Don't demonise Carr, urges clergyman

Maxine Carr was the innocent victim of Soham murderer Ian Huntley and should be allowed to “get on with her life”, a leading clergyman in her home town said today.

Canon Michael Hunter, the rector of Grimsby, said Carr should be forgiven for providing an alibi for Huntley, who murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

“I think she is someone who is very unfortunate and it is a great misfortune for her that she happened to be Ian Huntley’s girlfriend at the time of the Soham murders and for that she will ever be labelled,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme.

“Maxine Carr is not a demonised person and she is not worthy of that label.

“She is somebody that has done no harm to anyone, she is going to do no harm to anyone, she is just somebody that wants to get on with her life and I think we ought to give her the opportunity to do that.”

Carr was released on Friday after serving half of her 42-month sentence for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

She provided a false alibi for Huntley by lying to police about her whereabouts on the weekend in August 2002 when he murdered the 10-year-old girls in Soham, Cambridgeshire.

Last Monday she was convicted at Nottingham Crown Court of separate offences of benefit fraud and lying on job applications and was made the subject to a three-year community rehabilitation order.

As she was moved from custody, her legal team won a wide-ranging gagging order.

It bans journalists from even asking for information about her new name or whereabouts.

The order means she will probably live out the rest of her life in secret unless she decides to write a book about her life.

Canon Hunter said it was important to separate Carr’s role in the Soham murders from her former partner Huntley.

“It is so sad that they were tried together at the Old Bailey for crimes which were totally of a different dimension and nature,” he told the programme.

“She is forever going to be associated with Ian Huntley in much the same way as Brady and Hindley.

“I just think it is going to be very sad. What sort of life she is going to have? It will be exceedingly difficult because of the hype and the way it has been projected and explained and the way it has been put in the tabloids.”