Thomas was a wonderful human being who was loved dearly by his family and we think about him with sadness every day.

We miss his quirky sense of humour, his oftentimes deep and perceptive comments and his huge presence. We miss witnessing the fulfilment he found in everyday life and his faith, his love of runner beans and cats, crosses and candles.

Many years ago his life had been troubled. However, he had made real progress and we were so proud that he was living semi-independently and happily. He had found purpose with his second family at St Thomas’s church, he was a regular at his local gym, and it was heartbreaking to open his post after he died to find that his provisional driving license had arrived. He was so looking forward to learning to drive.

The impact on us, and many of those in our lives, has been devastating. Since the trauma and ordeal that began on 3 October 2012 – from the moments that we first became aware something had happened to Thomas, to sitting at his bedside night and day in hospital for a week hoping that he would recover, to switching off the life-support machine and washing his body before placing it in a body bag – our lives have been irreparably changed and damaged.

We have struggled to understand the process and the content of the investigation, we have worked hard to understand complex legal and medical issues, we have had to fight for information every step of the way and we have faced what seem like endless and unnecessary delays. We were not allowed to have Thomas’s body until seven months after his death and we didn’t have access to much of the evidence until two years had passed. We still wait for disciplinary hearings and for a possible inquest.

It has been draining and on many occasions we have felt powerless and out of our depth as we have struggled to communicate with a system that didn’t seem used to communicating with ordinary people, particularly ordinary people in the midst of grief. Learning to fight while grieving has proved to be so stressful and hard.

In all this time we have never had a simple apology or genuine acknowledgement that something went horribly wrong that day. It feels simply inhuman.