The mother of two sisters who were murdered in a London park said she wants to meet one of the police officers who took selfies at the scene and shared the images.
The Ven Mina Smallman, the first black woman to become an archdeacon in the Church of England, who was guest editing BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, also spoke of the pain of losing her daughters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, in June 2020.
Deniz Jaffer, 47, and Jamie Lewis, 33, who were serving Metropolitan police officers, had been ordered to guard the murder scene.
However, it emerged they had taken photos, some showing the bodies, and shared them in two WhatsApp groups.
Jaffer resigned from the Met in August, while Lewis was sacked by a disciplinary tribunal.
Last month Jaffer and Lewis were each jailed for two years and nine months.
Danyal Hussein, 19, was jailed for life in October – with a minimum of 35 years – for the murder of the sisters. Smallman said she had forgiven him.
Since her daughters’ deaths, she has campaigned on violence against women and for equity on how victims are seen.
When asked what she felt about a police system that produced and allowed two serving officers to photograph her daughters as they did, she replied: “I’m repulsed by them, if I’m honest, and I can’t wait to meet Jaffer.
“He said he’d like to meet with the family and I don’t believe he thought that that could happen, but it will because he said he wants it to happen. I’m going to give him that invitation.”
The family have planted a cherry tree at Fryent country park in north-west London, where the women were murdered.
In October, following an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), the Met police apologised to the family for failing in the way it responded when the two women were reported missing.
The IOPC found that a missing persons log was incorrectly closed and inquiries were not progressed. The Met commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, said a better response would have saved their family and friends “immeasurable pain”.
Smallman told the Today programme “having to fight to find your own children” was horrendous.
Asked by the presenter Mishal Husain if the guilty verdicts had allowed her now to “turn a page in some way”, Smallman said: “No, not yet. I think it is probably too soon. I’m looking forward to that time when we can just start grieving. But we don’t know what that looks like yet.
“I’ve said once before, it’d be great to have no news, good or bad. We just would like a flat line, just to gather speed and to find our way through the grieving process.”
She added that there had been times when she no longer wanted to “be here” and that they had been “dreading” Christmas, but added that her campaigning had helped her.
“If anything, this has kept me going,” she explained. “This has given me a reason to stay with it and try to ensure that another family doesn’t have to go through what we’ve been through.”
