I’ve never been to court before to see justice meted out, and I’m guessing most of you haven’t either, especially in a murder trial. But last Friday I went to Birmingham Crown Court to witness the final day in the trial of Bradley Davies for the murder of Ben Bebbington, Shrewsbury artist, poet, busker and general well-liked man about town. Davies had been convicted two days before. His friend Stuart Doran had
pleaded Guilty to murder and been convicted earlier in the year. Both of them
were awaiting sentencing.
I first heard
Ben’s story when I visited the Shrewsbury Ark, where he’d been a regular, and
again when interviewing Radio Shropshire’s Jim Hawkins, who was a friend of
Ben’s. Now, outside the court, Ben’s family shared with me some
photographs. Here they were as
children - summer’s day, wheat field, big grins, laughing. Here around the table at some family
event, the dreamy young man in the foreground, with his gentle, handsome face,
managing to smile through the camera rather than directly at it. And now here they were again,
transported to Court No 5, cheek by jowl with Doran and Davies’s families,
seated parallel to the men in the dock, facing the judge in his wig and red
robe.
No one had slept
well the night before. Ben’s mum,
Patricia, had taken a sleeping pill. Ben’s sister Karen had opened a bottle of
wine. For two weeks they’d been attending
court, hearing all the evidence, representing Ben in the only way left to them.
And now they faced the final day.
These are the
details of the case, as spelled out in court before sentencing took place. On
the night of 6th September last year, two boys, Stuart Doran and
Bradley Davies, encountered a drunk and plainly vulnerable Ben Bebbington on
Ditherington Road, outside the One-Stop shop. They made derogatory remarks about him, questioning what he
was up to with the young lad accompanying him. One of them, Stuart Doran, threw
down his bike. Ben’s being in the company of a much younger boy became a flimsy
excuse for violence. The boy in
question went into One-Stop to warn staff that trouble was brewing outside. He then cycled off, but returned after
a few minutes to find Ben heading down Old Canal Lane, also known as the Cut,
with Doran and Davies following him.
The time was
10.10pm. Ben was very drunk. Doran and Davies confronted Ben on a flight of
steps leading to a lower path. Ben was on the third step. Doran pushed him down
the rest. He and Davies shouted at
the boy to leave. In the darkness
on the lower path, they attacked Ben. Stuart Doran started it by kicking him in
the chest. Further kicks followed.
Ben was also stamped on the head. His screams could be heard over music coming
out of a local pub.
At 10.20pm,
Stuart Doran and Bradley Davies reappeared before a small group that included
the boy, who had all heard some of what had been going on. Within the next twenty minutes, Doran
and Davies returned to check on Ben, and finding him staggering along the path,
launched a second attack. It’s not known at which point Ben was fatally injured
by a boot-blow to the head, but at some point he made it to the upper path,
where he collapsed. He was discovered by a cyclist at 1.10am. In the darkness, the cyclist couldn’t
see what he had hit. He could hear laboured breathing though, and thought at
first he’d collided with an animal.
Ben was taken by
ambulance to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. C.T. scanning revealed serious damage to his skull and
he was transferred to Stafford where doctors discovered that surgery wasn’t
able to help him. Ben’s
life-support was switched off at 8.35am, and he was pronounced dead. The marks of two trainers on his head were
photographed. A Post Mortem on 8th
September found that Ben died off an acute subdural hematoma. Extended injuries
were mentioned too, including two lacerations to Ben’s scalp, which could have
been caused by a glass bottle.
That’s what
happened to Ben. Following the attack, this is what happened to Stuart Doran
and Bradley Davies. The attack happened on Thursday evening. On Friday, at
Bradley Davies’s house, they attempted to burn their trainers in an oil drum in
the back garden and wash their clothes in a washing-machine. Bradley then put pressure on his mother who drove him into Shrewsbury to buy an identical pair of trainers that he
was able to present to the police as the ones he’d been wearing on the night in
question. With Bradley, his cousin and another person who can’t be
named because of reporting restrictions, his mother drove up to Lyth Hill,
where her son hid the charred remains of his trainers, along with one of
Doran’s, in a hedgerow. Later the
same day, the two boys, accompanied by the unnamed other person went to the
police to tell a concocted story about having been attacked by Ben and having
pushed him down steps in an attempt to defend themselves.
All of this, as
spelled out in court last Friday, was what happened on the night of September 6th
last year and over the following day. These are the events as they took
place. In addition, the two boys’
barristers brought before the court a variety of mitigating circumstances. In Davies’s case his youth was
mentioned, him being only just eighteen at the time of the attack, as were the
facts that he’d had no intention to kill and had never sought to deny
playing a part in what happened.
In Doran’s case, it was put forward in mitigation that once the lie
about Ben initiating the attack had been uncovered, Doran had come clean and pleaded
guilty. This was described as an act of courage on his part.
Doran had
previous convictions, as it turned out.
Battery. Public Disorder. Actual Bodily Harm. Three convictions,
spanning the years 2006 to 2012.
He wasn’t proud of these convictions, his barrister said, and in the
case of Ben Bebbington, he didn’t want to minimize what had taken place. He
wished to make an unvarnished apology and had written to the judge expressing
his remorse. He knew he faced a
custodial sentence and hoped to spend his time inside educating himself and
becoming more mature. He didn’t intend to go back to the old habits he’d
exhibited to date. He asked the
judge, in sentencing, to take account of the 263 days he’d already served.
The barrister
acting for Bradley Davies pointed out that not only had his client been only
just eighteen at the time of the attack, but a naïve and immature
eighteen. The co-accused was three
and a half years older than him, and exerted considerable influence. It had been a case of follow-my-leader,
in which respect Bradley Davies asked the Judge to sentence on the basis of the
blow in the second assault being no more than one of passive support. Certainly
there had been no intention to kill.
In addition, the barrister pointed out that Bradley Davies had never
disputed the primary facts. At the
police station he had admitted participating in the attack. From that early stage there had been no
attempt by him to deny his involvement.
Though he had engaged in a cover-up, that had only been done to protect
his mother.
Ben Bebbington
didn’t know the young men who attacked him, and they didn’t know him. For them, what happened was a matter of
random violence. For Ben, it was a matter of death. I don’t know why young men
might be angry enough to kill a stranger on the street, but last Friday in
Court 5, after the barristers had finished speaking for the boys, this is what
the Judge had to say:
Ben Bebbington
was a man aged forty-three, who had never done any harm and had led an at time
sad and at times full life. He had
touched many people for good. On
the night in question, he had been at a low point in his life. He was drunk,
and not in a good way. For anybody
meeting him, there had been two ways to deal with the situation. One was what
the young boy had done, showing compassion and trying to help. The other was
the thuggish option, taking advantage of Ben’s condition and attacking him in a
violent way.
Stuart Doran and
Bradley Davies had taken the latter option. Their offence was one of murder,
and it was compounded by there having been two of them, and by the gratuitous
level of the violence, using their feet as weapons. ‘Ben Bebbington was vulnerable,’ the Judge said, addressing
them both directly. ‘You picked on
him. It would have been bad enough if you’d done it only once and gone on your
way, but fifteen to twenty minutes later you went back and had another
go.’ Not only that, but next day,
discovering that the man they’d attacked was dead, they’d attempted, along with
members of Davies’s family, to conceal evidence, and then had concocted an
untrue account of what had happened, which they presented to the police.
‘I am asked,’
said the judge, ‘to find no intent to kill, and in the strictest terms there
was none. However, the behaviour
of Doran and Davies was so sustained, and the level of gratuitous violence so
great that intent in this case is less important than in some others. The degree of mitigation here is
small.’ He was asked, the Judge said, to accept that both were immature and
young, and that in Davies’s case it had been Doran who initiated the
violence. It was he who had pushed
Ben down the steps, he who’d administered the first kick in the chest. Davies was just a follower. However,
said the Judge, he was a follower who had taken a significant part in the
attack, and he had done so twice.
On this basis,
Stuart Doran and Bradley Davies were both sentenced to life. Taking into account Doran’s having
pleaded guilty, he would serve sixteen years and whether he’d be released at
that point would depend on the parole board and on his own behaviour.
Stuart Davies
was sentenced to fourteen years.
He gave his family a thumbs-up as he was sent down.
After this,
Bradley Davies’s mother, cousin, half-brother and one other person were
placed in the dock. They had been found guilty of perverting the course of
justice and making false witness statements. Their barristers presented mitigating circumstances on behalf of each
of them. Davies’s mother’s
barrister presented the Judge with three references and a letter from her
medical practice. The Judge read
them and said ‘yes’ twice.
Mrs Davies, said her barrister, acknowledged that what had happened had
had a greater effect on the Bebbington family than on hers, however she wanted
it to be known that she was a hardworking mother who had been employed all her
life, who had worked to raise her family and whose life had fallen apart. When
the news came through, she had acted without thinking out of shock. She did not encourage the burning of
the trainers, nor did she participate. Despite asking her son to surrender, he
put her under pressure to take him to buy new trainers. Out of misguided loyalty, and without
thinking, she agreed to this. In addition, she provided the police with a false
witness statement. The effect of
this on the investigation had turned out to be minimal, but she would live with
the burden for the rest of her life.
‘M’Lord,’ said
her barrister, ‘I invite you to accept that what she did that day was out of
character. It was unplanned and without thought. It was acted out of
panic. She has since demonstrated
remorse. It has had a profound effect on her mental and physical health.’ He
asked for a suspended sentence.
The Judge, however, ruled that there had indeed been thought, and a deliberate
misleading of the police in the face of the grave offence of murder. He handed down a custodial sentence of
two years.
Shock waves ran
around the court. There was sobbing in the dock, sobbing behind us in the
gallery, a brief moment, a shocked face, a woman being led away. Afterwards,
the cousin wasn’t handed a custodial sentence, on account of the help she had
given the police, but received a suspended sentence instead - eighteen months,
suspended for two years. In addition, if she failed to complete the two hundred
hours of unpaid work laid down by the court, ‘You will go to prison,’ said the
Judge. ‘Do you understand that?’
A further person who provided the police with a false witness statement didn’t go to prison either, but received a Youth Rehabilitation Order. However, the half-brother was sent
down. For his part, he received a sentence of
eight months. His loyalty to his family had extended to crossing a moral
threshold, the Judge said. The boy half-waved to his family as he was taken
away.
Before the judge
drew proceedings to a close, he said this to the Bebbington family: ‘This process may or may not have
helped you, but it’s the only one we lawyers can engage in. Having said that, I
am a parent myself. The most
tragic case a parent can face is to bury their own child. I can’t imagine what that’s like. Such cases are always distressing. I offer you my condolences.’
So, was justice
served last Friday? And if it was,
can justice ever be enough when a son or brother is dead and nothing can bring
him back? The night before that
final day in court I talked to Karen Bebbington, Ben’s sister. For the last two
weeks she and her family had sat in court hearing what happened to Ben on the
night of September 6th.
Some things they knew. Some
things were new to them, and came as a shock. Attending the sentencing, Karen
said, was going to be hard. She wouldn’t be there to gloat. She’d be there to
put an end to something - that was all.
Since last
September, the Bebbington family have been living in a parallel universe to the
rest of us. Ben’s death, and the
manner of it, has become their life. The police have been the constant in that
life. ‘They have been wonderful,’ Karen said. ‘But it’s been like living in a
bubble. The rest of the world is normal, but we in Ben’s family are in the
bubble - and the awful thing is that it’s happening again. Another family is starting out. The family of Georgia Williams over in
Telford. Our hearts go out to
them. We know exactly where they are.’
On Saturday the
dreadful news came in that a man has been charged with the murder of Georgia
Williams, and a body found in North Wales. ‘What’s happening in our society to make young men so very
angry?’ Karen asked when I spoke to her.
We talked about the recent charging of a nineteen year old youth for the random
murder at a cash machine of a Shropshire man, Robert Barlow. Then the Woolwich
murder came up, and Karen said it horrified her that the mooted Muslim Prayer
Centre in Shrewsbury might come under attack as a result. This wasn’t the Shrewsbury
she knew, she said.
‘But then none
of this, including what happened to Ben, is the Shrewsbury I know. This is not
my Shrewsbury,’ Karen said. ‘My Shrewsbury is a lovely place to live in. It’s beautiful. It’s full of good and kind people. From one end to the other, even amongst
the communities where Doran and Davies lived, we’ve found nothing but kindness
and support from families like our own trying to look after their children and
live good lives. And that’s the Shrewsbury I
know. And when things like what
happened to Ben come along, I want to know what’s happening and why.’
After everything had been said and done, I sat in the sunshine taking it in.
All those rows of barristers, all those files and mountains of
paperwork, all that police work and all that grief - a tragedy for all
concerned, every member of every family, and none of us, I guessed, any wiser as to what was really happening
here, or why. But an attempt had been made to uncover the truth. Details matter
in a court of law - and thank God that they do.
More than
anything, that’s what I carried away. It wasn’t so much the drama of the situation that impressed
itself on me, but the forensic determination to be fair, to take every last detail into account, to be balanced and to get things right.
Back home from
Birmingham, I found a message on my phone, sent by Ben’s other sister,
Anne-Marie. It’s of Ben in
conversation with Jim Hawkins. I
listened all the way through.
Though I knew Ben by face as a busker on Pride Hill, this was the first
time I’d heard his speaking voice.
He was reading one of his poems.
This is how it ends:
‘There are
those who have convictions,
only want to
drag you down, though you’re not around.
Still the
light is fading out,
and the sun
can take the
dream train
out of here.
To fade out
of here,
across the
hills and silent trees.
[Ben loved being in the countryside, said Karen, so this photograph on the hills seemed appropriate. He was also a big fan of Radio Shropshire and enjoyed talking to Jim on his 'bench'. In Ben's honour, a street musical festival, 'The Big Busk' was held this year. It was a huge success, raising funds for the Shrewsbury Ark. There will be another 'Big Busk' next year.]
How sad is this? Many young people in this country now think they are above the law and family values seem to have gone by the board. All best wishes to Ben's family. xx
ReplyDeleteVery moving. I come from a Shrewsbury family. Shrewsbury is a lovely place full of lovely people. But something went badly wrong that night. Love to Ben's family.
ReplyDeleteThank you, AliBan. I'll pass that on.
ReplyDelete