BULLIED TO DEATH
THE SEXUAL PREDATOR WHO STOLE OUR BEAUTIFUL GIRL
Her face red raw after another attack by her boyfriend, Emily Drouet sent this photo to a friend. Seven days later she was dead. Her family bravely decide to publish as they tell the full story of how their bright eyed teenager was
If she had not met Angus Milligan, she would still be alive today
The marks on Emily Drouet’s swollen face are raw after a vicious assault.
Her abusive, bullying, sorry excuse for a boyfriend had tried to choke her.
Emily took a selfie and sent it to an old school friend to record what had happened.
Seven days later, the law student would take her own life, unable to cope after a sinister campaign of abuse by fellow Aberdeen University student Angus Milligan.
The ex-public schoolboy would slap Emily when he decided she had told a lie, encouraged her to sleep with other men and bought bondage restraints as an 18th birthday present.
Her heartbroken mother Fiona, 45, still breaks down when she looks at the image of battered Emily, which she saw only after her daughter’s death.
Fiona bravely decided to release the picture to illustrate the shocking transformation from a student full of hope to an abused and bullied teenager who decided she had no escape from Milligan.
Fiona said: “I want to jump inside the picture and cuddle her. I want to tell her that she could have spoken to me, that she could have asked for help. We would have been there.”
Fiona and her Frenchborn husband Germain, from Glasgow, are still in deep shock 14 months after Emily died at Flat 86B in the university’s halls of residence.
Milligan pled guilty last week to assaulting Emi ly, threatening and abusing her using abusive and offensive language and sending offensive, indecent, obscene and menacing texts.
Five other charges, including one alleging he tried to choke her minutes before she took her own life on March 17, 2016, were dropped.
The family say Milligan, 21, groomed their innocent daughter into a twisted sexual relationship, controlling her with violence and threats.
They want to expose a culture among young people where some consider it normal to sleep with many different partners and indulge in violent sex and bullying.
Fiona, who called her daughter by pet name Emy, said: “If she had never met Angus Milligan, she would be alive today.
“Emy was naive, she was innocent. She saw the world through good eyes. She was fun-loving, kind and smart and she never saw how beautiful she was, on the inside or the outside. She was a virgin when she went to university and I’m proud to say that.
“Within six months, that man destroyed our daughter and wrecked our lives. He’s just complete evil.”
Just six months earlier, the family had driven Emily up to Aberdeen to settle into her new life as a law student. They had met her flatmates, helped her settle in, putting up fairy lights around her bed and an extra-warm duvet.
The fami ly don’t know exactly when she first met Milligan, from Edinburgh, who was in Flat 1A at the halls of residence. Fiona, who spoke to Emily dozens of times a day, said it was around Christmas when she first mentioned him.
Home for the holidays, Fiona said Emily would babysit for her younger brother and sister and asked one day if her friend Angus could come to help.
Fiona said: “He came into the house and I did notice Emily was tense around him. He barely said a thing to us.
“I was trying to make conversation, asking him about his course and university life, joking about partying and going out. But he just looked at me and gave one word answers.
“He was nothing like her other friends or boyfriends, in looks or personality.”
What Fiona and Germain would not discover until after he death was the extent of mental and physical abuse that Emily was hiding.
Fiona said: “He slapped her if he decided she was lying about something.
“He would tell her one minute she was the most beautiful girl in the world and the next call her vicious and obscene names in text messages.
“He slept with other girls and told Emily about it. He encouraged her to sleep with other people, saying it was normal.
“He was supposed to be her boyfriend but he never took her out or did anything a normal boyfriend would do. He just wore her down.
“Our beautiful daughter became a victim of domestic violence at just 18.”
Most horrifying for the family was when they discovered that Milligan had bought Emily hand restraints to be used during sex as a present for her 18th birthday. Fiona said: “We found them in her room after she had died. It was horrific. That’s what he thought my daughter was worth.”
The pain that Emily never chose to tel l Fiona what was going on is sometimes too much for her to comprehend.
She said: “The guilt sometimes is overwhelming. I play out conversations we had in my head and what I could have done or said differently.
“But then we found out that he was threatening her with us, telling her that he’d email us and tell us about the sex and the partying.
“She had told her friends that she was ashamed of her behaviour and so she did not want us to know. He turned us into the enemy.
“He isolated her from us, so that she would not tell us about the violence. He
made her think that our love for her was conditional.”ent
When Emily returned from Aberdeen for her 18th birthday and a friend’s birthday party, Fiona had a mother’s instinct that perhaps all was not well.
She said: “I actually told her she looked as if she had lost her sparkle. Her eyes were dull. But she brushed it off, saying she was was just tired. “That was the last time I saw her alive.” The family would only find out the truth in the days after the police turned up at their home in the early hours of March 18 last year to tell them Emily had taken her own life. Fiona said: “I thought my shop had been broken into.
“It was 1.30am. They sat us down when they said it, I actually asked if she was dead. I thought they were telling me she had been murdered. What happened in our living room that night was awful. I didn’t think I could make the kind of noises I was hearing come out of my mouth.”
Germain and Fiona say they still struggle to understand what happened that night. They would discover Emily had tried to break off with Milligan and had not seen him for several days.
Germain said: “Fiona had been talking to Emily by text because she was getting ready to go to a St Patrick’s Day night out and they had been discussing what she was wearing.
“She was fine. All seemed normal. She told her mum she was wearing sparkly green eyeshadow and was getting ready in her room.
“We’d discover later that Milligan had gone to see her. He was seen on CCTV. A few hours later, Emily was dead. She was wearing black leggings and a black top, which was the kind of clothes she’d wear to get ready.
“Her make-up was done, she had on her eyeshadow.”
The family, who had to remain silent until last week’s court case, are now waiting to hear Milligan’s sentence on July 5. They want to see the court send out a strong message and are hoping he is jailed.
By revealing the difficult sexual details surrounding Emily’s case, they hope to stop a culture they believe is now prevalent among young men and women. Fiona is speaking to Women’s Aid about talking to students around the country about Emily’s experience.
Fiona said: “We have a generation who are normalising this type of extreme sexual behaviour. They see it on the internet, on social media. “Girls think they have to do things sexually in order to f it in and it is what is expected of them. “Boys think that it’s now normal to treat girls like this. But it’s not normal.” The family remain in limbo. Neither parent has been able to return to work, Germain as a pilot, or Fiona to her children’s clothing business. Emily’s sister Rachel, 13, and brother Calvin, 11, are heartbroken and confused. Fiona’s father, who she had never seen shed a tear, cries every day. Emily’s funeral was packed with family and close friends. Her ashes are in the family home, in a beautiful silver urn, picked by Germain. Fiona said: “Angus Milligan has robbed us of our lives, too. “Germain and I are not the same people we once were. We can’t be the same way with Rachel and Calvin. “We will never be the same.
“Emily was the last person you would think something like this could happen to.
“But if this can happen to our family then it could happen to another family. I can’t bear the thought of another girl going through this. “I want my daughter back but that can’t happen. I need to stop this happening to another girl.”
None of us will forget last week, a few days when mothers have felt in their hearts the agony of other mums and when daughters of strangers felt like our own. I spent it trying to suppress the demented army sergeant inside me who wants to bark strict curfews at my offspring and curtail their roaming rights till they extend no further than our garden gate. It’s natural, isn’t it, to feel exposed and vulnerable? And what deeper instinct than to protect our babies (they’ll always be our babies) by whatever means we can? Wrap them in layer upon layer of cotton wool, keep them close and lock out the world. Trouble is, they keep growing up, wanting to explore, demanding experiences and adventures, tearing off our protective coverings like unfashionable clothes. Worse than that, we need to let them, even after a week like that one. That applies to our boys as much as our daughters, of course, but this attack was targeted at girls. That’s clear now. Charlotte Campbell had to let her daughter go to the Ariana Grande concert. Fifteen-year- old Olivia was a beautiful young girl, full of life and energy, and she had every right to go and see one of her favourite pop stars. She was only a few miles away. She should have been safe. So when Charlotte found herself on the TV news on Tuesday morning, panicking as she begged for information on her daughter, she spoke with such raw and honest pain that every mother was instantly in her shoes. Hers was the agitated speech of a woman who hadn’t slept a wink, the way she could remember everything her daughter was wearing, the way she recounted all the phone calls she’d made trying to find Olivia. It could have been any one of us, standing there in our back gardens, wishing we had never let our daughters go. There have been so many others since who have learned the worst news. Now we know 14-year-old Eilidh MacLeod’s parents, from the isle of Barra, are among them.
And because we love our girls, some of us might have decided the world’s become too dangerous to let them be as free as they’d like.
I know I did, as I listened to Charlotte. But that’s when hate wins.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the country, another mother was delivering a heartfelt message that stopped us in our tracks and made us look to our own.
Fiona Drouet’s daughter Emily had taken up a place studying law at Aberdeen University. And though it meant leaving her family in Glasgow for the first time, Fiona knew she had to let her daughter go.
Six months later, Emily took her own life in the halls of residence where she lived.
Last week, Fiona sat in the city’s sheriff court as Emily’s former boyfriend, Angus Milligan, admitted choking, slapping, threatening and abusing her in the two months leading up to her death.
Today, in the Sunday Mail, they have taken the brave step of allowing the publication of a photo Emily took following another beating at Milligan’s hands.
The Drouet family have not recoiled into bitterness and fear. As well as speaking out today they’ve set up the social media movement #LoveConquersHate to spread an altogether more positive message.
For those who’ve lost a child, the tragedy will never pass and the pain will be endless. But the rest of us need to find a way to carry on without stifling our kids with protection.
Maybe the best we can do for them through these dark times is hold our nerve and allow them to continue with all sorts of wonderful things, whether that’s setting off for university or going to a gig.
It’s so hard. But it’s our job to let them go and we’ve got to do it believing LoveConquersHate.