Tom Richmond: Killers protected by human rights... and families betrayed by the system

As well as coming to terms with the senseless murders of loved ones more than a decade ago, these victims of crime continue to be treated as "second class citizens" by the justice system.

It cannot go on.

And here's why.

"Data protection laws" prevent Mrs Lawrence, the widow of murdered headmaster Philip, from being told where her husband's killer, Learco Chindamo, was living. She believes she has that right. Italian-born Chindamo, after all, had been arrested for a violent cashpoint mugging four months after being released from prison.

Chindamo, who served 15 years of a "life" sentence, was roaming the streets because he argued that his human rights would be infringed if he was deported to his homeland. The misuse of "data protection" and "human rights" – a euphemism frequently abused by murderers and rapists – continues to haunt Denise Fergus.

Her son Jamie Bulger would have been 21 this March if he had not been abducted, tortured and murdered by two delinquents when he was two-years-old.

Yet, 18 years after the depravity of child killers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables shocked the nation, Mrs Fergus continues to be insulted by the leniency shown towards the murderers who have been given new identities.

As Jamie's mother, she was not even entitled to know why Venables was recalled to prison last year – the Parole Board said she had no right to know the details of the offence which related to the downloading of 57 indecent images of children. She only found out second-hand from the media.

But, while the killers of Philip Lawrence and Jamie Bulger have, at least, been convicted – and then freed – Molly Godley, a retired Yorkshire nurse, does not even have that small consolation.

Thirteen years after her son, Ian, was killed in an early-morning, arson attack as flames tore through his first-floor flat in Kilmarnock, Scotland, a veil of secrecy means she still does not know why murder charges were dropped against the two prime suspects who were aged 11 and 14.

It is anguish compounded by the police's refusal to reopen the case – and the sudden death, recently, of Mrs Godley's former husband, Norman, who went to his grave without seeing justice achieved for his son. These are just three cases. There are countless others.

But, while the circumstances – all too tragic – are different, there is a constant theme; the failure of the justice system to put victims first.

Both Mrs Lawrence and Mrs Fergus found out about the latest insults to the memories of their loved ones from the media; the authorities did not see fit to tell them. Likewise, Mrs Godley – an increasingly frail senior citizen riddled by arthritis and now living in Exeter – relies on occasional phone calls from acquaintances of her son. Even the promise of regular, six-monthly updates from Scotland's Procurator Fiscal have come to nothing.

It should not come to this – all three victims, after all, put great faith in Tony Blair's election manifesto promise, in 1997, to put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system. Indeed, the former Prime Minister became personally involved, at various stages, in all three cases. Likewise, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary from 2001-05. He, too, became involved in these legal battles. And he, too, regularly promised "new deals" for victims – and the then Tory opposition did not disagree.

Now the coalition is looking to see whether the police, and other agencies, should be doing more to help victims. The issue is actually a simple one. It should not take a new law for the families of murdered victims to be kept updated of any developments involving their respective case; it should be a basic right.

New laws are not required – just a recogintion, on the part of the police and its partner agencies, that such families should be kept informed at all times of anything pertaining to the case, even if this means them, in certain circumstances, signing a confidentiality clause.

This would prevent, where appropriate, any disclosures that may not be in the public interest or detrimental to a policing operation – but at least the families could be kept informed. Such a mindset should, also, not just be applied to murder and other high-profile cases – it should become the norm throughout policing, particularly anti-social behaviour, where some forces, but not all, are imposing new procedures. Without the public's support and help, the police would face an even more thankless task upholding the law. But how many people think twice of coming forward because they, as burglary or theft victims, were not taken sufficiently seriously when they reported their crime?

Respect works two ways – the civilised majority are far more likely to support the police if they can see the judicial system is on the side of the law-abiding.

Human rights and data protection acts were never intended to help murderers, rapists and such like. If anything, they were enshrined in law to help, among others, victims of evil crimes.

It is essential, therefore, that 2011 marks a sea-change in the application of all laws so the "human rights" of victims – women like Frances Lawrence, Denise Fergus and Molly Godley – are put before those murderers who killed their respective loved ones. For, as Mrs Godley said so eloquently, not an hour passes without her thinking of her son, what he would be doing now if he had lived – and wondering what did happen to those who set fire to his flat.

It gets no easier with the passage of time. It gets harder, she says. "It is the not knowing, the secrecy, being kept in the dark," she adds. "It eats away at you. It is a life sentence."