Time doesn’t heal for tragic Holly’s father

Published on 23/07/2012 01:20

The father of murdered Soham schoolgirl Holly Wells has admitted “time doesn’t heal” the pain of losing his daughter, but has vowed to “make it out the other side”.

Kevin Wells said that while his grief at losing his daughter ten years ago has not diminished, he has learned to live with what happened.

The 48-year-old said the murder of Holly, and her friend Jessica Chapman, by school caretaker Ian Huntley took his family to breaking point and nearly destroyed his marriage to wife Nicola, 45.

Speaking in an documentary to mark the tenth anniversary of the girls’ deaths, he said: “Time doesn’t heal, someone got that wrong.

“It anaesthetises. Grief does not diminish, but you can manage the intensity and learn to live with it.

“Murder has the capacity to destroy more lives than the one taken. I recognised that from the start, so I tried to take control, to make plans and to exert positive thought.

“I clung to my family, my community, my work, sometimes to God and sometimes to a late-night tumbler of whisky.

“I chose to believe in the future, a future that I could craft from the life we once had. Really, all I wanted was for us to be the ones who’d make it out the other side.”

Mr Wells revealed the couple, who had been together for 20 years when Holly was murdered, struggled to support each other as they “processed their grief at different speeds”.

But, he said, “slowly but surely” they came back together as a couple.

“They say 95 per cent of the parents of murdered children split up … we were determined to be among the 5 per cent who survive,” he said.