Ian Simms was imprisoned in 1989 for the killing of 22-year-old Helen McCourt on Merseyside and has never disclosed where her body was hidden.
The court ruled that the money raised through Marie McCourt’s crowdfunding page would be used to cover expenses.
Marie McCourt has campaigned for a law which would deny parole to killers who refuse to reveal the location of their victim’s body, said that it seems unfair that she has to pay Ian Simms costs but that’s what happened.
She said that she was thankful to all the people who donated to the fundraising page and Marie McCourt added that criminals get legal aid and people like herself who are ordinary people don’t have that sort of money to take it to High Court.
They only thing they can do is go to a GoFundMe and thank God they did give her that. However, David Lammy, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice tweeted that it was completely wrong for the family of Helen McCourt to be forced to pay a penny of the legal costs of the man who killed her daughter.
And he continued that the Government should acknowledge the extremely tragic circumstances here and use some common sense.
High Court judges refused to order a reexamination of Ian Simms’ release and said a Parole Board decision involved no arguable public law error, but Marie McCourt said the law doesn’t acknowledge how heartbreaking it is for families of loved ones whose bodies have not been found.
She said that she’s been going out searching for her daughter’s body for 33 years and the Government and the laws don’t seem to comprehend how heartbreaking this all is.
Families should have the right to know that when these killers are caught, if they refuse to say where their victim’s remains are hidden or what they did with them, at least let the families know.
And Marie McCourt said that they should have to show remorse before they can ever be considered for release.
A bill denying parole to killers who refuse to reveal a body’s location, known as Helen’s Law, cleared the Commons in March but it came too late to stop Ian Simms being released.
Parole should never be an option for a killer who won’t tell the police where their victim’s body is, and if they want to conceal that information for their own sick desires then they should have to deal with the consequences.
I can’t understand how a Parole Board came to the decision that Ian Simms met the criteria for his release.
He failed on two basic counts. Firstly he’d never admitted his guilt and he claims to be innocent and secondly, as a result of that, he’s not demonstrated any remorse for his crime.
This was an outrageous decision seeming to have been hurried through by the Parole Board intentionally to beat the passing of Helen’s Law, which would have almost definitely kept him in jail.
What price do we have to pay for justice? Where is the justice? Marie McCourt not only faces never knowing where her daughter’s body is but faces having to pay money into an immoral system to an immoral man and murderers should never be allowed to walk free when they decline to reveal the whereabouts of their victims and this is a perverse ruling.
