About Cherry Groce Foundation

In Brixton, in 1985, at the age of 37, Cherry Groce was wrongfully shot by the police in her own home, witnessed by her 11-year-old son, Lee Lawrence and his siblings. Cherry was left paralysed from the waist down. The children were left traumatised. In April 2011 Cherry Groce eventually died from her injuries having spent 26 years in a wheelchair. At the time, the shooting sent shockwaves through a community that had become accustomed to police brutality aimed at black males - and sparked the second Brixton Uprising – an overflow of anger and frustration at the institutional and everyday racism that the Black community faced.

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“I remember screaming: ‘What have you done to my mum?’

I heard my mum saying: ‘I can’t move my legs, I can’t breathe,
I think I’m going to die.’ At that moment everything in my life changed for ever.”

Lee Lawrence

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In the aftermath of the shooting and in subsequent years, Lee and his siblings were systematically failed by the agencies and institutions that exist to support – the council, social services, schools, and the police. The community was catalysed to act together relentlessly and persistently in the pursuit of justice for 35 years. Cherry Groce never lived to see justice served. It was eventually achieved through a process of Restorative Justice. Whilst much has changed in Brixton since 1985, Lambeth remains an area where too many people experience violence and where relationships between agencies, including the police, remain strained and support is lacking.

 

The Cherry Groce Foundation was set up in 2016 in memory of Cherry Groce, a mother who chose to live life to the fullest. The Foundation is committed to carry out its work in the momentum of the positive energy that radiated from Cherry Groce and her belief that truth and justice will ultimately triumph.