Johara Menacer was haunted by the horrors of Grenfell. ‘It all built up inside me and suddenly it just hit me one day,’ she said after launching a landmark legal challenge
A young woman haunted by the horrors of the Grenfell Tower blaze has launched a landmark legal case that could pave the way for payouts to traumatised victims.
Johara Menacer was just 13 in 2017 when fire tore through the 24-storey tower block, killing 72 people and leaving a community shattered. She was one of hundreds of children to be treated for trauma after the inferno in West London.
Now 21, Johara has launched a personal injury claim against the Tory-run Kensington and Chelsea council and a string of companies. Court documents seen by the Mirror show she has lodged a High Court claim against the council Tenant Management Organisation, as well as architects and cladding firm Arconic. Whirlpool, the Home Office and London Fire Commissioner are also named in the claim.
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A year after the fire, Johara and fellow survivor Yousra Cherbika recorded Fire In Grenfell, a tribute song to honour the dead. She also threw herself into helping Young Grenfell, a group that used talking, art and writing memories of lost friends as therapy.
Johara previously said of the disaster and its aftermath: “It all built up inside me and suddenly it just hit me one day. I was helping my mum all the time and making sure she was alright, but she kind of forgot to check if I was alright. I was always acting like I was alright. So I pushed everything away to help myself.
“The state I was in that night, I was in that state for a long time because I just avoided talking about it. I felt like it was for the best.” Johara lived very close to the tower and is believed to have lost friends in the disaster.
In 2018, she told how she still lived around the corner from the building, “so there is no way to avoid it”. She said: “My brother lived in the tower, so when we heard about the fire my mum went round to see if he was OK.
“I was crying and telling my sister not to go too close because it wasn’t going to be nice. I remember turning on the TV, when my brother ran through the door. I could smell smoke on his jacket. He was damp from the water coming through the building.
“He sat down because he was struggling to breathe. My sister looked after him and I went out with my mum to see if I could find any of my friends.”
Johara also revealed she was forced to keep attending Kensington Aldridge Academy School, which was damaged by the fire. She said: “We’ve been going to school in a Portakabin. That’s a constant reminder of the fire. There are a lot of survivors in the school. It’s really hard. We had exams that summer, but it was hard to concentrate on them.”
After the fire, figures showed that in North Kensington 10,000 people were screened for trauma, with 2,000 given treatment. Of these, 744 were children overwhelmed by grief.
In 2022, a High Court judge ruled the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation were liable for fatalities in the fire. The following year, 900 claimants made up of bereaved families, survivors and residents agreed a landmark civil settlement with the Tenant Management Organisation.