The mother of Harry Dunn has said she felt ‘a familiar sickness’ when she learned of another British woman allegedly denied justice after being strangled by a US military officer – and demanded that institutions learn their lesson.
Charlotte Charles, whose 19-year-old son was killed in 2019 by an American driving on the wrong side of the road, spoke after a Guardian investigation revealed the case of Sarah Steele, a woman strangled by an American pilot. The case was allowed to drift into the US system, where a male military jury acquitted the officer of the more serious charge. Cambridgeshire police did not assert British jurisdiction, the investigation found.
“Harry Dunn’s mother says Sarah Steele case shows US military still denies British justice after Guardian investigation.”
‘I thought those days were behind us following our high-profile case, and that the US military and British police had learned their lesson,’ Charles wrote in an opinion piece for the Guardian. ‘Clearly not.’
Charles described the US authorities’ ‘default position’ of protecting their own – ‘instinctively and aggressively, even when the facts are clear and the harm is undeniable, even when the victim is a child.’ In the aftermath of Harry’s death, she said, the British police and government told her they were ‘powerless’. Together with a neighbour and retired lawyer, Radd Seiger, she proved them wrong and challenged the narrative that the US had primacy.
‘What happened to Sarah should shame every institution that allowed her case to slip quietly into the shadows,’ Charles wrote. ‘A woman abused on British soil by an American officer. The man responsible was a guest in our country. Sarah was entitled to the protection of the law of the country in which she lived.’
The foreign secretary, David Lammy, is expected to raise the case with the US, the Guardian reported. Charles said it was ‘almost unbearable’ that another British family has been put through the same ordeal. ‘Since Harry died, other families have also had British justice denied,’ she wrote. ‘Families who have been told that the Americans will take over the investigation. Families who have been left confused and frightened because their local police force did…’
The question now is whether any institution will act differently.