RAY and Vi Donovan watched nervously as a smart-looking man walked into the community hall before hugging them both tightly.
“The first thing I noticed about him was his shoes,” says Ray.
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“They were polished, shiny and he was wearing a suit and tie — a sign of respect.”
After pulling Ray into an embrace and whispering, “Sorry, so sorry”, the man turned to Vi and did the same.
It was an extraordinary moment of forgiveness from Ray and Vi, as the 26-year-old they agreed to meet was one of three teens who murdered their son Chris, 18, kicking and punching him then throwing him unconscious into oncoming traffic.
He was part of a gang who attacked Chris and brother Phil, then 17, as they walked innocently in the street after a night out, singing Oasis hit Champagne Supernova.
A court heard how Chris’s head was “used as a football” before he was thrown into the path of a BMW which dragged him for 40 yards before the shocked driver could stop.
When his parents later found out in hospital that Chris had died from the injuries suffered in the May 2001 attack, Ray collapsed with grief and had to be restrained from banging his head on the floor, while Vi ran into a corridor and fell sobbing into a policeman’s arms.
Shock slowly turned to grief then anger as Ray struggled to come to terms with their loss but also the brutal way their son had died.
Yet ten years later, in 2011, Ray and Vi stood hugging one of the killers — who had been just 15 at the time — and later went on to meet the other two attackers.
Swaggered in court
All had been sentenced to life but released.
“When we met them it was like monsters had become humans,” says Vi, who even accompanied one of the killers to Chris’s graveside.
Today Ray, 74, and Vi, 71, run workshops educating young people and prisoners about the dangers of getting involved in gangs and crime — and committing offences in “five minutes of madness”.
We’ve seen supposedly tough men break down and cry once we’ve shared our story
Ray Donovan
They visit schools, universities and some of the toughest jails, and have met murderers, paedophiles and gang king-pins.
Among these have been Soham killer Ian Huntley, who murdered ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 — and notoriously violent prisoner Charles Bronson.
Ray tells The Sun: “We’ve seen supposedly tough men break down and cry once we’ve shared our story.
“A couple of years ago an inmate told me he was going to kill the bloke who murdered his brother, once he’d done time for GBH. I told him he was selfish because revenge meant every time his family spoke about his brother, his memory would be smeared by what he’d done. He broke down.”
Next month, the couple will share their story with the CrimeCon UK conference, attended by criminologists, law enforcement experts and investigative journalists.
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It is almost unbelievable that Ray and Vi forgive their son’s killers, yet they show astonishing generosity of spirit toward the trio — who were 15, 16 and 19 at the time of the attack.
It was Ray who told Vi they should consider meeting the killers and she was initially horrified.
After their son’s death, his body was “a crime scene”, they recall, so they were unable even to touch his remains in the mortuary and had to wait 16 weeks to bury him.
The killers’ trial, in June 2002, then deepened Ray and Vi’s pain yet further.
The 15-year-old attacker — who cannot be named — and Stephen Andrews, by then 21, and Ryan Seymour, then 17, swaggered in court and tried to blame each other for Chris’s injuries.
Vi says: “We never got the truth at the court case, about exactly what they did.
“When they were found guilty one of them turned to his dad who told him, ‘You hang in there, son’.
“Seymour was holding rosary beads and crying, but for himself, and Andrews’ girlfriend shouted: ‘I’ll wait for you.’ She never did.
“The judge read our victim impact statement in private in his chambers so Chris’s killers never got to hear it.
“Phil is now a dad but still suffers from PTSD from that night.”
At court, in a lunchtime recess, Seymour’s dad approached Ray and Vi to apologise. “I think he wanted me to hit him.” says Ray. “I think he thought it might make him feel better about what his son had done — but he was a victim too.”
Vi understandably found it hard to let go of her fury.
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She says: “The words forgive and forget are rubbish, you never forget, but I was hanging on to rage and it was starting to destroy me. Even my granddaughter told me that I had become an angry person.
“The truth is, we didn’t forgive these men to help them — instead we did it for us.”
Ray and Vi met the youngest killer first.
It was arranged by the Restorative Justice programme and mediators at the charity Confidence and Local Medication (CALM).
At the time, their son’s killer had served less than nine years in jail.
In a Surrey community hall, where tea was been laid on, he walked in with his polished shoes, suit and tie.
Ray says: “He gave me a huge hug and said he was sorry.
“He said ‘Thank you, thank you’ [for meeting] then hugged Vi.
We spoke for three hours then I told him, ‘Why don’t you go and have the life that Chris couldn’t have? We forgive you’. And he cried’
Vi Donovan
“He told us he had been a coward and that he wanted to tell us the truth of what had happened — that they were smoking drugs and he did what he did because of the lifestyle he was trapped in at the time.”
Viv adds: “We spoke for three hours then I told him, ‘Why don’t you go and have the life that Chris couldn’t have? We forgive you.’ And he cried.”
The couple kept in touch with the killer for a few months and Ray even got him work as an artist with a local charity.
Video games
Then less than a year later they met another of the gang, Andrews, in an anonymous room in Epsom, Surrey.
Ray, who is far more chatty than Vi, said: “He ran to me, grabbed hold of me and cried, saying how sorry he was, over and over and over.”
Softly spoken Vi adds: “I thought he’d never sit. He was so upset. He eventually told us he hadn’t wanted to go out that night but the gang pestered and pestered him.
“He’d had a job as a plasterer and had lost his whole life.
“He asked if he could see Chris with us and we took him to our son’s grave, with his probation officer. It was raining and he got down on his knees and was crying.
“We told him to get up and get on with his life.”
In March 2013, Vi and Ray met the final offender, Seymour. Vi describes him as a “different kettle of fish”, saying: “Something scared me. I thought he was the most angry. There was no real sorry — but at least he was truthful about what had happened.
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“He said that when the others ran off he kept stamping on Chris’ head and, when he heard our son moaning, he stamped on him again.
“He told us he saw the BMW that hit Chris coming.”
Ray shows his only hint of anger during our chat as he says: “Seymour said he thought Chris would get up. I asked, ‘Are you stupid?’
“He said he played video games like Grand Theft Auto and when I said that wasn’t real life he said he’d been living a very unreal life at the time — and now realised.”
Vi and Ray later set up the Christopher Donovan Trust and have been awarded MBEs for their work with young people and prisoners.
They say work such as theirs is often misunderstood and is not always about forgiveness but instead gives victims and their families a chance to get answers.
Vi says of the prisoners they have met: “It’s about getting these people to realise the impact they’ve had on other people’s lives. Many are in total denial.
“In one prison a guy sat down next to me and said, ‘Hello, I’m a bank robber’ and I replied, ‘Hello, I’m a victim of crime’. I asked him if he was disturbed by the fact he talked about what he did like it was a hobby and that really got him thinking.”
Ray gives a brief laugh, before adding: “Even the hardest of men end up in tears when we tell them what we’ve been through.
“Some have never even considered the families involved in their crimes, and the enormity of what they’ve done starts to hit.
“What happened to Chris had left a gaping hole in our family but we want to build a legacy for him. He was worth something.”
- See Ray and Vi Donovan and other world-leading experts at CrimeCon London – partnered by TV channel True Crime. Book your ticket today and by using our exclusive code – THESUN – you will get a 40 per cent discount on your ticket, saving more than £100. Weekend and Day tickets are on sale now. See crimecon.co.uk