Infected blood scandal victims demand these accountable are dropped at justice

Victims of the infected blood scandal last night demanded that those responsible are finally brought to justice.

Glenn Wilkinson, who co-founded the Contaminated Blood Campaign, said warnings had been continually ignored, meaning thousands like him were infected. Mr Wilkinson was infected with Hepatitis C during dental surgery in 1983, when he was unnecessarily given Factor VIII products.

He said: “From my point of view, as an infected person, I know from the group that I run that there’s a very deep feeling that consequences should be brought to bear on individuals, from the medical profession, from the politicians and also the pharmaceutical companies. And if that doesn’t happen, I think there will be a sense that justice hasn’t been delivered.”

Mr Wilkinson demanded that pharmaceutical companies help pay the compensation bill after thousands like him had “poison” injected in their veins. He said: “They bear a lot of the responsibility of what’s gone wrong here.

“Regarding the financial costs they should be made to suffer some of that because it was their poison basically, that they put into our veins, that caused this problem in the first place.”

He said: “We didn’t have to go through all this. People didn’t have to die in the thousands.” Mr Wilkinson said: “The warnings were not heeded, they carried on infecting people… They were warned time and time again.”

“They didn’t stop so people like me, thousands of people were infected with this filth and we’ve lost friends and colleagues and campaign members and family members. You just think all those people should be with us today, I think we’ve lost about 700 people just in the time it’s taken this campaign to develop.”

Andy Evans, who was infected with HIV and Hepatitis C when he was just five, told reporters that medics had acted with a “god-like attitude”. He said that youngsters like him were treated like “collateral damage”.

Mr Evans said: “This was foisted on us by unscrupulous doctors, unscrupulous licensing authorities, and it was exacerbated by the godlike attitude of doctors who thought that they could make decisions on behalf of parents and the children were just collateral damage.

“They were there to be experimented upon and have their infections monitored without telling them, and allowing adults to go away without knowledge of their diagnoses so that they could infect their partners. And then later on, to deny that they’d done anything wrong.”

Mr Evans, co-founder and chairman of campaign group Tainted Blood. welcomed today’s report by Sir Brian Langstaff. He said: “There were times during the campaign that we felt so down and disheartened that we could never see an end to it.” He said it had been apparent since 1986 that a public inquiry needed to be set up, stating that the report was “everything that we have been saying over the past 40 years”.

Andy Burnham told Parliament in 2017 that there had been a “criminal cover-up on an industrial scale”. After the report’s publication he said: “Sir Brian’s report confirms that is indeed the case.

“There must be accountability and there must now be full consideration of prosecutions. And I would include in that the potential for corporate manslaughter charges to face Whitehall departments. This report should rock Whitehall to its foundations.”

He continued: ” You cannot have a situation where an official line is held for decades, where lies are put to ministers and there not be major change that comes out of that, this should include consideration of whether there is a case for corporate manslaughter charges.”

Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson said the report contained “horrific” accounts, including experiments on children. She said: “That to me is a very clear indication of criminal behaviour and that’s something that I think the police should be investigating. And if there is sufficient evidence that should be passed to the CPS.”

Denise Turton, whose son Lee died when he was just 10, having been infected with HIV when he was two, said the report made her “numb”. Mrs Turton told the BBC : “All that time they knew, and they never said anything, and they covered it up and they lied.

“I’m so angry about it. I don’t want an apology – it’s too little, too late.” She said of Lee, who died in 1992: “They took his life. He shouldn’t have been infected, he shouldn’t have been on that treatment, he should be here, and this shouldn’t be happening.”

Anthony and Sue’s story

A woman whose mum and brother died after contracting HIV said her mother “died broken hearted with a broken body”.

Suzanne Orford said her mum blamed herself for the death of her brother, Anthony McCulloch, who was just eight when he found out he’d been infected. He died aged just 33 in 2010. Her mother, Sue Hollywood, died nine years later. Both were being treated for haemophilia when they were diagnosed in 1985 while being treated in Liverpool.

In a witness statement Suzanne said: “My mother died blaming herself for Anthony’s HIV infection. There was nothing anyone could say to her to convince her otherwise. She used to say “‘he’s dead now cause of me.'”

Suzanne wrote: “She was mentally tortured by the time of her death. It was horrible because she had always been the strongest person for us and it was sad that she never had anyone stronger around to be there for her.”

As a child she said Anthony was bullied at school because classmates learned that haemophiliacs were “associated” with HIV. We were terrified about how others would treat us and how this harassment would escalate,” she wrote.

Describing her family’s ordeal, she told Sky News: “At the time Anthony was diagnosed he couldn’t inject himself, so she would have had to administer the Factor 8 herself. She never recovered, she died broken hearted with a broken body.”

Suzanne, who held her mum as she died, said: “My mother had always been a very glamourous lady and having owned her own pub she was the life and soul of the party. She went from loving her life to not wanting to be alive anymore.”

Corrine’s story

Corrine Cobbledick was infected with HIV and hepatitis C when she was given a lifesaving transfusion in 1984.

In a heartbreaking witness statement in 2018 her partner John said doctors refused to use an anaesthetic when she had an operation, and a dentist refused to treat her. When she told a nurse she had HIV, she “ran down the ward screaming”, he wrote.

And when John’s employer found out about Mrs Cobbledick’s diagnosis he was sacked, the statement said. He lost his home after taking early retirement to look after his wife, who died in 1995.

Mr Cobbledick wrote: “Her life was not her own.” And he continued: ” She used to play darts for Scotland and then when she was diagnosed, she just stopped and never returned to it.

“She was a wreck. There was a mental toll on both of us.” Her stepson Ian wrote: “These years of fighting and living lies, its consumed any chance of a normal life! It has honestly ruined not just the lives of those infected, but every single person and family around those infected.”

Colin’s story

Colin Smith was just seven when he died in January 1990 after contracting Hepatitis C and HIV.

More than three decades later his parents treasure his blanket and toys as they describe their devastation. Mum Jan told Sky News: “I think it was about ’89 that we realised because the weight loss was incredible.

“And we had him home for a little while, and you couldn’t just pick him up. We had to use a sheepskin because it hurt him. He would say: ‘Mum you’re hurting, it’s hurting’.”

Even as their son’s condition deteriorated, Jan and husband Colin found themselves driven from their home by the prejudice they faced. Jan said: “It became public when he needed to start school for nursery and all the parents protested and said: ‘We’re not having an AIDS kid in this school’, because we’ve been known as the AIDS family.

“We had AIDS… [written] on the house. It was like six-foot letters ‘AIDS DEAD’, we had crosses scraped into the door. The phone calls in the middle of the night were not very nice. They were the worst.”

The family made the difficult decision to take Colin out of hospital so he could spend his last days at home. Jan said she put her hand on his chest waiting for his breathing to stop.

She said: “I was waiting for it to stop. And then it stopped. And I just said: ‘I think he’s gone’. And I remember shaking him a little bit, but he’d gone.”