Tomorrow it would have been Sarah Hicks's 39th birthday. “Would have been” is
a phrase her parents have had to get used to over the years as they have
counted down the milestones - graduation, wedding days, grandchildren - that
have been stolen from them. Instead the milestone that they mark this month
is that Sarah has been sharing a grave with her younger sister Victoria for
20 years.
Both girls were victims of the Hillsborough disaster on April 15, 1989, the
life squeezed out of them in crammed spectator pens. Their parents, watching
from different parts of the football ground, were distraught but unable to
reach them. Sarah was 19 and Vicky 15. On a beautiful spring day a family of
four travelled from their home in North London to a football match and then,
in a few minutes, that family was halved.
How do you live after that? How can you face each new day when you have lost
both of your children, when you know how it feels to suck the vomit out of
your dying daughter's throat, how it feels to see your kids zipped, still
warm, inside body-bags, when your own future as a parent has been
obliterated, when no one has even properly said sorry? Trevor, the girls'
father, says that, to this day, not one police officer has lost a day's
wages over Hillsborough. The lack of justice for the 96 who died remains one
of Britain's festering sores.
Now 63, Trevor Hicks has learnt to harness his pain when dealing with the
outside world, but it fizzes like electricity in the room during the two
hours that we talk about his girls. “It still hurts just as much,” he says,
his eyes dampening for the first of many times. “People say time heals - it
doesn't. But it does help you to cope because you learn how to handle it
better: you go from raw pain to managed pain. But I'll never be repaired. I
am scar tissue on legs.”
Fifteen months after Hillsborough his marriage to Jenni broke down. Such was
the scale of their grief that, as Trevor says, “it was a situation where we
couldn't cope together”, a common consequence of child bereavement. They
divorced, Trevor moving back to Yorkshire and Jenni to Liverpool to be in
the city where it had felt right to bury their girls.
But they remain friends and have a tradition that at Christmas and on each of
the girls' birthdays they meet up and lay flowers on the grave together.
“It's the only thing we can do for them,” he says. “We can't buy them iPods
and PCs. Flowers are all we can give them.”
We are here at the pub equipment business that Trevor owns in Keighley, North
Yorkshire, to discuss the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy, but
also to talk about Sarah and Victoria, two beautiful young women who were
brimming with potential. He speaks readily about his children, his pride in
them as fierce as it ever was.
Sarah was a straight-A student who had been offered a scholarship to Oxford
but turned it down, preferring to go to Liverpool University to study
chemistry. “I did my nut,” says Trevor, smiling. “I thought it was because
of the football, but she actually liked the course more at Liverpool. She
was very academically able, a natural academic really.”
Victoria too was very bright, a driven child who said that she wanted to own a
Ferrari by the time she was 30. “Vicky was a little charmer - she had long
black hair, and when she was little and we used to go into town in the
summer, we'd have American visitors patting her on the head.” The family was
on the up; at the time of the tragedy they were living in Pinner, Vicky was
at the private school Haberdashers' Aske's, where Sarah had also been a
pupil, Trevor was the managing director of a London security firm. He was
made a Freeman of the City of London and rubbed shoulders with senior
Scotland Yard officers. By his own admission he was an “Establishment man”.
That was to change dramatically when he saw that Establishment from the other
side. “If 96 police officers had died that day then I'm sure some fans would
have been locked up for an awfully long time.”
Because tickets to FA Cup semi-finals are like gold dust, the family didn't
get to stay together for the match. Jenni had a ticket for the stands, while
Trevor and the girls were in the pens behind the goal. They ate their
sandwiches in the car at the Sheffield ground, then set off to take their
positions for kick-off. Sarah was wearing an American leather bomber-jacket
that her parents had bought for her birthday five days earlier.
As they walked in, Trevor said that he wanted to get a cup of coffee, so the
girls walked ahead of him “glad to get rid of the old bugger”. He ended up
being in a different pen, which he noticed was oddly empty. This was
because, disastrously, everyone was being directed into the central pens,
because police had decided to open an exit gate to allow fans in more
quickly, as they were worried that there would be congestion and thus
trouble outside.
They had failed to close the tunnel to the central pens and disperse the
crowd, so the pressure was mounting unbearably in one confined area with a
steep slope. Some people died still standing up.
Trevor realised in horror what was happening and shouted to a policeman that
people were being crushed. “Shut your f**king prattle,” replied the officer.
This exchange would later be recounted at the public inquiry before Lord
Justice Taylor who, despite the police having tried to create the impression
that fans were to blame, found that the tragedy was caused by loss of police
control.
Trevor saw Vicky being passed over the perimeter fence. When he was finally
able to get to the pitch, his daughters were lying yards from each other. He
started giving Sarah mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, helped by a man who
turned out to be a doctor. Then he saw Vicky being put in an ambulance and
had to make a sudden, terrible decision about which daughter to stay with.
He jumped in and started trying to resuscitate Vicky, sucking debris from
her throat. The ambulance was full of dying and unconscious people.
That taste of his daughters' vomit was something that stayed with him for six
months afterwards. A psychiatrist told him that subconsciously he was trying
to hang on to that last contact. “When I made that connection myself in my
mind it went,” he says. “It was that link to them.” Unsurprisingly,
post-traumatic stress disorder was diagnosed.
Trevor became chairman of the Hillsborough Families Support Group, the
articulate, composed face of the bereaved families as they took on the
establishment in the courts. He stepped down a few years ago when he
realised that he needed time for himself.
That job, he says, was in many ways his “driver”. Fighting for justice was
something that he could still do for his kids and the other 94 victims. “I
had a job to do. There's two of me - the grieving father, who is mostly
hidden from sight, and me the chairman. It's what I think would have wanted
me to do.” It has not been easy. “I have sat at the same table as chief
constables that I have wanted to throttle,” he says, reciting a Yorkshire
adage that a man should be able to look himself in the mirror when he
shaves. “I know that a lot of people in South Yorkshire can't do that.”
When I mentioned to people that I was going to do an interview with Trevor
Hicks, the reaction was the same. That man is incredible, they said. How he
managed to stay so strong and dignified for all these years is miraculous.
More than one person confided: “I'm pretty sure I'd have topped myself.”
Today I want to talk to him about this survival, how a parent manages to carry
on after such a catastrophic loss. Trevor admits that there have been times
when he has considered suicide. One of his lowest moments came a few months
after Hillsborough when he was driving back to London on the motorway and
came across a crash in which someone had been killed. “It flashed through my
mind ‘if I drive into that bridge, that'll be an end to all this'.” For a
while he drank too much, and he fantasised about petrol-bombing Sheffield
Wednesday. But it was always the thought of letting his daughters and the
other victims down that stopped him. “The pressures of running the group,
which at times drove me mad, were also a liferaft,” he says. “I wanted to do
my best for Sarah and Vicky and everybody else.
“When you are in the jungle you have to learn to stalk animals, to set traps,
to survive. And I learnt how to deal with the media.” Still, I tell him,
many people simply wouldn't have been able to bear the pain he suffers.
At the worst moment of their lives, he and Jenni had been treated with
breathtakingly officious cruelty. On the day of the tragedy when Jenni had
asked to see Vicky's body, a policeman told her she couldn't because “she's
no longer your property. She's the property of the South Yorkshire coroner”.
The couple had to answer endless questions about how much they had been
drinking (nothing), having just been told that both of their children were
dead. It was as if they were criminals. Then there were the terrible,
untrue, accusations in The Sun, since apologised for, that Liverpool fans
had behaved like animals and looted the pockets of the dying.
“All that stuff about looting was rubbish; I was there - I saw for myself,” he
says. “We got Sarah's leather jacket back with everything untouched in the
pockets.” So how did he cope? “You haven't got a lot of choice. You have to
make the best of a very bad job,” he says.
For a long time he suffered horrific flashbacks and nightmares. Occasionally
he still does, crying out in his sleep, though mercifully he says they
aren't as vivid now. He and Jenni tried to adopt a child afterwards (Trevor
had a vasectomy after Vicky was born) and even offered to adopt two children
left orphaned in the disaster. But social services wouldn't hear of it.
“It seemed sensible to us at the time,” he says, “but we probably couldn't
have coped, we know that now.” They would howl at a God who had taken their
children. “You'd think ‘Even if you take one, you could have left us the
other - why both?',” he says. “We must have been terrible people. It's a
punishment for all the things I've done.”
I tell him that, remarkably, he seems devoid of self-pity. “Oh, I do feel
badly wronged and badly done to. I almost lost my faith. But is self-pity
going to make any difference?” Almost lost his faith? Does that mean he
still believes? “Yes. You need something. I hope that I will see them again
- I'll probably get some bollockings from them!” He is adept at using humour
to put others at ease but his face clouds over again. “If I thought they
were just stuck down a hole and that was it, I don't think that I could
cope, ” he says quietly. “Their human body is down there but their spirit is
elsewhere.
“Sometimes, when I am very low, I feel that I get a spirit injection from up
there. Somebody must be doing something for me or I would have packed it all
in.” It goes without saying that if parents have a surviving child, it helps
them to cope because they have no option not to. Trevor, however, says that
while this is true, Hillsborough has taught him another lesson. “I do envy
people with other kids...but it's not a numbers game. There are families
where there might be six children and they lose one - but they want that
one. The others don't compensate for it. Your heart is ripped out anyway.”
He sees friends his age with married daughters and grandchildren. “Sarah and
Vicky would both probably have been married by now; they might have three or
four kids of their own. One of the things we had to face in the early days
was that we'd never become grandparents.” What does he feel when he sees his
contemporaries doing exactly that? “Regret. Huge regret. I tend not to say
what I really feel, which is ‘you lucky bastards'. They were such lovely
girls. The thing that I have found hardest to cope with is the sheer waste.”
For a long time he tortured himself with ‘what ifs'. Then he had what he calls
his “this is it” moment. He realised that despite all the wishing and the
regret, and that even if David Duckenfield, the Chief Superintendent in
charge that day, and Bernard Murray, his second in command that day, had
been hanged, it wouldn't make any difference. Sarah and Victoria would still
be dead. “I thought this is it - for the rest of my life I will be ‘tragedy
dad'. I'll just have to get on with it. I think that was a turning point.”
In fact, Trevor believes he has emerged a nicer person. Some might imagine
that enduring such horror would have the opposite effect, but he looks back
at the person he was and realises that he had his priorities wrong, working
too much, notseeing enough of the family. “I got too caught up in moving on
wards and upwards, I was on the career path; the pursuit of wealth,” he
says. “It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I think that I have come out of it
a better person. But I'll always be a chipped cup.”
He knows that he has built a wall around him. “I'm slightly untouchable. I
can't be hurt any more. Yes, I can be angry and insulted but I can't be
hurt. I haven't closed downbut I've got a protective shield. I'd give up
everything I've got - my whole world - to wind the clock back but I can't.”
He knows that he was also too trusting of the Establishment. “I was an
Establishment man. I'm ashamed at how much I was taken in. The whole of the
Establishment was in denial. We have never got anyone to say sorry and mean
it.” What does he think of the Establishment now? “Not a lot. I'm
apolitical. I think that almost every politician - and there is the odd
exception - is shallow, deceitful and a processing machine.” What is his
view of Duckenfield and Murray? “Contempt is the best word I can find. The
whole bloody package is contemptible.”
However, there is, finally, some happiness. Last month he married Mandy, a
woman he clearly loves and whom, he says, has embraced the memory of Sarah
and Vicky fully into the family.
Their photographs, in heart-shaped frames, are up among those of her own
children and candles are lit whenever it is their birthdays. This is crucial
for him, he says, that the girls always remain part of his daily life. “I
couldn't deny them if my life depended on it,” he says, his voice breaking.
He is now a surrogate grandfather to Mandy's grandchild. One of her
daughters is 19 - the age that Sarah was when she died. She was born just
after Hillsborough.
Trevor has realised that he must “grab hold” of the time he has left. “I need
me to have a life now. There's not a lot of it left. I've had a knee
replaced, I've had stents. One of the lessons it has taught me is that I
might be dead tomorrow. We left that April morning, everything was
hunky-dory, we were doing what we loved, and yet me and Jenni had to drive
home in the early hours of the morning, without the girls and totally
wrecked.
“I will never forget and I'll never lose the passion [for justice]. But it
can't just be Hillsborough for the rest of my life. “Mostly, it doesn't seem
like it happened 20 years ago but sometimes it can feel longer, like a
lifetime has passed.” This is why he knows it's important to keep talking -
to keep the education process going, to fight any moves to bring back
standing terraces. He hasn't given up hope of getting justice. He believes
that it will come in a death-bed confession or from someone who can't live
with themselves any more. “There's a famous statistic that the average
miscarriage of justice takes 26 years to correct. I'm hoping still to be
here for that,” he says. “It only takes one person and the whole thing will
blow apart. Because it's a can of worms, Hillsborough.”
Engraved on the girls' gravestone, under a tree where passers-by still leave
dozens of Liverpool football scarves, are the U2 lyrics: “In the wind we
hear their laughter, in the rain we see their tears.” Their parents bought
the plot next to it for themselves.
Sometimes Trevor looks back and wonders how he got through this. He hopes the
girls would be proud of him. “You realise what's important - valuing life, a
smile - that's worth a lot,” he says, “I still have very quiet
moments. I used to hate silence and now I love it.” Acceptance is probably
the stage that Trevor Hicks has reached, acceptance that he can't change
what happened. “I can wish for it, pray for it, beg for it, steal for it. I
can even become a vicar but it won't make any difference. So I'm stuck with
it. I've got to make the best of it.”
Hillsborough was about many things: cowardice, prejudice, incompetence,
unbending love. But in Trevor Hicks and other parents like him it has become
about something else too: the extraordinary strength of the human spirit.
The Taylor report and its aftermath
In the aftermath of Hillsborough, Lord Justice Taylor conducted a 31-day
inquiry. His report concluded that the main reason for the overcrowding was
“the failure of police control”.
Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield had given the order to open a large
concertina gate at the Leppings Lane stand, allowing 2,000 people to pass
through and head for the already packed central pens. Officers failed to
direct the supporters away to less densely populated pens. “His capacity to
take orders and give decisions seemed to collapse,” Lord Taylor wrote.
Duckenfield was suspended after Lord Taylor's report.
In July 2000, the Hillsborough Family Support Group brought a private
prosecution of manslaughter against Duckenfield and his deputy, Bernard
Murray. After a six-week trial, the jury at Leeds Crown Court failed to
reach a verdict and both men walked free.
The defence had argued that the disaster was “unprecedented, unforeseeable,
unique”, and that it was caused by a situation beyond their control. The
judge ruled out a retrial, stating that the publicity surrounding the
proceedings meant a fair trial would be impossible.
Fourteen police officers who struggled to save fans were awarded £1.2 million
in damages in 1996 for psychological illness in an out-of-court settlement.
However, earlier that year the House of Lords ruled that relatives who
suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after watching the horror on
television, at the grounds or at the mortuary had no claim in law.
As a result of the report, all football grounds in the top two divisions of
English football and all new grounds have to be all-seat. Standing on
terraces, which had been the norm for decades, was eradicated.
Chloe Lambert
