See KentOnline for more
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 just opened a firm, it was 1987, and we bought this house with a view to it being a firm.
00:07 You know, the Lawyers Christian Fellowship was approached to say, would a local solicitor
00:12 - she was in Rochester, women's prison - be willing to take on her application for parole?
00:19 I mean, this is long after the murders and the horrific things that were done. And in
00:26 prison she had become a Christian. Many people would question that, but who are we to question?
00:36 And she wanted a Christian solicitor, and nobody in this area would take her on because
00:41 of her dreadful name. And Andrew said to me, what do you think? I think we should say yes
00:50 and apply for parole. She'd served her sentence, but it was a political reason she was kept
00:57 in prison because it would have been so unpopular whoever honoured her time for parole. And
01:05 he said, we'll get a lot of flag. And I said, no, I think we should. And the point was,
01:15 is there anyone so evil or brought so low who God couldn't forgive? He was a criminal
01:23 lawyer and it would fall in the usual remit, but no one would take it. Our families were
01:31 horrified, which is the first line of how can you? Our families were horribly upset.
01:40 And I remember we got a brick through the window once, the room next door, got hate
01:47 mail, but we didn't waver. You expect criticism if you're doing something you believe you're
01:59 meant to do. I'm sure we lost clients, but I haven't retained it in my memory really.
02:07 How could you? You could put it in many words, couldn't you? How could you? One friend disowned
02:12 us for several years. People have different ways of expressing their disapproval, don't
02:23 they? I think it's a lawyer's duty if you're in that field that you help anyone. You're
02:29 not the judge, which Andrew would always point out. You're not the judge. You have got a
02:36 duty to help them with their legal problem. We often met her in person and I spoke to
02:43 her on the phone. You know, you'll probably have heard, she seemed a very ordinary person
02:50 and she looked nothing like the horrific pictures. I was once on the front page of The Sun because
02:57 at Christmas we often sent our prisoners a little bit of money so they could buy presents
03:03 for family. And of course, with someone like Myra Hindley, prison guards would leak stories
03:12 to get money. Dreadful people like Margaret McCouey sending money to a horrific person
03:21 like Myra Hindley. I wasn't the only one, but I thought, "Wow, I'm on the front page
03:25 of The Sun. Who would have thought? I'm such a goody-goody by nature."