Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1036-1039)
Tuesday 4 March 2003
Mr Stephen Hynard and Ms Julia Hynard
Q1036 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed for coming to see us today. What we will do is this: I
will ask you to give us (and we have obviously read the material)
an outline of your concerns and then my colleagues will put questions
to you. Which Hynard is going to speak to us?
Mr Hynard: Julia had mainly to
do with the correspondence with the Mail so I think she
is probably slightly more informative about matters, if that is
all right with you.
Derek Wyatt: Chip in if you want to.
Q1037 Chairman: Why
should you be totally orderly when the Committee is not!
Ms Hynard: The reason that I made
a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about the Daily
Mail was following the inquest into my nephew's death which
happened on 27 February last which was some seven months after
Jimmy's death. We obviously had quite a lot of media interest
following his death because it was particularly tragic and horrific
so we were to some extent expecting media interest in the inquest.
I looked at the press reports the next day. I do not think my
brother, Jimmy's father, was in a fit state on that occasion to
look through them, but I had calls all through the day from various
people. I was at work and people came in and brought papers to
me and I was struck that the coverage was fair in most cases.
Then I had a phone call in the afternoon saying that somebody,
a colleague, had seen the Daily Mail and then throughout
the day I had more and more calls about this particular piece
that appeared in the Daily Mail. I went out in the afternoon
and bought a copy. I was just devastated really by their twist
on the story of what had happened to Jimmy. When I got home from
work all evening I received phone calls from relatives. My cousin's
daughter had had a doctor's appointment on the Island of Guernsey
and picked up the Daily Mail to read that morning and was
absolutely stunned by what she read, which was completely different
from the explanation that had been given to everybody following
the inquest. The evening before we had been phoning round to our
relatives and explaining what had happened and the Daily Mail's
report was utterly contrary to the conclusions of the experts
at the inquest. What had happened was that Jimmy had suffered
a sudden onset of a major psychotic illness and had become very
violent and attacked his father and his sister and had had to
be taken to hospital. Emergency services were called. He was subsequently
discharged from hospital who had wrongly diagnosed his condition,
they felt that he had taken drugs, and within an hour of being
discharged from hospital his calm condition changed again to one
of violence and he took his own life with a pair of scissors in
front of his father. The conclusions offered by the expert witnesses
at the inquest were that drugs were in no way implicated in Jimmy's
death, and that he had suffered sudden onset of a major psychotic
illness. The toxicology reports, which we did not have for many
weeks until after Jimmy's death, found that he had a very slight
trace of cannabis in the blood stream which can last in the blood
stream for a long time. My brother asked questions at the inquest
and lots of people asked questions of the toxicologist and bio-chemist
who gave his report who was absolutely clear that there was no
connection between drugs and Jimmy's death. The clinical psychologist
who came to give evidence made a series of statements in answer
to questions. He was asked whether cannabis could have an effect
on somebody's mental state and he answered saying things like
long-term use of cannabis can lead to lack of motivation and depression,
obviously nothing to do with what happened to Jimmy. Later on
he said in answer to the question from the Coroner who asked whether
it was possible for such a psychotic state to come on so suddenly,
the clinical psychologist replied that yes it was possible for
mental health conditions to begin in a very sudden and dramatic
way. And what the reporter at the inquest had done (I have realised
this since the case since I have been able to read the transcript
of the inquest) was put together two sentences, put together that
cannabis can have an effect on somebody's mental health and that
there can be a sudden and dramatic effect on somebody in terms
of a major psychotic episode, two completely different statements
at different points during a three-hour inquest which were unrelated.
That was the top line of the story which was written by a local
news agency and clearly picked up by the Daily Mail and
also it was picked up in the Scottish Daily Record, which
of course I did not read, and also the Mail supplied us
with other stories which had appeared in the London newspaper
the Metro as well. All the other coverage in all our local
press in the Winchester area was very fair and had read the report
as it was and reported it as was concluded, but the headline that
we had from the Daily Mail was "Cannabis horror"
and "Teenage boy high on cannabis stabs himself", and
we had a picture of our boy with the caption underneath it saying
"Drug crazed" and a picture of my brother with a caption
underneath it saying "Helpless". We were utterly devastated
at a point when most people would have concluded that we had had
enough. That is the outline of my complaint.
Q1038 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed.
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Q1039 Derek Wyatt: * * *
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