On Thursday, she called the police. On Friday, she alerted the jobcentre, and later called an ambulance. And then it was too late. How Faiza Ahmed was let down by the system It was just after 8am on 6 November 2014 when Faiza Hassan Ahmed knocked on her neighbour’s door. Violet Nantayiro did not know her, but Faiza was obviously distressed. She let her in and tried to comfort her. Faiza said a man had attempted to rape her, and asked Nantayiro if she would ring the police on her behalf.
Nantayiro did know that 31-year-old Faiza had been up much of the night. She had heard people chatting and music playing until 3am in the flat upstairs. Faiza told Nantayiro that she had been drinking with her boyfriend and his friend until the early hours. She said her boyfriend had recently gone to work, and she had gone to bed, where she was sexually assaulted by his friend.
A few minutes later, police officers arrived at the address in Limehouse, east London. By 9.30am the officers had left, after a tense encounter, without taking a statement. One day later, Faiza Ahmed was dead.
Mohammed Ahmed, 33, meets me at the offices of Women Against Rape, a campaign group that has supported Faiza’s family’s quest for justice. The inquest into his sister’s death is due to start in a couple of weeks, and he is worried it is going to be a whitewash; a verdict of suicide with no contributory factors, meaning that nothing could have been done to save Faiza’s life. The family strongly believe this is not the case.
Mo was always close to his sister. They were born in Somalia and moved to London when they were toddlers. There were six sisters and one brother, but Mo and Faiza had a special bond.
First there was the age – Mo was just a year older than Faiza. Then there was their attitude to life. Their sisters were well-behaved, conscientious children, but Mo and Faiza were a handful: strong, sparky and opinionated. Faiza was expelled from a number of schools. Sometimes they ran into trouble with the police, who, they said, were racist and stereotyped them as aggressive.
“We were so similar, our stories were almost identical,” Mo says. “Both of us were confident in ourselves. When we had an idea, nothing would stop us. We were brought up devout Muslims, but both of us went off the rails. So we were on the outside, compared with the rest of the family. We were thick as thieves, and would always cover for each other.”
Faiza, who was also known as Sophie, had her first run-in with the police when she was 14, and it changed her life in a way she could never have anticipated. But first Mo wants to tell me why he calls her Sophie. He smiles: “There was a teacher at school who couldn’t pronounce her name, and somehow it came out as Sophie. And that stuck!” Mo still knows her best as Sophie.
He can’t remember what Faiza was arrested for at 14. But he remembers their father going to the police station to collect her. As he walked there, a car ran him over, and a week later he died. Faiza always blamed herself for his death, though she never talked about it. (Mo only learned this from psychiatric reports after her death.) It also made her more hostile to the police.
Mo, a talented athlete, joined a football academy in Leyton, east London, at 16, but didn’t progress. At 21, he joined the army. He found the experience depressing, again encountering racism, and began to drink too much. “I joined as a devout Muslim. While I’d been in trouble with the police, I wasn’t a confrontational, aggressive person. The army made me a very aggressive, tough, robust person.”
One night he got in a fight and was convicted of actual bodily harm. He was kicked out of the army in 2004, and sentenced to six months in prison, of which he served two. This also proved a life-changer – but in a positive way. Mo told himself that he would never get into trouble again, and that he would make something of his life. Today, he works as a firefighter for the London Fire Brigade, has a nine-year-old daughter, and is getting married to his partner Wendy in July.
A year before Mo was convicted, Faiza had been sent to prison for the same offence. At the age of 20, she was convicted of actual bodily harm for assaulting a police officer, and sentenced to four months, of which she served two.
Faiza was also determined to make a new start when she came out of prison. But while Mo got ahead in the fire service, she struggled to find work. In 2012, she got a job as a team leader for the London 2012 Olympics and adored it. “London 2012 gave people like my sister an opportunity,” Mo says. “It was the best four weeks of her life. We’d never seen her so happy. If she had been given an opportunity, I have no doubt she’d be alive today. But after London 2012, it was back to the cycle of struggling, and the jobcentre trying to push her into jobs she had no interest in.”
After Faiza died, Mo discovered from her psychiatric reports that he had been her role model. “I went to prison and rebuilt my life, and she went to prison and was trying to rebuild hers. When bad things kept happening to her, she kept saying to herself, ‘If Mo can do it, I can do it.’” Now he blames himself for not being there enough, even though he saw her virtually every week right up to her death.
He tells me that when he was in prison, he became suicidal, and it was Faiza who convinced him there was so much to live for. This is why he is determined to get justice for Faiza.
***
St Pancras coroner’s court is a claustrophobic building at the edge of a park in north London. There is a room for the jury, a tiny room for the bereaved family, two toilets, and that’s it. It’s so small that everybody has to squash together in the hallway before being allowed into court: Mo, his mother, his sister Ferdus, the barrister for the family, barristers for the police and London Ambulance Service, police officers, ambulance workers, solicitors, and campaigners supporting the family.
Last year the coroner ruled that there would be a regular inquest (two days, without a jury); but the family went to the high court to argue for an article 2 inquest, to examine whether any act or omission by a state agency had contributed to Faiza’s death. These last longer, are more detailed, involve legal teams and are usually held in front of a jury. If the jury rules that the state contributed to the death, the family can go on to make a claim in court that there was a breach of the right to life under article 2 of the Human Rights Act.
Today, coroner Mary Hassell explains to the jury why this is a special inquest: that they are here to rule how Faiza died and whether there were any contributory factors. The jury hears that Faiza had expressed suicidal thoughts in the past: in 2010, she was diagnosed with a personality disorder; in 2011, she was sectioned by the Metropolitan police under the Mental Health Act; in 2013, she had again disclosed suicidal thoughts and tried to cut her wrists; and, in 2014, she had talked to her GP about being tearful, struggling to get a job, smoking weed and having intermittent thoughts of suicide but no plan to act on them. Faiza last saw her GP three months before she died, in August 2014, and said she was drinking large amounts of alcohol and not eating properly; she did add that she had a supportive partner.
Hassell reads out a letter that was left by Faiza: “This is to my family, including you Wifey… I have had enough. I just want to sleep forever! Please forgive me for exiting the world the way I did. Thank you Wife for loving me! Mum I’m sorry. The pain of feelin’ alone got too much!”
There are mutterings in the court. Counsel for the family, Taimour Lay, explains that Faiza was fond of slang, and Wifey refers to her boyfriend. But the boyfriend, who was reluctant to give evidence, is not in court.
Ferdus Ahmed, Faiza’s sister, takes to the witness stand to give a moving statement about her sister. “Faiza was kind and intelligent,” she says. “Very intelligent, actually, but she lacked confidence. She was very good with children. She adored her niece.” Ferdus momentarily breaks down, and is passed tissues. “She was a bright individual, but never got a break. She did a childcare course, but she had a criminal record and she found it difficult to get work. Faiza did suffer with depression. One day she’d be happy, the next really down. I felt cannabis was one of the things that really affected her behaviour, made her hallucinate. But I think she was trying to give it up.”
The coroner asks Ferdus what she would like to learn from the inquest. She talks about the missed opportunities to help Faiza. Hassell asks what would have happened if somebody had called her on 7 November and said, “Your sister is upset, and needs support.”
“I would have got in my car and gone to her house straight away,” Ferdus says. “We weren’t aware of anything that happened. We never got that chance.”
Mo provides a written statement about Faiza. “My sister’s a trailblazer, the most creative person in our family,” he writes. “She had her faults, but each fault would be complemented by kinder, more caring qualities.” He mentioned the negative relationship she had with both the police and the jobcentre. “She was sanctioned by the jobcentre for turning up late, missing appointments. She lived with the constant fear of being sanctioned. She commented that they never really believed her when she told them about her depression.”
***
When Faiza knocked on Violet Nantayiro’s door on 6 November, she was beside herself. Evidence emerged in court that she had been in a bad way all week, and that the alleged sexual assault had tipped her over the edge. Nantayiro tells the jury that she has worked in a psychiatric hospital, and that Faiza appeared “hysterical, a bit incoherent. She kept repeating how evil it was that a friend could do this to you. She was emotionally distraught, crying.” Nantayiro says Faiza was acting as if she had taken drugs. “It was not the behaviour of someone in their right mind. She was shouting at the top of her voice.”
Did Nantayiro feel threatened, the coroner asks. “No,” she says. She is a small, slight woman. “You wouldn’t have genuine concern of her… she was just a bit bigger than me.”
Four police officers attended the address that morning, and were buzzed in. The first two officers to arrive, both male, dealt with Faiza. The second pair dealt with the suspect, who was still upstairs in Faiza’s flat. One of the officers sent upstairs was female.
Nantayiro is asked about the demeanour of the police. “They were trying to calm her down, explain to her that they have to do their job.” They were very matter-of-fact, Nantayiro says. She pauses. “I thought they would be much softer. I guess they have to be professional.” Nantayiro says she was surprised by how persistent the police were in demanding intimate details of the assault, which made Faiza more hostile.
Much of the police evidence about Faiza is consistent with Nantayiro’s: she had been drinking, she was shouting. But there are significant differences. The officers say they found Faiza’s behaviour threatening. They say she refused to give essential information, and that she would not hand over her clothes or bedding for examination. The officers insist that, although she was aggressive, they did not believe she was suffering from mental health problems. (If they had, they would have been obliged to refer her to mental health services and ensure she was safe in the immediate future.)
PC Steven Pardoe tells the court: “She just seemed to be anti-police. At no point did I think mental health was an issue. I believe we dealt with it professionally. Tried to do everything to reassure her. We were there for the best part of an hour and a half, pleading with her, explaining why we need to take a statement. Unfortunately, it was not something she wished to do.”
Unlike in a criminal court, witnesses are allowed to hear each other’s evidence because, as Hassell points out, this is purely a fact-finding mission. The Ahmed family are not pleased when they hear this. They believe they are more likely to get to the truth of what happened if witnesses give their versions of what happened without having heard their colleagues. And yet inconsistencies do gradually emerge in the officers’ evidence. PC Neil Reynolds, who attended with Pardoe, admits that Faiza was not entirely hostile and that, rather than failing to tell them what had happened, she gave them the four facts considered vital in reporting a sexual assault within 20-30 minutes: what happened, where, when and to whom.
The female officer, PC Kelly Cloughton, who attended a few minutes after Pardoe and Reynolds, describes how she and a fourth colleague interviewed the suspect (who was arrested and later released). The coroner asks if it would have been more appropriate for her to talk to Faiza, rather than the male officers. “She might have engaged more,” Cloughton replies. “But because we arrived later, there was no chance of that.” If she had gone upstairs to the suspect, then returned to Faiza, there would have been a danger of cross-contaminating the suspect’s and victim’s evidence.
The officers agree that the more they asked for specific details, the more abusive Faiza became; they all state that she told them she hoped they were raped. Reading from his statement, PC Pardoe says: “She said, ‘You lot don’t want to know. You are heavyweight bullies. He won’t go to prison. Fuck off. I hope you get raped. You can’t do anything.’”
***
At around 9.30am, Faiza stopped cooperating and insisted on returning to her flat – the scene of the alleged crime. The officers say they could do nothing to stop her, and left.
It was at this point that the Metropolitan police made a crucial decision. When a sexual assault has been reported, policy at the time stated that an officer who specialises in sexual offences had to be dispatched within an hour. It makes sense: after all, officers talk about “the golden hour”, during which they can gather the best DNA. This protocol has now been changed, following recognition that the target was routinely being missed: last year, the mandatory time requirement was removed altogether.
The police decided to call off the specialist officer when Pardoe reported back that Faiza was being difficult and aggressive. Hassell reads a statement from Detective Sergeant Ian Valentine explaining why the specialist officer was taken off the job: “I got a call… saying she was no longer cooperating. Research showed that she was violent when intoxicated, and it was no longer appropriate for her [the specialist officer] to attend without body armour.” He cancelled the deployment of DC Maxine Durrant and arranged for another officer to attend the address the next day with a colleague and safety equipment.
Giving evidence, Durrant says her role is dealing with aftercare. “I am like the personal officer for the victim,” she explains. Durrant might have technically been Faiza’s personal officer, but she never met her and didn’t even open a log on her. The coroner asks Durrant why she didn’t attend later that day. “In my experience,” Durrant says, “when someone is that upset, irate, uncooperative, more often than not they need more than a couple of hours to calm down.”
Many sharp intakes of breath come from the family as they hear Durrant’s evidence. In the break, Mo asks how it can make sense. First, if it was felt the rape specialist would not be able to work with Faiza, how could the Met expect untrained officers to successfully take a statement? Second, if the specialist officer did not attend in the mandatory hour, how could the Met collect evidence while still fresh? Finally, if the Met had cancelled the visit because Faiza was difficult, would they not have to cancel a huge proportion of visits to traumatised victims of sexual assault?
***
The police gave Faiza more than a couple of hours to calm down. Nobody knows what happened to her later that day or the next morning. There were no visits from specialist officers, and she did not make contact with her family. Evidence reveals she drank during that time, but how much is impossible to say. The postmortem showed 231mg per decilitre of alcohol in her blood (the legal limit for driving is 80mg per decilitre). There is a blank until she attended the jobcentre between 2pm and 3pm on Friday 7 November, the day she died.
Clarence Whyte, the work coach at the jobcentre, is a quietly spoken man in a starched white shirt, tie and navy pullover. He tells the jury he asked Faiza why she was three days late to sign on, and she explained she had been sick. He said she would have to fill in a JSA28 form to explain her absence. “She wrote on the form, ‘I was busy trying to kill myself, drinking non-stop,’” Whyte says. He goes on to explain that there is a space for the date when you started being unwell (Faiza put 4 November) and another space for when you think you will be well again (Faiza put 7 November). Whyte says she handed him the report and, as he was reading it, disappeared without him noticing. That was the last he saw of her.
The coroner looks shocked.
“How did she seem?” she asks.
“Calm.”
“Dishevelled?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Did she look upset?”
“No, she seemed perfectly calm. Sometimes we see people categorised as potentially violent, and we wonder why they are categorised as such because they seem perfectly calm.”
Whyte told his team leader what happened. They completed a “six-point plan” (which they are obliged to do if they believe a client is going to self-harm) as best they could, decided not to sanction her, and continued with their work.
Whyte is asked how seriously he took Faiza’s statement. “I had to take it as a serious issue, but it wasn’t unusual.”
Did he think of ringing the police or ambulance service? “No. From my perspective, she wasn’t at the point where she was going to commit suicide.”
“I appreciate she did not say, ‘I’m going to kill myself now’,” Hassell says, “but ‘I was busy trying to kill myself’ is quite a stark statement. If I came into contact with a statement like that, I would be worried. I’d feel frightened for them.”
Whyte: “Yes.”
Hassell: “If you were frightened, why didn’t that prompt a call to the police?”
Whyte: “I don’t know. It eludes me why I didn’t do that.”
