Family Liaison Officers Conference, Staffordshire, 20 Nov 2024
On Thursday I had the privilege of speaking on behalf of hashtag#MurderedAbroad at the Family Liaison Coordinators Conference in Staffordshire.
Around only 20% of the attendees said they had been involved in an abroad case. Not surprising when out of a population of 69.8 million people in Britain there are only 60 to 80 murders abroad each year. Our families bereaved by a homicide abroad are, therefore, 1 in a million.
So, to all the attendees or any other SIOs reading this, all we ask of you is that when you are notified by the FCDO to deliver the death message, an SIO offers the victim's families, a meeting to discuss what has happened.
This is not asking you to fly to a foreign country or interfere with a foreign country's investigation. It is initially, with your 'detective' head on' to let the family know what questions they should be asking the foreign police, and if there is an investigative need to deploy a Family Liaison Officer. Without some professional police input, our Murdered Abroad families flounder around the system, not knowing who can help them.