DRIVEN TO HER DEATH BY FLAWED JUSTICE
FAMILY’S FURY OVER PRISON SENTENCE DESPITE PLEAS TO COURT FROM RELATIVES OF VICTIM Parents Katie jailed by sheriff after wrong information heard by court
Katie Allan’s parents believe the prison sentence which drove her to take her own life was delivered after a miscarriage of justice.
Linda and Stuart Allan say their daughter’s legal representation was not satisfactory.
And they are angry that the sheriff who sentenced Katie said it would be “impossible” to spare her jail.
We can reveal that Sheriff David Pender made the remarks despite pleas from Katie’s victim’s family to keep her out of prison.
A social enquiry report also recommended that Katie was given a punishment that did not involve jail.
What isn’t in dispute is that Katie had drunk four pints of beer or cider at a work night out in Clarkston, Glasgow, on August 10, 2017.
She walked the short distance from the hotel where she had been drinking to the bar where she worked with a pal after realising she had left her flat keys in her car.
When she got there, she made the stupid mistake of agreeing to give her friend a lift home, knowing she was over the limit.
Her car had a tyre blowout, she collided with a traffic island and hit teenager Michael Keenan in a collision which broke his ankle and fractured an eye socket, leaving him unconscious.
Katie insisted until her death that she had not realised she had struck Michael – a claim which was not put before the court.
An inaccurate claim that the force of the collision had ripped the bumper off Katie’s car was aired, however. In fact, she had stopped, changed the tyre on her car unaided and gone back to her flat.
Linda said: “Katie had been at a work night out at The Redhurst Hotel near Clarkston.
“She had parked away from there at her workplace and had not intended to take her car back to the flat.
“But she realised she left her flat keys at work so had gone back there to get them. Her friend asked for a lift home.
“She said yes. But the narrative in court which followed from there was simply not true.
“Katie was driving along Eastwoodmains Road and her driver- side tyre hit a traffic island and it blew.
“Katie lost control of the car and tried to recover. She actually pulled in and changed her tyre, at which point her friend left.
“Katie had no idea that she had injured anybody at that point.
“The first Katie knew that she had injured anybody was when the police came to the flat to arrest her.”
Katie’s dad Stuart said: “I understand people might think, ‘How could she not know?’ But we questioned her about it repeatedly and she did not know.
“Why would she have stopped and changed her tyre if she had known she had hit somebody?”
In fact, Katie’s car had hit schoolboy Michael Keenan.
Michael, then aged 15, had been out running on a bright summer’s night on a favourite route near his home in Giffnock. Michael had seen a group of girls from his secondary school, St Ninian’s, and taken a wide route on the narrow pavement to avoid them whi le never straying on to the road.
Katie’s car hit Michael, leaving him unconscious with a broken ankle.
Disturbingly, Katie’s parents say police asked them not to contact their daughter after they were informed of the incident before her.
Linda said: “The police came to our house between 9pm and 10pm looking for Katie as her car was still registered to the family home.
“The police asked us not to contact her but we didn’t even know if she was injured and Stuart went down to the
flat. Stuart said: “The police were already there and Katie was distraught.
“She had just been told that she had clipped Michael.
“She was crying and upset and didn’t want me there, either. I think it was out of embarrassment. She was saying, ‘ I’ll deal with it, dad.’
“The police said I couldn’t be there if she didn’t want me to be there.”
Linda added: “We got a call in the early hours of the morning to say she would appear at Paisley Sheriff Court.
“We subsequently found out that she didn’t have representation when she was interviewed. Whether she waived her right to that, I have no idea.
“I went to Paisley and found it scary. I met a senior partner at Tod Mitchell, who said their Amy Spencer would represent Katie. He said Katie was distraught in the cells but I wasn’t to worry.
“She entered no plea and was released on bail. I met her and brought her home. She was absolutely distraught. She was mortified, full of remorse about what she had done.
“The first thing she did was write a letter to the victim apologising for her actions. We gave that to the lawyers to pass to the Crown.
“We made her go back to work and to resume her university course.
“Katie had not made any mention of the other girl in the car but, when we brought it up with Amy Spencer, she said it wouldn’t matter as Katie would be pleading guilty.
“She eventually pleaded guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving and to drink driving.
“The advice from the lawyer had been that, although the charges carried the risk of a custodial sentence, Katie was led to believe it was highly unlikely.
“When she entered the plea in February, Michael and his parents were in court. They wanted the court to consider another form of punishment.
“Katie apologised to the whole family in person. She was incredibly upset and the family were very receptive to that. They were very kind.
“We accepted that Katie should be punished. Katie accepted that too. But having looked into this, it was not ‘ impossible’ for the sheriff to have punished her by a method other than jail. She had never been in trouble before and posed no risk to anybody.”
Gordon and Margaret Keenan, Michael ’s parents, conf irmed to the Sunday Mail that they had pleaded for Katie to be spared jail.
Their son has subsequently achieved A grades in five Highers and is now going to university.
Gordon said: “Katie said she deeply regretted what had happened and came across as genuine, sincere and repentant. Neither Michael, myself nor my wife Margaret wanted a custodial sentence for Katie.
“We wrote to the court to make this clear to the sheriff and asked that our feelings be considered.
“He met with us after the sentencing to explain why he had taken the decision he had. We were told that was unusual, possibly even unprecedented.
“But the overall impression we had was that the courts were looking to make an example of people involved in this type of driving offence.”
Margaret added: “The sheriff explained he had been doing his job for 30 years and taken soundings from his peers.
“He said that, taking the two aspects of the crime together, he had to impose a jail sentence. I don’t accept there was no alternative, though.
“Katie was given a sentence we didn’t want and we were devastated when we read she had died.
“Katie had written to us again from prison to apologise for a second time and reiterated she didn’t know she had hit Michael.
“The whole thing has been a tragedy for her family.”
Katie was full of remorse and the first thing she did was write a letter to the victim to apologise
Staff at Polmont prison failed to act on visible self- harm marks on Katie Allan’s body before her death.
Katie’s family only found out about the marks after seeing the results of the post-mortem.
The 21-year- old had one self-harm episode at the age of 18.
Her parents had told staff at Polmont about it and warned them Katie was vulnerable.
But despite that, and the fact that the scars would have been visible during Katie’s frequent strip searches, she was not deemed a suicide risk.
Katie’s mum was also shocked when she discovered the presence of an anti-depressant in her system.
When she researched the drug, she found it had suicidal ideation listed as a side effect.
Linda said: “After the meeting with the governor, we thought it couldn’t get worse. But it did.
“We were given a copy of the post-mortem and it showed a use of an antidepressant which she had not been prescribed in her blood.
“Katie had old and new scars all up her legs and arms from self-harming. She had been selfharming while she was in prison. She was strip- searched all the time but nobody acted on this. Whenever we visited, she was in baggy prison jumpers and able to hide it from us.
“The antidepressant that Katie was prescribed has suicide ideation as a side effect. Why would you prescribe that to a young person?”
Linda added: “I thought back to my first arrival at Polmont, where they show parents the prison.
“I told the prison officer showing me round that I was really worried about Katie’s safety. His response was that he couldn’t guarantee that Katie wouldn’t get battered. I asked, ‘By the prisoners or prison officers?’ And he shrugged his shoulders.”
In 2015, it was claimed that Scottish courts were failing to recognise mental health problems and sending vulnerable prisoners to jail when they needed hospital.
A report by the Mental Welfare C ommi s s i o n found alarmingly high rates of self-harm in jails and a high proportion of inmates had mental health problems.
The research was based on interviews with prisoners at Polmont, Cornton Vale, Edinburgh, Greenock and Aberdeen.
It also found that younger offenders with mental health problems were much more likely to be jailed. This suggested that courts were missing signs of trauma in younger women.
Linda said: “I contacted every family liaison officer in Polmont to raise concerns about Katie’s ability to cope.
“I told them about an incident of self-harm she’d had when she was 18. I heard nothing back from anybody.
“We encouraged her to sign up for academic courses. We were able to send her books for those courses and her dissertation for university until one of the prison officers told her she had too many and would need to get rid of some.”
Linda and her husband Stuart will focus on the processes for dealing with mental health as they begin a campaign for reform in the justice system this week. They will highlight Katie’s treatment and the sentence handed down by Sheriff David Pender after hearing what they say was a false narrative.
But the Allan family will also raise concern about the instruction by police not to contact their daughter in the wake of the accident.
They will also highlight the failure by the Crown Office to communicate over the possibility of a Fatal Accident Inquiry and the slow progress of a police investigation into Katie’s death.
Linda said: “We have had nothing from the CID investigation. Nor have we heard anything of substance from the Crown. We were given the name of a case officer. The first thing they told us was that everything would take ‘a very, very long time’.
“Then we got the post-mortem. That is all we have heard from the Crown.
“We were given the name of another liaison person but we have never heard from her.
“Katie broke the law and no one more
The prison officer had told me that he couldn’t guarantee that Katie wouldn’t get battered
than her accepted she should be punished but what was the punishment she received? The loss of her life.
“In Scotland today, we have the Crown presenting false narratives in court, unchallenged by court-appointed solicitors too busy to give their full attention to cases.
“We have sheri f fs who ignore guidelines and evidence and, on a daily whim, dole out inconsistent sentences dependent on subjective opinion.
“We have a prison service that claims to ‘unlock potential and transform form l ives’, yet accepts as the normm a culture of violence, drugs, torture ture and bullying.
“We have a prison estate that has ligature points in the cellsls of young people. We have a suicide cide prevention strategy in prisons ons that is all but ignored.
“We have a custodial health service vice unfit for purpose, where information ion is not shared, medical and nursing ng professionals are unable to assess ss the most basic of mental health needs ds and treatment is doled out to o prisoners in the form of medication n to self-administer and share.
“We have a broken Crown Office e with FAIs waiting to be heard, piled up over years, with families left in limbo and, when they are eventually heard, determination after determination ignored.
“How many families should endure this broken system while grieving their loss?”
Here’s a challenge for Scotland’s politicians.
Who among you will have the guts and the gumption to stand up for the late Katie Allan and her family?
To challenge injustice, upset the apple cart and bring about necessary change?
To move off the safer ground and take on an establishment hiding behind its own culture of secrecy?
The story of the 21-year-old’s conviction, sentencing and death should chill the spine of parents across the country.
Katie, a popular high achiever, made a dreadful mistake in deciding to give a friend a lift home when she had clearly had too much to drink.
Katie deserved to be punished. The resulting horror story which unfolded at the hands of Scotland’s criminal justice system, however, sounds almost Dickensian.
First there’s the overly harsh sentence handed down by sheriff David Pender in a system so procedurally opaque, it is barely understandable.
His decision, based on a flawed presentation of the facts, sent Katie into the teeth of a prison system which could be described as dysfunctional. And that’s probably being overly generous.
The word used by Glasgow University’s chaplain – primitive – is probably more fitting.
Rev Stuart McQuarrie went on to add: “Katie was a soft target.
“She was vulnerable from the very moment she walked into Polmont. “The system utterly failed to pick up the self-harm issue. Their duty of care was not fulfilled – it was abandoned.
“If you are going to strip-search people, you have to take responsibility for what they see. If they find drugs, they will act on that.”
Katie’s treatment at HMP & YOI Polmont should be the subject of an urgent investigation.
The regime, overseen by Governor Brenda Stewart, now faces serious questions about its basic efficacy.
The claims made by Katie’s parents about the failures of management and targeted strip searches are important and should be treated as an emergency.
A genuinely independent body with proper investigatory powers could get to the bottom of them within weeks, never mind months.
Katie’s parents say they raised concerns about their daughter’s wellbeing repeatedly. They say their daughter was strip-searched after most visits. All a matter of fact and record. Or at least they should be.
If half of what is being claimed is true, it should be enough for Ms Stewart to consider her position.
It might also necessitate a complete review of the Scottish Prisons Service’s Talk To Me strategy for dealing with vulnerable inmates, as well as another look at how suicide-proofed cells are allocated.
Unfortunately for anyone who has regular dealings with the big institutions in Scotland’s criminal justice system, the very idea of a quick response is complete pie in the sky.
A read through their responses to the issues raised today tells its own story. The sound you can hear is that of the wagons being circled.
Hiding behind a Fatal Accident Inquiry which will not take place for years is inexcusable and unacceptable.
There is no reason whatsoever that the possibility of an FAI should preclude anyone from providing Katie’s mum and dad with answers.
It is standard practice in the world of corporate public relations that any response to a story concerning loss of life will include an extension of sympathy to the family involved.
So did Police Scotland, the Crown Office or the Judicial Office do the same in response to this?
They did not. That simple act of decency proved beyond the lot of them.
Katie’s family and friends are entitled to read their comments with a growing sense of disgust.
Contrast them with the approach taken by Linda Allan, a mum who has lost her daughter in such tragic circumstances.
Asked whether she was sure she had the stomach to go public in telling Katie’s story, she replied that she simply had to.
This is not a woman who wants to be in the public eye but she knows she has to be to have any chance of achieving justice for her daughter.
It shouldn’t be left to Linda and her husband Stuart, Katie’s dad.
Unfortunately, with the occasional exception of Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie, there hasn’t been a single MSP who has stepped up to the plate and asked serious questions of the police, the Crown Office and the courts. It’s time for that to change. This issue needs a champion, an advocate who can change this country for the better.
Anyone who wants to take on the task might want to look to Linda Allan for inspiration.