The daughter of one of the 35 victims of disgraced funeral director Robert Bush has told GB News she will never recover from the trauma he has caused.
Speaking to reporter Anna Riley, Joanne Moody said Bush “should have got more” after being handed a 20-year prison sentence for 67 offences.
Bush’s offences spanned more than a decade and included handing dozens of grieving families the wrong ashes, with police finding 35 bodies at the company’s property.
Handing down the sentence, Mr Justice Hilliard said Bush had breached the trust of his customers “on an almost industrial scale” and “in a myriad of ways”.
Discussing the sentencing on GB News, Ms Moody, daughter of Peter Moody, said she is “pretty sure everyone will agree” that his sentence should have been longer.
She said: “He should have got more, a lot more, and I’m pretty sure everybody else agrees with me that it should have got a lot more than he got.”
Mr Moody was one of the 35 bodies found by police in their investigation.
Ms Moody told GB News that her family had believed they had buried her father just one month after his passing, but now she has “no idea who they buried”.
Joanne Moody, daughter of a victim of Robert Bush, told GB News she will ‘never recover’ from the betrayal
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GB NEWS
She told GB News: “He died in November 2023, and we thought we’d buried him in December 2023.
“And then it all came to light. I’m not going to recover from that anytime soon.”
Asked by Anna how it felt for the family to then have to have a second funeral for her father, Ms Moody was overcome with emotion.
She began to cry, telling GB News: “It was really, really hard. We’d done all our grieving, we’d done all our crying, and we’d done all our shouting.
Robert Bush was sentenced to 20 years after pleading guilty to 67 offences earlier this year
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HANDOUT“We buried someone, and I don’t even know we buried.”
Delivering a statement outside Hull Crown Court, the daughter of another two victims Karen Dry urged the Government to conduct a public inquiry into Bush’s wrongdoings.
Ms Dry said: “We remind our local MPs that a public inquiry should now be established because he had accumulated, with Hull City Council, a debt over £50,000.
“Mr Bush did not make a mistake, his acts were deliberate. His own barrister said the breach of trust is obvious and gross, and tainted the memory of every person.
Ms Moody told GB News that they have ‘no idea who they buried’
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GB NEWS
“Deep scars remain due to the terrible violations committed against our loved ones. It is agonising to recall a baby denied a proper cremation and left in a paper bag on the floor for nearly two years, and many adults denied a dignified resting place left to decompose on shelves to a point where DNA and dental record testing was necessary for identification.
“It underscores the funeral industry that is currently in desperate need of strict regulation. We all deserve dignity in death, and this was totally denied to our loved ones.”
In response to the sentencing, Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has said in a statement: “In the wake of this horrific case, we will now bring forward comprehensive proposals to ensure respect and dignity for the deceased in every setting, including proper regulation of the funeral sector.
“We’re determined to drive out rogue operators of this industry and protect other families from suffering this same heartache.”