Grieving parents hit out at Foreign Office ‘failures’

Agony of families ‘abandoned’ by UK.

Evelyn Clarke’s parents will meet lawyers tomorrow to discuss exhuming their daughter’s grave. The following day, a group of people will congregate on London’s King Charles Street.

Although most of them will not know each other, they will have an instant and unfortunate bond, forged through tragedy and feelings of hopelessness and despair.

King Charles Street is the location of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters who gather there on Tuesday not only have something in common with each other, but also with Eddie and Maryann Clarke.

Each of them has lost a family member overseas in recent years, whether through an accident, natural causes, suspicious circumstances or murder.

And every one of them, unfortunately, feels they weren’t offered the support and guidance they required from the Foreign Office in their darkest hour.

A huge banner with the faces of 29 loved ones who never came home will cast a long shadow over the throng, but these images are, quite literally, just a snapshot of the situation.

Last Sunday we told the story of air hostess Evelyn, who died in Dubai one year ago tomorrow. Her parents plan to request an exhumation and post mortem to discover how their 28-year-old daughter died.

The heart-rending story is still making headlines one week on.

The Ayrshire couple don’t believe the Dubai verdict that their daughter’s death caused by a fall from an eighth floor apartment window was accidental and want an autopsy in the UK in the hope it will provide some answers.

The case took a dramatic turn yesterday with claims Evelyn’s death could be linked to the disappearance of Scots sailor Timmy MacColl. The Royal Navy able seaman, from Killin, vanished a year earlier leaving investigators baffled.

But now reports say both Evelyn and 27-year-old Timmy visited Rock Bottom Caf in Dubai’s red-light district in the hours before their deaths. Their families believe their drinks may have been spiked.

We can also reveal there has been a small chink of light in the darkness that has enveloped the Clarkes for the past 12 months.

They have received a letter from the head of the Scottish Fatalities Investigation Unit, part of the Crown Office. It offers the services of one of the country’s top forensic pathologists, should a court give Eddie and Maryann permission to exhume their daughter’s body.

Glasgow University’s Dr Marjorie Turner, who often gives evidence in murder trials, has offered to meet with the family and carry out a possible post mortem for free. For the time being, Eddie and Maryann are focusing on meeting their lawyer tomorrow and getting through the anniversary of Evelyn’s death.

They remain overwhelmed by the level of interest their bid for answers has created, but remain resolute in their belief it’s something they have to do for Evelyn.

That sense of devotion is prevalent in so many of the families who will gather in London. None of them are looking for a distraction from their grief. Until they find the answers they seek or feel justice has been done, they will never be able to carry on with their lives.

A day before Evelyn Clarke was found dead outside an apartment complex in Dubai, another Scot was killed abroad.

Christopher Divers, from Penilee in Glasgow, was only 20 and had the world at his feet when he was involved in a car crash in North Carolina. He’d arrived in the USA 12 days earlier to begin a greenkeeping course. His dad, Gary, is also a greenkeeper. The pair had worked together in Sicily and Loch Lomond before Christopher grabbed the chance to train and work in the States.

He was doing the job he loved, he was engaged and he was expecting a baby with his fiance, Gemma.

But a year ago today he was a passenger in a van that collided with another vehicle. Two people died and a further six were injured.

Mum Clare says getting through today will be tough, just like every other significant date that comes along. The way she feels now, she says, makes her believe the passage of time will never make it easier.

Clare received a call from the Foreign Office on Wednesday, to inform her they had obtained the death certificate and crash report. Thankfully for Clare and Gary, they had taken matters into their own hands and obtained copies of the files by other means some time ago.

“That’s a year and we still don’t know the full story. We’ve had to try to find bits and pieces of information from elsewhere,” Clare says. “Months went by between calls from the Foreign Office. It’s a bad enough time without trying to find the information ourselves.

“There are discrepancies about the time of the accident, the time of death, and as far as we know there wasn’t an inquest.

“One document we’ve seen says he died of cardiac arrest, while another says it was brain injuries. He was airlifted to hospital, but there seems to be a five-hour lapse between the accident and time of death.

“That’s what I find hard wondering if my boy was still alive for a further five hours. There’s not a clear picture and we don’t know where to turn for the truth. Could the Foreign Office not deal with the relevant people and get all the information? ”

Clare and Gary’s other child, 19-year-old Daniel is now at university in Dundee. Their family home is uneasily quiet.

“We’ve an empty house now,” says Clare. “It always used to be so busy, so it’s proving difficult to get used to.”

Tragically, Christopher’s fiancee Gemma learned shortly after his death that she’d suffered a miscarriage.

Harry Lindsay, whose 34-year-old son Christopher died on the Costa del Sol in October 2011, will also attend Tuesday’s demo. Father-of-three Christopher was in Spain with workmates when he was found collapsed in the street by police. He died in hospital five days later. Despite being heavily bruised and having personal belongings missing, an inquiry into Christopher’s death has never taken place in Spain. In fact, Harry’s pleas for an inquiry have been rejected three times.

Harry, who lives in Chapelhall near Airdrie, is at the end of his tether and his words sum up the feelings of so many others in a similar position.

“I wake up at 3am, my head buzzing with thoughts and worries,” he says. “It’s soul destroying. Christopher had three sons and I go to see them but I don’t really know how they feel.

“I go to watch the eldest play football and all the rest of the kids have their dads on the touchline watching, but he doesn’t.

“The Foreign Office is oblivious to all of this. I wonder how they would cope with this feeling? Would they be able to sleep or eat or have a day go by when their thoughts weren’t consumed by it?”

Harry added: “The Clarke’s case is a perfect example of the way so many of us have been treated. I don’t feel the Foreign Office advised us correctly and they really need to be putting pressure on these countries to act and investigate.

“Around a month after Christopher’s death, we asked the Foreign Office which police department and ambulance picked him up, but they couldn’t tell us.

“I’ve been told he died of organ failure, but why did he have organ failure? If the authorities over there tell me he wasn’t murdered, then why did he die?”

At first glance, the woman behind Tuesday’s demonstration appears to have an idyllic life. Julie Sheppard lives in Selkirk with her husband Les, who is a retired school headmaster, his mum and their two children, who are home schooled.

They have an allotment and even receive a fresh supply of eggs from the hens they keep in their garden.

Les’s love of France saw him and Julie, and her three kids from her first marriage, spend a lot of time in the country. Julie married Les when her son, Andrew, was 17 and he too developed a passion for France.

He had been living there with his partner for three years when he was discovered dead in a country lane in September 2010, aged 31. French doctors determined Andrew, who was being treated for schizophrenia, had suffered heart failure, but a UK pathologist disagreed.

Julie has been fighting to see letters exchanged between the British and French governments about her son’s death, but she says the Foreign Office has refused to reveal them.

This is the second demo she has organised, following a well-attended gathering in October last year. She says there is likely to be further demonstrations after Tuesday’s, such is the feeling of anger amongst the families.

“Everyone suffers bereavement, which we have to cope with, but this is about the lack of assistance there is to deal with it,” she explained. “We might never get the full answers we hope for but we need to try. If we don’t, no one else will.

“We understand the Foreign Office can’t interfere in another country’s legal system, but it feels like they don’t even make their presence felt.