{"id":41844,"date":"2025-09-03T23:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T23:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/41844\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T23:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T23:07:10","slug":"that-man-destroyed-our-daughters-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/41844\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018That man destroyed our daughter\u2019s life\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The murder of the convicted paedophile Sean Small<\/a> in Newcastle<\/a> is \u201cnot to be celebrated,\u201d the father of one of his victims has warned despite what he calls a \u201cmockery\u201d of the justice system.<\/p>\n

Small (84) was found dead outside his home on Slievenabrock Avenue on August 24, after what police described as a \u201cbrutal and sustained attack.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mark William Bready (41) from the same street has since been charged with his murder on a date between August 19 and 24.<\/p>\n

Small had been recently released from prison, serving half of a six-year sentence behind bars for sexual offences against a child and a vulnerable young woman.<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/a>\"Man<\/a><\/p>\n

He had previously pleaded guilty to 10 offences, carried out between September 2016 and April 2018.<\/p>\n

Reported by the Mourne Observer, the father of one of Small\u2019s victims has called for an \u201curgent overhaul\u201d of the justice system, criticising both his sentence and the \u201chorror\u201d his family experienced when they learned of his release. <\/p>\n

He also condemned the many people who chose to celebrate Mr Small\u2019s murder on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat man destroyed our daughter\u2019s life. He murdered who she was in every meaningful way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe joyful, loving and kind-hearted daughter we once knew has been stolen from us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat remains is a young woman condemned to live with fear, with torment and with shadows that follow her from morning until night.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has been sentenced to carry this suffering for the rest of her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe scene at Slievenabrock Avenue, Newcastle, Co Down (Jonathan McCambridge\/PA) <\/p>\n

He also acknowledged the suffering of the other family\u2019s daughter, and how they had stood together as the painful details were relived during the trial.<\/p>\n

On Mr Small\u2019s sentence, with three years in custody and three he had yet to serve under supervised licence conditions, he said: \u201cThat is not justice. That is a mockery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a statement from the court that our daughter\u2019s stolen life, her broken future and her enduring pain are worth almost nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sentence demonstrates that his freedom was deemed more important than her healing. It is an outrage and a disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cEven though the courts acted within the remit of the law, that being said, an urgent overhaul is required.\u201d<\/p>\n

He called the social media commentary on Mr Small\u2019s murder \u201csickening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hate, the venom, the smugness and the self-righteous display of other people\u2019s pain for likes and shares is abhorrent.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be clear: his murder was not for anyone else to celebrate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was not justice. That was not righteousness. That was not closure. His end was for God alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PacemakerThe police cordon outside Sean Small’s home in the Slievenabrock Avenue area of Newcastle on August 25. PICTURE: ARTHUR ALLISON\/PACEMAKER <\/p>\n

Criticising a lack of media attention on his daughter\u2019s wellbeing, he also described how she learned of his release on social media. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat knowledge broke her all over again. It caused more mental anguish, reignited her fear, deepened her scars and spread stress and trauma throughout her entire family.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Northern Ireland Prison Service has previously explained that victims and their families must be registered with the Prisoner Victim Information Scheme to receive updates about a prisoner\u2019s sentence and when they may be released.<\/p>\n

A statement from the office of the Lady Chief Justice, Dame Siobhan Keegan, said that the sentencing framework which all judges must abide by is set in law by the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

This includes maximum sentencing for particular crimes as well as setting out a range of circumstances which a judge must consider before imposing a sentence.<\/p>\n

At the time of Mr Small\u2019s sentencing in 2022, Judge Gordon Kerr said that although he had a starting point of 14 years, he reduced the total sentence for Mr Small\u2019s guilty pleas, his poor health and on medical evidence that prison \u201cwill be more onerous\u201d for him compared to other inmates.<\/p>\n

He also spoke of the serious consequences for both victims who had both suffered from PTSD as a result of his crimes.<\/p>\n

While Mr Small had entered guilty pleas, Judge Kerr still said there was an \u201celement of victim blaming\u201d and that he had shown \u201climited insight\u201d into the consequences of his actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The murder of the convicted paedophile Sean Small in Newcastle is \u201cnot to be celebrated,\u201d the father of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,31651,13,14,6,717,11,12,15,16,3800,5,30,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-41844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-co-down","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-justice","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-murder","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-psni","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}