Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s mum said her murder “wasn’t going to destroy me” after spearheading a campaign to establish a law in her daughter’s name. Cheryl Korbel, 50, experienced the unthinkable when her nine-year-old daughter was murdered in her own Dovecot home by a gunman in August 2022.
And that trauma turned to anger and frustration when the cowardly killer, Thomas Cashman, refused to face her at his sentencing hearing, denying Cheryl the opportunity to directly tell him the horrors he had dealt to her and her family.
But three years after she channelled her grief into ensuring others would not have to go through what she did, Cheryl and her family learned last week that Olivia’s Law had gained Royal Assent and would become official legislation.
Part of the larger Victims and Courts Bill, the law carrying the nine-year-old’s name means criminals who refuse to attend their sentencing, or deliberately disrupt hearings, could face additional time in prison, as well as other sanctions.
Speaking to the ECHO, Cheryl said: “It still feels a bit surreal at the minute. It just doesn’t seem very real. I think we are in a bubble. It is going to come down to actually seeing it implemented and working. I think that is when it will sink in and we can turn around and say ‘we did it’.”
Announcing on social media the news that the law had jumped the final hurdle last week, Olivia’s Butterfly Foundation said: “We are so proud that Olivia’s name will be making a difference for years and years to come…she will be looking down on us all beaming with pride.”
Olivia Pratt-Korbel(Image: Family handout/PA Wire )
And Cheryl told the ECHO that her daughter would be “over the moon” to see her name on something as significant as this. “We’ve said from the day she was born ‘she has been here before’,” the mum said. “She was a lot older than nine.”
Olivia’s aunt, Antonia Elverson, said: “She was our sassy little queen. She absolutely will be on the brightest cloud up there doing her disco diva dancing. And I think she absolutely is the proudest star up there ever.
“We always said she will be famous one day. Unfortunately because of this awful thing she is famous for all the wrong reasons, but she was a character. She absolutely would have been somebody.”
Recalling the moment she was told Cashman, who was eventually jailed for a minimum of 42 years, was refusing to face her in court in April 2023, Cheryl said it felt like a “punch in the stomach” after they had endured weeks of heart-wrenching evidence.
She said: “We weren’t even aware that he had the choice of coming up [from the cells] or not. How dare he have that choice of being in court or not? To turn around and say ‘I’m not coming up’, I thought how is that fair? I considered whether I was actually going to do my impact statement but decided to do it because I knew somewhere along the line he would hear my words.
“It was a massive insult. Once the trial has been completed and a verdict given the sentencing should be about the judge’s remarks, respect for the judge, but predominantly the victims and the victims’ families. To have that taken away from you by the perpetrator is just absolutely diabolical. For me, I think the start of rehabilitation is to actually stand in the dock and face your sentencing.”
But asked how anyone could pick themselves up after what she has been through, and to channel those emotions into something positive, Cheryl said: “I get asked every day how I get out of bed. Enough has been taken from me. I said this wasn’t going to destroy me.”
Cheryl Korbel holding a teddy bear outside Manchester Crown Court after Thomas Cashman was found guilty of murdering her daughter at her family home in Dovecot(Image: Peter Byrne/PA Wire)
Cheryl told the ECHO she first had the idea about doing something in Olivia’s name when she attended a summit at Radio City around a month after Cashman’s sentencing. After meeting a number of people who had gone through similar incidents where the offender had refused to meet the court, Cheryl had a “lightbulb moment” and started to think how she could escalate the petition.
What started locally with t-shirts and posters and the support of neighbours and their local community escalated within a week to 30,000 signatures and, before long, Cheryl, Antonia and the wider family were travelling around the country, drumming up support.
With the increased attention the family’s campaign was getting came the media spotlight, which had been on Cheryl and everyone else since the day of Olivia’s murder. But following the support of local media, most notably ITV Granada, their petition, growing by the second, reached the highest political office in the country and they soon received a call from the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Having the backing of the most powerful politician in the country gave the campaign added impetus but, no sooner had the momentum shifted, the family were dealt a blow when the Labour Party romped home in the general election and Mr Sunak was out of office.
Luckily for the campaign, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer matched his predecessor’s pledge and for the past two years Cheryl and Antonia travelled repeatedly down to London to visit parliament, supported by their MP Anneliese Midgley, to see their proposed law navigate the numerous steps required.
Olivia Pratt-Korbel
How did they manage to get a law across the line in just three years? “Olivia,” said 44-year-old Antonia. “It is the only word we can use.”
She added: “At the time there were lots of high-profile stories in the media. You had Axel Rudakubana who had just killed those three beautiful babies in Southport; you had Kyle Clifford who had murdered John Hunt’s wife and two of his daughters; the Lucy Letby trial was going on at the same time as our trial was on.
“Each time we picked a newspaper up or watched the news you’d see another one. That spurred us on even more because we were like ‘this has got to stop, it can’t be happening to other families’. We would see devastated parents and obviously Cheryl more than anybody knows that pain and final injustice. It is a final insult. It is like they still have the power.”
While the foundation has received support from all over the world during the campaign, it was the people of our city who helped drive on Cheryl, Antonia and the rest of the family. “Liverpool had gone through a really rough deal, it was taking a massive kicking,” said Antonia, referencing the week where not just Olivia, but Ashley Dale and Sam Rimmer, were murdered.
“It is a week Liverpool won’t forget quickly. One thing I can say about Liverpool, the people do stick together. I think we had the determination and were making enough noise to be heard. I don’t think there is ever a right or wrong way to deal with grief. And I think for us, we turned a lot of our pain into that fight to make sure Olivia’s legacy was going to live on so much more.”
Cheryl told the ECHO the foundation was going to concentrate on events in the coming weeks, including one next month to celebrate what would have been Olivia’s 13th birthday.
But Cheryl and Antonia, who both have jobs and other family commitments, said they had plans for the future. “I’m not going to give too much detail away yet,” said Antonia. “But I’ll go as far as to say if we can help other places change their laws, then we’re there.”