‘Utterly disappointed’
Parents of Nora, 15, told jungle death was misadventure
THE parents of a British teenager found dead in a Malaysian jungle say they are “utterly disappointed” by a coroner’s verdict of misadventure.
The family of 15-year-old Nora Quoirin’s insisted in a statement: “We always believed that Nora was abducted.”
A coroner in the Malaysian city of Seremban yesterday declared Nora – who vanished during a family holiday – had died as a result of “misadventure” which “did not involve any third party”.
Coroner Maimoonah Aid said Nora probably wandered out of the villa into the jungle looking for her parents after waking up confused or jetlagged.
Nora from Balham, South London, vanished as the family slept on the first night of their holiday, prompting a search involving sniffer dogs, helicopters and rescue teams in August 2019.
Her naked body was found partially submerged in a stream,
10 days later. A post mortem found she had starved to death.
Police ruled out foul play and said Nora had got out of a window with a faulty lock then got lost in the jungle.
The family, who viewed proceedings online, had
hoped for an “open verdict” as evidence pointed towards abduction, and said “sexual assault” could not be ruled out. They said: “Once again we see justice struggles to support the most vulnerable in society, only engaging with special needs at a surface level, not the level that truly reflects children like Nora.” Earlier the coroner said Nora had a condition called holoprosencephaly disorder, that affects brain development. During a two-hour hearing, she said the family’s 19- hour journey from London to Kuala Lumpur could have led to “tiredness and confusion”. She suggested Nora could have woken up “after three hours of heavy sleep” due to “outside noises” from a party in a nearby chalet, adding: “One might expect the difficulties she faced in a strange and new place.” She said there was no evidence of sexual assault. Nora’s Irish and French mother and father, Meabh and Sebastien Quoirin, believe she must have been abducted as she had difficulty walking and “never goes anywhere by herself ”. They told the inquest they heard muffled voices in the villa while their lawyer quizzed officers about cigarette butts found near Nora’s body and DNA of two unknown males and fingerprints found on the faulty window. A total of 49 witnesses were called to testify in the inquest which began last August
We believed Nora was abducted.. she never went alone anywhere
MEABH AND SEBASTIEN QUOIRIN NORA’S PARENTS