A mother who fought to the end

After her daughter, Sarah, took a fatal overdose in prison, Pauline Campbell, who died yesterday, became a tireless campaigner against the deaths of women in custody. Julie Bindel pays tribute to a woman who was driven by a passion for justice

Pauline Campbell: a tireless campaigner. Photograph: Graham Turner
 

Pauline Campbell, who was found dead yesterday morning, put the deaths of women in prison on the map. A formidable and tireless campaigner, she had personal experience of deaths in custody. Just over five years ago, her much-loved daughter Sarah, 18, died of a drug overdose at Styal prison. Campbell's body was discovered close to her daughter's grave in Oakhills cemetery in Malpas, Cheshire. As we went to press, it was not clear whether she had killed herself or died of other causes, but it looks bleak.

Sarah died after swallowing 100 sleeping tablets at HMP Styal, on the first night of her three-year sentence. She was Campbell's only child; indeed, her only family member.

Sarah's life had been beset by problems, just like the vast majority of women in prison. When she was four, her father walked out, leaving her with what Campbell described to me as "an intense feeling of loss". Much of Sarah's childhood was blighted by sexual abuse, at the hands of a distant relative. After being raped when she was 15, Sarah became clinically depressed, and turned to heroin to numb the pain. It was when trying to harass a man in the street for money to buy drugs that the course of Sarah's life took an even worse turn. The elderly man suffered a heart attack and died on the spot. Sarah was convicted of manslaughter.

- more -