I feel sorry for boys whose drinking rituals killed my son
27 vodka shots. Revolting initiation ceremonies. And a savage waste of a student’s life. But most astonishing of all? The mother of the latest victim of our universities’ binge culture says ...
THE hardest thing that Helen and Jeremy Farmer have ever had to do was to watch their son Ed die after they switched off his life-support machine.
‘It took longer than expected,’ says Jeremy. ‘He just didn’t want to give up.’
The second hardest thing was to phone their elder son Will, who was in Australia, to tell him to come home. It was Helen who broke the news that his brother Ed, just 20 years old, had suffered a cardiac arrest and massive brain damage during a night out with his friends at Newcastle University — part of an initiation into the boozy Agricultural Society.
‘Will’s first words were, “What have they done to him?”’ Helen recalls. ‘ He’d been through the initiation process himself. He knew what happened at these things.’
Now, thanks to four days of harrowing testimony at Ed’s inquest, we all know what happens at ‘these things’. Healthy young men drink so much that they die. And all in the name of what? Fun? Camaraderie? Tradition?
When Ed was eventually taken to hospital on that awful night in December 2016, too late to be saved, he was soaking wet and his head had been shaved — the result of bizarre initiation rites that may have seemed hilarious at the time but sound downright inhumane in the cold light of a coroner’s court.
First-year students were encouraged to bob for apples in urine, sprayed with paint and drank vodka from a pig’s head. In one bar alone, the students ordered 100 triple vodkas, and Ed drank 27 vodka shots.
‘madness,’ says his mother. ‘Ed didn’t even drink shorts much. He liked pints.’
Her husband’s frustrations are never far from the surface. ‘I always said to stick to ale. And why the silly beggar had to have six sips when his friends were having four, I don’t know …’
on Thursday, the final day of the inquest, just before the coroner, Karen Dilks, ruled that Ed died from the ‘toxic effects’ of excessive drinking and called for an end to such initiation ceremonies, his parents sat through CCTV footage showing Ed’s final hours. There Ed was, falling; then being carried by his friends not to hospital but to a house, where the partying continued as Ed slid into unconsciousness.
‘I couldn’t watch it,’ says Helen. ‘Jeremy had seen it before, but even at the inquest, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to see Ed like that, in distress.’
What Helen did want to see was Ed’s friends recounting what happened that night. Eleven ‘ boys’, as she calls them, were in court; three more gave evidence via videolink.
most had come to Ed’s funeral (‘And said nice things,’ Jeremy adds.) Not one of them had been in touch since, however. Jeremy talks of a ‘wall of silence’.
Perhaps some unease was inevitable. The couple recall opening their son’s phone, ‘just after we’d been to see him in the morgue’, to a flurry of WhatsApp messages on the boys’ group chat, saying ‘deny, deny, deny’.
During the inquest, the boys involved would insist these messages had been sent before they realised Ed had died, and were a ‘joke’. The Farmers, quite understandably, were distraught. Then, when their questions — namely, had foul play been involved? — went unanswered, they were angry. ‘ Your mind goes into overdrive,’ Jeremy says. ‘ You put two and two together and get 18.’
It sounds as if Helen was determined to face those ‘boys’ down as they took the witness stand.
‘ I wanted them to suffer while they were giving their evidence,’ she admits, a little apologetically.
‘I was glad James Carr (chairman of the Agricultural Society at the time) was there. I wanted to look him in the eye. To his credit, he was the only one who met my eye. The others couldn’t.’
And afterwards? ‘ Strangely, I felt sorry for them. They were not to blame. Yes, if he hadn’t been drinking with them, if they hadn’t done … so many things — but ultimately, they were all silly boys, doing silly boy things. It could have been any one of them. It just happened to be Ed.’
What an extraordinary couple the Farmers are. After the inquest ended, they appeared outside the court to give a statement which eviscerated the university authorities but absolved their son’s friends of blame … then ‘went for a pint with the lads’, says Jeremy.
They meet me immediately afterwards, in a Newcastle hotel, and the relief is clear on their faces.
‘This morning I said to Helen that I wanted to shake James Carr’s hand, to break the ice,’ Jeremy says. ‘The minute I did, you could see the weight dropping off his shoulders.
‘I told them it would be nice if they could stand with us on the court steps. They all agreed, and it must have been hard for them.
‘Afterwards they said they felt sorry they hadn’t been in touch after Ed died, but I do understand. They would have needed a maturity beyond their years to meet the parents of a friend who had died like that. They didn’t know what reaction they would get from us.’
WHodo they blame for Ed’s death, then? The university authorities get both barrels. Jeremy says: ‘These initiation ceremonies were banned, but we, as parents, didn’t know they were banned. And it clearly wasn’t an effective ban because they still happened every year.’
Now they are determined their tragedy should ‘draw a line under this whole tradition’.
‘It needs to stop,’ Helen says. ‘Expel anyone involved. Expel, expel, expel. Send a message out that this won’t be tolerated.’
Representatives from Newcastle University and its Students’ Union gave evidence at the inquest, and have since insisted that they have made a number of changes ‘to the way we raise awareness among our students about the risks of alcohol and how they keep themselves and other students safe’. ‘Pathetic,’ says Jeremy. ‘It’s clear they just don’t know how to deal with this. There isn’t the will to do so.’
It is devastating to witness the Farmer family in such agony. Comfortably off arable farmers in rural Leicestershire, they sent both their boys to private school, brought them up to be polite and respectful, and were quietly proud of their every achievement.
They accompanied Ed to London to receive his Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award. ‘I always said we were a family that tragedy skirted around,’ says Jeremy. ‘Until this.’
ED(‘mY baby,’ nods Helen) was bright, talented at school and sport. ‘ He was amazing,’ she says. ‘He was a natural learner. When he was little, he memorised every Top Trumps card about the Rugby World Cup. He wanted to be a sports presenter.’
He wasn’t a saint, obviously. ‘ oh, he could mess around. He was a joker, and that could get him into trouble. once he had to do a project in school on the computer. He finished really quickly, so he put on The Inbetweeners to watch, in class. That was very Ed.’
His brother Will, who followed his parents into the farming industry, had studied agriculture at Newcastle. Ed saw another path.
‘He was more of a city boy, he thought,’ says Jeremy. He went to Leeds Uni.’
But Ed hated Leeds — ironically, because of the social scene. ‘ He hated the culture. He’s a pint and banter person, and at Leeds it was all nightclubs and people popping pills. He’s anti-drugs.’
After six weeks, Ed dropped out. The following year he started at Newcastle, after all, studying economics. He inevitably veered towards the Agricultural Society for socialising. It was notorious for heavy drinking and the tradition of initiation ceremonies which goes back 30 or 40 years.
His parents thought they knew all about these. ‘Will talked about it — to his Dad more than to me,’ says Helen. ‘my attitude was, “Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know”.’
on the phone the weekend before he died, Ed casually mentioned his initiation that week.
‘I wish I’d phoned the university to say “This is happening, stop it”. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to be one of those parents who interfered. I’ve since discovered that other people have phoned up, though.’
They talk about parental responsibility, and Jeremy says quite honestly that if Helen had attempted to call the university, he would probably have stopped her.
‘maybe I was naive. But bobbing for apples in urine? I thought it was daft, but harmless.’
Had they taught their sons about sensible drinking? Again, they thought so.
‘I’d go for a pint with them,’ says Jeremy. ‘my attitude was if they are going to do it, then let’s be open about it. If you try to ban kids doing
anything, then it will be worse in the long run.’
The farming culture, they admit, encourages heavy drinking. ‘Maybe the farming community has to take some responsibility here,’ he adds.
Or maybe it goes wider than that. ‘We do have a problem with this binge-drinking culture. People my age are targeted. We hear, “Only have so many units a week”.
‘ But where is the message telling youngsters that if you drink to this level and, by chance, don’t throw up, then you are going to die. It needs to be that brutal.’
Had Ed’s drinking ever caused them concern before? Never, they say. Helen recalls once picking Ed up from a night out ‘when he was so drunk he was sick repeatedly on the way home’.
‘It was a one-off. I didn’t make a big deal about it, because he knew he’d gone too far.’
The most pitiful detail of the inquest came when Ed’s friends told how their actions — taking him with them, letting him ‘sleep it off’ — were intended to help.
‘That’s the awful bit — they thought they were helping him,’ says Helen. ‘But it would have been better if they’d left him in the street. Then someone might have got him to hospital.
‘He was snoring loudly. They thought he was sleeping. I can’t blame them for that. I didn’t know either that heavy snoring can be a sign that someone is in trouble. There should be more education about the first-aid aspects.’
There’s terrible footage showing Ed stumbling at the top of an escalator. He looks to be trying to flee his friends, and the inquest heard testimony that he was ‘terrified’.
‘The old beggar rallied,’ says Jeremy. ‘There was still life in him and he was trying to make his escape.’ He doesn’t know that for sure. ‘No, I’m imagining how it would have been.’
The police came to their farm just after 3.30am on December 13. Helen thought someone must have broken into the grain store, but then she saw her husband’s face and ‘knew it was something awful’.
They were told Ed had suffered a cardiac arrest, and it was bad.
‘I think as we drove up, I knew, deep down,’ says Jeremy.
Helen didn’t. ‘I was worrying about how much time he’d have to have off university — but the minute I saw him in that hospital bed, with the police standing there, I just thought … no.’
They don’t break down when they talk about the 12 hours sitting at their son’s side, but somehow that makes it worse.
‘It’s a funny thing to say but it was nice,’ says Jeremy. ‘I don’t mean nice — but better than it would have been if we’d arrived to see his corpse. He was warm. He was Ed. We could hold his hand and talk to him.’
They weren’t even horrified by his shaved head.
‘One of his friends who came in thought they’d shaved his eyebrows too, but I didn’t notice that,’ says Helen. ‘ Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered. Hair grows back.’
There was never any hope that Ed would pull through.
‘The doctor, lovely man, said the brain damage was so huge that he just wasn’t going to make it. I think he was probably shocked by our reactions. We said immediately “Turn it off ”. Ed wouldn’t have wanted to be a cabbage.’
Their son’s death wasn’t as instant as they expected. ‘He kept going for a bit. Then he started to sit up — it was the muscles contracting, I know that — and his eyes opened a little bit.’
Helen says they sat with him for ‘ages’ afterwards. ‘The nurse was there. They were brilliant. They never left him. All three of us sat and cried together.’
From there, they plunged into every parent’s nightmare. The next day, they went to the university and left with a carload of Ed’s possessions, now in his bedroom. ‘It’s still a tip,’ says Jeremy, making his wife laugh.
Helen hasn’t been able to clear out his things (‘I just can’t’), and his ashes remain unscattered; but they have erected a headstone.
‘We miss him terribly,’ says Helen. ‘Mostly we miss his laugh. He could make me laugh like no one else.’
Anyone with a child heading to university will read the Farmers’ story and shudder. But that’s good, they say. ‘If his death can be used to tell other people, “Look what can happen”, then I’m happy for that to be the case.’
Helen says some of the other lads have offered to help them spread this message. ‘ One said he’d be happy to come into schools with me — Ed’s old school if I wanted.’
They hope Ed’s death might just be the last one associated with an initiation ceremony.
‘Just last night, Will was on the Metro and got chatting to two girls dressed as green peas,’ Jeremy says. ‘They said they were off to an initiation ceremony. He begged them not to go, and told them why. One burst into tears.’
The couple say their home in Leicester will be open house for any of Ed’s friends. ‘ They will be very welcome,’ says Jeremy. ‘ Ed wouldn’t want it any other way.’