Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Beautician’s tragic death ‘shows addiction can affect anybody’
The family of a much-loved beautician who died of a drugs overdose aged 32 hope the tragedy highlights how addiction can “happen to anybody”. Mum-of-one Emma Sheref was found dead at her flat in Queens Avenue, Canterbury, in April this year - almost a month after she had last been seen.
Her family described her as a spirited and artistic woman who formerly owned her own beauty salon in Wingham.
She had enjoyed a “middle- class” upbringing and attended a private school in Canterbury.
But her life sadly spiralled when she began abusing drugs and alcohol.
Her older sister Lucy Lucraft, 37, described Emma as “a very happy child” during her years growing up in Herne Bay. “She was very funny and cheeky,” she said.
But at the age of just nine, Emma began self-harming after complaining children were excluding her and calling her names.
Emma - a former pupil of St Edmund’s School in Canterbury and St Lawrence College in Ramsgate - trained as a tattoo artist and body piercer and worked at The Belly Bar in Canterbury.
In 2012, she gave birth to a son and soon launched her own
beauty salon, The Wingham Sanctuary.
At an inquest into her death, coroner James Dillon said: “Life seemed very happy for Emma.” But things began to deteriorate when she and her son’s father separated in 2015. Her mum, Angela Sheref, described this as “the catalyst for Emma’s mental health deteriorating”.
“She slowly turned everything in on herself,” she said, in a statement read before the inquest.
Emma began abusing drugs and alcohol, and Angela stepped in to care for her son. After several worrying episodes - which saw Emma take an overdose following a night out, and go missing in 2016 - she agreed to attend a rehab facility in South Africa.
But following a stint there, she moved to the South African city of Durban with a boyfriend, and began using drugs again. One day, Angela received a panicked call from her daughter.
Emma’s boyfriend, who owed money to drug dealers, had allegedly attempted to sell her to them in lieu of payment. She managed to escape being trafficked, and was taken into the care of police.
Mr Dillon told the inquest: “The police said she was at risk of sexual exploitation, or even murder.
“It was a very, very serious situation she got mixed up in.” Angela flew out to South
Africa and brought her daughter home.
Emma, who had already been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was diagnosed with PTSD following the harrowing experience.
Earlier this year, she moved into a one-bed flat in Queens Avenue.
Thursday’s inquest heard how Emma initially engaged with psychiatric services, but soon failed to attend appointments. She was seen alive for the last time on March 8.
A neighbour had been at his living room window when he saw her return home at about 9.30pm.
“She was struggling to get her car on the driveway,” he said in a statement read before the inquest.
“I saw Emma get out of her car. She appeared to be unsteady on her feet, and was holding onto the car.”
Worried she had not heard from her daughter in several weeks, Angela phoned the police.
And on April 2 - almost four weeks after she was last seen - officers discovered Emma’s body on a bed in her flat, where it had lain for some time. A tourniquet was found on her arm along with a puncture mark, and drug paraphernalia was also found at the scene. A post-mortem found her death had been caused by fatal morphine consumption. On Thursday, the coroner concluded Emma died a “drug-related death” - ruling out suicide as a possible cause, in the absence of any indication she had intended to take her own life.
Speaking after the inquest, Emma’s sister Lucy encouraged anyone suffering from mental illness or addiction to seek the resources offered by charity Mind.
“I think addiction and mental health problems are not always at the forefront of people’s minds, but right now they really should be,” she said.
“Mental health services are being cut, and this happened while we were in a lockdown in a global pandemic, which made things particularly tricky. “And that’s the case with so many very vulnerable people - that they’re so much more isolated and vulnerable right now. “Emma was a middle-class girl; had a ‘good’ upbringing, had a lot of opportunities. But these things can happen to anybody.”
A funeral service is yet to be held.
Emma’s family ask anyone wishing to make a donation in her memory to do so to charity Mind.
‘Emma was a middleclass girl; had a ‘good’ upbringing, had a lot of opportunities. But these things can happen to anybody’