My sister was killed while the police did nothing

The killings shocked the country: women murdered by ex-partners despite warnings of stalking to the police. David Rose investigates how the tragedies happened and learns of the families' search for justice

Sunday March 11, 2007
The Observer

The voices recorded by the 999 operators were full of terror. Rana Faruqui, desperately calling for help as the man who had been stalking her for years approached; Julia Pemberton, similarly pleading as her husband entered the storeroom where she was hiding. Minutes later both women were murdered by the men who had threatened their lives for months.

Now, The Observer can reveal, the transcripts and tapes of those final telephone calls are set to play a central role in pioneering lawsuits brought under the Human Rights Act. If successful, they will subject police policy and practice against stalking and domestic violence to unprecedented scrutiny - and force the police to pay substantial damages if their policies are revealed to have failed.

'What has he done to you in the past?' the operator asks Faruqui, 35, more than two minutes into their conversation, as she stands with her mobile in an isolated field and her one-time boyfriend Stephen Griffiths looms closer, armed with three hunting knives. Faruqui makes no reply: the transcript records her telling Griffiths, 'You're not allowed to come anywhere near me, Steve, leave me alone' - and then 'hysterical screams'.

Pemberton's estranged husband, Alan, has already shot their 17-year-old son William dead outside their home where she is hiding when she tells the operator: 'I heard another bang, he's letting off guns ... I've got about one minute before I die.'

Astonishingly, the control room wrongly claims that armed police are 'now' on their way: 'We are actually trying to approach carefully... with a loaded gun.' In fact, it is another seven hours before officers will approach the house. Behind it are dense woods into which Julia might run. But believing help is imminent, she stays put. By providing reassurance, the operator has deprived her of her only chance of escape.

Ever since the murders in 2003, the families of Rana and Julia have tried to call to account the force that handled both cases, Thames Valley Police, for what they say were 'systemic failings'.

In the weeks before they were murdered, both women had experienced not only death threats but attacks on their property, almost certainly by their eventual killers. Rana's car brake pipes were deliberately severed, but despite the background of harassment, the police broke two appointments to visit her home near Slough. Finally, her brother, Simon, said: 'She went to the police station and dumped the pipes on the reception desk.' At last the police took a statement. But there was no investigation; no attempt to locate Griffiths, much less arrest him. Two days later, Rana was dead.

Months after Alan's first death threats, Julia's locks on her house were superglued. She and her son were sent copies of a statement she had made to get a restraining order: they had been defaced with further threats. The domestic violence co-ordinator at Newbury, Julia's local police station, had already written a memo she described as one of the most frightening she had ever seen.

There have been inquests, internal police inquiries, Griffiths's trial when he admitted murder - having killed his family, Alan Pemberton turned his gun on himself - and now, in Julia's case, a pending 'homicide review' by a private consultancy. All have left the families dissatisfied. The lawsuits - one is also planned by the family of Hayley Richards, who was murdered in Trowbridge, Wiltshire by her former partner Hugo Quintas a week after he carried out an earlier, serious attack in 2005 - are their last recourse.

'The stalking of Rana was something you wouldn't normally experience,' Simon Faruqui said, 'which is why you rely on professionals. Yet she was dealt with by junior officers who had very little clout and, it seemed, very little experience, who were not properly supervised. After she was killed, I met officers who were clearly superb professionals, as you would expect - after all, they were investigating a serious crime. But by then, it was too late. Before, there didn't seem to be any management, any leadership.'

Suing the police for negligence for failing to stop a murder has proven impossible, under a precedent set in a case brought by the mother of one victim of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.

The Human Rights Act offers an alternative legal route: an approach to the High Court to ask a judge for a 'declaration' that the police failed to protect the victims' right to life. Last year, Mrs Justice Cox awarded £50,000 to the family of Giles Van Colle, a Hertfordshire optometrist murdered by a man who had threatened his life because Van Colle was due to give evidence against him for theft.

The judge ruled that the police had failed to 'discharge their positive obligation' to Van Colle by doing nothing about the threats, adding that his family's distress had been intensified by the force's failure to apologise - just as in the three domestic murders of Rana, Julia and Hayley. The police have appealed, arguing that if they are found legally liable for such failings, it will 'open the floodgates' for similar actions in future.

The appeal judgment is expected later this month. If the Van Colle family wins, the Faruqui, Pemberton and Richards cases - in which the first legal steps have already been taken - will follow.

John Latham, the Swindon-based solicitor acting for the three bereaved families, told The Observer that the human rights court actions offered a means of ensuring that good intentions were translated into action.

'What really frightens police forces is the prospect of being successfully sued, because that establishes a framework in a given set of circumstances that means they've got to do something about it. If the courts rule in favour of families who suffered as these have, the Human Rights Act will provide a new means of achieving some degree of satisfaction and accountability.

'All these cases have clear evidence of systemic failure. It's just not good enough, as the police have claimed in the past, to say that women died because certain individuals did not get it right.'

In a written statement yesterday, Thames Valley police, which refused to provide a senior officer for an interview, claimed that, since the Faruqui and Pemberton murders, it had made 'significant improvements' to its systems. All domestic violence cases were now treated as 'urgent', information was being shared with other agencies and a new training package had recently been 'rolled out' for all relevant staff.

Yet more than a third of female murder victims, about 110 each year, are killed by their former or current partners - figures that have not changed significantly for many years.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the way Thames Valley handled the cases of Rana Faruqui and Julia Pemberton is that only a few years earlier, the force's approach to domestic violence was a lot more systematic and, apparently, effective. A study by the Oxford University Centre for Criminology conducted in 1997 said that Thames Valley had a clear, force-wide domestic violence policy which was often capably followed, and that many officers were committed to work with victims to bring perpetrators to justice.

But by 2003, when Pemberton and Faruqui were murdered, much had changed. In February 2005, Superintendent Ashley Smith of the professional standards department wrote to Julia's brother, Frank Mullane, giving detailed answers to questions he had submitted. In the period when Julia was being threatened, 'there was no Force Domestic Violence Policy in existence,' Smith wrote. As for Newbury, the area that dealt with her, it did have a local policy, but 'the information appears to have been lost when electronic data was transferred, leaving only some hard copy information that does not appear to exist'.

By 2002-03, despite an earlier, more personalised approach, the domestic violence co-ordinators in Newbury and Slough who handled Rana and Julia were referring to potential victims as 'clients,' offering advice about how to seek civil injunctions and keeping files on their cases - which were not shared with operational officers who might have done something about them.

Amid much political fanfare, John Major's dying Tory government had passed the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, a measure expressly designed to protect victims from stalkers. At no stage did officers from Thames Valley use the new powers to arrest the women's former partners.

In May 2000, the Home Office had sent out a circular to all police forces, stating that the government was committed to 'strong action' against domestic violence perpetrators. It pointed out that the longer harassment was allowed to continue, the worse it was likely to get, and urged chief constables to 'show leadership' by making sure that domestic violence was a priority and that staff were properly supervised. They should have force-wide policies: 'The main duty is to protect victims' and investigate all incidents fully.

So, what changed at Thames Valley? Two sources there, familiar with the cases, agreed to discuss them anonymously. It was true, they agreed, that dealing with domestic violence appeared to have been downgraded - a trend, they stressed, that had now been reversed. One reason, they argued, was the increasing pressure put on police by central government under New Labour, with much greater emphasis on improving crime detection rates, and drives emanating from Downing Street to focus on particular areas, such as street crime. 'You don't improve performance indicators by preventing a domestic murder,' one source said. 'And police have an old saying - "what gets measured, gets done."'

Even when policies are clear, they may not be implemented. Latham also represents the family of Claire Bernal, 23, shot dead in Harvey Nichols, Knightsbridge, in 2005 by her former boyfriend Michael Pech. In his case, he had been prosecuted under the Harassment Act, but had been allowed to leave the country pending his trial - an opportunity he took to buy a gun in Slovakia and smuggle it into Britain, returning to the country by bus.

Tricia Bernal, Claire's mother, said that while she had also considered suing, she felt that this would only add to the extreme pressure put on PC Bibi Shah - a young probationary officer who was the first to see her daughter when Pech began to make threats. She was carrying a form used to make a formal risk assessment, but did not use it - at the time, she had only nine months service, and been given just one day's training in dealing with stalking and domestic violence.

Last week, the Home Secretary, John Reid, pledged to fund a new system of risk assessment of domestic violence across the country. 'Public protection is my top priority, on the streets or in our homes,' he said.

The overriding lesson of the very recent past is that rhetoric on public protection, voiced by a long line of police chiefs and politicians, may not match reality. Having listed its own new measures enacted after Rana and Julia's deaths, Thames Valley's statement concluded on a note of caution. It hoped they would protect future victims. Nevertheless, 'the Force is firmly of the view that it will never be able to eliminate risk'.

Abused and killed by their former lovers

Rana Faruqui

35, of Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire. Stabbed to death by ex-boyfriend Stephen Griffiths in August 2003 at a farm where she kept her horse. Police had been aware of his stalking following their split four months earlier. He was sentenced to life in December 2004.

Julia Pemberton

47, Newbury, Berkshire. Shot dead by her estranged husband, Alan Pemberton, in November 2003 at her home. He also shot dead their 17-year-old son, William. Following years of abuse she had sought help from police after he had threatened to kill her. The financial adviser then shot himself.

Vicky Horgan

27, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Shot dead, along with her 25-year-old sister, Emma Walton, by estranged husband Stuart Horgan at a family barbecue in June 2004. She had contacted Thames Valley police's domestic violence team about him on several occasions. He committed suicide while on remand in prison.

Hayley Richards

23, Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Throat slashed by ex-boyfriend Hugo Quintas in June 2005 at her flat while three months pregnant. He had attacked and threatened to kill her a week earlier, when she needed hospital treatment for neck injuries. Quintas was extradited from Spain and jailed in March 2006 for a minimum 18 years.

Clare Bernal

22, Dulwich, London. Shot four times in the head by ex-boyfriend Michael Pech while she was working at a perfume counter in Harvey Nicols in September 2005. He began stalking her after their three-week relationship had ended. Police had charged him with harassment and he was sacked from his job as a security guard at the Knightsbridge store for his obsessive behaviour. The Czech national shot himself moments after the murder.

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