Mother of Libby Squire hopes documentary raises awareness after Bafta win

By Naomi Clarke and Kerri-Ann Roper, PA Reporters

The mother of student Libby Squire has said she hopes the hard-hitting documentary series about her murder will help “get her message out and honour her memory” after it won a Bafta TV award.

The three-part Sky series, Libby Are You Home Yet?, which tells the story of how the 21-year-old student was abducted and murdered while walking home from a club in her university city of Hull in 2019, was awarded the factual series prize on Sunday night.

Libby’s mother Lisa Squire said she hopes the documentary’s heightened profile will help educate the public about violence against women and girls, revealing she plans to discuss the topic with the Prime Minister in the near future.

Ms Squire told the PA news agency the win was a bittersweet moment, explaining: “You’ve got friends and people saying ‘How exciting, congratulations’ and you think ‘I would give all of that up, I just want to be a normal mum sat on the sofa with all my children’.

“Doing the red carpet and all of that is absolutely amazing, and we’re really grateful, and it’s lovely, and I really enjoy it, but you’d give it up in a heartbeat if it meant you could have her back.

“But we can’t. So, we just do as much as we can to get her message out and to honour her memory.”

Ms Squire added that she was “really pleased” for the team behind the documentary as she felt they were “incredible” at honouring her daughter’s story after she had rejected a number of other companies as she felt they were too focused on Libby’s personal life rather than learning from the experience.

Following Libby’s disappearance in 2019, it sparked a large-scale manhunt effort by Humberside Police which culminated in the arrest of Pawel Relowicz, a married father-of-two and Polish butcher.

He was convicted of raping and murdering the 21-year-old student when he chanced upon her after she had been out with friends. He was jailed for a minimum term of 27 years at Sheffield Crown Court in February 2021.

The documentary chronicled Libby’s life, the hours that led to her death and the investigation that followed alongside interviews with her family, friends and the police.

The series’ director Anna Hall, from Candour productions, dedicated the Bafta award to Libby, which Ms Squire felt “really summed up” how the documentary team had handled the whole process.

“It was about her and getting her story out, and telling it beautifully, and honouring her, and and I think it was really lovely that she alluded to that the only reason we’re all there is because of Libby,” she said.

Ms Squire said her message is always for women and girls to report any incidents if they are a victim of a sexual offence.

“The more women and girls that report things, the more things will have to be done”, she said.

“(The Bafta) will have kicked off the whole campaigning again in a really nice way without me having to do too much legwork, which is a positive really.

“I still go into schools and talk to sixth-formers predominantly about when they go off to university, about never leaving your friends.

“If your friend’s too drunk to get into a club, or if your friend isn’t feeling very well, go home with them, you can go out next night because bad things happen, not frequently, but do you want to risk it?

“As I’ve said 1000s of times, I don’t blame the girls that she was with that night for this happening, but I think we can use it as a learning experience.

“If they have the knowledge, and if they have the the understanding and the education around it, then they can make better choices and then they don’t have to live with what we all have to live with, us as Libby’s family and her friends, the ripple effects are massive.”

Ms Squire is currently working on an education package with Thames Valley Police which she hopes will go national after they test it in local schools.

She added: “I’ve been re-energised with the Baftas last night, so I’m now going to get back on the political thing and have a meeting with Rishi Sunak and talk about violence against women and girls.”