There’s a TV documentary that Mina Smallman likes to watch regularly. When she presses play, she can hear her daughters’ voices, take in their beautiful faces and feel wrapped up in their fun once again.
These memories of her vivacious daughters, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, are all Mina has left. She can no longer just pick up the phone for a quick chat or give them a much-needed squeeze of the hand after a hard day, as the young women’s
Watching them on screen, Mina says, may make what happened feel real – but it also helps keep her girls alive.
“I miss Bibaa’s laugh and we shared the same love of music. Nikki, I miss her kindness and watching her and Chris [her father] be silly together. Most of the time, I’m just left with the good bits,’ she tells Metro from her Kent home.
It was in the summer of 2020 when the UK was beginning to enjoy a little more freedom from lockdown, that the Smallman family became trapped in a whole new world of pain.
In the early hours of June 6 in Fryent Country Park in North London, her two daughters Bibaa and Nicole were murdered while celebrating Bibaa’s 46th birthday in a racially motivated attack, stabbed multiple times.
It took 24 hours for the police to respond to over 15 worried calls from family and friends, and it was only when 27-year-old Nicole’s boyfriend Adam searched for them himself – and found their bodies – that they were taken seriously.
Added to that, the two policemen from the Met’s Charing Cross branch instructed to guard the sisters overnight, PC Jaffer and PC Lewis, were discovered to have taken photos of them, which they sent to a WhatsApp group of officers full of misogynistic and racist comments.
Their killer was Danyal Hussein, who considered himself ‘Aryan’ was found to have extremist and Satanic beliefs. Just 18, he’d joined an American cult on the dark web and signed a contract in his own blood to kill six Black women, which he thought would make him win the lottery. It took 25 days for police to catch and arrest Hussein, who was eventually jailed for a minimum of 35 years.
While five years on Mina has forgiven him, the girls’ mum says she will never grant PC Jaffer and PC Lewis that luxury.
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The officers may have been jailed for 33 months for their utterly vile behavior, but that only motivate Mina to push for change – not only in the Met but to fight for the safety of all women and girls, regardless of color, especially in light of the recent Panorama investigation into racism and misogyny within the Met.
‘I didn’t have to forgive the murderer, but if I hadn’t, my whole world would have been about how I can pay him back,’ explains Mina. ‘But Despicable One and Two – as I call them – no, I haven’t.
‘When Cressida Dick (former Commissioner of Police) came to see me and my husband Chris, on my request, her apology felt like a slap in the face. The Charing Cross Whatsapp group was already being investigated by the IOPC so she knew it was a major problem. And the recent Panorama program shows it’s still going on. It’s something that they have to be forever vigilant about and penalise.’
Mina believes that it was only because of the police officers’ actions that there was so much coverage surrounding her daughters’ murders. ‘I began campaigning because nobody cared that two women of color were murdered in a park until two police officers took selfies with them,’ explains the former teacher and archdeacon (the first of color) who is intent on honouring her daughters’ lives.
And there’s no doubt that she has. Not only did Mina ask Stacey Dooley to make Two Daughters for the BBC in 2021, she’s also written her memoir, A Better Tomorrow, while this year also saw the release of Bibaa & Nicole: Murder in the Park, a three-part Sky documentary which included emotional interviews with the young women’s family and friends.
Just this week the program won two prestigious Grierson awards for its impeccable ‘exploration of a devastating case of police incompetence and racial injustice’.
‘I don’t want to be famous, I’d much rather have my daughters back,’ says Mina. ‘But Bibaa and Nicole wouldn’t be surprised about what I’m doing because I was always fighting for the underdog. I imagine them looking down and saying, “Go on, Mum!” They are the heroes of this story. I didn’t want the documentary to be all about the killer and how he did it.’
Suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and PTSD, Mina says she has only just felt able to start therapy to process what she’s been through.
‘Because those pictures were taken of my daughters, I have an image of what they look like in death and it’s given me night terrors’ she admits. ‘Seeing any stabbing triggers me, too. I feel I failed them; I wasn’t there to protect them. And so we work through that.’
Since her daughters were murdered she has tried to take her life three times, most recently when the police officers were released after serving only half of their sentence. However, with a renewed sense of purpose, Mina says this Christmas will be the first that she, Chris, and her daughter Monique, 50, feel able to celebrate.
“I have been suicidal – my last attempt I woke up and I was pissed off that I was still here. But I said, I get it. The higher power has decided I’ll be let go when they are ready so I won’t be doing it again,’ she explains. ‘We’ve moved from the house where the girls spent Christmas, which has made a difference, and I’m looking forward to putting up the tree and making a cake. Five years on, it’s the first Christmas I’ve been able to face.’
Mina also says that she now feels ready to finally see Bibaa and Nicole’s friends in person too. ‘It’s been too painful before,’ she says. ‘We’ve spoken, especially about the documentary as I had no idea the level of involvement before I saw it, or how many phone calls they made.’
Talking about her family, Mina says that her husband Chris is her ‘superpower’, explaining, ‘I can walk in to any room if I have him with me. I also honour Monique. Can you imagine being the one left behind?’
She continues: ‘I am in this exclusive group no one would ever want to be part of – mums who have lost their daughters, including Sarah Everard’s. We are a support group for each other; we call each other to chat and cry.
‘Not everyone can do what I do but I have no problem talking to power. I do what I believe is right and wanting to make things better – that’s why I campaign for all women and girls. I want to model what it is to be a decent human being and challenge the media, the police and any other organisation to say, “Do better”.’
Can you imagine how powerful it would be if men joined forces to say, ‘I am not like them”?
While Mina experienced the worst of the Met, she says she also experienced them at their best as DI Maria Green led a team who worked all hours to find the girls’ killer. Maria didn’t want to be part of the Sky documentary but as a black woman with a similar family to the victims, she knew it was important.
‘It’s a balance as it shows the embarrassing awful things we didn’t do properly within the police force,’ she said at a recent Q&A that Metro attended. ‘But on the other side, we worked relentlessly to make sure that the person responsible for the death of two fabulous girls was caught – that was the only thing I was really thinking about. I was amazed how difficult I found filming for it though because when you’re in the investigation, you try and remain stoic.
‘Then I retired from the police two and a half years ago and you lose that hard shell – so having to go back over the investigation was difficult, especially seeing what the girls were really like.’
The first episode [of the Sky documentary] is now being used by the Met for training call handlers and Mina also speaks frequently to people in the organisation – her next planned meeting is with the Minister of State for Policing and Crime, Sarah Jones.
‘I am challenging the government and looking at ways we can make it safer for us,” she says. “And we need good men – like my husband and those who worked on this documentary – to join our movement. Can you imagine how powerful it would be if in all major cities, men joined forces to say: “I am not like them; I stand with women for their safety and I march today to pledge my allegiance to you”?’
Bibaa & Nicole: Murder in the Park is available to view on Sky and streaming service NOW
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