Interview with Iain and Katie Hoskins

The News, Portsmouth

Family "petrified" as notorious Portsmouth murderer and fugitive Victor Farrant could be released from jail

Transcript

00:00 (wind whooshing)

00:02 - Yeah, the last week's been very intense, obviously.

00:18 I mean, since we got the email that we ended up receiving,

00:22 I think it was two weeks ago.

00:24 From then on in, it's been pretty kind of full on

00:26 and we've only had a really finite amount of time

00:29 to make a difference.

00:30 So yeah, things have kind of snowballed a lot,

00:34 but we've got to keep the pressure up

00:36 in order to hopefully change people's minds on this.

00:41 - Yeah, definitely, it was a real shock.

00:46 I sort of saw it and it was in the morning, I think, here,

00:50 and I was like, "Oh my God,"

00:52 like almost literally kind of gasped, like screamed

00:56 when I saw the text,

00:57 'cause it went to David, our younger brother,

00:59 and then he forwarded it on to us.

01:01 Then, so it was just a reaction of shock, really.

01:04 Then after a day or so, the three of us connected

01:09 and thought, "What are our avenues?

01:12 "What can we do?"

01:13 - Yeah, I mean, obviously you've done loads

01:19 in the last two weeks.

01:20 I mean, do you feel that it's having a positive effect

01:25 on potentially stopping them getting out?

01:28 - I mean, truthfully, we don't really know

01:30 what the process is behind all of this.

01:32 We've been kind of given a vague timeline

01:35 of how this might happen.

01:37 We've got no experience of how the justice system works,

01:41 so we're just really trying to do our best

01:44 in terms of just making awareness.

01:49 I think the public outcry has been pretty unanimous

01:54 from everybody.

01:55 I don't think anybody said, "I think he should be released

01:58 "and this is a good idea."

02:00 The feedback we've got from all the media that we've done,

02:04 all the journalists, the public at large,

02:07 not only they think this personal story

02:11 is a bit of a miscarriage of justice now,

02:14 there's also the issue, well, the wider issue,

02:18 is this now gonna be commonplace

02:19 where dangerous criminals don't fulfill

02:24 their whole prison term,

02:28 which I think is worrying for everybody, really.

02:31 - And that sentiment's definitely been echoed.

02:35 I've seen those exact sorts of comments

02:38 echoed in the comments on news articles

02:41 or on social media posts of the news articles,

02:44 people saying exactly that,

02:45 and noting that we've not really had

02:49 any specific information about his health condition

02:52 or exactly how bad it is or how unwell he is.

02:57 And if he's got any kind of physical incapacity or not.

03:03 People have been commenting, well, even if he's ill,

03:09 why should he get out?

03:10 Why should he have the dignity to get out and die

03:14 in a caring environment?

03:16 He didn't afford that dignity to his victims.

03:20 And also that fear that he could go out

03:25 and, like Ian said, have a last hurrah.

03:29 And the more I read about him and remember

03:31 over these last few weeks and remember

03:34 and get more of an insight into his character

03:36 and his personality and the way that he does

03:39 and has before manipulated the system,

03:41 the more I think that could definitely be a good possibility.

03:46 - Yeah, I mean, you mentioned before

03:49 about how does it feel to revisit all of this?

03:51 This is something which we had blocked out

03:54 a lot of the details and over the last week or two

03:58 with revisiting it with interviews and speaking about it,

04:01 but also conversations that three of us had privately,

04:04 there's a lot of stuff that we've actually blocked out,

04:07 a lot of stuff that we were too young

04:08 to really kind of comprehend.

04:10 And a lot of stuff that we actually didn't know at the time

04:13 where people have come forward,

04:15 friends of our mum who still live in the area,

04:20 in South Sea and Portsmouth,

04:22 and said stuff that we didn't really know about

04:24 at the time that we may have been protected from,

04:26 which is really, really chilling.

04:28 So the more we hear about it,

04:30 there's nothing that has been made

04:32 to ally any of our kind of fears with his release.

04:37 The exclusion zone thing,

04:40 for that to be mentioned sort of straight away,

04:42 it feels that process has sort of been jumped over.

04:46 The conversation must be, is he gonna be released?

04:50 Not to kind of all of a sudden start agreeing

04:52 exclusion zones from the start.

04:54 And the worry is that to me doesn't appear to be someone

04:59 that is on their deathbed,

05:02 that seems to be someone that can move around freely,

05:05 that has got the freedom to move up and down the country

05:09 and certainly the physical capacity to be able to do so.

05:12 So from that perspective,

05:14 our fears feel that they're very valid

05:19 and it doesn't feel that we're just over-exaggerating it

05:22 just because of the grief that we feel

05:24 and the anger that we feel towards him.

05:26 So I think it's really, really worrying

05:31 given the lack of detail that we've been given

05:33 and how quickly this can happen.

05:36 - Yeah, and like you touched on before,

05:38 you still see him as a dangerous man,

05:40 even though obviously he's been in jail a long time now

05:43 and he could still be a threat to yourselves

05:47 and the public, you think?

05:48 - Yeah, I don't think being in jail

05:53 would have rehabilitated him in any way.

05:56 Obviously he was in jail before in the '80s and early '90s,

06:01 which only served to make him a more violent criminal

06:06 when he got out of prison.

06:10 Obviously, again, we've had no insight,

06:13 but all reports from previously spoke to him

06:18 not being someone that could be rehabilitated.

06:22 - I mean, also one thing that we'd heard

06:25 was that when he was inside in the '80s and '90s

06:28 for the string of crimes that he did,

06:31 he refused all psychiatric help at that point.

06:35 Again, we don't know if that's been the same

06:37 this time around, but when he left prison,

06:39 he left to murder and his parole officer

06:43 had said at the time that he was one of the most dangerous

06:47 people that she's ever encountered.

06:49 And that wasn't just purely from the fact that he was,

06:52 it was a thing just about danger.

06:59 It was about the fact that he was so persuasive

07:01 and he just didn't seem that he was capable of that

07:06 and he convinced people that he wasn't.

07:07 So I think that really does kind of play

07:11 into what we're seeing now

07:13 and what we're seeing now happening.

07:14 People are convinced, oh, he's dying,

07:16 give him another chance, come on,

07:18 what difference will it make?

07:19 Well, he knows how to work the system

07:21 and I think that should be really, really taken into account

07:24 when you're looking at kind of what the game plan is

07:27 for him being released.

07:28 I mean, if you're dying and your family's disowned you,

07:30 what difference is it dying inside or outside?

07:33 I mean, we haven't been told that the prison

07:36 doesn't have the care to take,

07:37 people die in prison all the time.

07:39 So I don't really subscribe to that argument

07:42 that the prison can't take care of him to his end of life,

07:45 which, as we mentioned before,

07:47 that Judge Butterfield has said that it is absolutely

07:50 something which he should die in prison.

07:54 That was made very, very clear in 1998.

07:56 - And remembering he wasn't only on trial

08:00 for the murder of our mom,

08:02 six weeks earlier, the attack he carried out on Anne,

08:06 on the other woman was horrific.

08:09 Like people remember the image of her injuries to this day

08:14 that were printed in the paper.

08:15 It was, I think, and I don't wanna speak for her,

08:18 but I think she had lifelong, she has lifelong injuries.

08:23 I think I read, you know, she was in a coma,

08:25 she had her part of her brain removed.

08:26 Like it was just a really massively violent attack

08:31 and the fact that he was tried for those two together,

08:34 you know, meant no one could think,

08:39 oh, this was a, I'm gonna hate this phrase,

08:41 but a crime of passion,

08:44 or it was a spur of the moment event.

08:48 You know, you could see a true like line of serial events.

08:54 - Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

08:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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