MUM’S ANGUISH AS SHE WAITS FOR INQUIRY INTO TEEN’S
4 Sunday Mail An anguished mum is still waiting for the death of her teenage daughter in a jail cell to be investigated after four years.
Dionne Kennedy, 19, took her own life at Cornton Vale after being locked up on remand for breach of the peace despite suffering from severe mental health issues and having a history of self-harm.
The shocking case has emerged after the Sunday Mail last week told how 21-year-old geography student Katie Allan killed herself in prison after claiming she was bullied.
We can now reveal how Dionne’s mum Margaret Dryden, 51, has been left tormented since 2014 because the Crown Office have failed to hold a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI), which she believes will reveal serious failings in Scotland’s justice and prison systems.
Margaret, from Troon, Ayrshire, said: “The grief never goes away. I think about Dionne every day and the fact that she’d still be here today if things had been done differently.
“The worst aspect of this is the unanswered questions and I’ve been left waiting for four years now with very little information and no FAI.
“There’s been no closure for me because I still don’t know the full circumstances and I live with the constant pain of that.
“I think the people running the justice and prison systems believe if these things run on long enough people will lose interest.
“But I will never give up on knowing the truth about my daughter.
“Dionne wasn’t a danger to anyone but herself.
“She was raped when she was 13 and the trauma of that left her with terrible issues.
“She was just a teenager and needed help and support but instead she was thrown in a prison cell with no support on remand for a silly breach of the peace.”
Dionne, who lived in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, at the time of her imprisonment, was a self-harmer known to have suicidal thoughts and had been previously been rushed to hospital.
She had served several months in Cornton Vale after being caught carrying a knife – which Margaret believes she would only
ever have used to cut herself – before being released on October 20, 2014.
However, Margaret said she was re-arrested hours later on an outstanding warrant for a breach of the peace over an earlier incident when she had been found shouting in the street.
Dionne was taken back to prison and held on remand to await a court appearance.
She had previously been held in Cornton Vale’s mental health unit under 24-hour supervision.
But on her return, she was put in Skye House – the prison’s young offenders’ unit.
The teenager was found dead in her cell by staff about two weeks later after taking her own life.
Margaret believes officers should have enforced the warrant before Dionne was allowed to leave prison.
She added: “There are so many unanswered questions about why she wasn’t under supervision despite clearly being such a high-risk prisoner.
“The prison service knew they were dealing with a highly vulnerable young girl with really serious mental health issues.
“What checks were carried out on her before she died? Where were the psychiatric assessments? Why wasn’t she sent back to a mental health unit?
“Dionne was allowed to leave prison on October 20 and came home happy and determined to change.
“But she was re-arrested several hours later at her friend’s house rather than being taken back into custody at the prison gates.
“For someone with the mental health issues that she had, this was the most awful thing you could do – to raise her spirits by allowing her to leave and then crushing her again a few hours later.
“To then send her in with no supervision was unforgivable and unacceptable and we need to know why. “I’ll never be able to find peace until I’ve had these questions answered and it’s disgraceful that we’re still waiting after four years.
“One of the main excuses