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The Mother of All Cons Season 1 Episode 3
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00:12The day of Meg's funeral was horrendous.
00:20Meg was such an important person to me, still is.
00:25Just, I didn't know what to think.
00:38Jean was a mother grieving the loss of her daughter.
00:43And I know how that feels.
00:58I wanted to be there for her like she was there for me.
01:06A lot of the Believe in Magic families wanted to come and pay their respects from all over the UK
01:13because they loved Meg.
01:18And the magic that she gave those children and the memories she made and the joy, the laughter and everything.
01:34Halfway there, I get the strangest message from Jean.
01:40And then I had to ring as many people as I knew to say, like, stop, turn around and go
01:51home.
01:52The funeral had been cancelled.
01:57What? In what world? When does this ever happen?
02:06The whole thing just felt really surreal.
02:09And I was just so confused.
02:12Like, I've never heard of a funeral really being cancelled.
02:19More investigations are being done.
02:21They're not releasing the body.
02:23Even in death, this doesn't add up.
02:26What?
02:27Hasn't the coroner released the body?
02:29Is this an illegal funeral?
02:30What?
02:37It seemed bizarre that they were doing that because Meg had had a brain tumour her whole life and had
02:44died from a brain tumour.
02:46It just seemed to be adding insult to injury and on such short notice as well when everyone's worked themselves
02:51up towards that day.
02:54People are posting that the funeral has been stopped.
02:57Just talk of the police being involved.
03:03And I'm like, gosh, that's my email.
03:20Once upon a time, a little girl lived with her mother in a small stone cottage.
03:27It's been an incredible year, really.
03:30Believe in Magic has grown so much.
03:33The little girl was poorly, but all she thought about was helping other poorly children.
03:39It's run by me and my mum.
03:40We've just brought magic to so many poorly children.
03:44I love magic.
03:47Believe in Magic was like no other charity.
03:50It was more like a family.
03:53Meg and Jean were the fairy godmothers.
03:56They would just appear and sprinkle their magic.
04:01Hi, I'm Lily from One Direction.
04:02Me and the boys have been working with Meg and Jean now for almost as long as we've been in
04:06band.
04:07The power and might of One Direction put this celebrity rocket under the feet of Meg and Jean.
04:17And they did do unbelievable things.
04:22It seemed like the perfect fairy tale.
04:26But was it too good to be true?
04:32Were they amazing women?
04:35Was Megan really sick?
04:39Or is this one big scam?
04:42We were going to find out what the truth was.
04:47You throw disgusting agitation to us.
04:51I hope so much that you'll see how well you've been.
04:55They were out for blood.
04:57And they got it.
05:00Not all fairy tales end happily ever after.
05:25I was feeling uneasy about the fact that Megan had passed away.
05:31And it was Jean's update a couple of days after Megan's death that had prompted that concern.
05:39At 11.53 on the 28th of March 2018, my whole world changed.
05:47According to Jean, Megan had eight heart attacks.
05:51And they're mentions like the sepsis.
05:55Maybe there's an element of truth but there's such exaggeration.
05:59Why did you believe the sepsis bit though at this point?
06:02Because of them walking off the boat.
06:06So I knew that she didn't have severe sepsis and I thought,
06:10Jean, what are you capable of if you can lie about your own daughter's death?
06:15Like who does that?
06:18And then Jean updates to say that Megan would be cremated.
06:23Sounds awful but there was a finite amount of time.
06:26After that, there was no evidence of what happened to Megan.
06:31So I contacted Great Ormond Street and said,
06:34Is it possible to speak to someone about a death at your hospital?
06:37The mother is lying about her daughter's death and I'm concerned there may be suspicious circumstances.
06:43Joanna Ashcraft.
06:49But I had no idea where it would all lead.
07:13But I had no idea where it would all lead.
07:16We are here today to resume the inquest touching the death of Megan Elizabeth Beatrice Barie.
07:24I'm obliged to hold an inquest into every death where cause of which is either apparently unnatural or apparently unknown.
07:34if someone dies unexpectedly then an inquest is held i just feel like ah this is it finally we're
07:43going to get some answers of what really happened an inquest is to establish the how when and where
07:53somebody died and the inquest would actually give us the actual cause of death i'd become so invested
08:02and i'd put my reputation on the line and been under attack
08:08because gene was telling people that we were responsible for megan's death
08:15and people believed her so there was part of it i thought i'm glad that
08:21here we will find out what was the reality what does the autopsy show
08:28i'm going to call the pathologist who conducted the post-mortem examination
08:33for his opinion of the medical cause of death
08:38histologically i didn't find any significant changes except in the liver where i saw very
08:44severe fatty change replacement of the normal tissue of the liver by fat
08:49so the only pathological change of note was fatty liver disease
08:54i offered probable cause of death was acute cardiac arrhythmia due to fatty liver disease
09:01she didn't die of a heart attack she died of cardiac arrhythmia an abnormal rhythm of the heart caused
09:11by severe fatty liver disease that doesn't make any sense to me at all how does a 23 year old
09:23die of fatty liver disease were you surprised by that shocked
09:30having heard all of this evidence the cause of megan's death is she had a fatty liver that doesn't appear
09:37to
09:37have been related to alcohol or diabetes or any other factor that we know about save perhaps that
09:44she had a high body mass index
09:48so actually i am left with a natural cause of death
09:53this doesn't make any sense fatty liver is very treatable and the symptoms are nothing like the
10:01symptoms of a brain tumor it just gave me so many more questions and i just couldn't understand it
10:08over the years they've made so many claims about meg's different health conditions
10:13i think for me the question is did she have a brain tumor
10:23externally there were signs of resuscitation efforts otherwise there were no signs of external injury
10:30the brain itself appeared morphologically normal
10:38she didn't have a brain tumor
10:44they pretty much indicated everything that we'd said all along
10:50it's irrefutable
10:53all these families that had welcomed megan and jean into their life have to accept now that
11:02it was all based on a lie
11:07i was definitely angry i was angry at meg i was angry to think that she'd lied and that she
11:17hadn't been ill
11:20i just can't understand why you would say that to someone if you didn't think it was true
11:25and why kind of she did what she did
11:29i felt sick i felt absolutely sick
11:35it was the fact that she chose a brain tumor and that's what my daughter died of
11:43it's disgusting it's horrible i feel like they almost preyed upon my vulnerability and all the other
11:50vulnerabilities of all the other parents
11:52what do you think of the fact that the coroner's inquisitors didn't find every gene
11:58in my head it's possible they missed it or something happened
12:05it's it's it's like i'm i'm looking at facts but they don't agree with what my experience has been
12:11so i can only believe that the facts are wrong why would she have symptoms if she wasn't ill how
12:19did she get
12:20the drugs to compensate those symptoms just none of it makes sense
12:41girl fakes brain tumor to dupe scars out of cash the charity got closed down
12:49a large amount of money was missing but gene blamed megan and said that megan dealt with receipts
12:58and the punishment for gene was that she couldn't be a trustee for five years and megan wasn't here to
13:04defend her cell
13:06you couldn't avoid it it was all over social media
13:10and that was just horrendous that was when it really hit me that i'd lost my sister that meg was
13:18dead i remember just sobbing my eyes out and i felt quite shameful for doing that like i didn't have
13:28a
13:28right to because i didn't really know meg very well back then i had these negative thoughts and
13:39feelings about meg because of all the lies that they were both telling and i found her childlike manner as
13:47an adult irritating so i'm not saying like meg's this innocent child you know she was 23 years old she
13:58was a fully grown adult but in that whole article there was only one line about gene and it just
14:05says
14:06that her mum jean was a trustee and that's it they were both the public faces of believe in magic
14:15jean was by her side throughout the hog thing through every lie
14:22and then jean disappears
14:30i hear from family that after the inquest jean moved over to france
14:37from that point jean then vanished as she cut contact with everyone
14:45and for me things shifted a bit was made to blame like all the papers are saying
14:53or did she actually think she was ill
14:59i need to speak to people that i remember from meg's childhood
15:04so i reached out to beth
15:12they were inseparable from the age of 10.
15:19what did beth see
15:25hi how are you oh nice to see you likewise it's been
15:31yeah it's what 12 13 years since i last saw you it's crazy
15:37i've just got so many questions yeah and um don't we all and i just feel like as meg's best
15:44friend yeah and you might have some answers how did you see things at once i fully believe that meg
15:52thought she was as ill as they were saying yeah i mean if your mum tells you you're ill
16:01you believe that so as far as you guys are concerned she's genuinely
16:07ill yeah this is happening yeah yeah like
16:11going to her bag gets bottles of morphine pill pot after pill pot she had alarms on her phone to
16:18go through a schedule of like what she should be taking when
16:23never missed a dosage i've got some photos of from when i went to visit her in hospital
16:31with alex yeah she was just sat on hospital beds with like a valve coming out of her skull
16:39like oh wow yeah yeah you would never question that
16:46that gene was there with her did you see them together like what did you think when you saw them
16:51together so i think when i first met her obviously like we were 10
16:59and yeah like gene just came across it's like this doting mother and obviously with the illness
17:04i think like that voting turned into controlling yeah always wanting to know where meg was what she was
17:13doing who she was with when she'll be home i think gene hated when i got my driving license
17:21on a car because then gave meg a bit of freedom and independence away from her because i can imagine
17:28that yeah yeah yeah
17:31i think meg fully believes that if she did one thing wrong that would be it
17:48meeting beth i absolutely believed her she is honest and genuine and if meg did genuinely think
17:58she was ill then how did that happen what was gene's part in all of this
18:15i've got quite a lot to show you
18:22i've managed to get hold of a lot of meg's medical records
18:28i didn't realize there would be so much um how much do you reckon is that all together oh thousands
18:38thousands
18:41and what i found really interesting was there was repeated visits to doctors and hospitals going back to
18:522002 when meg would have been seven they're going to the doctors for clicky joints
19:03abdo pain feels hot but no temp
19:08going to the hospitals for laboratory testing scans headache headache sore throat sore throat so it was on for a
19:17while
19:17yeah it's almost like gene wanted the doctors to find something wrong with meg
19:23and when i kind of look back for all of this it does make me think of some memories from
19:29when i was little
19:34before meg was born i had two older brothers and older sister
19:40and in our kitchen we had a big blue aga there to the left as you came in you had
19:48the farmhouse table and so those four of us would sit around the table
19:53and just above um the table was this cupboard
20:00and every time we'd sit down for dinner
20:05tins would roll off the top of the cupboard
20:11and nearly hit us on the head
20:17you would play this game you'd hear the sound of the roll and you'd just kind of like
20:25tend to be like ninjas
20:30and the table was like battered from where all the tins fell off
20:37kind of just dawned on me as i got older i was like why did you put the tins
20:42on top of the cupboard rather than inside the cupboards the cupboards weren't
20:45full why were they always falling at the times that we sat down for dinner
20:52and it was almost like gene wanted an accident she wanted one of us to have an accident
20:58i just don't understand why gene would do that
21:06i was trying to find answers myself and just start looking up stuff online and just going down all
21:13these rabbit holes and i came across an article written by dr mark feldman
21:20i'm a psychiatrist and i've been interested in medical child abuse for over 30 years
21:28he's an expert on munchausen by proxy and it's not something i'd ever heard of before i didn't know
21:35anything about it munchausen by proxy is a form of abuse in which an individual usually the mother
21:44feigns exaggerates or actually induces illness in the mother's own child and they
21:53do it because they find it inherently gratifying to get attention and sympathy it also keeps the child
22:01dependent which is something that a lot of the perpetrators in fact relish it just ticked a lot
22:10of boxes and it was just like oh fuck what if this is munchausen by proxy
22:22i was up late at nights reading every article every reddit post that i could get my hands on
22:29to kind of get an idea of what meg may have experienced and then i came across carrie
22:39when i describe what happened to me i just say i'm a survivor of munchausen by proxy that's the name
22:46most
22:46people know i think medical child abuse is a much more prescient term because it names the effect of
22:55what she did
23:00i lived a life where i was told i was always going to feel ill
23:07the diagnoses that my mom found for me were colic projectile vomiting
23:14oppositional defiant disorder adhd and fibromyalgia which is chronic pain
23:25people say that they remembered my parents seeming like they had it all
23:29that they were living the american dream but i think my mom saw illness everywhere
23:39when i was around seven i remember my mom making juice and her putting pills in it and saying like
23:49don't tell anybody because i was going to a summer camp
23:56my mom would also doctor shop and just like desperately beg for morphine
24:01and we would practice what we needed to say in advance
24:05but i didn't think we were lying if you talk to her doctors inherently sort of their gatekeeper
24:12so you have to sort of use the right language to get what you as a patient need
24:20what happens with munchausen by proxy is not one moment or one lie it's a whole
24:26world that they're presenting
24:29what i think is an under discussed fact about munchausen by proxy is about 50 of cases do start
24:36with the kid actually having a problem and then the mom starts exaggerating and lying
24:43reading about carrie's life is fascinating because like her meg did have something wrong there was a
24:51diagnosis there in 2008 when meg was 13 jean takes megan to hospital saying that she's been screaming in
25:05pain and experiencing blurred vision and headaches eventually they did diagnose her with iih which is
25:15idiopathic intracranial hypertension which is a build-up of
25:20fluid around the brain and she has a shunt put into her skull so you can see here
25:28a tube that goes from her brain down into her abdomen to drain fluid which helps regulate the
25:37pressure in her brain is there mention of the brain tumor then anywhere at one point meg is being
25:48investigated for a pituitary tumor but quite likely it might require neurosurgical intervention
25:56they very quickly rule that out
25:59but it's almost like that planted the seed for gene because from that point onwards she starts tweeting
26:06my poorly daughter has a brain tumor
26:13this is all around the same time that they've started the charity believe in magic
26:21gene's tweeting a lot of celebrities pulling at heartstrings and it is just kind of relentless
26:29within the first nine months of her opening her twitter account jeans tweeted one direction over 500
26:37times it's like some obsession
26:43but it works you know technically she's a marketing genius and meg's brain tumor is basically their branding
26:58so this is the cinderella ball in 2015 this was kind of their big bumpy year for the charity
27:06it just looks like this fairy tale
27:14you've got the red carpet you've got one direction turning up you know
27:18look at the cameras this was this was massive all of this was on the basis of meg having a
27:26brain tumor
27:28and none of those people know the truth
27:35well she does she's been told we don't get the funding that all the big charities get so we are
27:42desperate for all the funding she's up there front and center rubbing shoulders with celebrities that's
27:50all she's ever dreamed of that's what she loves and thrives on she felt that that's where she belonged
28:03she has no shame as long as her end goal gets her what she wants and needs
28:12watching this i do see more characteristics of munchausen by proxy
28:18both meg and gene seem to be really enjoying the kind of attention
28:25but what i don't know is how much did meg really understand of what was going on and and what
28:32was
28:32happening with her health
28:35so i went back to kyra's story
28:39she managed to escape her mum and munchausen by proxy but to do that she had to leave america
28:48thank you so much for meeting with me there are so many questions that if i could um i want
28:57to ask meg
28:59did you believe that you were ill at the time yeah yeah i think it's so easy for people in
29:06the age of
29:06true crime to sit in their armchair and play detective and be like that child was old enough
29:11to have known better yeah and i don't think people also realize what it would take for you to question
29:19an illness that you had that your mother and doctors seemed to justify
29:25even once i left home and i was never sick again i just thought that this mysterious pain condition
29:32had gone into remission so if someone had come up to you and said let me help you let me
29:39take you out
29:39i would have turned against them and never spoken to them again and then i would have told my mom
29:43and
29:43she would have never let me talk to them again i was so wrapped around her finger that nobody could
29:49have told me yeah it's a full-on control over someone isn't it i don't know about you but with
29:56gene
29:57and meg gene really isolated meg no it sounds exactly like my life you know she was taken out of
30:02school at 13. yes i do feel like she infantized her as well the meg did speak kind of with
30:10this
30:10quite lispy baby voice she would have glitter on and kind of little bows in her hair yeah yeah if
30:17i
30:17started talking about my mom i would start talking in this like childlike voice really which is
30:22supposedly really common they're incredibly close an unusual relationship that's common that and it's
30:29also she would say she had to put meg to bed and i think meg must have been about
30:3720 at this point um and this was at quarter past seven and she used to sleep in bed with
30:45gene so they
30:46used to sleep in the bed together i didn't sleep in the bed with my mom but she slept on
30:50a couch by my
30:51mattress so and she would just like have to be there to put me to sleep the same way and
30:57i thought i
30:58needed that too i was a teenager on high doses of morphine from the ages of 15 to 17 i
31:09was on 80
31:09milligrams of slow release morphine daily at a time when i weighed about 40 kilos when the morphine wasn't
31:19enough to control my pain my mom would crush up hydrocodone into a powder and mix it with sugar and
31:26put it on a spoon and hold it under my tongue she said it would get to my bloodstream faster
31:32we had these morphine capsules that i think she probably took the powder in and out of or like
31:39up to the dose or down the dose without telling me so that i had withdrawal so i thought i
31:46was sick
31:48because whenever she wanted to she could sort of pull the puppet strings and like make me sick you know
31:53how did it make you feel did you feel nothing i think it kept me really compliant
32:06so this is a list of all of meg's prescriptions so you see here from beginning of january of 2012
32:14she starts getting oromorph week later oromorph a week later oromorph
32:21then another week later oromorph and then we go again we go oromorph
32:31oromorph oromorph oromorph oromorph oromorph oromorph oromorph and you look at how many times
32:40this is not something someone's supposed to be on consistently you know that's pages of it
32:48and we're still going that's a lot of morphine that's a lot of morphine
33:02you could hear her coming a mile away because the glass bottles jangling together in her handbag and
33:08the pills it was full to the top with medication it was just it weighed a ton but it went
33:14everywhere
33:15with her everywhere i remember clearly being the langham and seeing her swigging out of a bottle of
33:23oromorph this is a class a drug it's for severe pain and she was just like like you would drink
33:34a can of coke and i'm thinking that's oromorph what what the hell she was always always swigging
33:41oromorph out of a bottle always and we always used to say to her maybe you shouldn't be taking that
33:46much but she would claim that she was in so much pain that she needed it
33:49the long-term use of morphine is not great for you from sickness to headaches to shaking
33:57it's awful so maybe meg really is feeling sick but maybe it's because of all this morphine that
34:05she's taking
34:08i think in hindsight looking back meg was like addicted to morphine
34:15she was taking it like multiple times a day for pretty much our whole friendship which was over
34:21several years
34:24i remember once the three of us were staying in a hotel in london and she was saying that it
34:32felt
34:32like she like couldn't get any air or couldn't get any oxygen like couldn't breathe and meg kept like
34:38losing consciousness like she would kind of pass out i remember beth giving her mouth to mouth
34:46when she came around she didn't have any clue who i was where she was what was going on why
34:53she was in
34:53so much pain it was completely terrifying her reliance on morphine was increasing she was having to take
35:04more and have it more frequently jean never said anything about that no jean just made sure she was
35:13taking what she needed when she needed
35:20when you look at the amount of oromorph that she was taking
35:25what i want to know is why weren't the doctors doing anything and then i came across this letter which
35:35was brilliant and it just shows that actually they did try and help meg they were seeing that this
35:42wasn't right
35:47dr fawn writes here it became apparent to me that she was taking a very large dose of medically
35:53prescribed opiates i expressed my concern to the patient and her mother i was concerned that she was
36:00a vulnerable young individual and potentially an opiate dependent i attempted to arrange a
36:06multidisciplinary follow-up for the patient and informed her of this but she did not re-attend to my
36:11clinics so he's trying to get her some help and support and they're advising jean jean knows at this
36:20point that megan is addicted to morphine but she's not helping her they just do what they always do
36:30jean cuts off contact and goes to a different hospital and try someone else and they just disappear
36:36they've been rumbled but because of this doctor this does lead to the oromorph prescriptions
36:45stopping a few months later
36:49but according to her friends she continues to take it for many more years
36:58in 2016 before they went to america meg sent a picture of the drug she was taking
37:08do you have the picture of the medications
37:10yep so it says oh you know just your average supply of life-saving drugs for six weeks
37:18piles and piles of pills and needles and morphine at the front
37:28bear in mind that each of these bottles laying down are 100 millilitres of morphine oh and that
37:34each of those piles are stacked again at the back and you know there's five lots of 48 hour drug
37:40supplies hidden in our handbags and backpacks i'm not really sure how my body is managing to function
37:46to be honest on some of them you can kind of see the harrods prescription receipt as well
37:54because she'd collect it from harrods pharmacy or yeah i mean that wouldn't be out of the question
38:04how many bottles of morphine are on there
38:14around 30 for six weeks that's about five a week it's about a bottle a day
38:22but from my memory i don't think that was uncommon for meg to kind of go through a bottle in
38:28a day
38:30that sounds like a vast amount of morphine to be taking every day um it does but
38:40i think at the time i thought meg was in a vast amount of pain
38:47did you worry that she was taking so much yeah i did but it's kind of the meg i've always
38:53known i guess
38:57i know from the records that the nhs cut off their morphine um prescription back in 2015
39:05so the obvious question is how are they getting that morphine
39:21at the inquest i remember there's a doctor who says he was contacted by harrods pharmacy
39:29about an attempt to obtain oromorphon prescription using a what he i think his exact words were a poor
39:37forgery in november 2017 i was contacted by harrods pharmacy i was told that there had been an attempt
39:45to obtain oromorph with my name on the prescription i was later sent a copy of the prescription and the
39:52signature was clearly a poor forgery it did not look like mine
39:58i actually found a copy of the forged prescription for harrods pharmacy in meg's medical records
40:08and this is it so it says it's a private prescription um very very basic um an insane amount
40:21please dispense the following medications oromorph oral solution totaling 100 mils per day total 2800
40:31mils breakthrough oromorph oral solution total 3600 mils so that's 6400 mils of morphine
40:47in this one repeat prescription and have you looked at what the recommended dosage is well it said here
40:54before um the recommended dosage was that sorry the not even the recommended the maximum adult dose being
41:021.7 liters a month so this is more than three times what you're supposed to be having or the
41:08maximum
41:09and adults supposed to be on
41:17i remember sometimes gene would ask me to go to harrods and pick up more prescription
41:24i think we went a couple of times if not more
41:29the fact that it's harrods is so on brand for gene
41:33harrods was a status symbol they would shop in the toy store there and buy all of the gifts
41:40for the charity meg would go and buy designer handbags harrods was their day out of all the places
41:49to fraudulently gain access to drugs you do it in harrods i have so many questions about this i didn't
42:00even know they had a pharmacy there and so i contacted the coroners and asked if they would
42:08send me all of the evidence that was submitted to them and i'm so pleased i kept pushing and pushing
42:15for
42:15that because the inquest didn't contain half of this fraudulent prescriptions like the above
42:23appears to have been administered from april 2017 that's the same month that the charity commission
42:30open up an investigation into the charity so rather than lying low gene seems to be committing
42:41another fraud and it goes on for eight months
42:47that it's more than just having this fake prescription and kind of forging his signature
42:56they've gone to the extent of putting a telephone number on there as well
43:03when harrods pharmacy tried initially to contact professor tatani it put them through to someone
43:09called priscilla who they thought was his secretary which they do go on to explain spoke to his secretary
43:17priscilla who appears to be the aunt of megan or i imagine gene
43:25the crazy thing is that isn't even half of it
43:31gene was contacting the wholesalers that supply harrods pharmacy pretending to be harrods pharmacy
43:40and bulk ordering morphine so that's separate to the actual prescription for that yeah this is a whole
43:49other level and this is quite clearly gene doing this this says it here this is gene
43:56gene what on earth does she need wholesale morphine for there was a crime reference number as well so
44:03this was being investigated as a criminal case
44:09eventually gene was interviewed by the police about the forged prescription
44:15but it wasn't until after megan died i was later told by the police that
44:21she put the blame firmly on megan that that was the word she placed the blame firmly on megan
44:32ultimately there were no criminal charges so nobody has been held accountable for that
44:42i'm certainly not an expert but from everything i'm reading and seeing
44:46this is a case of munch house and by proxy she's been told that some of the symptoms that her
44:54daughter
44:55is feeling could be down to the fact that she's an opioid addict and rather than trying to help her
45:02and support her she gets her an even more insane amount of drugs this is disturbing it just looks like
45:11abuse
45:17munch house and by proxy is sinister being a parent who's been in a situation where you would literally
45:26do anything to save your child
45:30to then actively think that somebody would deliberately inflict harm
45:39the harm on their child it goes against everything that being a parent should be
45:48we didn't understand what it was to start with but as time went on we were trying to tell people
45:57that megan was vulnerable and had people listened the outcome could have been so much different
46:06i believe that megan would be here now if there was a way of getting her away from her mother
46:24there's a lot of stuff i've not talked about before i knew stuff that was going on in their lives
46:31that
46:34yeah no one else knew no i looked at any of this in about 10 years
46:41this is a box of photos and letters from meg and that she sent me over the years
46:48i think i was the one person that she knew she could rely on
46:56so i think this must have been so when everything kind of got more difficult and she was having a
47:05really rough time at home
47:10there was this other side to jean that no one ever saw no one ever heard about
47:22i've been holding on to a lot for a decade plus i need to talk about it and what i've
47:30seen
47:31i've mentioned it's been pretty intense and yeah yeah yeah yeah
47:39summer 2014 when meg was 19 like meg was
47:46at her lowest point that summer like just mentally she was
47:52really suicidal she just wanted to end it all
47:56meg was meant to be in hospital for a big op at the end of august she wasn't convinced she
48:01was
48:01going to make it start of that august meg ran away she came to mind
48:11i got a message one morning begging me to pick her up
48:15meg was like i need to leave i need to get away from my mom
48:21she was absolutely terrified of being alone with jean
48:30that's from meg i really really can't wait to get out of here i'm so frightened all the time
48:35sitting here shaking and trying to silently stop because she'll get angry if she hears
48:41i need a break from this so much last days are supposed to be magical not frightening and awful
48:51do you know what she said to me oh my life is going to be so good soon i'm so
48:56broken
48:58oh my life is going to be so good soon yeah who the fuck who says that to their daughter
49:04who says
49:04that to anyone who thinks she's about to die i'm not going back home because it's basically suicide
49:12and there are much much better ways to end things than by her i know that
49:18any of this any of this
49:25meg stayed for a few days didn't land too well with jean that she wasn't at home
49:35every now and then she would park up outside our house and just
49:39sit in her car outside sorry so she would come to your house yeah
49:46sometimes she'll just drive by and go again sometimes just park up for a bit and and wait
49:52yes that's fucking insane yeah stalker behave that's controlling your population yeah yeah
50:01and angry yeah so she went up to london and she was then gonna be staying with alex
50:08beth was kind of like she can't stay at mine anymore
50:14and when meg was at my house the police came
50:19because jean called the police and reported meg as a missing person
50:25i think jean was kind of trying to make a point trying to kind of almost strong arm meg into
50:31coming
50:31back home because also meg was 19 at that point
50:38me and beth had encouraged meg that if she really felt like she wasn't safe
50:42that this was the time to speak to the police about it and meg kind of downplayed why she didn't
50:50want to
50:50go home she didn't use the word abuse she didn't mention any kind of physical violence from her mom
51:02she didn't think that police would be able to do anything
51:06meg hadn't been in school since she was 13. she didn't have qualifications she wasn't able to work
51:13she was completely dependent on her mum so what happened with leg after that because consequences for
51:20her must have been yeah so she goes back into living with jean for the next four years
51:30she spoke every now and then but i didn't see her again you didn't see her again no that was
51:38the last
51:39time i saw meg why do you have guilt you have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about honestly
51:50jean was manipulative and she's rolling yeah and the second you stand up you were cut off
51:57i'm so grateful meg had you yeah that was just
52:05just wonder how
52:08things could have turned out differently
52:13i don't think i'll ever know what the full picture was what went on behind closed doors because
52:20meg's not here for me to ask but hearing meg's voice through her messages
52:27that she was so frightened was really hard
52:35i wish i'd known at the time i wish i could have done something she could have come and stayed
52:42with
52:42me she could have but but we didn't know i i didn't know and jean pushed us away
52:51she pushed beth away to control meg
53:00after meg passed away i felt
53:05for jean so i'd message jean on meg's birthday or on jean's birthday or when something reminded me of meg
53:14if you look through your messages with jean and if there's one that you feel you're happy to read
53:23i i wouldn't i wouldn't feel happy reading any of those messages i don't think i think i worried for
53:30a long time that i
53:31had done the wrong thing or like complicit in anything that could have gone wrong so then if
53:42if i still have questions in my mind kind of rehashing sympathy towards someone who
53:48has the answers to those questions is it's tough because it was kind of the one person at the time
53:55i felt i could confide in and talk to but if they were
54:03part of meg becoming ill the whole thing's just even more sickening to me
54:14what would you say to jean now if you met her honestly i don't know
54:21you know i don't i don't know she's lost her daughter which is you know devastating and she
54:27has to live with that and if she was part of that then she has to live with the guilt
54:34i haven't had contact with jean for years now
54:40but i did see her recently at a family funeral yeah there's her here she was well put together
54:49well dressed hair done she stood at the right back do you know where she is or what she's doing
54:58yeah
54:59here she is online uh as a uh social media influencer for the over 60s
55:07what like a blogger or something yeah she's reinvented herself using a fake name
55:15and there's no mention of believe in magic she does mention at times about caring for someone
55:23um and losing someone and caring for them but that is the only mention of meg
55:33for a long time i really wanted to get some answers from jean but then i kind of realized
55:40she was never going to tell me the truth
55:47i feel like with everything that i have all of this information that i've got together
55:53i should be able to take this to the police that someone should listen and take it seriously
56:00do you think then you'll get some kind of closure on it
56:04i don't know about closure but what i want and what i hope for is that meg gets that justice
56:12that she
56:21deserves
56:22she was a child when all of this started this wasn't her fault
56:31when i look back on it i feel really sorry for meg
56:36i feel really sorry for us and like our teenage selves as well
56:41but i just yeah i don't think i feel angry at her anymore
56:47nothing brought my children the joy like meg did and my children adored her and still adore her
56:57and i hate to think that meg was led to believe that she was poorly when she wasn't
57:09she didn't really have a voice but what i can do is make people listen to meg's story
57:20and be that voice for megan so that nobody has to go through even a fraction of what meg went
57:30through
57:55it's so
58:04it's not all but it's so perfect so you can enjoy it
58:05it's really important to be found
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