Activist and campaigner Mina Smallman said she still hasn’t forgiven the two police officers who took selfies of her dead daughters in a moving interview with the BBC.
Ms Smallman, well known for her campaigning on the safety of women and girls and police reform, appeared in this Sunday’s Desert Island Discs on Radio 4.
Her daughters, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were murdered in Fryent Country Park, Brent, in June 2020 as they celebrated Bibaa’s 46th birthday.
A year later, Danyal Hussein was sentenced to life imprisonment for their murders in a random attack as part of what he saw as a “satanic sacrifice.”
Two police officers were also dismissed and jailed for misconduct after posing for selfies with Bibaa and Nicole’s bodies in the background. In 2021, a report by Independent Office for Police Conduct (the IOPC) into the deaths of Bibaa and Nikki found the response from the Met Police to calls from worried friends and family of the missing sisters was “below the standard that it should have been”.
The IOPC advised the Metropolitan Police to apologise to Mina and her family. Dame Cressida Dick, the then Met Commissioner, issued a public apology.
In a powerful interview, Ms Smallman recalls the days leading up to the discovery of her daughters’ bodies and her reaction to the failings of the police who handled her daughters’ case. The former teacher and priest said she remembered receiving a call from Nicole’s boyfriend, Adam, asking if she had seen her.
He said Nicole had not been home and that he had called the police and hospitals but she were nowhere to be found. Ms Smallman said she called police and spoke to a handler who promised to chase up the case and call her back but never did. She said she remembered the “frantic” mood at home moments before receiving another call from Nicole’s boyfriend saying they had found the sisters’ bodies.
She said: “[Adam] said, ‘Mina, Mina, you need to sit down. They’re gone.’ I let out this primal scream – [it] comes from the core of your soul, really.” She added: “I have never, in my entire life, experienced a sense of, there is no hope. That feeling of disconnection from the world.”
Ms Smallman said she had been in London preparing to bury her daughters with the IOPC wanted to speak with her. She said: “Graham, the lead person from the IOPC, when he was telling me, his chin was trembling. He said, ‘I don’t actually know how to tell you this because I have two daughters myself’ and I thought, ‘My God, what is he going to tell us?’ and when he told us, I completely lost it.
“My language was so blue [that] when they left, they must have said, ‘did you say she was a priest?’.” She said wasn’t a ‘police basher’ but was critical of the policing system. She said: “I bash the ones who have managed to squeeze in through poor [and] lack of vetting, lack of funding, hidden pockets of filth that’s been allowed to blossom.”
Ms Smallman said she had been able to forgive her daughters’ murderer but not Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis, the two policemen who took the selfies. She said: “I have no words for them… I was celebrating when those two were sent to prison.” She said not forgiving them “keep[s] the fire alive that makes me want to continue to challenge institutions to do better”.
She also criticised Sir Mark Rowley’s refusal to agree with the finding from Baroness Casey’s 2023 review which found the force was “institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic”. She said: “Sometimes racism doesn’t have language, it’s not verbalised, it’s what you fail to do.” She also reflected on how she and her husband Chris coped with their grief.
She said: “We’ve never judged each other on how we grieve…We have allowed each other the space that we need and we laugh together every opportunity that we can because it’s what keeps us going.” Ms Smallman dedicated the song Hit Me with your Rhythm Stick by Ian Drury and the Blockheads to her surviving daughter Monique.
She said: “It’s really hard to be the last one left behind and I want her to know that she doesn’t have to fill that gap and that she’s entitled to have a life.” Ms Smallman also thanked other mothers who have lost their daughters, saying their love and support have kept her going.
She also shed light on her early life, her difficult childhood with a mother who suffered from poor mental health, her career first as a drama teacher and then later as a priest. In 2013 she became the first woman of colour to be an archdeacon in the Church of England, serving Southend in the Diocese of Chelmsford.
She said her faith had sustained her through extremely difficult times. This episode of Desert Island Discs, which airs on Sunday, February 16, was recorded in January.
