Aftermath

“I hate him. To rot in hell, right where I am...Every breath I take is like a breath of hell.   There ain’t no release, there’s no relent, there’s nothing.” Natalie SharpHazell had done his worse to destroy Tia’s family. But her mother Natalie is also a mother of two little boys and ‘she lives for them.’Her rage, her revenge, however, may never die:“He doesn’t even deserve to be in jail, he doesn’t deserve to die. He deserves to suffer. But he’ll never suffer will he? Not like I need him to.”

The leap Hazell made from petty criminal - none of his many convictions involved sexual or serious violence - to child sex murderer, concern many.Coincidentally, on the day Hazell was sentenced, The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre released it annual report. In it, they warned that the sheer volume of child abuse images and the growth of high-speed internet connections had increased the threat to children.In June 2013, Croydon council started demolition of the house where Tia’s body was found.In August 2013 the neighbour who was said to have seen Tia – after she was dead – was sentenced to five months for wasting police time.In November 2013, leading search engine companies such as Google and Microsoft finally gave in to huge public, press and political pressure. They agreed measures to make it harder to find child abuse images online. The tragedy of Tia Sharp was often cited in the campaign to force the change. Because Tia’s killer Stuart Hazell was sentenced to life imprisonment, he has no guarantee that he will be released after he’s served his minimum of 38 years. That will be up to the Parole Board.