Relatives of Gaia Pope have expressed anger and heartache at the lack of progress on key reforms in policing and healthcare they believe are needed a year after the Dorset teenager’s inquest exposed dozens of failings in her care.
One described the impact of her death and the legal process that followed as “a wound that will never heal or even stop bleeding” while another said they still felt badly traumatised and let down by the legal system.
They say some of the organisations that were told by the senior coroner at the end of the inquest – one of the longest in British history – to consider changes had ignored her or made only minor tweaks.
Charities that work with bereaved families and survivors of sexual assault said the relatives’ complaints showed fundamental reform was needed to compel organisations to take real action when a coroner produces a preventing future deaths (PFD) report.
Pope’s cousin Marienna Pope-Weidemann said: “For the three months of the inquest we spent every day in a room where it’s basically torture hearing the terrible details over and over. Our barrister had never seen so many PFD reports coming out of one inquest. I was pulled into hoping there would be change.
“About a week later I woke up with a really cold feeling. What is a PFD report? A coroner makes recommendations but they are completely non-binding.”
Pope’s sister Clara Pope-Sutherland said: “The jury’s findings were damning. But there is this continued feeling that we and other victims’ families are being failed by the system. Reliving the trauma of what happened in the inquest is still very prevalent for all of us.”
Pope, who had epilepsy, went missing on 7 November 2017 from the seaside town of Swanage at a time when she feared a man who allegedly raped her was about to be released from prison and soon after being sent indecent images by another man, which relatives say triggered her post-traumatic stress disorder. Her body was found in undergrowth on a clifftop 11 days later after a flawed police search. She had died of hypothermia.
The inquest jury in Bournemouth heard about a series of missed chances – the family say it added up to about 50 – to help or save her.
At the end of the inquest, Rachael Griffin, the senior coroner for Dorset, wrote to 10 organisations expressing concerns and asking them to look at making specific changes.
For example, Griffin asked the College of Policing to consider giving training to all police officers in England and Wales on mental health illness and epilepsy. The college wrote back saying such training was not practical because of the number of medical conditions officers would need to know about.
The coroner also expressed concern about the number of specialist epilepsy nurses, having heard there were only two for 10,000 adults with epilepsy in Dorset. Since the inquest, University Hospitals Dorset NHS foundation trust has hired just one more specialist nurse who only works one day a week.
Pope’s family made it clear during the inquest she was devastated that the man who allegedly raped her, who went on to be jailed for other sexual offences against girls, was not prosecuted. They said the inquest exposed serious failings in how rape allegations are investigated and called for Dorset police to introduce a specialist rape unit. The force continues to insist this is not necessary.
“It’s the one thing we asked them to invest in,” said Pope-Weidemann. “Gaia and other women are being badly failed by a toxic culture of misogyny within the police and other state services.
“The College of Policing saying they don’t need more training is disgusting. It says a lot about the culture in the police nationally around an unwillingness to take this stuff seriously. Officers are making outdated assumptions about what someone’s behaviour means.
“It’s vital that police have more training at a time when they are increasingly called in as a first port of call because of cuts to mental health services.”
On the number of epilepsy nurses, Pope-Sutherland said: “As a family we do understand that the NHS is under significant pressure. It’s only getting worse. But one extra nurse one day a week is frankly insulting.”
Lucy Nevitt, the joint founder of the Gemini Project, which campaigns for changes to the way sexual violence is investigated, called the College of Policing’s stance “ignorant and dangerous”, adding: “It is imperative that they have the relevant knowledge and skill base to respond to situations they are going to encounter.”
She also said all forces should have a rape and serious sexual offences unit properly resourced and supported. “A refusal to set up a specialist unit suggests a refusal for adequate service provisions which is concerning.”
Clare Pelham, the chief executive at the Epilepsy Society, said: “The coroner was right. Better training and awareness of epilepsy is the answer.” She wrote to the College of Policing last week to offer help with training.
Pelham said: “The coroner was also right that we need more specialist epilepsy nurses. There are more than 600,000 people with epilepsy in the UK – that is one in 100 of us. Clearly, two specialist epilepsy nurses in Dorset is too few.”
Deborah Coles, the director of Inquest, a charity that provides expertise on state-related deaths, said the coroner’s PFD reports on Pope’s case had been a “vital recognition of system-wide failings” and intended to protect other young women and girls.
She said: “Despite the importance of these potentially lifesaving recommendations, there is no public body tasked with making sure they are enacted or even checking progress. There is no one who is responsible for oversight of whether steps have been taken at a local and national level to enact changes. This shocking accountability gap undermines the preventive potential of inquests.”
The College of Policing accepted that its reply was not what the coroner had hoped for. But Ch Supt Andy Walker said: “Whilst police officers and staff need good first aid skills, we don’t think that providing them with extra medical training would be effective in helping them make better decisions about missing persons.”
Dorset police said all its investigative teams were specialists in the investigation of sexual offences. A spokesperson said: “Therefore there is currently no plan to create a further dedicated team although we continually keep our operating model under review.”
University Hospitals Dorset NHS foundation trust said that as well as the part-time nurse it had appointed an epilepsy coordinator and aimed to further increase its specialist workforce.
The senior Dorset coroner declined to comment.
Pope-Weidemann said she remained very angry at the inquest system. “I feel as traumatised by the inquest as I do by Gaia’s death. We have nothing else to give and what was it all for?
“When you have lost someone you love and your family is forever changed, forever incomplete, forever suffering. It’s a wound that will never heal or even stop bleeding.”
