Tia Sharp's grandmother, Christine Bicknell, says ‘there were no clues that I was living with a monster’. In a tearful interview yesterday, she insisted that the true nature of Stuart Hazell, the man who murdered her granddaughter and with whom she shared her home, came as a total surprise.
This was a man, remember, who had formerly been the boyfriend of Tia’s mother, but after a spell in jail for dealing drugs had become the long-term lover of her grandmother.
That detail alone was indicative of a deeply warped set of values. However, in a world where a man like Mick Philpott can kill six of his children by setting fire to their home while they’re asleep (and then casually ask their grieving mother to perform a sex act on a fellow suspect two days later), the idea of a grandmother living with her own daughter’s former boyfriend no longer hits us with the sledgehammer of revulsion that it should.
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Stuart Hazell (right) has been jailed for life for murdering Tia (left), with whom he was regularly left alone, and told he will not be released for at least 38 yearsThe sad truth is that in certain sectors of society, the idea of a nuclear family, with a mother and father who are married to each other and who put the love and care of their children first, has become almost laughably old-fashioned.
Against that cultural backdrop, it’s perhaps less difficult to understand why Christine Bicknell and her daughter failed to grasp the sickening risk to which they were exposing young Tia.
Christine Bicknell insisted that the true nature of Stuart Hazell, the man who murdered her granddaughter and with whom she shared her home, came as a total surpriseI’m not suggesting for a moment that Stuart Hazell ever gave either woman an inkling of his revolting predilection for watching child porn.
Neither of them had any idea that he searched the internet, using terms such as ‘violent, forced rape’ and ‘little girls in glasses’ and ‘underage incest galleries’, just as they never knew he’d videoed Tia while she slept.
Both Tia's mother (right) and grandmother (left) knew the home life that poor little girl was exposed to was one that carried serious risks for her future well-being
