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. 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, where 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.
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. They protect their own. They do it instinctively and aggressively. They do it even when the facts are clear and the harm is undeniable. They do it even when the victim is a child.
In those early days after Harry died, we were completely overwhelmed. We were grieving and we were suddenly up against a foreign government that behaved as if our son’s life mattered less than the convenience of one of their citizens. Our neighbour and recently retired lawyer, Radd Seiger, an American who has lived in the UK since his childhood, came to our aid. The British police and the British government told us that they were powerless and that there was nothing they could do. We proved them completely wrong and together we challenged the narrative that the Americans always try to impose: that they have primacy under the laws between the countries and that British police and British families should simply accept it.
Since Harry died, other families have also had British justice denied. Families who have been told that the Americans will take over the investigation. Families who have been left confused and frightened because their local police force did not understand the law and did not know how to push back.
In every one of these cases, the pattern was the same. The Americans moved fast to protect their own. British police forces hesitated or deferred. In Sarah Steele’s case, the same old dynamics played out again. A woman was attacked on UK soil and the system that should have protected her did not.
Every police force in this country needs to be educated about these cases. They need to understand that the Americans do not automatically have primacy, and that they have a duty to stand up for British victims.
I lost my son. Nothing will ever make that right. But if speaking out helps even one family avoid the suffering we went through, then I will keep speaking. When an American serving in the UK harms a British citizen, the British system must protect the British victim.
