Mina Smallman, the mother of two women murdered in a London park, has forgiven their killer but not the two Metropolitan police officers who took and shared photos of their bodies, she said.
Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were reported missing on 6 June 2020, the day before friends discovered their bodies in a park in Wembley, north London, after organising their own search party.
Police officers Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis were ordered to guard the scene. While there they took photos, some showing the bodies, and shared them in two WhatsApp groups, calling the victims “dead birds”. They were each jailed for two years and nine months in 2021.
Smallman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she had forgiven her daughter’s killer, Danyal Hussein, but not Jaffer and Lewis.
Hussein, who was 18 when he murdered Henry and Smallman, was given two concurrent 35-year jail sentences in 2021.
“It wasn’t until after the trial, [the BBC journalist] Mishal Husain interviewed me and she said: ‘Do you forgive the killer? Have you forgiven the killer?’ After a quick soul search – I had, there was nothing there,” she said on Saturday.
“My husband is the most peaceful, loving, quiet person you could imagine. He has not forgiven him. He feels total rage.”
Speaking about the officer’s actions, Smallman said: “Obviously what they did wasn’t as bad as murdering.
“But you’re telling me you have violated our girls further by doing this. Them, I haven’t forgiven.”
Smallman said that when the two former officers were released from prison, she tried to kill herself.
“I knew they were coming out but the whole trauma of their journey – the effect of when they appealed, when they applied to go to an open prison – I just thought, oh, you know what, I don’t want to be here. I just had enough. I’ve had enough of everything. And yeah, I attempted suicide,” she said.
She said she no longer felt suicidal. “God will not let me go. This is not the way I’m supposed to go. When it’s time, it’ll be time.”
Smallman, who has become a women’s safety campaigner, said she still had faith in the police despite the actions of Jaffer and Lewis.
“It’s one of those things that people might not understand. The majority of the police are good people. I’m invited all over the country by different constabularies to come and talk to them about my experience,” she said.
“This is what I do, and I realise it is keeping me alive. I feel really honoured to meet the parents and the women’s groups who are supporting victims, survivors of male aggression. The response I get from after speaking, it warms my heart, because then I think, I’m not just doing it for me. I’m doing it for them.”
Smallman is in touch with the families of other women murdered by men, including Sarah Everard’s mother, Susan. “When I talk to these mums, they are so broken, really broken, and they’re grateful to me because they know I’m talking about all of us,” she said.
This month, Carol Hunt, 61, and two of her daughters, Hannah, 28, and Louise, 25, were found injured in their home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and died shortly afterwards. Kyle Clifford was arrested a day later on suspicion of murder. “The first day that I heard about it, it just takes me back to the day when I was told they [her daughters] were dead, and I grieve all over again. I grieve for us and I grieve for the family.”
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
