On June 20th, 1996, 16-year-old Rebecca Middleton arrived in Bermuda with her friend Jasmine Meens, ready for her "trip of a lifetime."
On the night of July third, 1996, Becky, who had just celebrated her 17th birthday in Bermuda with Jasmine and her family, was murdered in what has been described as among "the worst, most brutal, most animal sexually-depraved, most violent and inhuman murder of any woman or man anywhere in the world"... (Quote from Bermuda Online).
Passersby found her as she died, lying almost nude in the middle of a dark, isolated road. Despite autopsy results on the very day of her death showing forcible rape, sodomy, battering, torture, cutting and stabbing, responsible agencies, "police, the attorney general's department, the courts, and the judiciary-- have failed in their responsibilities to this innocent child.
Keith Forbes of Online Bermuda terms the situation a "notoriously botched murder case that has brought huge international discredit to the United Kingdom and its Foreign and Commonwealth Office, its place and reputation in the European, United Nations and world communities, Bermuda, its Governor and Deputy Governor, Cabinet and legislators, Chief Justice, Attorney General, Police Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and Police Service and the island's judicial system."
Colin Coxall, a respected former Scotland Yard police official, who now is an expert on terrorism in the UK, who was Police Commissioner of Bermuda at the time that Becky was murdered, tried to right the situation. Unfortunately, a year after Becky's murder, Bermuda terminated his contract. Coxall is on record of referring to Becky;s murder as "the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice" of his career.
Over a period of many years, the judiciary of Bermuda and its governor have declined to charge those responsible (who are well known) with aggravated sexual assault and other most serious charges, notwithstanding the abundant evidence that is available to support those charges.
On March 30, 2006, Bermuda's head of prosecutions refused to file charges of rape and kidnapping against the pair police identified as suspects, Kirk Mundy and Justis Smith, despite the fact that the men were never charged with those crimes--thus, many suggest, not an issue of double jeopardy.
Why weren't they charged with the obvious crimes in the first place? Because some in the judiciary reportedly bought a known criminal's absurd allegation that sex was consensual--despite existing evidence otherwise.
Through the efforts of people who care about the Middleton family and who were not satisfied to let the situation stand as it was, top Bermuda lawyers John Riihiluoma and Kelvin Hastings-Smith, led by UK human rights barrister Cherie Booth, wife of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, challenged the Bermuda judiciary's refusal to act.The case went before Supreme Court hearing in front of Chief Justice Richard Ground on April sixteenth and seventeenth, 2007.To few people's surprise, Justice Ground upheld the DPP's ruling, citing double jeopardy.
However, Bermuda's lead prosecutor, Vinette Graham Allen, who had been sympathetic all along, but who believed her hands were tied by law, apologized to the family--speaking for Bermuda. Too late and too little.
Becky's story will be told in its entirety in a book soon to be published by Dr. Carol Shuman, a psychologist, writer, and human rights advocate. For the first time, the secrets kept since Becky's murder will be told, along with appalling truths about the events and thinking that led up to how Becky's murder happened and its aftermath.
Please revisit this site for publishing information soon.
As Martin Luther King Jr. once said:
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved with it as he who helps to perpetuate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
