The mother of Barnaby Webber, a victim of the Nottingham attacks, has spoken out on GB News on how difficult life is without her son.
It comes after three senior judges ruled on Tuesday that Valdo Calocane’s indefinite hospital was “not arguably unduly lenient”, stating the court could not ignore medical evidence related to the killer’s paranoid schizophrenia.
Emma Webber spoke to Bev Turner and Andrew Pierce in a candid discussion on GB News where she admits to getting through every day “by her fingernails”.
“By my fingernails, hanging onto something”, she said.
Emma Webber spoke to GB News about her struggles
GB NEWS
“We’ve got an amazing network of people and an overwhelming amount of support from the public.
“That really does encourage you. It keeps you going because of course, we check ourselves to make sure that it’s not just us venting our grief and anger.
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“We sadly aren’t getting through support we should be from the Ministry of Justice and victim support. You’re given a paltry 12 sessions of therapy and me and my husband have been to them to try and stabilise ourselves.
“But now we’ve been told ‘that’s it, you’re on your own now’. You have to go to the NHS or pay.
“When I know that Calocane is costing the taxpayer upwards of £350,000 a year, and we believe he is in receipt of his benefits because he’s a patient, not a criminal.
“The Ministry of Justice says victims are at the heart of everything that the criminal justice thing does, but we’re an afterthought.
Valdo Calocane was sentenced to a hospital order in JanuaryGB News“That has to change for the sake of mental health and people’s futures.”
The Attorney General referred the sentence to the Court of Appeal in February, with lawyers arguing that Calocane, 32, should have been given a “hybrid” order, where he would be treated in hospital before serving the remainder of the sentence in custody.
Calocane fatally stabbed 19-year-old university students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar as they walked home from a night out in the early hours of June 13 last year, before killing 65-year-old Ian Coates and stealing his van.
Before his arrest, he used the vehicle to knock down three pedestrians in Nottingham city centre.
Emma Webber joined Andrew Pierce and Bev Turner on GB News
GB NEWS
Prosecutors accepted his not guilty pleas to murder at his sentencing at Nottingham Crown Court in January after multiple medical experts concluded he had paranoid schizophrenia.
Giving their judgment, Baroness Carr, sitting with Lord Justice Edis and Mr Justice Garnham, said: “Because the offender’s level of retained responsibility was low, and in circumstances where the offending would not have taken place but for the offender’s schizophrenia, the judge was entitled to conclude that a penal element was unnecessary.
“This was so, despite the number of victims and the extent of the harm caused.”
She concluded: “It is impossible to read of the circumstances of this offending without the greatest possible sympathy for the victims of these terrible attacks, and their family and friends.
“The victim impact statements paint a graphic picture of the appalling effects of the offender’s conduct.
“Had the offender not suffered the mental condition that he did, the sentencing judge would doubtless have been considering a whole life term.
“But neither the judge nor this court can ignore the medical evidence as to the offender’s condition which led to these dreadful events or the threat to public safety which the offender continues to pose.”