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00:10 The evidence has been completed by Katie's parents today.
00:19 Katie was not the first young person in Scotland to die in prison custody.
00:23 Sadly, we know William Lindsay died four months after Katie, and
00:26 others have continued to take their own lives in the last five years that have passed.
00:30 So broken is our justice system, so shrouded in institutional silence.
00:34 Katie's mother, Linda, could not stay silent today, and
00:36 neither could her father, Stuart.
00:38 Self-inflicted deaths in custody are almost a monthly occurrence.
00:42 And today, Linda Allen and Stuart Allen spoke up, not just for their daughter, but
00:46 also for all those whose cries for help were not heard.
00:50 >> I feel relieved that we've given evidence and
00:54 we've been able to, five and a half years after our daughter's death,
00:57 been able to tell our truth.
01:00 But right now, I feel very angry at just having listened to the evidence of
01:06 someone that was in the profession I was in for 38 years.
01:09 And that really angers me about what I've just said.
01:12 I want young people, anybody, to stop dying in prison from an avoidable death.
01:18 End of.
01:19 That's justice for us.
01:21 Half of me's glad, and half of me knows through our personal research
01:27 that the fatal accident inquiry will change nothing.
01:32 We've raised this for the past four years with our elected politicians, and
01:37 it's been ignored.
01:38 The Sheriff Collins doesn't have at least power to change the FAI system.
01:43 That has to be raised through politicians, and
01:48 that doesn't seem to be a priority.
01:51 >> We relive it every day.
01:53 The only difference today is it's public.
01:57 >> True. >> It's not going to bring Katie back.
01:59 So along with our campaign, we've got to accept the fact that we don't have
02:04 a daughter with us anymore, and her son doesn't have a sister anymore.
02:09 And we won't celebrate all the life,
02:13 the parts of Katie's life that would be normally celebrated.
02:18 And we do not want another family having to experience this.
02:21 We sat and listened to John Riley, William's brothers,
02:25 and Afro David's today as well, which would break your heart.
02:29 Break your heart.
02:30 Two young people from bipolar backgrounds, same outcome.
02:35 The questions I was asked today, which I found very challenging by
02:40 the Prison Officers Association, was how compassionate some prison officers were.
02:46 And absolutely they were, but it's irrelevant.
02:50 Whether prison officers had a good relationship or
02:52 not a good relationship with their daughter, prison officers had a job to do,
02:57 and that was to protect their daughter.
02:58 Katie lost between 60 and 80% of her hair.
03:02 She was covered in self harming marks.
03:04 She was covered in eczema.
03:06 She had weight loss, and she was acutely distressed.
03:10 What really else would need to have happened for
03:14 that bulk suicide risk to be ticked?
03:17 The strip searching and the violation that she felt.
03:22 There's a dispute between us as a family and
03:25 what the prison service is saying, and the number of times, Katie.
03:28 It doesn't matter if it was one or 20.
03:30 Katie felt violated after standing in a hall with two prison officers and
03:36 X number of trainees while she was strip searched.
03:39 The bullying that took place, which is a feature of Pullman, and
03:43 every inspection report, and anything you read about Pullman,
03:46 she was subject to bullying for the last three nights of her life,
03:52 threatened, no intervention from prison officers.
03:55 So whether they were compassionate or not is irrelevant.
03:57 Feel closure when we go through one, two, three, or
04:01 five years with no suicides in prison.
04:04 That's what will give us closure.
04:06 >> So absolutely, I mean, the closure for us is just change.
04:11 And we know so far from looking at previous FBIs and
04:14 also the inspections of prisons that nothing's changed.
04:19 So something has to change to make that happen, and that must be enforced.
04:24 So there must be some accountability for the prison service to make sure that
04:30 any recommendations that are made in this role of FBIs like this,
04:34 that they are actually implemented.
04:37 Otherwise, nothing's gonna happen.
04:39 And that's what we've been fighting against for the last five years.
04:44 And we knew we were coming down to this FBI,
04:45 we knew we had to get it out of the way and get it done.
04:48 But we're not that confident that anything good is gonna come out of it,
04:52 until that change takes place.
04:54 >> Katrina, you asked about closure, can I just say that?
04:56 The family had already said in court about the meetings with Hamza Yusuf.
05:00 He was Justice Secretary at the time.
05:02 Many promises were made, many promises were broken.
05:04 We've not heard from Hamza Yusuf about deaths in prisons.
05:08 We've not heard from Hamza Yusuf about the failure to implement all
05:11 the recommendations of the review.
05:13 So the pressure is on the Scottish government,
05:15 as in what are they actually going to do?
05:17 Otherwise, we continue to have an epidemic of suicide within our prisons.
05:21 The Crown Office, the Lord Advocate's Office, told this family,
05:25 as well as that of William Lindsay, that there was credible and
05:28 reliable evidence to say that the Scottish Prison Service had breached
05:33 its duty of care, had breached the Health and
05:35 Safety Act in terms of the treatment of Katie and of William.
05:40 Yet they can't be prosecuted because of Crown immunity.
05:42 It keeps coming back to that.
05:44 This is part of the journey.
05:46 There's still a long way to go.
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