![]() I had to be honest with myself – and them, the parents of the man I had punched, even if they were hard truths. “When they asked me why I did what I did, I really didn’t know. “I was shocked when I heard Joan and David wanted to speak to me,” remembers Jacob, now 30, and a father of two small children, “but pretty quickly I came to the conclusion that the very least I could do was answer their questions.”Īnd that meant, he now admits, facing things that he didn’t want to face. ![]() At first, contact with Jacob was by messages and then letters, with the team at Remedi as go-betweens and advisors. Victim Support connected her with Remedi, an organisation working in a field known as “restorative justice”, where perpetrators and victims are brought together. What deterrent was that for youngsters who go out and get in fights? We wanted to get in touch with Jacob to hear why he hit our son, and see what type of person he was.” “We felt our son’s life was worth more than 13 months. “At the time, my ex-husband David and I were angry and bitter,” recalls Joan. It chronicles the long, drawn-out and often painful process that began when he was released after Christmas in 2012 having served 13 months, plus two on tag, of a 30-month sentence for James’s manslaughter. This week, she will explain how she got to know her son’s killer in The Punch, a series of remarkable, searingly honest programmes on Radio Four presented by Jacob himself. “I used to worry that forgiving Jacob might mean forgetting James, but forgiving Jacob doesn’t mean I think any less about losing James.” ![]() “I’ve grown fond of him,” she tells me, on a break between shifts as a nursing assistant at her local hospital. Now a grandmother and living in Derby, she has not only forgiven the man who took her son’s life, but forged some sort of relationship with him. If any parent can begin to imagine how Joan must have felt at the moment, they would probably find it even harder to do what she did next. James only had one small bruise on his chin but a bleed on his brain meant, tragically, that nine days later, his life support machine was turned off. An unprovoked attack in the street by local youngsters had culminated in James – a trainee paramedic – being felled by a single punch thrown by 19-year-old Jacob Dunne. It was the summer of 2011, and Joan Scourfield’s 28-year-old son, James, was out in Nottingham city centre with his father, younger brother and some friends after watching the cricket, when a terrible phone call summoned her to hospital. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |