'You never get closure': Olivia Pratt-Korbel's mum calls for change to court sentencings

In the wake of her daughter's death, Cheryl Korbel is calling for a change to the law to make it mandatory for offenders to attend their sentencing and face the families of their victims in court, as ITV News' Chloe Keedy reports

At 2pm on April 3 2023, courtroom one of Manchester Crown Court was packed. Thomas Cashman was due to be sentenced for the murder of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel.

Olivia's family sat quietly, waiting. Her mum, Cheryl Korbel, was holding a teddy bear that she would later tell the court had been made from Olivia's pyjamas.

I sat with family members, police officers and other journalists in the public gallery. Even the jury benches were full. Jury members don't have to come back to court for sentencing but, in this case, almost all of them had chosen to.

We waited and waited but the dock remained empty. Eventually, after a 45-minute delay, Thomas Cashman's barrister explained to the judge that his client was refusing to come to court. He would not be there to hear his life sentence handed down, or to face Olivia's mum and sister, Chloe, as they read the statements they'd prepared, detailing the devastation he has caused to them and their family.

Three months on, Cheryl spoke to me about her shock at the moment she realised Cashman wasn't going to attend because she hadn't realised he had a choice.

"It's a life sentence for us as a family, so you never get closure," she said. "And then for them not to turn up was a punch in the stomach."

"In doing the impact statement, I was hoping I would touch his heart. But he obviously doesn't have one. Otherwise, he'd have been there in that dock."

Olivia's auntie, Antonia, describes it as Cashman's final power play, and says the family felt "just totally robbed. Absolutely robbed".

Together they are supporting a campaign called Face the Family - calling for a change in the law to make it mandatory for offenders to attend their sentencing and face the families of their victims in court - and want people to sign an online petition.

Speaking in her first television interview, Cheryl told me that murderers need to "at least try and understand what they've done, and the pain they are putting these families through".

She said: "The law needs to change. [Courts] need to have more power to bring these offenders up to the door and to face the families and listen to the impact statements."

Cashman shot Olivia dead on August 22 last year. She was standing on the stairs when he burst into her home firing a gun. He was chasing another man, who survived.

Cheryl was also injured in the attack - shot in the wrist - as she desperately tried to hold her front door closed. She told me she doesn't think she will ever be able to process what happened that night.

"If I hadn't been hurt, maybe I could have saved her," she told me through tears. "The past ten months have just flown by - it's like you blinked. As for what happened, it's like yesterday.

"You try not think about it but it's hard not to. I don't think I'll ever process that night but it's just something you've gotta learn to do."

Cheryl described the experience of writing her victim impact statement as "horrendous", forcing her to confront things she hadn't even spoken to her closest family about.

She said: "It's not a quick process at all. It was over the space of four days, but over a number of weeks.

"Each day it was three, four, five hours sometimes. It was long cause we went from before Liv was born, through her life, the night it happened, the night she was killed on the aftermath and it is a lot. It was draining."

Antonia said: "It was absolutely heart-rending to watch her [Cheryl] going through that array and mixture of emotions and there's absolutely nothing you can do to help take it away.

"People who are convicted - when an impact statement is read out - they only get a glimpse. They don't see that whole process of what it takes and what it's involved to get that onto paper. I would never want to watch that process again. Not with anybody."

But Cheryl says the process was also cathartic, helping her to begin to process her grief. Part of her campaign is about making sure other victims' families have the chance to go through that process as well, knowing with certainty that their perpetrator will have to come to court to hear it.

"I don't want families to feel that it's pointless to do an impact statement, because it's not," she said.

"The way I described it was like a jar with a tittering lid. And doing the impact statements... that lid would be lifted. So that let little bits out. Like we've said, it's okay not to be okay."

Cheryl calls Olivia her "little shadow" because, she says, they went everywhere together. She says her daughter was "sassy, a wind up merchant… she never stopped talking".

"She loved dressing up. If it wasn't costume princesses, it was my clothes, her sister Chloe's clothes, even going to my mum's and my nan's - she'd dress up in their clothes," she added.

"Big long coats and scarves and handbags… she loved it."

Last month, they would have celebrated Olivia's 10th birthday.

Cheryl said: "It was… hard. The fact she'd reached a double digit, and she was looking forward to reaching a double digit, as any kid would be… She's still here, she's still here. She may not have a voice but we're her voice from now on."

Together with children from Olivia's school, the family is creating a garden in her memory. The plot of ground in Court Hey Park, where Olivia used to play, is already covered in flowers.

Many of them are pink - her favourite colour - and they are being tended to by her classmates. The children have also created a giant butterfly mosaic on the wall.

Cheryl and Antonia are hoping the garden will be finished in time for the first anniversary of Olivia's death, which is next month. It's a peaceful spot - somewhere for both her family and school friends to go and spend time, reflect and have fun.

This, they hope, will be part of Olivia's long term legacy. Together with a change in the law to make killers face their victims families, to hear their heartbreak and to witness the devastation they've caused.

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