DeepCut - My daughter’s inquest wouldn’t have happened without the Human Rights Act

Des James wrote:Now, at last, we’re on the brink of exposing the facts – which the authorities fought so long to deny us – about Cheryl’s death at Deepcut barracks 20 years ago





Private Cheryl James was found dead from a single gunshot wound in November 1995. An inquest recorded an open verdict.


Politicians and military chiefs have been clamouring to make their views on the Human Rights Act known in recent weeks. There’s been much vilification of lawyers and repeated calls for overseas troops to be exempt from its protection.
In all those column inches, there’s one group we’ve not heard from – the many servicemen and women and their families who have used the act to seek justice when the Ministry of Defence has failed to meet the standards they rightly expect and deserve.

I am one of them. Today, 20 years after my daughter Cheryl died, the inquest into her death will begin – and my family would not have seen this day without the Human Rights Act. It secured us access to vital evidence regarding Cheryl’s death – evidence it suited the authorities to withhold, to which I was repeatedly refused access and without which my legal team at Liberty could not have secured this fresh inquest.

Cheryl was found dead from a gunshot wound to the face while undergoing initial training at Deepcut barracks in 1995. She was just 18. We expected “things” would be done properly. After all, this was the British army – no stone unturned and all that. I was a child of the 50s and trusted the establishment implicitly: the army, the government, and obviously the police. I was their friend; they were mine.

Reality was very different. Surrey police immediately handed the matter over to the army. The army didn’t even wait for the inquest before documenting Cheryl’s death as suicide. The Royal Military police investigation and original inquest were vastly inadequate – two witnesses weren’t called, medical records went uninspected and evidence was ignored. The coroner recorded an open verdict. It was all so hurried and uncaring and, crucially, left so many questions unanswered.

It would be seven years before we established that there was no forensic evidence that Cheryl’s death was caused by the rifle found at her side.

In March 2002, James Collinson became the fourth Deepcut recruit found dead from gunshot wounds – and it was the media that started asking questions. Not the army, and not even the government.

Surrey police immediately “reopened” investigations. I have little doubt that had the deaths happened at, say, Eton or Oxford University, a public inquiry would have been a formality. However, it became clear to me that this was little more than a cursory re-examination of assumed suicide, more intended to appease public opinion than to discover what really happened. It was rushed, and everything felt wrong.

The government finally shut down press speculation and public criticism by appointing Nicholas Blake QC to review Surrey police’s evidence. Neither the families, nor our legal representatives, were granted unrestricted access to any of that evidence.



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Yvonne Collinson, Geoff Gray, Diane Gray, Des James and Doreen James read out a statement in March 2006, following Nicholas Blake QC’s report into the four deaths at Deepcut barracks. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/PA
It came as no surprise that Blake published 33 recommendations – though it was a shock that his 34th was to recommend no public inquiry. It was an even bigger shock when Surrey police ignored another Blake recommendation – to share the evidence regarding Cheryl’s death with us, her family. Their refusal was to last for almost a decade.

In 2011, my wife and I came to Liberty. They threatened Surrey police with legal action under – guess what? – the Human Rights Act, which demands proper, effective investigations into deaths involving the state. Only then did they agree to hand over what we had fought for: more than 90 lever-arch files of forensic evidence, statements, photographs and notes. That evidence let Liberty apply for fresh inquest.

And so we come to today, when we are on the brink of exposing answers the authorities have fought so long to keep under lock and key. The original inquest lasted just one hour. This inquest will probably last for two months, with evidence from more than 100 witnesses.

Given what my family has been through, you’ll forgive me if I am distrustful of this government’s motivations in repealing or diluting the Human Rights Act. You will understand why I am wary of any plan for a replacement that will leave the rights of overseas troops unprotected and let politicians choose which cases are serious enough to merit their day in court.

You will appreciate why even the glossiest public relations offensive will not convince me that abolishing the act would be a good thing for members of our armed forces.

Mine is just one case, but it’s far from the only one. There are the families of the soldiers who died in unprotected Snatch Land Rovers, told by our supreme court that they can use the Human Rights Act to challenge the MoD.
There are the families of the soldiers who died of heat exhaustion on the Brecon Beacons last year, who only secured a full inquest examining the wider failings of the army after using the act. There are the sisters of Corporal Anne-Marie Ellement, only able to secure a fresh inquest into her death and a fresh investigation of her rape allegation by using the Act.

And there are the families of the three other young soldiers who died at Deepcut – all of whom are battling to secure thorough investigations.

The establishment don’t like being challenged – but they must understand that they sometimes get things wrong. We cannot allow politicians to repeal legislation that has proved so valuable to so many, simply because it does not accommodate the ideology of a government that could not get its own way.

My message to the prime minister, the defence and justice secretaries and the minister for human rights is a very simple one: if you’d like to hear firsthand how the Human Rights Act helps our troops, I would be delighted to oblige.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/01/daughter-cheryl-james-death-deepcut-human-rights-act#comment-67826511