By the time he was seven and his younger brother, Sam, was 18 months old, his parents had split up. And this is what we are now talking about, sitting at the bottom of his garden on a cold spring evening.ĭ unne grew up on the Meadows in Nottingham, an infamous estate blighted by drugs, violence and criminality. So he started to think about his past, about what had made him into that young man. All he could say was that he had received a call telling him that things were kicking off, and he ran over to support his friends. When Joan and David initially asked him to explain why he had punched James, he couldn’t give a satisfactory answer. We hear of his admirable achievements, but he also shows us an unattractive side, when he considered himself almost as much a victim as Hodgkinson was, and was determined to exact revenge on the former friend who he refers to as “the snitch”. Why is he so anxious? “Because I’m so honest in it.” It’s true. How is he feeling about the book? “I’m excited and anxious,” he says. He appears relaxed, taking everything in his stride, but it doesn’t take long to discover the intensity bubbling underneath. He puts the kettle on, and asks if we can go into the garden so he can smoke a cigarette. It’s an image of chaotic domestic bliss.ĭunne carries the children upstairs, one in each arm, and returns a few minutes later. There are fancy-dress outfits on a clothes rail, toys galore and a children’s library.
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Peppa Pig is muted on the TV while he reads to the kids. Dunne, now 30, is preparing his children for bed. Today, he has two young children, a first-class degree in criminology, and talks in schools, universities and prisons about conflict resolution and restorative justice. When he threw the punch, Dunne had no qualifications and sold drugs to make a living. James Hodgkinson, who was killed by a single punch from Jacob Dunne outside a pub in Nottingham in 2011, after a day spent watching cricket at Trent Bridge with his father and brother. It resulted in an extraordinary and complex relationship. Dunne has been able to rebuild his life largely thanks to Hodgkinson’s parents, Joan Scourfield and David Hodgkinson, who wrote to him and eventually met him in an attempt to understand the incomprehensible – why a stranger ran out of nowhere to throw the punch at their beloved son that killed him. At its heart is the theme of restorative justice.
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Right from Wrong is part mea culpa, part love letter to his mother, and part manifesto on how to help children from difficult backgrounds to avoid the lifestyle he led. Ten years on, he has written a book about the punch, and how it changed his life and the lives of others. Some, including Hodgkinson’s parents, suggested he should have received a far longer sentence.
All he had done was throw a random punch on a night out scrapping with his mates. At the time, Dunne thought he was unlucky. Because he admitted to his crime and there were mitigating factors (despite his predilection for fighting, he had no criminal record, no weapon was used, and James’s bleed to the brain resulted from his fall rather than Dunne’s single punch to the jaw), he was only sentenced to 30 months in jail, of which he served 14.
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