By Lisa Ramsden
The father of one of Sean Small’s victims has demanded an “urgent overhaul” of the system.
Speaking last week, after his daughter’s attacker was found dead and a man charged with his murder, the local dad said more needs to be done to protect the victims of sexual violence. He said his daughter has been “let down by the delivery of justice.”
Emphasising that the 84-year-old’s death “was not for anyone to celebrate,” the local man said that the sentence imposed in 2022 for 10 crimes against his daughter and a young teenage girl, “was not justice.”
He added that his daughter “has been handed a life sentence,” and that when a sex offender is freed back into the community, their victims must receive advance warning.
Whilst his daughter is a grown woman, the local man said he will forever be filled with guilt that he was not able to protect his child.
“At the end of the day, I had a wonderful, happy-go-lucky daughter who viewed the earth with joy and hope, but who became, through no fault of her own, somebody that was depressed and suicidal, and is still recovering,” he said.
“The effects of what my child and the other girl went through, and continue to live with, are horrific. I feel I have to make up for the times that I should have been there to protect my daughter; it’s a feeling that will never go away,” he admitted.
“What people fail to understand is that when someone commits such a vile act, they do not merely wound the victim. They destroy the spirit, the soul, and the very essence of who that person was. Those scars do not stop there. They extend into every member of the family. They tear us apart piece by piece, day after day. The emotional devastation is relentless and enduring.”
He continued: “As parents, we have always believed that our most sacred duty is to protect our child. It does not matter how old she is; that duty never ends. And yet here we are, crushed under the weight of failure, forced to live each day knowing that we could not shield her from the evil of that man.”
Speaking of how “guilt and pain are permanent companions, that will never leave us,” he continued: “That man destroyed our daughter’s life. He murdered who she was in every meaningful way. The joyful, fun-loving, and kind-hearted daughter we once knew has been stolen from us. What remains is a young woman condemned to live with fear, with torment, and with shadows that follow her from morning until night. She has been sentenced to carry this suffering for the rest of her life.”
He also wanted to reiterate that it was not just his daughter who suffered and that “another family’s daughter also endured his cruelty.” Both families were jointly involved in the court proceedings that led to Small’s conviction.
Adding that they stood together through the trial, “facing the horror of reliving every detail of his vile acts,” the local man continued: “We can only imagine the anguish that family has faced, and we fear deeply that there are many more families who continue to suffer silently.”
Turning his attention to the sentence imposed on Small in 2022, he said: “The so-called justice handed to him was three years in prison and three years under a curfew. That is not justice. That is a mockery. It is a statement from the court that our daughter’s stolen life, her broken future, and her enduring pain are worth almost nothing. That sentence demonstrates that his freedom was deemed more important than her healing. It is an outrage and a disgrace.”
Speaking from the heart, the father describes his daughter’s attacker as “evil.”
“To that man, I say this: you were evil. You were a coward. You were a predator who thrived on fear and cruelty. You stalked our daughter. You threatened her. You violated her sense of safety. You stripped away everything that made her who she was. You murdered the daughter we once knew, and she will never be the same again. You left her with a life sentence, and yet, in a cruel twist of fate, you are now dead.”
“To the courts, we say this: we feel let down by the system. We feel let down by the way our daughter was treated. We feel let down by the way the innocent are supposed to be protected. We feel let down by the delivery of justice. The chance to show that what he did was intolerable, unforgivable, was missed.”
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