Milly Dowler family: we paid too high a price

Director of Public Prosecutions

Bellfield these trials raised "fundamental questions" about all aspects of victim support

Milly Dowler family

attacked the justice system for its "really horrible" experience at the trial of 13 years of age, the murderer Levi Bellfield, saying he had paid " a high price "of his sentence.

After their statements angry, emotional on the steps of the Old Bailey, Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, said the trial had raised "fundamental questions" to be considered in a review of Department of Justice in all aspects of victim support. Surrey Police apologized for the mistakes in the original investigation, when Milly was abducted by Bellfield for nine years.

Previously, the judge who sentenced him to "cruel and merciless" Bellfield for life for his murder and kidnapping dismissed the jury, which deliberated further on the allegations that Bellfield had tried to kidnap another girl, Rachel Cowles, then 11, the day before Milly disappeared. The jurors were released after the defense said was an "avalanche" of media reports of adverse verdicts after Milly, and the charge was sentenced to be found in the file. There will be a new trial and the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, whether newspaper publishers and broadcasters are facing contempt of court decisions.

Milly parents, Bob, 59, and Sally, 51, and his sister, Gemma 25, made statements very busy off the field on the eve of what would have been 23 anniversary of Milly .

His father, his mother was subjected to a brutal interrogation by the defense Bellfield, he said. "We have the despair of a justice system that is so loaded in favor of the offender

"We see this as true justice to Milly, rather than a criminal conviction. My family had to pay a high price for that conviction."

Bellfield, 43, a former concierge club, West Drayton, Middlesex, denied the abduction and murder of Milly, who disappeared while walking to school in Walton-on-Thames, The Surrey March 21, 2002, a few meters from where Bellfield rent an apartment. A jury took seven hours to convict unanimously Thursday.

Surrey Police have apologized to Dowlers and Cowles, 21, missed opportunities early in the police investigation could have led to Bellfield before being captured. He then students Amelie Delagrange murder, 22, and Marsha McDonnell, 19, and tried to kill Kate Sheedy, 18, a convent school head girl.

Bob Dowler said the trial was "an experience mental scars on an unimaginable scale," and he and his wife felt as if "we were in the trial."

convicted Bellfield, who refused to testify or appear in the dock for sentencing, as "cowardly and despicable" to hide behind their defense and the quality control a challenge to the testimony of each witness . "Where is the justice in a system that allows this behavior?" said.

Starmer said that experience Dowlers: "These questions call for answers and we will contribute to the review by the Department of Justice in all aspects of support to victims."

• The prosecution said that the adversarial nature of the test system was "designed to test the evidence of witnesses," but to consider the issues raised by the study.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett said the case has given pause. "Lawyers must ask the question: are the ducts, are simply a payment figure, whose job is to do everything that can be fierce critic?" But Peter Lodder, QC, Chairman of the Association of Law Society, said: "It was an exceptional case, though, of course, our sympathies are with the family of the victim, must be careful to recognize the right of an accused to defend themselves. it is absolute."

Mother

Milly, a professor of mathematics at the school her daughter in Weybridge, gave vent to their anger and disgust at Bellfield. "I hope in prison are treated with the same brutality as the Treaties of his victims and that his life is hell."