Dorothy - Interview 28

Age at interview: 65

Brief Outline: In 2005 Dorothy's son, Mark, was killed in an industrial incident. He was working in a waste and recycling plant. Dorothy was shocked and angry. Counselling, hypnotherapy and Compassionate Friends have helped.

Background: Dorothy was a civil servant (now retired). She is married and has 2 children (1 died).

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In April 2005, Dorothy’s son, Mark, was killed in an industrial incident. He was working in a waste and recycling plant at the time. On the day he died he had been asked to load and bale 4,000 gas filled aerosols. The machine was not designed for this purpose. He was alone in the building when the load of aerosols exploded. Mark screamed for help, but the fire exit was locked on the inside. The main door would not open at first because it got sealed due to the heat, and the fire extinguishers did not work. Mark was taken to hospital, and put on life support, until Dorothy and her husband arrived. The doctor said that due to Mark’s burns his chances of survival were nil, so life support was discontinued.

 

Dorothy and her husband were devastated. Mark had left a wife and two children. They were devastated too. The family liaison officer made things worse by describing in detail what had happened on the day Mark died. Dorothy did not get any help from the police. She phoned a solicitor for help. She also phoned the Centre for Corporate Accountability. This is a charity concerned with the promotion of worker and public safety. The organisation provides free and confidential advice. Dorothy found help there.

 

The coroner refused to release Mark’s body. He said that he was waiting to see if the Crown Prosecutor was going to bring any criminal charges. Dorothy wanted to leave flowers at the place where Mark died, but the company refused her access to their property. Dorothy decided to leave flowers at the gate of the industrial estate where the company was situated. She did this on a regular basis, until the company asked the police to tell Dorothy that they would charge her with criminal harassment. Dorothy was shocked that the company was so inhuman and uncaring and that they denied her the right to leave flowers in memory of Mark.

 

The Crown Prosecutor decided that there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the directors of the company. Mark’s body was released and the funeral took place. The family had a humanist funeral and then Mark was cremated.

 

Dorothy was consumed with rage. She was angry that criminal charges had not been brought and that they had to wait so long for the funeral. None of Mark’s work colleagues came to the funeral, which was also upsetting.

 

Dorothy saw her GP, who prescribed diazepam to help her sleep. She also saw a psychiatrist, who said that he could not help her because she was not mentally ill, and that she was suffering from grief. She saw a counsellor, and had 10 sessions of private counselling, which was very helpful. She also had some hypnotherapy, which was wonderful. The hypnotherapy helped her to get rid of the flashbacks she was having. She kept seeing Mark consumed by flames. Dorothy also asked for Cruse counselling, but she has been on the waiting list for about a year. She found great comfort by communicating with members of Compassionate friends via their chat room on the internet.

 

Dorothy wanted to prepare for the inquest. She was shocked when the coroner demanded £566 before he would send her the evidence that might be presented at the inquest. She was told that the coroner’s action was illegal, so demanded the money back. Her solicitor said that he would go the small claims court, so the coroner repaid the money and withdrew from the case.

 

Another coroner considered the evidence at the inquest, which took place in February 2009. The jury gave a narrative verdict, not the verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ that Dorothy had wanted. After the inquest Dorothy felt devastated and exhausted and let down by fellow citizens. Health and Safety will now decide whether or not charges will be brought against the company. The company has accepted liability for Mark’s death, but Dorothy’s daughter-in-law is still waiting for compensation.

 

Dorothy, like the rest of the family, has been deeply affected by Mark’s death. With others she has started an organisation, Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK). This is a national campaigning network which campaigns to stop workers and others being killed in preventable incidents and which directs bereaved families to sources of legal help and emotional support. Dorothy is trying to re-build her life but sometimes she still feels that life is not worth living.

 

Dorothy was interviewed in 2009.

Dorothy felt disillusioned with the justice system and with politicians after her son died in an industrial incident. She kept her anger bottled up. Sometimes she felt life was not worth living.

How have your feelings changed, if they’ve changed at all? Are they just the same, or have they changed in any ways, and what other feelings have you had?

 

I think, I mean in that time I would say there’s probably not a day gone by when I haven’t thought of Mark.

 

So, the anger I suppose is under control, lets put it that way, it’s there, but I control it, it’s under control. I think as time’s gone on and I’ve met more people and you know the justice system and the politicians, I think my, my disillusioned by the system has grown. I have no faith, no faith in the system here at all, and I suppose at sometimes I have no faith in my fellow man really, but occasionally you meet someone, there are, there are people out there who are giving their all, you know trying to support someone, or trying to campaign, or trying to battle or whatever.

 

 

So in some ways I don’t know, I think possibly my disillusion has deepened, my anger, I wouldn’t say it’s lessened, it’s there, it’s in there, I just keep it bottled up, I keep it under control. Some days I feel life’s not worth living, other days you know I think I’ve got to go on and do something, so its, I take each day at a time really.

Dorothy finds it hard to relate to other people who have not been bereaved by a traumatic death; she feels she is in a 'parallel universe'.

I feel I’m talking a foreign language to people now, I don’t have, I can’t relate to people now, you know, people who haven’t been through this, because I get very impatient, you know when people are talking of the golf club, and the cruise and the whatever, and the price of this, or the price of electricity, I get very impatient because I think all these things are going on every day, and this is all you’re worried about, you know I’m so, I don’t have an awful lot of sympathy you know.

 

That’s understandable.

 

And they don’t want to know what’s happening in my life either, people back off, you know I’ve lost quite a few friends…

 

Have you?

 

Yes. Yes. I’ve lost one in particular that I hadn’t spoken to her since the day I phoned her to say what had happened to Mark, she’s never been in contact, which hurts.

 

Why do you think that’s happened?

 

I think people, it’s kind of, I think they think it’s some kind of infection, I think its, I don’t know, I think it’s probably they, they don’t know how to cope. Or whether you know you’ve, you’ve become a different person, which you do, you know you start off being a kind of confident, everything’s right with the world and whatever, and you cross over into another parallel universe where everybody has been denied justice, you know, people are losing children for all reasons, everybody is, you know, all these people that are being killed at work, I mean, it gets to a point where you know that people are being killed every day, it’s like you wake up in the morning and think some family is going to start doing what we’re doing today, so its, the true world’s kind of separate really, you know, this world where everybody’s sort of carrying on and talking about buying a new car and all the rest of it, and this world where you know you’re campaigning for people’s basic rights to life and to justice.

After Mark died in a workplace incident Dorothy found a few journalists who helped publicise her campaign to change the law to make directors accountable when people are killed at work.

What’s your experience of the press been like, the media?

 

We’ve actually been, well again the media not really, on the whole the media are not interested in deaths at work. It’s if you, we have actually tried to get publicity for workers memorial day, and deaths at work and how it’s happening every day and they’re not, we have been told a few times that it doesn’t sell papers, but having said that we actually have, I have some contacts who have actually been very good, some journalists who do feel quite strongly about it who have actually printed some articles, not so much the detail obviously of how Mark died etc, more you know into the campaign, you know our campaign to try and get the law changed so that directors are held accountable when people are killed at work, you know, in order to try and stop it, so that they’re, you know, I’ve had a few articles printed like that.

 

But, we haven’t had any, I mean perfectly honest you know, we’ve probably had less publicity than we would have wanted because you know the more publicity there is, we feel that it brings it to public attention. I think, I think the press is more interested in, I don’t know sleazy murder cases and things like that, you know that might titillate readers rather than the actual issues you know. 

 

Dorothy and her family wanted to prepare for the inquest. The coroner charged them '566 for disclosure of evidence, but another coroner told her that she should not have been charged. She got it back.

You said you’ve got the inquest coming up?

 

I have.

 

Has a Coroner’s officer not been in touch with you at all?

 

Never, ever. Yes I have never spoken to, I mean the Coroner that we had, the original Coroner that we had, the one who wouldn’t release the body, our solicitor asked him for disclosure of the evidence so that we could prepare for the inquest, and after initially refusing he eventually agreed but he said he would only release it if we paid him £566. The solicitor phoned and said, “You know what do you think?” And I said, “I’ll pay anything, anything, I don’t care, it’s only money. And I just don’t care.” So we paid him, my daughter in law obviously couldn’t pay, so we paid the £566 for the disclosure of evidence.

 

What’s the money for? For copying?

 

Photocopying. He also charged us, there were two other solicitors involved, there was two companies involved, my son’s employer and another company, who were all breaking the law, he also charged them £566 to supply the same photocopies. I was speaking down in London at a conference, a CCA [Centre for Corporate Accountability] conference, and I happened to say this in part of my speech. I said this, and a Coroner that was in the audience came forward and said, “You should never have been charged for that.”

 

Right.

 

So I contacted my MP at that point, who wrote to the Minister of Justice, and the Ministry of Justice wrote to the Coroner saying that there was no basis in law for charging for disclosure of evidence and that he should refund us the money.

 

And he refused.

 

The Coroner?

 

The Coroner refused. So we then, our solicitor then said that we would raise an action in the small claims court, in my name, to get this money back, which we did. We wrote to the Coroner saying that I was going to take him to the small claims court in his area, to get this money back and at that point he repaid the money and withdrew from our case.

 

Oh he has repaid the money?

 

He’s he repaid the money, but only, only after threatening him with…

 

Was he going to keep it for himself?

 

It was paid to him, directly, no the money was paid to him directly, it was his money. And it was, when it was repaid it was repaid from his private bank, from his own bank account.

 

That’s incredible.

 

And he withdrew from the case. I then wrote to the Office of Judicial Complaints who deal with complaints against Coroners and that was where all the information, the information from my solicitor and all the investigation I had done on the internet, printed off what Coroners should do, how they should behave etc, etc. I sent everything off to them, and they were going to take the complaint up, they had agreed that they would take this complaint forward, and then we discovered that the Coroner was terminally ill.

 

That was all this year.

 

Well over a period of yes, yes. I withdrew the complaint on the basis that you know I would show his family you know all the compassion that he never showed to mine.

Having waited years for her son's inquest Dorothy felt 'totally devastated' by the jury's narrative verdict. She feels that members of the jury applied hypocritical standards.

My family had to look at still photographs and CCTV footage of my son's last moments including the explosion, we had to listen to witnesses, ex-colleagues who we knew were lying and experts who said the man who killed my son so heartlessly must have known of the dangers involved. The Coroner was excellent, thorough, sensitive and extremely intelligent. We had to listen to the man who killed my son shout, rant and bully, even shouting after my family as we had to leave court too upset to listen further.

 

The coroner took the extremely unusual step of offering the jury the option of an unlawful killing, manslaughter verdict and explained his reasons. The jury took only 3 hours to come back with a very weak narrative verdict only for the most paltry of reasons.

 

How do I feel now? I am totally devastated. I have lost my son all over again. I have lost my faith in my fellow citizens who apply double hypocritical standards. Had this man been a driver in which a relative of one of the jury was a passenger, supplied no safety belts, had no driving licence, had been drinking, ignored all road warning signs, drove at 100mph resulting in crashing his car killing their relative, I'm sure the members of that jury would have rightly expected him to be charged and face a prison sentence. But when an employer does the equivalent they say he should walk away without any charge because he put his own life at risk. If I could give up my British passport I would.

 

I feel ashamed of my country, extremely angry and totally bereft. The terrible thing is that this is how all the families of those killed at work are treated in this country.

 

I know this will not help anyone who is facing this terrible experience but I can only say how I feel, there is no point in giving hope where there is none. Shall I continue to fight for justice for others through Families Against Corporate Killers? At the moment I am absolutely exhausted but I suspect I will. It took many years of struggle to abolish slavery, this is the modern equivalent.

Dorothy couldn't sleep and was having flashbacks after her son was killed. Her husband was very concerned about her. She found an excellent private counsellor and paid for some hypnotherapy.

I was consumed with rage. In fact so much so that I think possibly at that time I could happily and quite easily have gone out and killed the man who killed my son. It became a kind of overwhelming feeling, and my husband actually was quite worried because he thought I would do it, so I went to a counsellor, a private counsellor, I went to a counsellor then, and she was excellent.

 

Was she a professional counsellor?

 

Yes, yes,

 

How did she describe her sort of counselling, did she talk about any sort of particular therapy?

 

She probably did yes, she probably did, but to tell you the truth I can’t really remember, because you know, you’re brain tends to sort of just shut down, I just knew I needed, I needed to talk to somebody out with the family, you know that I could say all the things that I wanted to say, at that time, because the rage was just taking over.

 

This was mainly listening?

 

She was listening, yes. She was mainly listening. And she made me kick things, and punch things and you know get it out that way. And eventually I kind of got to the point where I thought well what’s the point of killing him, it would possibly give me some satisfaction, some momentary satisfaction, but it would just bring more grief on the family so..

 

Did you have to pay for that counselling?

 

Yes, yes. Uhuh. No, there was no help from the, no help from the NHS at all, and don’t get me wrong, my doctor here  but we were living down, we were living down south, the south of England, but my doctor here is, I mean he’s a very nice, in fact he gave me some diazepam at the beginning, but he said, “I don’t want you to get into the habit of that.” So I had a couple of diazepam, just for the first two or three weeks.

 

Did you ever explore the idea of getting more counselling, paid for by the National Health Service?

 

I did, I went to the doctor, he sent me to, oh I can’t remember, to a clinic, I saw a psychiatrist, one visit and I explained it all to him, and he said, “You know,” he said, “Really,” he couldn’t help because  he said, “You’re not suffering any kind of mental illness,” he said, “You’re not suffering from a depression” he said, “You’re, you’re suffering from grief”, and he said, “And I can’t really, I can’t really help.” So that was, that was really. I had no counselling with the NHS, again you know, I don’t know because I know other people have had NHS counselling you know where they’ve lost someone you know through cancer or through whatever, so it’s very different, the whole experience of losing someone where it’s a death at work, is totally different.

 

How many sessions did you have with the counsellor privately?

 

I think I probably had about 10 sessions with her.

 

So that was quite expensive.

 

It was, uhuh. I also went to a hypnotherapist  telling a lie, the hypnotherapist came here, to the house, that was expensive also, it was £60 a session. But that was wonderful, you know. But it was mainly, again it was specific, I was having flashbacks, I couldn’t, you know, when I slept I just saw Mark being consumed by flames, so I couldn’t sleep I would sit up at night drinking coffee or whatever, so that was specifically counselling, it was hypnotherapy and we concentrated on relaxation techniques, and being able to try and get these flashbacks out of my mind, and it was quite successful, and she, you know, she sort of showed me how to relax, partly so that was, that was again it was just specifically for that, for that purpose.
 
Did she put you in a state of hypnosis?
 
Yes. Yes.
 
And it helped you to think back, think in a different way?
 
No, it was, it was mainly the kind of, putting me in a place where I felt comfortable and relaxed and able to feel, not quite happy but peaceful, basically.
 
How many sessions did you have to have with her?
 
Again I probably had about 10.
 
And that helped a little bit?
 
It did, it helped with the sleep, and the flashbacks, but then obviously you know the flashbacks have tended to come back, while we were going through the evidence for the, preparing for the inquest, you know, reading it all, I began to get these flashbacks back again during the night.
 
I’m so sorry.
 
Anyway that’s difficult. 

Dorothy went to a Scottish gathering of Compassionate Friends and used their internet chat room. She found she could relate to the other members and did not have to 'put on a mask'.

And then you said you got in contact with Compassionate Friends?

 

Compassionate Friends, that was when, that was a few months, that was probably about the end of the year December 2005. I was desperately looking on the internet to see if there was anything, and I came across the website, Compassionate Friends, and that was, that was an amazing help to me because at that point there was a sort of a chat, a chat room as well, and there was always somebody on there because, you know there was members that lived in Australia and Spain and whatever, so even at one o’clock in the morning, there was somebody on you know, and we could, that you could talk to and sort of see how you were feeling at that time. So the Compassionate Friends has been an amazing help to me, I mean I’m still, I still have contact with, I haven’t been, I haven’t been able to go to any of the groups ‘cos there are no groups near at hand here, I’ve been to one, the Scottish gathering. I would like to go this year, but we’ll probably be out of the country then, ah but its, you know it’s an amazing organisation, and its, I think the fact that you can just speak and say how you really are, how you really feel, rather than putting the mask on, I find now your all the time, you’re putting a mask on. 

The family had to wait eight weeks before Mark's body was released for the funeral because the crown prosecutor could not decide whether to bring criminal charges. Mark had a humanist funeral.

Our solicitor applied to the Coroner for the release of the body, for Mark’s body, in order that we could bury him, and the Coroner refused, with the result that we waited eight weeks to get Mark’s body back. I can’t describe how, what that’s like.

 

No.

 

Or to have to wait eight weeks.

 

Did they say they had to do a post-mortem or anything?

 

No, they had done a post mortem. He was waiting on; he said he was waiting on the county prosecutor’s decision as to whether there would be any criminal charges, manslaughter charges. Our solicitor actually wrote to him and sent him a home office memo, that said that a second post mortem should be arranged by the Coroner to allow the body to be released to the family for burial. But he said that that only applied to homicide victims, they were the only ones that were warranted early release.

 

So that was his reason for holding it up?

 

Well, he said he was waiting on the crown prosecutor telling him whether there was going to be any, it turned out I mean again this coroner turned out to be, well I don’t know whether we were unlucky, I mean I’ve heard others stories from other people who’ve gone through very similar experiences, he just flatly refused to listen to our solicitor. She sent him this home office memo, saying that, which said he should arrange a second post mortem to allow the body to be released, and he said, as I say, that that only, that only homicide victims warranted early release. Now the definition of homicide in the dictionary is the killing of a human being, so I don’t know what the difference was between manslaughter enquiries with an employer and homicide. I don’t know what the difference is, and to me it’s the same thing. But to him it was different.

 

 

The funeral was, Mark was very, very proud of his Scottish heritage really, I mean he was, it was a bit of a joke in his house because my daughter in law is English, my grandson was born in Wales, so, you know they always kind of say it’s a you know, a multi cultural family, so it was always a bit of a joke, but he was very proud of being Scottish, so we had a piper playing at the funeral and as I say, they were so many people there, but nobody, nobody from the employer, not even you know the men that he considered friends, attended the funeral.

 

It was a humanist funeral, simply because Mark wasn’t religious, and I, I probably I suppose at that point I was probably, I don’t know, indifferent, I was probably agnostic I suppose. But since then and you know the way that people have behaved since then, I would say I’m probably atheist now, you know I don’t really, I just think if there was a God out there, you know, people wouldn’t behave like that, you know it would just so but so it was a humanist funeral.

 

And how did you find someone to take that service?

 

Again, I went through the telephone directory and phoned up the Samaritans, I phoned up them because I, you know I have friends who are still Samaritans, so I phoned, I phoned them and you know someone phoned someone else, and they came back with this ladies name, and she was wonderful. She was, it was, it was a beautiful ceremony. I didn’t speak, at that time I, I couldn’t have, I couldn’t have spoken, I couldn’t have said anything. Mark’s friend said something, but she talked about Mark’s life and whatever, we didn’t, there were no hymns sung, it was music, it was Mark’s favourite pieces of music that were played.

Dorothy described what happened when her son, Mark, was fatally injured in a huge explosion in a recycling plant. The family went to the hospital to say good-bye.

Well he [my son] said that the health and safety procedures were almost nil, and he was being bullied by his general manager into taking huge safety risks, and on the 11^th April 2005, which was in fact my birthday, the last birthday I’ve celebrated, he phoned to say that he had got another job, and he would be handing in his notice. And I never spoke to him again. That was the last time I spoke to him.

 

And on the 12^th April the general manager in that company took a load of 4000 aerosols, gas filled aerosols for processing for scrap, and he loaded them into a baling machine and he told Mark to bale them up. The aerosols were filled with butane gas as I said, Mark was alone in the building, there was a huge explosion, fireball which blew part of the roof off the building, and the windows out, and Mark was set alight. The fire exit was locked from the inside, Mark was screaming for help, there was no fire hose, there was no fire blanket, the staff had never had fire drill, they didn’t know where the extinguishers were, when they found, the extinguishers, they were empty. So he was basically left to burn to death.

 

I’m so sorry.

 

When the fire, when the ambulance arrived, Mark was still alive, he actually walked into the ambulance. The first we knew was a phone call from my daughter in law, and she said, “You have to come now, there’s been an explosion, and Mark’s in hospital, and there’s no hope.” So my husband and I just threw a case, threw a case in the car and it took us five hours to get down there, and we arrived at the hospital, oh about midnight, and they took us upstairs to the intensive care and a young doctor, a very nice, that was the last act of kindness I think, that was shown to us, the doctor explained to us what had happened, and said they had thought of taking Mark, moving Mark to a burns unit, but he said he chances of survival are nil, so we thought we would make him comfortable and keep him here till you came. So we went in to the room and he was just burned beyond recognition.

 

Just a charred body. And we were allowed to see him, excuse me, we were allowed to say goodbye, and while we were sitting there saying goodbye there was a clattering of dishes from the sink, from the kitchen next door, somebody very noisily washing dishes, at midnight, and because it, it, you know it sort of got through to my brain because I thought how come somebody be washing dishes, when some, my son is dying.

 

And when we came out of the room they switched the life support system off, we came out of the room and this woman met us in the corridor and said, “Well I can go home now folks, would anybody like a lift?”, with a dish towel in her hand. And I learned later that that was the Family Liaison Officer. That was my first introduction to the Family Liaison Officer. Not one sorry, no regrets, just “I can go home now” he’s dead. That was the, that was the impression.

 

What was she doing washing dishes?

 

Ah, well she’d been making coffee and whatever, and you know she’d been waiting there for us coming, and the family were there, my son’s best friend was there, he was the best man at their the wedding. He was there with his wife, and they were supporting my daughter in law. 

The liaison officer added to the family's distress when she described CCTV footage of Mark's death in an industrial explosion. Eventually the family said that they did not want to see her again.

But the Family Liaison Officer, I think, I can’t remember whether it was because we didn’t sleep I mean, you know you don’t know days or whatever, but she called shortly after, and the family were all there. Friends and family of my daughter in law’s were all sitting, as people do, they collect in houses, sit and drink tea, nobody does anything, they just sit and drink tea, and the Family Liaison Officer called and started to tell us in great detail, she said that Marks’ death had been recorded in CCTV, and they had all been watching it back at the station, and that it was quite horrific, his death was quite horrific, and she started to tell us details then, of just what happened, in front of everybody.

 

And my grandson was there. And my daughter had flown over from Italy and she took my grandson out and she said, “You shouldn’t have to hear this. He shouldn’t be listening to this.” And she [the officer] actually enjoyed it, it was like she was describing a good film she’d been to, an exciting film she’d been to, and she seemed to quite actually enjoy the gory details of the whole thing.

 

How awful.

 

And to cut a long story short the woman was just absolutely horrendous, she added to our agony so much, so we eventually phoned the police and said, “Don’t send that woman back to this house, because she’s not doing us any favours whatsoever.” And with that the police more or less withdrew and didn’t, we didn’t get another Family Liaison Officer and we got no more, no more help from the police at all.

 

Did you explain why you didn’t want to have her back in the house?

 

Yes, yes.

 

And they didn’t apologise or send anybody else?

 

Well that came much later, I made an official complaint to the Chief Constable of that particular force. And that came much later, that was a lot later. Because you don’t know what, nobody comes forward to help. Nobody says. “This is what you do, this is what happens, this is what should happen.” No, this is a new experience, you don’t know, you really don’t know what you, what should be happening.

After Dorothy's son was killed her daughter-in-law was left with two children and no income, and she was still waiting for compensation four years after Mark's death.

When, when my son was killed back in April 2005 the employer purely sent his pay slip and his P45 and he was killed, he died on the 13^th April, so they paid him from the 1^st to the 13^th April. They didn’t even pay the month. So my daughter-in-law was left with two children and no money because she didn’t, she didn’t work. She was left with two children, and no money coming in at all. Just that, just that 13 days pay.

 

So having worked in the civil service and having a sort of idea of you know what was involved, unfortunately I was the one that had to go round with my son’s temporary death certificate, not realising how difficult it was, if, if I hadn’t had the background that I had, and the contacts that I, I was able to have I don’t think my daughter in law would have got the benefit, so I don’t know how people manage now with the… they have made it so difficult, so difficult for people. I mean years ago widow’s benefits were paid out as I said within six working days, we prided ourselves we could get money out to a widow and there was a lump sum paid to tide her over, a widow’s allowance for so many weeks, and then the widowed mother’s allowance if she had children. Now it’s a basic for the well it’s parents, it’s widowed parents, it’s men and women who get it now, but there’s no sort of lump sum, there’s no allowance, they just get a payment for themselves. To get paid for the children you then have to go to the Inland Revenue and make a claim for family tax credit, separately for the children.

 

So you have to go round all these different offices with this death certificate, trying to do it on the phone, oh it just, it was just, that was just a total nightmare, an absolute nightmare. I was able to call on the help of people that I knew in the department and at one point my-daughter- in- law was being under paid, and I knew she was being underpaid, again from my past experience, so I phoned up and spoke to the Customer Complaints Manager, in a particular department, and she told me I was wrong, and I said, “No, I think you’ll find I’m right,” I said, “If you go to a certain court,” I said, “You will find that in there, and I think you will find I am right, and that you are under paying her.” And the next day she phoned back and she said, “I’m really sorry about that, you are right, I didn’t know that.” Now if I hadn’t had that experience.

 

So it’s not a standard amount for a widow?

 

No. No. No, it depends on your National Insurance Contributions.

 

Oh I see.

 

That the person who’s died has paid.

 

Oh.

 

No it depends on the National Insurance Contributions that the, that the, the person who’s died has paid into the system. How much, how much they get. I mean if I hadn’t, if I hadn’t had that past work experience, I knew that these things were, you know, that what, what was being paid, and what was being said was wrong, then no-one would have connected it.

 

If health and safety make charges, would there be any compensation due from the company?

 

My daughter in law’s solicitor is dealing with that, he has been dealing with it since 2005. That again, the employer has been really dragging his feet again, you know, every step of the way they have been coming up with arguments and whatever, so she has not received any compensation as yet, which is almost four years.

Dorothy's son died in an industrial incident. She said that in a similar situation the family may need a good solicitor and support and that justice may not come easily.

Have you got any message for other people like yourself who are bereaved because of some industrial incident?

 

Yes, I would say don’t think that the police or the health and safety or the Crown Prosecution or whatever, that any of these official departments will be on your side, or will act for you, in your best interest. I think you need to get the strength of your own people around you, a good solicitor, and if it’s an industrial incident, the Centre for Corporate Accountability, and like myself, the Compassionate Friends, where you know, if it’s a son or daughter, are wonderful. And you just have to fight, you have to battle and fight to get justice. It will not come easily.