Hansard

I add my thanks to Graeme Pearson for securing today’s debate on a very difficult, but important, subject. I, too, praise the work of the Moira Fund and Petal Support. The support that those organisations give to people affected by murder and culpable homicide is vital and should be supported.

Today I highlight just two of several cases that I have been involved in, to explain why the support from those two organisations is so important and why, in Scotland, we need a dedicated victim support homicide service that provides comprehensive support, not just in the immediate aftermath of a particular crime, but throughout the time that a victim’s family is engaged with the justice system.

In 2008, my constituent Giselle Ross waved goodbye to her two sons, six-year-old Paul and two-year-old Jay, as her former husband Ashok Kalyanjee took the boys to visit their grandmother. Ashok later took the boys to the Campsie Fells to a spot that he knew their mother loved. Once there, he put them in his car and stabbed them repeatedly. One of the boys witnessed what happened to his brother before being attacked himself. Kalyanjee then telephoned Giselle and taunted her about the boys, before setting fire to his car with him and the two boys inside. He was found alive by police but his sons were dead.

Kalyanjee was examined by three psychiatrists and found to be sane and fit to plead. He eventually pled guilty. In delivering his verdict, Lord Brailsford apologised in court to the Ross family for the protracted process and the requirement to obtain so many reports before a verdict could be arrived at. It had taken some eight months to get to the point of conviction.

Of course, that was not the end of the matter—as though there ever could be an end for Giselle Ross—because Kalyanjee then had his lawyers ask for a review of his conviction on the ground of his mental state at the time of the incident. That application was refused in early 2012, but a further application for review was submitted later that year, and this time it was granted. After a number of harrowing court hearings, Kalyanjee’s bid to have his conviction quashed was rejected in May 2014.

The case did not end with the conviction of Ashok Kalyanjee; it continued for another five years while he used the justice system to argue his case, as he was entitled to do. However, one could be forgiven for thinking that he simply wanted to continue his vindictive campaign against his former wife, Giselle. The question is, what support was available to Giselle during all that time? The answer is, very little, and she is not alone in that.

I want to consider another, very different case in which it seems to me that the system could have done more to support a family. One evening, my constituent Charles Howe took his wife and young son out for a drive. Out of the blue, another driver swerved across the road and crashed head on into Mr Howe’s car. Mr Howe suffered facial injuries and a shattered knee, and his nine-year-old son had a broken arm and facial cuts. Mrs Howe, who was nine months pregnant, died of her injuries, as did her unborn son. The driver of the other vehicle—Goldie—suffered some injuries, but ran away from the scene and evaded arrest for some six months. Because of the illness of a witness, Goldie pled guilty to failing to report an accident and driving without insurance while disqualified, and was admonished on a charge of dangerous driving.

I do not intend to rail against those sentences or charges, although there is much to rail about; rather, I want to highlight an aspect of that case that has added to Mr Howe’s concerns in the 20 years since the deaths of his wife and son. His son, who was to be named Dylan, was recorded as having been stillborn in spite of the fact that he died at nine months gestation, probably hours away from his natural birth, because of the incident that his family was involved in. It is fair to say that it has tortured Mr Howe in the 20 years since that his son did not have the recognition in law that Mr Howe feels that he should have had and that his birth and, most important, his death are summed up in the word “stillborn”. Could the minister consider that matter?

Surely we owe people such as Giselle Ross and Charles Howe more support than they currently get. If there are systems in other places that work better than ours, we should surely be brave enough to acknowledge that and follow their example.