FEATURES...FEATURES...FEATURES...FEATURES...FEATURES...

THREE DAYS AFTER PAULINE CAMPBELL GAVE THIS INTERVIEW TO FABULOUS, SHE COMMITTED SUICIDE. HER BODY WAS FOUND BESIDE THE GRAVE OF HER TEENAGE DAUGHTER. PAULINE, 60, TOOK HER OWN LIFE FOLLOWING A LONG AND TRAUMATIC FIGHT FOR JUSTICE FOR SARAH, WHO KILLED HERSELF IN PRISON AT THE AGE OF 18. IN MEMORY OF PAULINE, THIS IS HER TRAGIC STORY

By Laura Topham

It’s a tragic story in any circumstances a grieving mother committing suicide by the grave of her only child.

But while it sounds like a scene from a TV drama, it happened here in the UK just a few weeks ago.

Pauline Campbell never recovered from her 18-year-old daughter Sarah’s (pictured left) suicide in Styal Prison, Cheshire, five years ago.

Shockingly, Sarah’s death was not an isolated incident she was the youngest of six women to take their own lives in a 12-month period in Styal.

For Pauline, 60, it was too much to bear.

On May 15, a passer-by discovered her body at her daughter’s graveside, under a headstone bearing the words: ‘Her mother left broken-hearted’.

The details of Pauline’s death are sketchy.

There has been no inquest and police haven’t released details, but there have been reports that she took a drug overdose.

As Pauline spoke to Fabulous just before her death, her anguish was palpable, the result of a deep anger at the way her daughter had died while in the care of the state.

Her determined fight for justice had taken its toll on her both mentally and physically.

Pauline’s pain showed through as she explained:

"Sarah died a slow and painful death.

"She was on suicide watch when she told prison staff she’d overdosed on antidepressants, yet they left her alone in her cell, fitting and vomiting blood, while they searched for handcuffs and argued over who should call an ambulance."

By the time paramedics reached her, Sarah was unconscious. She died two hours later.

Pauline took the call at midnight, alone in the kitchen of the home she had shared with Sarah in the Shropshire village of Whitchurch.

As a policeman explained what had happened, Pauline collapsed.

She had worried for years about Sarah’s heroin addiction and assumed that, behind bars, she would be safe.

Although the police don’t know how Sarah got hold of enough prescription antidepressants to kill herself, her mother suspected she’d smuggled them in.

In the wake of her own personal tragedy, Pauline discovered some shocking facts about women in British jails.

Twice as many women as men are jailed for first time offences, and an alarming 37 per cent of Britain’s 4,300 female prisoners have attempted suicide.

Most of these women are vulnerable and need help 70 per cent of female inmates have mental health problems, while others are victims of childhood abuse or domestic violence.

Sarah was a case in point.

Her parents separated when she was young, and for years she was sexually abused by a distant relative.

She was diagnosed with clinical depression and started taking heroin at the age of 16.

Then, in 2002, she was charged with manslaughter after she and another girl hassled a man for money and he collapsed and died of a heart attack.

Sarah pleaded guilty at her trial and was sentenced to three years in jail.

Sarah, who had attempted suicide seven times while awaiting trial, was acknowledged as being mentally ill.

The judge advised she go to a secure psychiatric unit, but instead she was sent to Styal Prison.

Her parting words to her mother were: "Why aren’t they sending me to hospital?"

Sarah committed suicide the following day.

"If Sarah had been put into psychiatric care, she’d still be alive," Pauline told Fabulous.

"She was desperate for help, and the system let her down."

Pauline’s subsequent campaigning she demonstrated outside prisons whenever a woman died in custody, and bombarded politicians and reformers with emails won some justice for her daughter when, nearly three years after Sarah’s suicide, the Home Office admitted full liability for her death.

Sadly, for her mother, a former college lecturer, it was too little too late.

She told us: "Since my daughter’s death in 2003, 41 more women have killed themselves in custody.

"Lessons are not being learnt."

One can only wonder whether, as she spoke those bitter words, Pauline already knew that she herself would become the next tragic victim of the justice system she felt was failing women in so many ways.

 

‘I GRIEVE FOR HER WASTED LIFE’

Housewife Pauline Hart, 52, lives in Kidderminster. Her daughtere Jenny killed herself in jail in 2003.

It’s still incomprehensible to me that my beautiful daughter Jenny got involved with drugs.

As her heroin habit spiralled, she lost her restaurant job, moved out of home and started shoplifting.

She was charged with theft and sent to prison in Essex nearly 400 miles away for six months.

She wanted to get off drugs, but was offered no treatment.

Jen sounded happy when I last spoke to her on February 6, 2003, but hours later she hanged herself with her dressing gown cord just two weeks before her release.

She was 19.

The shock was unbearable.

I believe the justice system failed Jennifer, and housing prisoners so far from home is inhumane.

If she’d been nearby, maybe I’d have noticed her anxiety.

I grieve for her wasted life every day.

My family will never recover.

 

‘MY GIRL SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN IN PRISON’

Jean Powell, 55, comes from Tipton in the West Midlands. Her daughter Caroline was 26 when she hanged herself in a Gloucestershire prison in January 2007.

"Caroline was awaiting trial on remand when she hanged herself.

"Although she had a clean record apart from minor driving incidents and her offence was a non-violent one, the judge refused her bail when she was charged with acting as a lookout during a robbery.

"About a month after the bail hearing, Caroline called me from prison.

"She was terribly upset.

"Her children had previously been taken into care because of her relationship problems, and she’d just discovered that two of them had been adopted.

"Later that night, Caroline was found hanged in her cell.

"I don’t know how she did it.

I had no idea she was suicidal, although I later discovered she’d already tried to kill herself at the police station."

Jean believes her daughter should never have been in prison in the first place and says the situation was made worse by the fact that Caroline was imprisoned so far from her family.

She had depression and her kids had just been taken away from her common sense says she needed her family.

 

Photography: The Guardian, Abbie Trayler-Smith. Hair and Make-up: Soula Henderson at Joy Goodman