Sarah Payne’s mother still talks to her murdered daughter
The eight-year-old was killed 17 years ago in a crime that prompted Sarah’s Law.
The mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne has said she talks to her daughter every day and that her family are coping 17 years after her death.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Sara Payne said she has produced a book of letters to her daughter as her way of remembering the eight-year-old, who was murdered 17 years ago.
She said: “Both my mum and dad have passed away and my older brother, that is constantly how I talk to people not around me, with letters, as you would with a relative who wasn’t close to you, write them letters and update them on what is going on.”
Ms Payne continued: “I talk to her every day, always as an eight-year-old, she will always stay eight forever, I can see through my other children what she would look like and I have a good idea of what she would be like personality wise.”
She added: “When we were searching for Sarah we allowed people into our lives and they became part of that and Sarah became part of a lot of people’s growing up.
“I wanted to let them know we are alright, everyone knows about the ow and the wow and the initial when she was taken, I wanted to let people know there is recovery and there is life, and the children are okay and I’m okay and we are happy.”
She added: “I have got peace, we have had a lot of health issues, had a lot of things happen to us as a family but we are dealing with stuff.”
Ms Payne continued: “We all always felt we owed it to Sarah to do the best we could with our lives because she didn’t have long to live, we felt we should do as much as we could to be as happy as we could.”
She said her sons Luke and Lee did not talk about the events of Sarah’s death very often and added that the family dealt with it “individually, sometimes badly, sometimes well, something we have all learnt is as it comes, as naturally and progressively as possible”.
Speaking of Roy Whiting, who was jailed for life for Sarah’s murder, she said: “As a family we try not to talk about him at all, we felt he had had enough from us and wasn’t going to get any more.”
Ms Payne said she was happy with Sarah’s Law, which allows disclosure of a person’s background of any child sex offence if they have close contact with a child, but said that the authorities need to be quicker at adapting as society and children change.
