I won't let my daughter's killer live in my head, says Sarah Payne's mum

Published9 hours ago

The mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne says she wants to change how people see victims of crime.

Sara Payne's daughter was abducted while playing with her siblings and murdered in July 2000, aged just eight.

Roy Whiting - a convicted sex offender - was jailed for life in December 2001 for her killing.

Sara told BBC South East there were many reasons behind how people behaved, but they "still have choices".

"You have to choose which path you're going to take," she said.

"I chose not to allow him [Whiting] to live in my head.

"It had to be her - so I keep Sarah."

Sarah's body was found 17 days after she went missing from a field near her grandparents' house in West Sussex.

Her disappearance prompted one of the most heavily publicised searches in UK history and led to landmark legal changes.

"I don't have anger. I don't have aggression. I don't want to bring back hanging or any of those things," Sara continued.

"I just want to go forward in a humane way and be human."

Sara, who lived at the time in Hersham, Surrey, said: "People can have this image of victims in their head."

But she added: "Not everybody reacts in the way that the textbook says.

"Shock has a massive effect on anybody."

Sara spoke ahead of the release of a new BBC podcast series - titled Sarah Payne: Unforgotten - which draws on archive and new testimony from Sarah's family, detectives, journalists and politicians to tell the story of the murder investigation.

It also charts Sara's long battle for Sarah's Law, which allows parents, guardians, or carers to formally request information from police about whether anyone with access to their child has a history of child sexual offences.

Sara explained she campaigned for the law - which came into effect in 2011 - as she found it unfair that sex offenders could serve their jail time and then be anonymous.

"Victims... don't get to just move on with their lives," she said. "They have to deal with the aftermath."

Sarah Payne: Unforgotten

Shadow World

More than 25 years after her daughter's murder, Sara described most of what happened around that time as a "bit of blur".

"I feel a bit removed from it to be honest," she said.

"It's almost become a story in my head too."

However, Sara added that an "overriding memory" was the friendships she made and cemented during this time, which have lasted to this day.

"[You find] out who your true friends are," she said.

Sara also recalled thinking her daughter would be watching TV during the search.

"[Sarah] needed to see that I was coming for her," she added.

'The world lost something'

When she found out her daughter was dead - which she said was being reported in the news the same time as she was being told - Sara said the "world was taken out from under" her.

"It wasn't what I expected," she continued. "I'd convinced everyone around me that she was coming home."

Sara said she tried not to think about what her daughter - who she called "very similar" to her - would be like now.

"She was really a special little girl," she added.

"The world's a sadder place without her.

"It lost something that day."

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