When I heard about the brutal rape and killing of Sarah Everard, I found my thoughts going back to 1969 and Sammy Devenney. Like Sarah, Sammy died as a result of police brutality. Unlike Sarah, he was assaulted in his own home and died some months later. Many people believe him to be the first victim of the Troubles.
Given the nature of the Sarah Everard case, and the fact that the policeman used his warrant of arrest ID to trick, then rape and kill a young woman, there are clear differences between the two cases. But there are also similarities.
In both cases, the police abused their power. They took an everyday, peaceful situation and turned it into a murderous assault. Just as Sarah was innocently walking home in south London, so Sammy Devenney was in his Bogside home, in the one place most of us think we will be safe. While Wayne Couzens tricked Sarah into believing that he had the right to arrest her, the RUC men who assaulted Sammy Devenney didn’t bother with any of that preliminary stuff: they just charged straight in. Both were a gross violation of power: Couzens because he was bigger and apparently a guardian of the peace, the RUC men because they had batons and they believed they could do what they wanted.
And this is where the cases finally and sadly differ. However horrible the death of Sarah Everard, her family have the small, tiny comfort that the brutish man who raped and killed her will probably never be released from prison until he dies. Sammy Devenney’s family, fifty-three years later, continue to bear the extra burden that his killers were never apprehended, never punished, never even reprimanded. The Met’s police commissioner Cressida Dick acknowledged the shame which Wayne Couzens had brought on the entire force. The Chief Constable of the RUC, to the best of my knowledge, made no such acknowledgement of shame. Why bother when you have the power not to?
Quis coustodiet Ipsos custodes? Who will protect us from our protectors?
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