Our sister Alison was caring and intelligent, the kind of person who didn’t seem to have to try hard to get good grades. She read music and drove us to distraction trying to play the violin. She was a gentle soul who was loyal to her friends. In the 1980’s, as a young woman in her teens, like one in four other people in the UK each year, Alison experienced Mental Health problems. Her episodes became increasingly severe and in 1987 she was sectioned and admitted to a Mental Health hospital in Carlisle called the Garlands.



We buried our sister Alison on Christmas Eve 1991. She had stepped in front 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 at the time, but an older trainee nurse had developed an interest in Alison and had sexual intercourse with her.

Alison was vulnerable to exploitation and we believe these sexual acts were illegal. Alison became pregnant and was coerced, we believe by hospital staff into a crisis abortion. 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 uncovered and 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. 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.

If you would like to know more about what happened to Alison you can find further information at www.AlisonsStory.co.uk