Murderer and his fraudster wife are given £20,000 legal aid to fight for an IVF baby

13 April 2012

A murdere serving life in jail for kicking a man to death has taken his human rights battle to father a child by artificial insemination to Europe's highest court.

Kirk Dickson's demand to have a child with his wife Lorraine has been consistently rejected over five years in a series of hearings that have cost the taxpayer at least £20,000 in legal aid.

The couple, who met through a prison penpal scheme after she was jailed for a £27,000 benefits fiddle, claim that not being able to have a child breaches their human rights.

Dickson and a friend killed 41-year-old George Askins because he refused to hand over his cigarettes.

Last night his victim's family bitterly attacked the couple. 'This is a man who brutally took the life of my brother,' said Peter Askins, 53.

'Why should taxpayers' cash be used to give him the opportunity to create another life? They beat George to a pulp. If he wanted to have a family he should have thought of that before he robbed my family of a much-loved man.'

Dickson, 34, was found guilty at Nottingham Crown Court in 1995 of the murder of handyman and father-of-one Mr Askins at Chapel St Leonards, Lincolnshire, in 1994.

Dickson was told he must serve a minimum of 15 years behind bars.

In 1999 he met Lorraine Earlie, now 48, after she was jailed for 12 months that year at Hull Crown Court for benefit fraud. A mother of three by her first husband, she failed to declare maintenance she was receiving from him.

Bankrupt and with previous convictions for deception and conspiracy to defraud, she claimed her only income was £15 a week from Tarot card readings.

Dickson married her in 2000 - after her release and while he was at Blunderston Prison in Suffolk. The couple decided to hire a solicitor when the governor refused to authorise a sperm donation from the murderer for use in IVF treatment.

If a request is granted, an inmate gives a sample in a prison's hospital wing or private clinic and their wives must then make arrangements for insemination. The Home Office says applications from prisoners for artificial insemination are granted only in 'exceptional' circumstances.

In 2001 the then Home Secretary David Blunkett rejected the couple's application, pointing out that their ' relationship' had never been tested outside prison and any child would be without a father for an important part of its childhood.

Given the gravity of his crime there was also a need to maintain public confidence that the punishment was not being circumvented.

Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal also rejected the couple's case so they went to the European courts.

They claim the Home Secretary's decision violated European Convention on Human Rights - the rights to a private and family life and the rights of men and women to marry and have a family.

Last year a panel of seven judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg decided against them by a 4-3 majority.

Yesterday the couple went before the 17 judges sitting in the court's Grand Chamber but after opening the case, their lawyers were told they would have to wait 'months, if not longer' for a decision.

Dickson, who has no children, is at Dovegate Prison in Staffordshire, and not eligible for release until 2010 - when his wife will be 52.

She refused to discuss the case at her home in Beverley, East Yorkshire, yesterday but in an interview with the Daily Mail in 2003 said: 'I know some people think that Kirk should have thought about whether or not he wanted children before he committed murder, and others think I shouldn't have married someone serving a life sentence if I wanted another child. But neither of us want a child with just anyone.

'Our child would be brought up in a normal loving family.'

Politicians and family groups condemned the couple's claim.

Ann Widdecombe, a former Tory prisons minister, said: 'A child is not a right, a child is a major responsibility.'

Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said: 'This couple seem to have lost sight of the fact that one of the purposes of a prison sentence is to deny offenders the freedoms and privileges that the lawabiding majority enjoy.'

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