place, there's an attempted murder with a machete along the road in Port Glasgow.
That said, according to police figures, serious assaults in the area are at a record low. There have been 160 this year, down from an average of 180. Police in Inverclyde now seize around 100 bladed weapons in the course of a year. Five years ago, it was almost three times that number.
Yet, statistics aside, people feel afraid. Why? Well, for one thing, the knife problem is arguably more disturbing outside the city. Where populations are relatively small, it's possible that a surviving victim, or the family of a murder victim, will find themselves living scarred-cheek-by-snarling-jowl with the perpetrator when he is released from prison.
I speak with Stephen Gray, a 47-year-old local man, who tells me about his brother being stabbed to death with a butcher's knife in a double homicide. The killer, 16 at the time, served 11 years before being released on parole.
Gray has tears in his eyes. "It's just heartbreaking," he says. "Unless something like this happens to you, you can never understand how bad it is. What's worse is when I'm at my work, driving the bin lorries for the council, he's walking up the street beside me smirking."
IT CAN'T be easy to stand up in a room of more than 500 people and talk about the worst thing that ever happened to you. For one man at this public meeting in Greenock Town Hall the challenge is physical as well as emotional. The 27-year-old rises slowly, pushing himself up on crutches, leans into the microphone, and in a halting yet determined voice tells his story.
"My name is Steven Hughes," he says, "and I was attacked with a knife. I had six operations and I ended up losing my leg." He starts crying and breathes out hard. "It's still very hard for me. It's awful hard for my dad and family as well. So…"
He can't go on. Sits down and puts his face in his arms to loud applause. This is the Inverclyde Knife Crime Conference, organised by the Greenock Telegraph and John Muir, a 69-year-old whose 34-year-old son Damian was stabbed to death in 2007. Muir has since campaigned against knife crime and earlier this year argued in the Scottish Parliament that repeat offenders should be given mandatory prison sentences. Had these been in force, he says, his son's killer would have been in jail and Damian would not have died.
Muir is calm and amiable, but has flashes of anger. "My son's lying in Inverkip cemetery," he tells me later, "and before he died he had eight holes punched into him by a mindless thug."
The Inverclyde conference is intended to come up with specific ideas on how to tackle the blade culture in the area; these will be passed on to the Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill. And while it's certainly true that the audience are keen to contribute, the whole event feels more cathartic than constructive. These people are angry, fearful and heart-sore, and for three intense hours they let those feelings out. The organisers were determined that this wouldn't be just another talking shop, and it's not; it's a weeping shop, a raging shop.
The panel on stage includes Muir, a couple of senior police officers, a procurator fiscal, a surgeon who deals with knife wounds, and Jason Trotter, a young man with a scarred face who stills and chills the room with an understated account of being attacked in a pub toilet: "Two men were standing above me. And all I could see was one of them swiping his arm…"
What the panel doesn't have, which might have been instructive, is a violent offender who has turned his life around. It would take a brave man to stand in front of these people and talk about his days with a blade, though. The crowd aren't exactly holding pitchforks and burning torches, but there is a palpable hostility in the air.
That's not surprising. Huge numbers seem to have been touched by knife crime. On the ground floor of this grand hall, some seats remain empty, but that seems appropriate as there are plenty of felt absences. A middle-aged woman in black, two rows back from me, says: "My son got murdered eight year ago. I never got justice, and the one that done it is walking the streets yet."
The fortysomething man right in front speaks about his brother, stabbed to death by a 16-year-old in a fight over stolen lager.
A woman in a grey jumper seated in the balcony talks about the attack on her son. "It wasn't just knives. It was machetes. It was golf clubs. It was a sword. A screwdriver. It was like graffiti all over his body."
Everyone seems to have a story. Even the off-duty police officer who gives me a lift home talks about the time when, before he joined the force, he was stabbed in the chest with a Skean Dhu, "which I don't think the guy was carrying for patriotic reasons".
Criminologists talk about the "ripple effect" of violence, meaning it is not only the victim who is harmed but all those close to them. In Greenock town hall it's almost possible to see the effect pass through the crowd in great sickening waves.
Dozens of seats are filled by family and friends of Darren Pyper, a 14-year-old from Gourock who died when an artery in his leg was severed. His attacker, 64, died of a heart attack while on remand. The family feel they have been denied justice and have come tonight wearing T-shirts with Darren's smiling, unageing face on the front.
"If they take a life they should do life," says the boy's grandmother, Anne. "A life sentence is exactly what we're doing. We have to suffer for the rest of our lives because we don't have Darren here."
Scottish media reports about knife crime tend to focus on Glasgow and its peripheral housing schemes, but the towns and villages elsewhere are not immune. People are cut and killed in places like Renfrewshire and Ayrshire too, within sight of rolling fields and looming islands. At the very moment this conference is taking place, there's an attempted murder with a machete along the road in Port Glasgow.
That said, according to police figures, serious assaults in the area are at a record low. There have been 160 this year, down from an average of 180. Police in Inverclyde now seize around 100 bladed weapons in the course of a year. Five years ago, it was almost three times that number.
Yet, statistics aside, people feel afraid. Why? Well, for one thing, the knife problem is arguably more disturbing outside the city. Where populations are relatively small, it's possible that a surviving victim, or the family of a murder victim, will find themselves living scarred-cheek-by-snarling-jowl with the perpetrator when he is released from prison.
I speak with Stephen Gray, a 47-year-old local man, who tells me about his brother being stabbed to death with a butcher's knife in a double homicide. The killer, 16 at the time, served 11 years before being released on parole.
Gray has tears in his eyes. "It's just heartbreaking," he says. "Unless something like this happens to you, you can never understand how bad it is. What's worse is when I'm at my work, driving the bin lorries for the council, he's walking up the street beside me smirking."