Amy Winehouse's ex-mother-in-law has criticised mental health provisions after her son fled a Yorkshire secure hospital and died of an overdose.
Freddy Civil, 27, died of a heroin overdose on April 26, 2021. He was the younger brother of Amy Winehouse's ex-partner Blake Fielder-Civil, and Georgette Civil's youngest son.
An inquest heard that Freddy ran from Fieldhead Hospital in Wakefield. From there, he checked into a B&B for £40 a night and overdosed - the coroner ruled his death was due to "misadventure".
Read more: Tragedy as person found dead on tracks at Morley train station
Georgette, 56, has now said she "predicted" his death months before. She said: "I fought throughout to keep him alive because I predicted in November and December and January he was going to die under their care.
“My son was robbed of his dignity and his respect, and the grossly poor handling of the complaints procedure was just shocking. He was no better treated - and I hate to say it - than like a caged dog. But for me, the real tragedy here is Freddy had good, good cause to fear he would never be free. We both did."
In 2019, the Care Quality Commission ruled that the trust's mental health provision required improvements. This left Georgette fearing deaths at the hospital could rise.
She added: “All our lives are forever changed. Will there be any further deaths there? Yes, there will be.
"I don’t understand now why our mental health system is failing."
The inquest heard that a judge made Freddy subject to a hospital order after being sentenced to HMP Leeds for an unspecified crime. Since autumn 2018, he had been detained at Newton Lodge, a medium security unit at Fieldhead Hospital, under the Mental Health Act.
Mum-of-three Georgette, from Rippingdale in Lincolnshire, had hoped to open a barber shop with her son in the future. She had formerly owned a salon.
She said: "There was never a day when I didn’t ring my son or he didn’t ring me.
“And with every upset, I would always say to Freddy, 'Do you want me to raise it with staff.' And I did, I supported Freddy. He’s my son, I love him.
"You read his files, and you can feel his pain and isolation and frustration, and you can see the inevitable was just about to happen, and it’s just devastating that it happened. For years he was bullied, and he was frightened, and he was lonely, and he was isolated.
"All we both saw was years and years of him trapped in this awful situation we were both in. And after he died, I felt really upset."
She said Freddy had really idolised older brother Blake. Freddy's personal diaries had been released to Georgette after his death - in them she found he claimed staff were nicknaming him after the paedophile Jimmy Savile.
In one diary, Freddy wrote: "Approached the office to ask staff a question at which point staff member…looked through the window, looked directly at me and said in front of my friend… ‘Alright Jimmy Savile.’ I said Hello and walked away.
“This is the second time he has called me Jimmy Savile, previous time was at [sic] the corridor."
In another, he added: “When I try [to] explain what I see in this hospital i.e.: bullying, patronizing behaviour, attitude problems, bad moods, which in turn gets took out on us patients, the doctors in particular."
A further entry read: "There's no doubt I will [be] battling my mental health for a lot [of] time, maybe forever. But deep down I know I will never go back to the life I once lived."
Freddy called what was going on in the hospital "disgusting" and wrote that he hoped to show his diaries to a lawyer in the future. Coroner Oliver Longstaff agreed that Freddy had found the slow progress of his treatment frustrating in his summary of the inquest on Thursday, November 24 - but Georgette felt more should be done.
She said: “This is the trust whose reputation is above patient safety, and I think that’s quite clear in Freddy’s file, and certainly how they handled my complaint.
“I haven’t got Freddy and never will have. They say lessons are learned, but I don’t think they’re learned from this at all.”
Carol Harris, Chief Operating Officer at South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said: “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by Mr Civil’s death.
"At our Trust, the safety of the people who access our services is a priority for us.
"Following the incident we carried out a thorough investigation and developed a detailed action plan to enhance our service delivery.
"As a learning trust we continue to work to ensure the services we deliver are the best they can be.”
Read next:
