A Dunblane survivor has told how she is expecting her first baby on the school massacre’s 25th anniversary.
After witnessing the horrors first hand as a child, Amy Bestwick feared she would never get over the trauma of that murderous day.
But with the help of a pioneering eye movement therapy, the 33-year-old has finally overcome her nightmare – and is due to give birth on the 25th anniversary of the massacre.
Amy was just eight when deranged Thomas Hamilton, 43, strolled into Dunblane Primary School and murdered 16 children aged between five and six and teacher Gwenne Mayor with four handguns on March 13, 1996.
She still remembers hiding underneath another teacher’s desk after watching as bullets flew through a hallway window metres away.
Amy suffered decades of mental health problems but now has hope for the future.
She is also looking forward to the birth of her first child, a daughter, next month.
Amy said: “She is actually due on March 13, it’s a crazy world. There’s no saying she will arrive then but just that being my due date is very special. There will never be anything that takes away from the pain of people who lost loved ones at Dunblane.
“But for me her birth means happiness and something beautiful can come out of that day.”
Amy’s life has changed dramatically for the better over the last three years.
She has started a new career, fallen in love with partner Ryan, 33, and is winning her battle against PTSD after undergoing integral eye movement therapy.
Amy added: “I spent 22 years dealing with unprocessed trauma, 22 years of living in a state. But now I feel amazing and I’ve got so much to look forward to in my life. I’m so secure and loved and happy. I’ve got everything I could wish for.”
Amy moved to Scotland with her family in 1993 and spent three years at Dunblane Primary, near Stirling.
On the day of the massacre she was with classmates in Primary Four.
She said: “Our class was walking through a corridor to the music room, called the ‘GP room’, to practice singing for an assembly. I was stood next to my friend and we saw little holes appearing on the glass in front of us and chunks of plaster coming out of the walls behind.
“We were standing there like two little old ladies with hands on our hips talking about how there ‘must be builders banging’.”
The corridor was separated by a concrete playground from the gym where loner Hamilton, who later killed himself, struck at 9.30am.
Amy can still remember seeing a figure, believed to be the killer, in the doorway of the gym’s fire escape. She crawled back to class on “hands and knees” before returning to the GP room to be reunited with her mum.
Amy added: “We were sat like an assembly, lined up on the floor and one by one people went home. I remember my friend crying, because she wanted her little sister with her.
"My mum says my personality changed on the day of the shooting, she says she brought home a different child from school. I changed from outgoing, confident and fearless happy little girl, to one who was quite lost in the world.”
Two weeks after the murders, her mum Sue and stepdad Nigel, both 60, completed a planned family relocation to Nottinghamshire.
Amy battled undiagnosed anxiety and depression, culminating in a suicide attempt at 14. She suffered night terrors about people close to her dying. The problems continued into her 20s when she closed all windows and blinds to feel secure.
Even watching gunfire on TV could trigger a breakdown. Amy was in the same class at Dunblane as Andy Murray, 33.
In 2019, the tennis star spoke publicly for the first time about the massacre, which led to the UK enforcing strict firearms legislation.
Amy has been inspired by Murray’s determination to stop Dunblane from “defining” him.
In 2016 she suffered another crisis which led to a second suicide attempt. But the end of her marriage a year later was to signal a change in her fortunes.
In 2018, she got back in touch with former sweetheart Ryan.
Amy also switched from a career in early years childcare to local government.
Her new boss put her into contact with therapist Carl Jackson, 54, a builder who is an expert in IEMT.
It involves patients holding onto problematic memories while following complex movement patterns with their eyes.
Amy noticed an immediate change after her first session with Carl in October 2019.
She said: “I just seemed lighter, calmer, quieter in my mind. There have been so many pieces to the puzzle of healing me and this was the final one.”
Carl, who runs Carl Jackson Therapies in Lincoln, has now had four sessions with Amy.
He added: “Amy’s outcome is not unusual, I tend to see the biggest changes in the worst cases.”
Amy lives with coach builder Ryan, who has two children from a previous relationship. They are building their dream home in Lincolnshire.
Her older brother Joe, 36, who has a lower limb disability, won wheelchair basketball bronze at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics.
Amy is speaking out to inspire other trauma survivors to carry on searching for support.
She said: “Never give up hope. I have no idea how eye movement therapy works but it has been better than I could have imagined.
“Dunblane has been such a big part of me. I never hide away from it. I can finally look at my time there as a time I loved and was at my happiest. It’s not about that one day any more.”
Killer who was obsessed with firearms
Dunblane killer Thomas Hamilton, who lived in Stirling, was raised by his aunt and uncle and left school aged 15.
He volunteered as a Scout leader but was thrown out and blacklisted over concerns about his leadership skills.
Senior figures within the organisation later admitted they were also suspicious of his “moral intentions towards boys”.
Hamilton responded by launching his own ‘Dunblane Rovers’ group, which took boys up to the age of 14.
After similar allegations were made against this youth club he complained he was being persecuted by the authorities and police.
The shopkeeper blamed others for the collapse of his business.
He wrote letters to the Queen and local MP Michael Forsyth.
Alongside Hamilton’s “unhealthy” interest with children he was also obsessed with firearms.
He regularly practised target shooting at gun clubs and is said to have stroked his weapons and “spoken to them like children”.
