The Telegraph
Mother of black sisters stabbed to death says police did not give killing same attention as Sarah Everard case
The mother of two women who were attacked and killed in a London Park has accused the police and politicians of failing to give the case the same attention as that of Sarah Everard. Sisters, Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were stabbed to death in June as they celebrated one of their birthdays in Fryent Country Park in Wembley. But their mother Wilhelmina Smallman, who is the UK’s first female Church of England Archdeacon from a minority ethnic background, has accused the police of not initially taking the case seriously. She said after her daughters were reported missing, the police failed to conduct a proper search and it was left up to their friends to find their bodies. Ms Smallman said she was convinced the fact the girls were black had played a part in Met’s approach to the case and she said hearing about the Sarah Everard killing had plunged her back into hell. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she said: “We have received so much kick back from friends and colleagues who are saying ‘excuse me, where was this level of coverage and outrage for two of your daughters murdered?’ “We have had the Prime Minister, the Mayor of London and Priti Patel all going on record to express their deepest sympathy [with Sarah’s family and friends] .” But she said her family had not received the same response from senior politicians. She added: “I think the notion of ‘all people matter’ is absolutely right but it is not true. Other people have more kudos in this world than people of colour so from my point of view, all women, women of colour, white women, all of us we are on the same journey. “We are on a journey to say that we all matter and actually I can now use this specific situation of my girls and Sarah, they didn’t get the same support, the same outcry.” Ms Smallman, who lives with her husband in Ramsgate, said her agony was compounded when it emerged that two police officers had allegedly taken selfies at the scene with her daughter’s bodies. A criminal investigation has been launched into the actions of the officers and they have been suspended from duty. Last week it emerged that an officer manning the cordon where Miss Everard’s body was found had allegedly sent an inappropriate meme. Ms Smallman said the events in Clapham had caused her fresh anger and pain at a time when she and her husband were still struggling to come to terms with their own loss. “Me and my husband, we just went back in time emotionally, and the anxiety. I know what that family, the parents will be going through and it is a hell. “You can’t begin to understand what it is to lose a child under those circumstances and then to have a further betrayal, the very organisation that is paid and we have an agreement with, that they will protect us. they will honour us and behave that gives our deceased dignity. “To hear that not only had Sarah’s parents lost Sarah but to have the indignity of having someone doing a meme, how heartless.” Ms Smallman said her first Mother’s Day without her daughters earlier this month had been extremely difficult to cope with. She explained: “I think there is two sides to me. There is mum and then there is activist. Someone who has always stood in the gap for people who are not treated fairly. As a mum I am broken beyond words.” But she said she wanted her daughters’ case to bring about some change in the way women of colour are treated in society. “If there lives make a change in the way women are viewed and black women in particular because in the pecking order of things it’s been known that we are the lowest on the ladder,” she said. Danyal Hussein, 18, is due to go on trial on June 7 at the Old Bailey, charged with the murders of Bibaa and Nicole. He has denied murder.