TV comedian in court fight with ex over where to scatter her girl’s ashes
‘Stranded in a morgue’
A TV comedian is locked in a High Court fight with her ex-partner over the final resting place of their dead child.
Shaquelle Vidal, daughter of Mock the Week panellist Ava Vidal, was found dead at an exclusive London mental health clinic in April. The 23year-old had talked of suicide before her death.
But a family ‘dogfight’ over the funeral arrangements has left her body stranded in a morgue for six months. Miss Vidal, 42, is at loggerheads with Shaquelle’s father Edgar Harrison and two family friends about who can attend the cremation. There is also a dispute over the ashes.
Miss Vidal told the court she wants to spread at least some of her daughter’s ashes herself, while Mr Harrison and the others want them stored at a neutral location.
And they want to prevent Miss Vidal paying for the funeral of a child who they claim wanted ‘nothing to do with’ her.
Giving evidence, Miss Vidal told Judge Milwyn Jarman QC: ‘I would like to pay for her funeral as her mother, I would like that as the last thing I can do for her.
‘I had originally thought of taking her ashes to the Caribbean or a place I used to take her when she was a younger, where we used to go and feed the ducks.’
But Mr Harrison, who lost contact with Shaquelle as a child but reentered her life when she grew up, said his daughter would not have wanted this.
The court heard that Shaquelle was brought up by her comedian mother, but struggled with mental health difficulties and went to live with family in Barbados when she was in her mid-teens.
On her return at 18, she cut ties with her mother and had no further contact with her before she took her life. Her father, with two members of Shaquelle’s wider circle, say she would not have wanted her mother involved in her funeral.
Their barrister, Claire van Overdijk, read to the court extracts from an email sent by Shaquelle to her mother when she was 18. In it she said she did not want anything to do with her because of the way she had been treated as a child. But Miss Vidal believes her daughter was ‘exploited’ during their years of estrangement, encouraged in her drug use and coerced into prostitution by an unnamed party.
The allegations were dismissed as ‘entirely incorrect and defamatory’.
The court heard that, when Shaquelle died, she left behind computers and iPhones, which are also in dispute in the case.
Her father says she would not have wanted her mother to have anything to do with her possessions. But Miss Vidal, who has two surviving children, insists she should be allowed to see the information on the devices so she can understand what happened.
She said: ‘ She has killed herself. You want to know why.’
The hearing continues.