TO say that the families of the Hillsborough deceased could have done with more “empathy and understanding” from the authorities is one of the understatements of the century.
From the second they arrived, numb and shell-shocked, in Sheffield on that fateful April day in 1989 to try to find their loved ones, they were treated at best like a hindrance and at worst like the enemy.
They were sent from hospital to hospital or to the makeshift mortuary at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground with no guidance, just a cold dismissal. When they were asked to identify corpses, mothers like Margaret Aspinall who asked if she could hold her 18-year-old son James, were told curtly, “no, his body is the property of the coroner.”
Some of the families of the 97 deceased were never informed that a postmortem of their relatives was to be carried out, others were left deeply traumatised after being shown, without any warning, photographs of their dead loved ones.
Jenni Hicks, mum of Sarah, 19, and Victoria, 15, was left furious and inconsolable after seeing photos of her daughters’ genitalia were openly displayed on a police computer.
At the first inquest the coroner, without consulting families, imposed a 3.15pm cut-off, claiming that every victim would have been brain-dead by that time and ruling out any evidence relating to events after it. Which made it so much harder to prove criminal neglect by the authorities.
It was later shown to be based on flawed pathology evidence, and families were told that dozens of the 97 could have been alive after that time. And possibly saved had the emergency services done their job.
They were only informed of this bombshell news in 2012, more than 23 years after the disaster.
As the report shows, the families were ignored throughout the entire pathology process. As though, in the eyes of authority, they didn’t count.
Which is at least appropriate as that was precisely why their loved ones died in the first place.
