Grieving parents fight to see justice for their teenage daughters killed in Hillsborough disaster
Grieving parents fight to see justice for their teenage daughters killed in Hillsborough disaster
A grieving mother and father are fighting to see justice for their teenage daughters who both died in the Hillsborough disaster.
A development in the fight for justice over the Hillsborough disaster over the last year was in the name of teenage sisters and victims Victoria and Sarah Hicks.
To this day, their official death records state the pair lost consciousness within 30 seconds and died quickly.
This is not true - tragically, they suffered much longer, over the course of an hour.
In the early 1990s, a civil case against South Yorkshire Police for damages over their deaths was dismissed, ruling Victoria and Sarah were unconscious within seconds - findings that later inquiries and inquests demonstrated were fundamentally flawed.
In the last year, the girls’ parents, Jenni and Trevor Hicks, have campaigned to see their daughters’ official death records corrected, and for the introduction of ‘Hicks Rule’ to make it easier for people in similar circumstances to correct the official legal record.
Jenni Hicks said in February: "For more than three decades, the law has recorded something about our daughters that we now know simply isn't true.
"This isn't about compensation. It's about truth. It's about dignity. And it's about acknowledging what Sarah and Vicki - and so many others - went through that devastating day."
However, it led to tensions with SYP, who must consent to the records being corrected but were frustratingly slow to commit to righting this wrong, and dealt with the campaign through a series of published statements.
One came on February 9, after Chief Constable Lauren Poultney did not attend an invitation to meet the Hicks at an event in London. Instead, a statement said the force would "take the steps available to us to support the families.”
The Press Association reported this “infuriated” the parents for not outright agreeing to testify in open court.
A subsequent statement on February 12 saw Chf Con Poultney say the force did not believe testifying this way - in what is known as a Statement in Open Court (SOIC) - would achieve the family’s goals, but that she supported their campaign.
Then, on February 26, the police chief finally met with Jenni and Trevor in private to commit to the plan.
Jenni Hicks said afterwards: “This is the first time we have sat down with a Chief Constable and been told directly that steps will be taken to correct the record about our daughters.”