This July we have launched a crowd-funding campaign to obtain a fresh inquest into our sister Alison’s death. We buried Alison on Christmas Eve 1991. She had stepped in front of a train at Rotherham Station. Alison was a mental health inpatient in the care of the NHS at the time of her death. We did not know it then, but an older trainee nurse had developed an interest in Alison and had sexual intercourse on hospital premises with her.

Alison was vulnerable to exploitation and the sex acts committed on hospital premises were illegal. Alison became pregnant and was coerced, we believe by hospital staff into a crisis abortion. Alison took her life on what would have been the third birthday of her aborted baby. The facts were covered-up and the tragic circumstances leading to her suicide were withheld from the original inquest into Alison’s death in 1992.

In 2017 the trainee nurse in question finally admitted having sex with Alison on multiple occasions on the hospital premises. However, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute him as they said it was not in the Public Interest. We strongly disagree.

A new inquest is now the only way the truth about what happened can be brought into the public domain. The application to obtain a new inquest will cost around £8,000 and though the signs are very positive, there is no guarantee of success. There is no legal aid available for people seeking to reopen inquests so we really need your help to raise this amount. Please pledge a small amount and share the link with your friends and contacts.

This campaign is supported by INQUEST, the only charity providing expertise on state-related deaths and their investigations to bereaved people, lawyers, advice and support agencies, the media and parliamentarians.

Thanks to many people’s generosity the money needed to try and obtain a proper inquest for Alison has been successfully raised CLICK THIS LINK to go to the Crowd-Justice website.