'After years fighting for Chantel's law I'm meeting minister'

A mother, who is campaigning for a change in sentencing of murderers who hide their victim's body, has said she is "overwhelmed" ahead of her meeting with a minister.

Jean Taylor's daughter Chantel Taylor, 27, was killed by former soldier Stephen Wynne in 2004. He was released on parole this year, despite never revealing where her body was.

Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones said the Law Commission was examining the issue and has agreed to meet Jean Taylor.

Taylor, who wants Chantel's Law to be introduced for "those who go beyond murder", making concealment or desecration of a body a separate crime, said she wanted the meeting "sooner rather than later".

"At last, it's looking as though it's going in the right direction," Taylor added.

There is not currently an explicit offence of desecration of a dead body in England and Wales.

Conservative minister Esther McVey has supported Taylor in arranging the meeting with Davies-Jones.

McVey, MP for Tatton, said she hoped Chantel's Law would make desecrating a body a crime "in its own right", and go further than it being an "aggravating factor" which it currently reads as in the law.

"Because not only could Jean Taylor not grieve her daughter or bury her daughter, and Chantel's three children couldn't either, but in hiding the body serious evidence also was hidden," she said.

Taylor said what Wynne did to desecrate and conceal her daughter was "beyond words".

"There has to be a combined sentence for our judges who come across these types of killers," she said.

"For those who go beyond murder - there has to be another sentence which I am crying and campaigning for."

She added: "What he did to Chantel was beyond any normal person's mind of thinking, and my daughter deserves justice and so do I, her brothers, sister and three children.

"Respect has to be given and certainly for someone's body."

Davies-Jones said: "[Jean Taylor] will know that the Law Commission are looking at specifically desecration of a body, and that work is ongoing, and that we as a government, when they report back, will look at that carefully to see what more we can do."

Wynne's original life sentence was later reduced on appeal to 18 years, and he has now been freed.

On the terms of his conditions, he is not allowed on Merseyside, yet Taylor said that's "not good enough".

"I've failed, he's out there," she said.

Since her daughter's murder, Taylor set up the charity Families Fighting For Justice, which advocates for tougher murder laws and act as a support group for impacted families.

She has previously joined other victims of crime to deliver a petition to 10 Downing Street, which called for life sentences to "mean life".

She said a law in Chantel's name would mean "so much" to her and the whole family.

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