Father of Southport attack victim helps raise £125k for commemorative playground
The father of Southport attack victim Alice da Silva Aguiar has been 'overwhelmed' by support after a London Marathon fundraiser for a commemorative playground approached £125,000.
Sergio Aguiar, whose nine-year-old daughter Alice was one of the three girls murdered in the Southport attack on July 29 last year, is helping raise £250,000 for a new playground at Churchtown Primary School, which Alice attended.
Mr Aguiar will be running the London Marathon in April alongside Jinnie Payne, the headteacher of Churchtown Primary, as well as other members of staff.
The playground will also commemorate fellow Churchtown student Bebe King who, aged six, was the youngest victim of the attack by Axel Rudakubana.
Mr Aguiar said: 'We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of the local community so far, not to mention the support across the country.
'Our serious training is ramping up now, and we're determined to get this done.'
The new playground, which was proposed by Alice's parents, will contain a dedicated performance space and an indoor/outdoor library.
There are also plans to revitalise the early years' playground with a den-building area.
Ms Payne said the playground will be 'a lasting monument' to Alice and Bebe's 'amazing personalities'.
'The amount we have raised so far is phenomenal, but we still have a long way to go,' she said.
Rudakubana, who killed Alice, Bebe, and seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January.
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Telegraph
01-06-2025
- Telegraph
‘Our son pocketed a £30k loan and cut us off from our grandchildren'
When James* and Alice's* first grandchild was born, they stepped in without hesitation to help with childcare. For the next decade, they would see their two grandchildren three or four times a week for trips to the beach or to the park and to babysit. Three years later, in 2005, his son decided to fulfil his dream of emigrating to Australia with his young family. 'We knew we would only have limited contact with the grandchildren when they were growing up and would miss them terribly, but their happiness and welfare was paramount,' says James. To help support their son, they agreed to loan him £30,000 for a house deposit. 'It was virtually all our life's cash savings,' he adds. A few months later, James fell seriously ill. While he was in hospital, their son informed them he had found a house and needed the money that day. Alice felt she had no choice but to leave her husband's bedside to transfer the funds. 'I could have died a few hours later. I was self-employed. We might not have got a full pension, might not have been able to sell the business, and poor Alice would have had no savings left as a widow,' James says. His son's marriage ended before they emigrated. After renting out the house he had purchased in Australia for six years he sold it for a profit. But he asked if he could hold on to the money to purchase a house in the UK with his new partner, with whom he had welcomed James and Alice's third grandchild. James and Alice agreed. When they asked for the money back, their son claimed it had been a gift all along. 'We know we never declared it as a gift,' they say. But with nothing in writing, the money was gone. 'We never saw the £30,000 again.' James and Alice felt used. 'The betrayal is beyond words.' Their already strained relationship with their son quickly deteriorated further. James and Alice's new daughter-in-law informed them that they had been substituted as grandparents by her parents. 'It was just all about her family,' they say. 'She just didn't want to integrate with our side of the family at all.' James and Alice's access to their grandchildren became increasingly restricted, until suddenly they were cut off altogether. 'Our grandchildren were used as a weapon' Money can tear families apart – from family loans to disputed inheritance – leaving grandparents locked out and grandchildren caught in the crossfire. Research by the social network Gransnet found that one in seven grandparents in the UK are estranged from their grandchildren, with an estimated two million grandparents denied contact. Over a third, 37pc, haven't seen their grandchildren in more than five years. The reasons vary from emotional abuse and personality clashes to mental health issues and family disputes. In the survey, 64pc blamed their child's partner for the problems. But time and again, money plays a part. In 2018, Nigel Huddleston, a Conservative MP, said in Parliament that 'when access to grandchildren is blocked, some grandparents call it a kind of living bereavement'. After two serious allegations of verbal abuse, James' and Alice's offers to pay for third-party mediation were rejected. For more than a year, they were denied all contact. 'The grandchildren were always used as a weapon,' they say. Left with no other option, they went to court. Grandparents have no automatic right to see their grandchildren. But Ministry of Justice figures show a 25pc rise in applications to court by grandparents since 2017. James and Alice were among the few success stories – if it can be called that. A contact order granted them access once every four weeks for 60 minutes. The process cost them around £5,000. 'I don't want the money. I just want to see my grandchildren' Rose has a similar story. When her son-in-law got into debt, she loaned him £60,000 without question. At the time, it didn't cross her mind to get anything in writing and, not wanting to worry her daughter with whom she had a turbulent relationship at the time, she decided not to tell her. Years later, her daughter rang her in tears with bailiffs at the door. Her husband hadn't paid any bills for six months. Rose paid off the debts and confessed to her daughter about the previous loan. When her son-in-law found out she had confessed about the loan, Rose was instantly cut off from seeing her grandchildren. Rose took the matter to court, spending £12,000 on legal fees. But she withdrew her case after learning she was distressing her granddaughter, which she now regrets. 'Somehow I signed away rights to see my grandchildren until they're 18,' she says. Rose is now 87. 'Whether I'll live that long, I don't know,' she says. 'But I just keep thinking I've got to live long enough to see my granddaughter.' She has also never seen the £60,000 loan again. 'I've said I don't want it now. I don't want the money. I just want to see my grandchildren.'
BBC News
29-05-2025
- BBC News
Coercive control remains major issue in South East
A victim of domestic abuse has spoken out, a decade after coercive control became a criminal offence in the UK, about how long it took her to realise her ex-husband was abusing which is not her real name, met her ex-husband at university and said during the marriage she did what he wanted to "keep the peace".The mother-of-three said it was "very hard to recognise coercive control" and initially thought it was down to "complicated communication issues".Data obtained from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) by the BBC showed there is an upward trend in the number of prosecutions in the last decade in the South East - from 18 in 2016 to 438 in 2024. According to domestic abuse support charity Safe Lives, coercive control "describes a range of behaviours that allow someone to gain or keep control of a partner, ex-partner or family member" and is "a complete subversion of a personal relationship"."There were limitations for what you could do," said Alice. "It was really confusing because of the mental game-playing that went on."It has been 10 years since coercive control became a criminal offence in the UK. Under the Serious Crime Act 2015 coercive control in an intimate or family relationship carries a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment, a fine, or both. The BBC obtained data from Surrey and Sussex Police through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request which revealed the number of coercive control cases recorded in the two the past five years, Surrey Police recorded more than 3,000 reports. Of these, 40% led to arrests and 7% resulted in the last decade, Sussex Police recorded more than 7,000 reports. Of these, 36% led to arrests and only 3% resulted in FOI request was also submitted to Kent Police however, the force has not supplied the information at the time of publication. 'Difficult to heal' Alice said she felt coercion was more harmful than the physical violence she experienced."You may have some marks and bruising, but your body will heal and it will deal with it the way it knows best," she said."Coercive control is so hard to prove because nobody else is in the room with you and it's your word against the perpetrator. "There's mental scars which are so difficult to heal." Alice is encouraging people who are experiencing coercive control to seek help."I struggled to speak my truth, I struggled to be honest about what was happening and I couldn't openly express what I was thinking," she said."When I picked up the phone to call the police, I was proud of myself for doing that and it changed the course of my whole life and future."You should look for help from an outsider or domestic abuse support charity to check what is really happening in your relationship because sometimes you can't make judgements on your own." 'Appalling and abusive' Ellen Miller, chief executive of Safe Lives, said: "At the very heart of domestic abuse is the idea of coercive control and coercive controlling behaviour. "It is a complete subversion of a personal relationship into something that's all about feeding off, taking power and taking control in a way that's appalling and abusive."Ms Miller said examples included controlling who the victim saw, their choice of clothing, what the victim was spending their money on, career decisions, and controlling behaviour through threats of added: "It's that idea that someone is owning your life and is causing you to live in fear. "If something doesn't feel right, you need to ask yourself - 'is this coercive control?'" If you are affected by any of the issues raised, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.
ITV News
27-05-2025
- ITV News
Liverpool response shows police have learnt from Southport
While the focus today is rightly on the lives changed by Monday's horrific scenes in Liverpool, there are also signs that Merseyside Police is itself transformed since the last time it dealt with an incident on this scale. Three words indicate a step change in the force's communications: 'white British man'. It took them less than two hours to inform us of the suspect's profile last night. Contrast that with the vacuum of information following the Southport murders last July, and it's clear the police have learnt from the past. I was in Southport a few hours after three little girls - Elsie, Alice and Bebe - were killed and saw for myself how disinformation filled the void left by police communications. Online, outright lies spread about the attacker. Mainly that he was a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived via a small boat. He wasn't and he hadn't. So determined were the advocates of that disinformation that still to this day some people believe and perpetuate those conspiracies. By the time Merseyside Police released the full information about Axel Rudakubana - including that he was from Britain - it was too late to put the falsehoods back in the box. This is something the inspectorate HMICFRS subsequently criticised police for, recently concluding that 'the police service needs to better appreciate that fast-moving events require it to respond with an accurate counter-narrative". So this time, Merseyside Police acted quickly. I noticed that within minutes last night theories were once again circulating on social media, where irresponsible accounts deliberately stoked a particular narrative. This time, before it could take hold, the Merseyside Police statement landed shortly before 8pm, stating that the suspect was male, white and British. But quickly criticism turned to whether or not the police were too quick to outline the man's profile. In future, will police always be expected to state the ethnicity and nationality of a suspect? What if that information inflames rather than eases tensions, or feeds a false narrative rather than dispelling it? And if police don't routinely release this information, in future cases people will ask why not. There has been great praise today of the police officers - and other emergency services - who responded at the scene of the incident. But the back office staff who decide what information to release must feel they cannot win.
