My son was out of control when he died
Trafalgar plinth artist reveals tragic teenager turned to drugs after being bullied at school
ALISON Lapper has revealed how she was unable to help her teenage son, who was ‘out of control’ before he died from a suspected accidental overdose.
The artist said her son Parys, 19, suffered from anxiety and depression and turned to drugs after he was cruelly bullied about her disability.
Children taunted the boy that his mother, who was born without arms and with shortened legs, was a ‘crip’.
Parys’s body was discovered in a hotel last month.
In the years before his death, Parys had started smoking cannabis as soon as he woke up, which Miss Lapper said made him erratic, The Sunday Times reported.
Miss Lapper was told by police her son may have accidentally overdosed on drugs.
‘He was out of control and I couldn’t help. Not being able to help, I felt so bloody useless,’ she said.
Parys featured in the BBC documentary series Child of Our Time, which followed the development of 25 children until their 20th birthday. He is the only participant not to reach 20. Miss Lapper said her son’s personality changed at school in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex.
He asked her not to attend parents’ evening from the age of 13. She added her son was anxious ‘we were the show’ and ‘Parys would go in to school and they would rip pieces out of him’.
Parys began to spend more time on social media after he was moved to another school before dropping out.
‘Parys didn’t like his body,’ Miss Lapper said. ‘I thought I could teach him to, but it’s a social media nightmare, isn’t it? There’s always someone with a six pack or bigger. That’s the problem. Everyone’s comparing themselves to everybody else.
‘Nobody puts a duff photo of themselves anywhere.
‘Look at me, for God’s sake. And I really love my body. I’m not ashamed about it at all.’ Miss Lapper, 54, became famous when a sculpture by Marc Quinn of her pregnant with Parys was displayed on a plinth in Trafalgar Square from 2005 to 2007.
Parys had aspired to be a model, photographer or scuba diver, but his mother said he gave up on those as he became more reclusive.
She said she tried to help him but her efforts fell on deaf ears. ‘I fought tooth and nail because I said he’s not right. Something’s going on with him,’ she added. ‘You know your own child better than anybody but people didn’t believe me. It was really hard.’
For Parys, the relationship between drugs and his health was a ‘vicious circle. His mental health would get worse so he’d take drugs and the drugs would make his mental health worse.’Parys’s drug use became too difficult to manage and at 16 he was taken into care. They spoke three days before Parys’s death and Miss Lapper said he had been excited to start a new job.
She has never spoken about Parys’s father, who left her before his birth.
The artist, who studied fine art at Brighton University, had ‘a very physical relationship’ with her son.
She recalled how when Parys turned four he was taller and stronger than her and at just 13 months he could run away. Miss Lapper said: ‘All you could hear from this house was me calling his name. I couldn’t catch up with him. It got to the stage where he could move me around. If I was telling him off he would pick me up and put me somewhere.’
She previously described her son as ‘my greatest piece of art’.
‘Accidental overdose’