A US military worker killed my son in Britain, and still we fight for justice. I’m angry that others are waiting too | Charlotte Charles

As Harry Dunn’s mother, I’ve demanded accountability. The Guardian’s discovery of other victims of US personnel shows how urgent that is

David Lammy to ask US about case of woman strangled by US fighter in UK

When I read about the case of Sarah Steele, the woman strangled by an American pilot, I felt a familiar sickness in my stomach. It took me straight back to the day I lost my son Harry and to the months and years that followed, when the US authorities did everything they could to deny us justice. It is almost unbearable to think that another British family has now been put through the same ordeal. I thought those days were behind us following our high-profile case, and that the US military and British police had learned their lesson. Clearly not.

What happened to Sarah, as revealed by a Guardian investigation, should shame every institution that allowed her case to slip quietly into the shadows. A woman abused on British soil by an American officer. The man responsible was a guest in our country. Yet instead of a clear and confident assertion of British jurisdiction by Cambridgeshire police, the case was allowed to drift into the US system, where a male military jury acquitted him of the more serious charge. I do not know whether the outcome would have been different under our system. That is not the point. The point is that Sarah was entitled to the protection of the law of the country in which she lived.

Charlotte Charles MBE is the mother of Harry Dunn

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