Justice for a student I mentor!

I have been mentoring a university student who lost both her parents in a car accident when she was in year 12 (lower sixth form). She went to live with her maternal grandparents who turned out to be totally vile people.

She had a nightmare six months living with them but was so unhappy and felt so unsafe that she moved back into the family home on her own to escape. She must have been desperate to do this in the middle of her A levels. One thing led to another and in the end she complained to the police and the whole affair was taken out of her hands. 

The case reached its conclusion this week and at the Crown Court Granddad was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months (with some sort of reduction for pleading guilty) and his wife got 12 months (also with a small reduction). Granddad got 1 year for the fraud (basically stealing her money), 1 year for the domestic burglary (breaking into the family house the day after the accident to remove cash and jewels) and 3 years and 6 months for assault (hitting the poor girl with all sorts of objects for such major crimes as mentioning her dead parents!) - all three sentences to run concurrently.

Given that the two of them were in their 70s the court must have been very unimpressed with what they had done to give them a fairly lengthy custodial sentence.

I had a few email dealings with her Granddad and he seemed like a total nutter to me - with no redeeming features that I could detect. I’m pleased that he is sitting in prison as I write this – it rather restores my faith in fate catching up with bad people.