Esther Ghey: ‘Brianna’s murder can’t be for nothing – I’ve got to make something good out of it’
Scattered across Esther Ghey’s hands are several finely etched tattoos. She got them in the run-up to the highly publicised trial of her transgender daughter Brianna’s murderers, which ended earlier this month.
“I chose the lotus flower because it rises from murky waters,” she says glancing down at the delicate inking on her wrist. “These on my index finger are the tails of two arrows – they are Taoist symbols and are my favourites. The first arrow is the pain that comes to us all and is inevitable in life. The second represents suffering and whether you choose to carry it with you. I have decided to leave it behind.”
If that sounds astonishing then you probably haven’t witnessed Ghey’s television appearances in recent days. Aged 37, the quietly-spoken mother of two-turned campaigner has carried herself with such composure and demonstrated such compassion it has humbled us all.
“The worst possible thing has happened to our family, and for me, it can’t be for nothing,” she says. “I’ve got to make something good come out of this and create a lasting legacy for Brianna.”
Ghey, who worked as a food technologist, now has two goals: to introduce mindfulness to schools across the UK – a mission for which she has already raised over £95,000 – and more ambitiously, to reform the internet.
“This isn’t something I would ever imagined myself doing,” she admits. “I don’t feel comfortable talking to the press. But I want fundamental change, I have another daughter and I want to make society a better place for my grandchildren – for all our grandchildren.”
The horrifying facts of the case have justifiably made headlines; on February 11 2023,
16-year-old Brianna Ghey was stabbed to death in a park in Warrington, Cheshire in a premeditated attack by then-15-year-olds Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe. He was partly motivated by Brianna’s transgender identity, the judge later concluded. Jenkinson was obsessed with torture and deaths she had seen on the dark web and was primarily motivated by sadistic excitement. On February 2, she was sentenced to 22 years in prison and Ratcliffe to 20 years.
Ghey’s response has been more than dignified. This ordinary woman said something so extraordinary we collectively held our breath; in December after the pair were convicted, she called for “empathy and compassion” for their families as “they too have lost a child” and “must live the rest of their lives knowing what their child has done”.
It was a sentiment she repeated after sentencing and has gone down far as to say she would like to meet with Jenkinson’s distraught parents who have extended their heartfelt apologies for what their daughter did.
“I refuse to harbour hate. You can let something like this destroy you or you can get back up on your feet and push forward,” she says.
By any measure, Ghey is an unlikely activist; she is not instinctively drawn to the spotlight, nor is she a natural orator. In an ideal world we would never have heard of her. But she recognises the platform she has been given, however unwished-for, however absolutely unwelcome, and has stepped up to speak out.
The first is Peace In Mind, a charity she had set up to introduce mindfulness into Britain’s primary school classrooms. Herself a practitioner of mindfulness for the past eight years, she credits the practice for giving her the resilience and empathy to cope with the terrible loss of her child.
“Teaching children mindfulness instils them with self-acceptance, compassion and empathy,” she says. “Brianna had mental health issues and I know she would have really benefited if she had been given the skills that mindfulness provides.”
Ghey’s other focus is online safety for children; like virtually every other teenager in the country, Brianna was “addicted” to social media which fuelled her anxiety. In these past few days, she has met up with fellow crusader Ian Russell. Last September, a coroner ruled his 14-year-old daughter Molly, from Harrow, north-west London, died from “an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content” in November 2017.
“I think we will work together, he’s a really nice man,” observes Ghey, as though their paths had crossed on a parents’ evening rather than in the white-hot glare of the media. But make no mistake her mildness belies her tensile emotional strength. Those of us whose family lives are – by the grace of God – untouched by such cataclysmic tragedy, can only wonder how we might react in similar, nightmarish circumstances. Elemental grief has many allotropes. Loss and loneliness affect individuals differently – it is estimated that around 16 per cent of relationships break down after the death of a child. Who among us can be certain how we would react?
Some parents withdraw from the world, others seek to alter it, a phenomenon the University of Massachusetts professor Chris Bobel calls “accidental activism”? After her 17-year-old daughter Gracie was mown down and killed by a distracted driver, she mounted a research project investigating why some parents become crusaders in the wake of bereavement.
“They are crafting purpose, searching for meaning,” she writes. “Not seeking a meaning for the death of their loved one, but rather a way to transform their pain into purpose, a process that restores much-needed control for the traumatised.”
She and her students spoke to ordinary people who, in the wake of their traumatic loss, became experts in suicide, drug addiction, medical errors of various kinds, hospital-acquired infections, natural disasters, car and truck crashes.
It is a list that invariably generates head-shaking because it captures our worst fears come to life – and death. The shocking load of a child is not just impossible to rationalise, it represents a direct affront to the natural order of things.
“Through their work, these bereaved parents make their grief legible in a culture that turns away from their pain,” Bobel concluded. “As activists, they can grieve out loud. Their activism is a potent means of survival; when others are pressing them to let go, they use their activism to hold on.”
Again and again the world gently urges the grief-stricken to find “closure”. For Ghey, it is a journey not a destination.
“I think there are various stages of closure,” she says. “Watching Brianna’s killers being sentenced was one point of closure. Seeing mindfulness teachers in schools would be another. You can’t cover up the terrible loss at the centre of your life, not would you want to. Instead, you try to build a new life around that huge vacuum.”
Perhaps we need new language to describe the slow, incremental healing process – it is a reflection of the taboo surrounding child death that there is no word for it. We have widows and widowers – but words fail us when it comes to describing bereft parents. Those who feel compelled to somehow transform their raw grief into action do us all a service.
As Nicole Hockley, the mother of one of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Connecticut once explained: “What happened, the murder of my youngest son, was not something I could control. What happened after? That was my choice.” Hockley, who is now a nationally-recognised expert on school safety, chose to co-found the Sandy Hook Promise foundation to try to prevent further senseless bloodshed.
Here in Britain, Emma Webber became a vocal campaigner last year after her student son Barnaby was knifed to death along with his friend Grace O’Malley Kumar on the streets of Nottingham by Valdo Calocane, a 32-year-old paranoid schizophrenic.
Emma had not felt able to return to work at her job in communications for NHS Somerset. Instead, she has channelled her public relations skills into a high-profile campaign to call the authorities into account for the egregious errors in policing and care that left Calocane free to kill.
“We never ever thought we would be that family, thrust into this catastrophic life-changing event when the world changes on its axis,”, she told The Telegraph, “As the families of the victims, we’re just an afterthought.” Thanks to people like her and Ghey, the public is listening.
But Ghey is careful to point out that her priority is and will always be family; Brianna’s stepfather Wes and above all Alisha, her elder daughter, now 19. “We are as close as best friends and I can see she’s very strong, but also that she is suffering – to lose a sister is appalling,” says Ghey. “I’m really protective of her and I will always carve out time for her before anything else.”
I wonder aloud what Brianna would have made of her mother’s unexpected activism. Ghey’s reply is a poignant reminder of the force that drives her. “I know exactly what she would say; ‘Oh Mum, you are so embarrassing!”
And, for the first time in a long while, Ghey, campaigner, smiles a mother’s smile.
