Did fear of prisoner who assaulted her push Gaia to suicide?
After body of teenager missing for 11 days is found on clifftop ...
‘A traumatic incident’
GRIEVING family and friends of Gaia Pope revealed last night that she had been anxious before she went missing that a man who had assaulted her was about to be freed from prison.
It came as police said it was unlikely the teenager – whose body was found on a Dorset clifftop on Saturday – had been murdered.
A police spokesman said there were no injuries to suggest anyone else was involved in the death of the 19year-old who had been missing for 11 days.
Her family have said she was extremely vulnerable due to her severe epilepsy, and yesterday detectives and medical experts were trying to establish if her death was caused by her illness, and also examining the possibility that she took her own life.
Gaia was said to have been tormented by post traumatic stress disorder after a gang of young men abused her two years ago. A friend from college said Gaia’s erratic posts on social media in the days before she went missing made her fear for the teenager’s mental state.
She said: ‘Just before she went missing I actually called two of my friends and said “look, I’m worried my friend Gaia is having a breakdown’’.’
She added: ‘She was assaulted when she was 17 and I think she thought the man would be released from prison early.’
Gaia’s aunt, Hannah Sutherland, told the Daily Mail: ‘There was a traumatic incident a couple of years ago and some people were convicted – not for that incident, but there was a conviction.
‘And because of her epilepsy, prior to a seizure she could get very anxious and that was apparently part of what came out as some of the anxiety. She was anxious there could potentially be some parole or something coming up.’
Detective Superintendent Paul Kessell of Dorset Police said the cause of death was undetermined and ‘at this time this remains an investiga- tion into an unexplained death’. Gaia was found close to the Dancing Ledge cliff near Swanage on Saturday afternoon, around half a mile from where some of her clothes were found on Thursday.
The area of cliffs between Anvil Point to the east and Dancing Ledge was searched multiple times between November 8, the day after Gaia disappeared, and November 12, with nothing found.
The body had not been formally identified last night but police were confident it was that of Gaia, from Langton Matravers, who had not been seen since about 4pm on November 7 in Swanage.
As Gaia’s twin sister Maya said she was heartbroken, police were criticised as ‘wooden-tops’ who arrested three innocent people during the search for the teenager ‘simply to make it look like they were doing something’. Greg Elsey, whose son Paul, 49, grandson Nathan, 19, and ex-wife Rosemary Dinch, 71, were all arrested over Gaia’s disappearance, has accused detectives of leading a witchhunt against his family.
Mrs Dinch had seen Gaia before she disappeared, telling reporters before her arrest that the teenager had turned up at her door asking for help.
She, Nathan – who had been a school friend of Gaia – and Paul Elsey were all released under investigation. Their family are now planning to sue the police for wrongful arrest.
Greg Elsey, 69, said his ‘heart goes out to Gaia’s family’, but his family had been needlessly ‘smeared’. He said: ‘The officers running this investigation seem to be a bunch of woodentops. It feels like they arrested Paul just to make it look like they were doing something.’