Hello everyone I hope you are well.
Three years and 7 months today at 1.15am we were told on the phone on the way to try and save Josh’s life that he was dead. His throat had been slit (we only found this out 2 and a half years later after reading Josh’s Post Mortem Report) in the RE Bar in Eastcote now called the GEO Bar in an unprovoked knife attack an again in this article. https://www.mirror.co.uk/…/britains-most-wanted-fugitive-sl…
Brooke and I had to pull over in the road and sit in total shock on our way to the bar because we had hoped and prayed on the frantic journey, there that he would be ok, that there might be some hope but we were minutes away from Josh when he took his last breath. Not being able to be with him to hold him to comfort him or try and do something, anything, to help save his life is a pain that I live with and will continue to live with everyday for the rest of my life.
There are so many questions that have never been answered and so much pain from that night still manifests itself into the lives of so many as well as us. Those who were there trying to save Josh’s life and those that were not there but had received calls in the early hours of the morning and the days thereafter have scars that are now part of the tapestry of their lives.
Now that we are part of the criminal justice system there are more battles to be had, more unanswered questions, more trauma and more pain, we are once again surrounded by people who are just doing a job. For us it is just like yesterday all over again when Josh was murdered, when he was taken from us and my desperate need to get to him to hold him and to comfort him, whisper to him that everything will be ok is as urgent as it ever was. My Son who I brought into this world was left dying on a dirty floor, in a bar, in a pool of his own blood. He did not have his Mum to hold him or to comfort him he was robbed of his life and robbed of the love of his family and of his friends. Try living in the present while living alongside the past to that moment where you could do nothing to change your child’s imminent death. Try sitting next to your child’s Ashes and looking at them knowing that it is all that you have left of their physical presence and then try kissing their photos hoping that you feel soft flesh but knowing that that will never happen, well that is my reality.
And here we are with an imminent court trial set for September the 16th along with the pomp and ceremony of the legal fraternity, the swishing of silk gowns and the bobbing of horsehair wigs along with the hustle and bustle of the circus that will surround us where we will be merely observers. We will hear things about what happened on the night of the 11th of October 2015 for the first time, we will be ushered in and out at the beginning and at the end of each day after watching the arguments the arguments of the prosecution and defence barristers. We will have to sit still, show no emotion (for fear of trying to sway a jury) and pay attention because we won’t want to miss a tiny bit of information that we never heard before. We will do all of this while we share the same space as Shane O’ Brien the man who has been charged with Josh’s murder.
As a victims I have very few rights, I have experienced this and I have witnessed it too, victims are seen as the leftovers, the ones that need to be taken into consideration, not because the system has to but because we demand that they do. I am seen as an inconvenience, a fly in the ointment nothing more than an irritation by those that ‘have a job to do’ but I fight nonetheless I push boundaries because I know inherently that the system needs to change and it needs to take my feelings and emotions into consideration. I said to someone the other day who had no concept of my feelings, the next time your find yourself in a emotionally challenging situation where you pray for a positive outcome and you get it, remember me, remember my Son and remember that no matter how hard I prayed I could not save his life. And when you breath a sigh of relief that your life is as it always was, take a breath for me and find a place in your heart for Josh and fight with me not against me.
My Son had the right to life and he had no say in his abrupt, violent and barbaric ending and I will march forward and fight in the face of adversity for justice for Josh and doing so I will do all that I can to push for positive change for victims in my beautiful son’s name. Mum loves you very much Josh and I am one step closer to helping you to rest in peace ????#justiceforjoshhanson
