When I read about the case of Sarah Steele, the woman strangled by an American pilot, I felt a familiar sickness in my stomach.
It took me straight back to the day I lost my son Harry and to the months and years that followed, when the US authorities did everything they could to deny us justice.
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It is almost unbearable to think that another British family has now been put through the same ordeal.
I thought those days were behind us following our high-profile case, and that the US military and British police had learned their lesson.
Clearly not.
What happened to Sarah, as revealed by a Guardian investigation, should shame every institution that allowed her case to slip quietly into the shadows.
A woman abused on British soil by an American officer. The man responsible was a guest in our country.
Yet instead of a clear and confident assertion of British jurisdiction by Cambridgeshire police, the case was allowed to drift into the US system.
A male military jury acquitted him of the more serious charge.
I do not know whether the outcome would have been different under our system. That is not the point.
The point is that Sarah was entitled to the protection of the law of the country in which she lived.
Pattern of Denial
When Harry was killed in 2019 by an American driving on the wrong side of the road, we discovered very quickly that the US authorities have a default position.
