Hampstead Heath dog walkers launch campaign to stop gay cruising
Dog walkers have been branded 'homophobes' for trying to stop gay men cruising on Hampstead Heath.
The popular walking spot has been at the centre of a row after residents put up signs in an attempt to deter gay men hooking up for sex in such close proximity to children playing.
Hampstead Heath has been a popular cruising spot since Victorian times, and the practice has continued since homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967.
The posters read: 'Cruising for sex? Homosexuality is legal. Use a hook up app like Grindr or Sniffies and get a room.'
They also feature a map of the park with a red circle labelled: 'This is not a cruising ground'.
Opponents of the posters have now hit back with claims they 'embolden homophobia ' and perpetuate 'inaccurate stereotypes' about gay people.
They claim cruising is part of a wider cultural movement and only happens on a very small part of the heath, which has been a 'special meeting place for over 200 years'.
Lola Pony, 34, performance trash artivist and music alchemist, told The Telegraph that the counter-protest was organised to counteract hate crime because the poster targeted a marginalised community.
'The poster creates division, and because of the current global political climate, can incite hate crimes. We are a vulnerable community. Our action is protection and emphasises care and human connection,' she said.
A video of the counter-protest showed four men exposing their bottoms as a blindfolded man squeezed their cheeks in a competition of 'whose bum is it anyway?', while police officers watched on. Nearby, people held up signs that read: 'This is a cruising ground, release the pups' and 'let's go outside'.
Nestled in the woodland, some distance away from the footpaths and open areas that are often packed with runners, buggies and picnickers, people meet at all times of the day for sexual encounters – but it is usually busier at night.
'I talked to some locals there and they didn't even know this [cruising] happens, some joined us for a while,' Ms Pony added.
'The times I have been in the heath, I haven't seen needles or condoms. Cruising in the area is frequent but it needs to be supported by safe sex measures [and] harm reduction.'
Other protesters said the posters are 'yet another attack on queer culture', which has frequently been targeted in hate crimes.
One speaker at the event stressed the importance of meeting people away from dating apps.
'The last thing that we need is to take away the face-to-face interaction of coming out in the sunshine like we're all doing today and meeting each other in real life,' they said. 'That's like a lifeline for some people. It's important. We need that.'
'This is my culture'
The event was planned by the activist group ACT UP London and This Is My Culture, a collective best known for the eponymous party they throw on the heath each year to mark the birthday of George Michael, its most famous cruiser.
The group takes its name from an encounter Michael had with a News of the World photographer while out walking the park: 'Are you gay'', Michael recounted asking the paparazzo in 2007. 'No? Then f--- off – this is my culture!'
The row has divided the public. One person said on a forum that the practice was no longer relevant. 'I understood the necessity before the internet; casual sex was incredibly difficult for gay men but what's left now are basically just voyeurs and exhibitionists,' they wrote.
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But for decades it has been mostly derelict, with the sprawling multi-storey complex now completely covered in graffiti and pockmarked with burn marks and smashed windows. The only person making use of the sheltered arcade that once linked up restaurants and a nightclub is a man urinating in a shuttered doorway. A steady stream of people are walking underneath the faded snooker club sign, through a decrepit passageway that remains in use as a link between a pedestrian bridge over Newcastle's Central Motorway and the city centre. At the top of a spiral staircase dropping people down into the busy shopping streets, a teenage boy sitting with a group of friends wearing hoodies and balaclavas says: 'It's been empty like this for years, now it's where the homeless people go.' The building sits on the edge of Newcastle city centre, which police data shows to have the highest rate of criminal damage and arson in England and Wales per capita. More than 1,500 such crimes were recorded in the three years to September, and 83 per cent have been left unsolved. Walking towards the city centre from the Central Snooker Club building, it becomes apparent that several large office and leisure complexes have fallen empty, and have since become targets for vandalism, including an incident in 2023 which saw a number of teenagers investigated at the time over suspected arson when a blaze forced the partial closure of a major road. Weeks later, a derelict care home was partially destroyed in an arson attack north of the city centre. Opposite a grand building that once housed a police station and court, a row of local businesses have their metal shutters covered in graffiti. The former police station is being turned into a luxury hotel. Shopkeeper Ali Khan wishes it had never shut. 'During Covid, a lot of people ended up closing and not being able to restart due to the financial pressure,' he adds. 'What happens is there are a lot of homeless people who will have a look in the empty buildings. The longer they're empty, the more of a play haven they are.' Asked whether he reports vandalism to the police, Khan scoffs and says that when he reported a man who came into his corner shop and threatened him with a machete, officers took three days to respond. Across Britain, that's a common complaint. Many incidents of arson and vandalism are never fully investigated, and suspects are not identified in 60 per cent of cases. Just 4 per cent of recorded incidents see a charge, down from 9 per cent almost a decade ago. In Newcastle, around the corner from where the Government is constructing a new multi-million pound headquarters for HMRC, Pacific House - once the city's largest restaurant - sits empty. Over the road, a closed branch of Frankie and Benny's still displays a sign on the door saying it is temporarily shut because of the pandemic. Chairs remain at the tables, and photos on the wall. But vandals do not always confine themselves to derelict businesses. The nearby Chop Chop noodle shop has chipboard covering a floor-to-ceiling smash to its glass frontage. A member of staff serving customers their lunch says she came into work one morning to find the damage, but has no idea why the restaurant was targeted. 'We tried to look at the footage on our camera but we couldn't see anything, we couldn't see the person's face,' she adds. Newcastle city council said the city was undergoing 'significant investment', with several major projects under construction that hope to attract new businesses and more visitors, and see empty buildings reoccupied. The derelict Central Snooker Club building is earmarked for demolition, and plans will see it replaced with a 29-storey residential tower, a new hotel, bars and restaurants. The council said recent months had seen a reduction in criminal damage in the city centre, while Northumbria Police said it was working to address 'pockets of disorder' around disused buildings. Neighbourhood Inspector Karen Madge urged locals to report offences, adding: 'We want Newcastle city centre to remain a great place for people to live and work in, as well as visit.' But back at the corner shop, Khan wants action. 'The council and the police have a lot to answer for in the city,' he says. 'I've lived here my whole life, I'm a born and bred Geordie and I've seen things go from bad to worse. It's a shame because we have a beautiful city, it just needs the right people looking after it.' The capital's car theft hotspot In front of rows of perfect white stucco London terraces facing an attractive garden square, an assortment of luxury cars gleam in the sun. This single residential street in Kensington is home to a Rolls Royce, a Maserati, multiple Porsches, Jaguars and a range of high-end BMW, Audi and Mercedes models. Some of the owners have fitted steering wheel locks, while others are trying to deter thieves with direct messages. 'Nothing of value has been left in this vehicle,' reads a bright yellow sticker branded with the Metropolitan Police logo on a Mercedes dashboard. Local residents, it appears, are keenly aware that they live in one of Britain's vehicle theft hotspots. The borough of Kensington and Chelsea had, behind Westminster, the highest rate of the car-related crime per population in England and Wales across 2024. Particularly badly hit zones include desirable postcodes around Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Sloane Square and South Kensington. In a smart mews around the corner from Gloucester Road Tube station, the Monaco of Kensington repair shop frequently sees the fall-out of the crime. Owner Anthony Barrell, 64, says customers come in every few weeks saying their cars have disappeared, while others have to book in repairs for smashed windows and stolen parts. 'We get people that have had high-end cars like Range Rovers taken – they come in to tell me, so that we don't start ringing them up saying 'your car is due a service',' he says. 'It happens a couple of times a month … It's common knowledge that this area is big for it. People phone the police and report their car has been stolen, and the police will say 'ok, here's your crime number' and that's it. They haven't got the manpower to investigate, and at the end of the day it's a car covered by insurance.' Barrell has seen trends in car theft change during his 15 years working in the repair shop, from manual break-ins targeting all kinds of models, to tech-savvy criminals targeting particularly desirable cars to profit from selling the vehicles or breaking them down for parts. 'The cars that are in this borough tend to be the high-end cars, and it's the high-end cars that get stolen,' he says. 'But the methods have changed, because now the criminals are more advanced.' Barrell believes the arrival of keyless technology has made the crime easier, because thieves can now 'trick' cars and quietly drive them away. Criminal gadgets allow two-person teams to pick up key signals from inside homes and relay them to the target vehicle, allowing them to unlock and start cars without having to break windows or burgle houses for keys. Increasingly, manufacturers and drivers are fitting cars with trackers so that if they are stolen, they can be tracked down. The revolution in car security has led to two decades of sharp declines in thefts. However, as with other crimes of this kind, the police appear increasingly unable to deal with such vehicles being stolen. Just one in 50 cases of a car being pinched result in a charge. In 2016, the corresponding figure was one in 15. Mike Boynes, from the Global Telemetrics tracking firm, says Kensington and Chelsea is its number one London location for recovering vehicles, which have an average value of £79,000. 'Gangs will have a list of cars that they need to find, and the easiest approach is to walk around Kensington and Chelsea,' Boynes adds. 'All thefts reported to us in the borough last year were keyless thefts. You can literally get in the car and have it away within three or four minutes, and you don't need to break any windows or anything like that. I think that makes it easier.' Boynes believes that while many high-value cars are shipped out of the UK to order, others are stolen to be stripped down for parts that can then be sold on. The Metropolitan Police said it had seen a 'spike' in the theft of cars in Kensington and Chelsea, and was increasing patrols in hotspot areas and investigating suspected perpetrators. Chief Inspector John Hine, from the borough's Safer Neighbourhood Team, added: 'We're also working closely with the public to offer crime prevention advice, and working with partners including the council to make best use of CCTV and street signage opportunities. 'We encourage victims of theft to report any instances to the police as soon as possible, so that we can attempt to trace the suspects and direct our patrols into the correct locations.' The tourist town ruined by rampant antisocial behaviour Blackpool town centre is quiet, with a grey Monday afternoon seeing seagulls outnumber people in the main shopping precinct as a cold wind blows off the Irish Sea. The seaside resort, where many shops and cafes are shuttered, is seemingly waiting to burst into life for the summer holidays. As a woman working at a cheerful souvenir shop on the seafront remarks: 'People come to Blackpool to have a good time.' But the alcohol-fuelled partying that accompanies many visits to the town comes with a significant side-effect – anti-social behaviour. Police data puts Blackpool town centre as the national capital of the crime type, with almost 5,700 incidents recorded in the three years to September. The category can cover anything from rowdiness to drug misuse, harassment, noise complaints and neighbour disputes. Particular hotspots sit on streets with the heaviest concentrations of bars, clubs and hotels, but also cross over into more residential areas. Sitting among rows of sambuca-flavoured rock, colourful buckets and spades and saucy fridge magnets, the souvenir shop assistant says that between the frequent holidaymakers and stag and hen dos, life in the town can be hard. 'You see homeless people on the floor begging and you get a lot of drunks, but we don't think anything of it,' she adds. At a branch of McDonald's sitting near the bottom of the famous Blackpool Tower, an employee emptying bins is not surprised to learn that the restaurant has been identified as one of the town's anti-social behaviour hotspots. 'We have had a stabbing here before, and there are always homeless people causing a ruckus,' he says. 'Sometimes they sit at the door and get in people's way. We get druggies and drunk people, stuff happens way too often. It's that kind of town.' Inside the nearby North Pier amusement arcade, the manager is keeping a watchful eye for potential trouble. 'In the [tourist] season, you'll get everything – stealing things off other customers, people pushing people out of the way and fighting for the money out of the machines,' says the man, who did not want to be named. 'Sometimes we ring the police, but we tend to just bar them.' A recent report released by Blackpool council said work aiming to prevent anti-social behaviour in the area was targeting people suffering from 'vulnerability and multiple disadvantage'. 'The cohort of people discussed include, but is not limited to, the town's aggressive beggars and rough sleepers causing a nuisance,' it added. But Kim Hughes, of the Blackpool-based homelessness charity Streetlife, disputes the assessment. 'It is absolutely not the case that those experiencing homelessness are responsible for anti-social behaviour in the town – if anything they're more likely to be a victim,' she adds. 'Blackpool keeps hitting the top of the charts regarding homelessness, which is a shame because it's an amazing town with a lot of people working really hard to turn things around.' The town is not alone in its struggles. About half of all of England and Wales's 7,264 neighbourhoods – as demarcated by the ONS – report at least a hundred cases of anti-social behaviour every year. A quarter report at least 200. Despite this, police response in the shape of fines, cautions or community resolutions have plummeted in recent years, from 328,448 in 2015 to 212,494 in 2024. In 2015, officers handed out 17,982 fines for 'drunk and disorderly' conduct compared to 1,508 last year. Meanwhile, just 404 people were penalised for causing distress, down from 8,263 a decade ago. In Blackpool, Hughes says locals endure 'absolute carnage' in periods that involve an influx of visitors drinking heavily, adding: 'There are certain things that are brought into the town because of the [tourist] season and the lively nightlife and alcohol, but we have our own homegrown problems that are generally rooted in poverty and a lack of options.' A spokesperson for Lancashire Constabulary said the force was working with the council and other agencies to tackle anti-social behaviour and was running a dedicated campaign. Paula Burdess, Blackpool council's lead for community safety, said it was trying to take a 'proactive, public health-led approach to preventing and intervening in anti-social behaviour'. She said some areas of the town had seen a significant reduction in recorded incidents following increased police patrols, adding: 'We are working to ensure that our town centre remains a vibrant, secure, and enjoyable destination for residents, businesses, and visitors alike.' The Welsh city where 98 per cent of bike thefts go unsolved In the eight years he has been running his bicycle repair businessnear Cardiff Central railway station, Dave Hann has frequently found himself at the forefront of the Welsh capital's bike theft problem. Within months of opening Motörlegs Cycle Workshop, the 56-year-old's apprentice told him that he recognised one of the bikes being fixed – and it was not owned by the man who brought it in. The pair called the police and arranged for the true owner to be at the shop when the suspected thief returned, but he 'saw the police, turned on his heels and ran' before officers could arrest him,' Hann says. Sitting beneath dozens of bikes dangling from racks on the ceiling of the former Victorian coach house, he recalls a recent incident where a woman was paying for her son's bike to be fixed when it was swiped from directly outside the shop. The business sits on the edge of one of the two worst hotspots for bicycle theft in England and Wales. In the three years to September, more than 1,300 thefts were reported to police and locals believe the figure is a vast under-estimate. Of the recorded crimes, 98 per cent went unsolved. Cyclists who have had their bikes, or parts of them, stolen are frequent customers of Hann's. While he is speaking, a young woman walks in asking for Hann to check over her bike, which no longer works properly after being recovered from a thief. Other customers come in with their bikes missing wheels, or with broken chains and frames from where criminals have tried to physically break locks. 'It happens on an almost daily basis,' Hann says. 'Even if people use D-locks round the post, the thieves have got portable angle grinders now.' He believes there is a roaring trade in both stolen bicycles and parts, including wheels and saddles, which are being sold for cash by people with drug and alcohol abuse issues. Hann reports any crime he suspects to the police, but rarely gets a response. 'I think there is less enforcement than there used to be,' he says. 'I'm not blaming the police, I'm blaming austerity – they've got less resources and they've got to choose their battles. 'But some people don't have a car, and their bike is their only means of transport. It's despicable.' Nationally, fewer than one in 50 of the 60,000-plus annual bike thefts are ever solved. Vast areas of England and Wales did not see a single individual punished for such criminality last year. Back in Cardiff, grey and drizzly weather hasn't deterred numerous cyclists from whizzing along segregated lanes around the city centre, and pedalling through nearby Bute Park. In the busy Queen Street shopping area, broken D-locks and chains lie on the damp ground by empty bike racks, with the bicycles once attached to them long gone. Inside the nearby Bike Lock cafe, founder Tom Overton is well aware of the risks, having had his own bike stolen six times before starting the business two years ago. It offers secure storage for up to 50 bicycles, alongside showers and facilities for office workers and train commuters. 'We're giving people peace of mind,' the 52-year-old says. 'A lot of people who use us come in and say, 'I had a bike and I got it stolen a few weeks ago'.' Overton believes that bike theft will increase as Cardiff becomes more cycle-friendly, with the spread of segregated cycle lanes and infrastructure. 'More and more people are cycling, so theft is going up and up,' he adds. 'I think there's also more confidence among the criminals that they will get away with it, coupled with fear in people over making a citizens' arrest.' Overton only remembers reporting one of his six bike thefts to the police, and believes the official figures are a 'huge underestimate' of the problem. South Wales Police has been distributing advice on how to prevent theft by double-locking bikes, removing wheels and saddles, using secure parking and registering or marking bikes so they can be recovered. 'We share concerns about bike thefts in Cardiff and welcome proposals by Cardiff council to improve the availability and security of cycle parking across the city,' a spokesperson said.
The Guardian
a day ago
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A perfect storm of errors meant Darren was placed in an unsafe cell. He died two days later
Warning: this story contains descriptions of self-harm and some readers might find it distressing. When Darren Brandon was detained at Melbourne assessment prison, a perfect storm of missed paperwork and a lack of clear intake procedure between police and the jail meant he was assessed as being low risk of self-harm. This could not have been further from the truth, according to his brother Steve. Darren lived with a serious brain injury after a motorcycle accident. It had left him with memory problems and bouts of depression. The family home where he lived had been sold after the death of his mother and Darren was between accommodation. 'Everything in our family just went upside down,' Steve tells Guardian Australia. In June 2018, when he found out Darren had been picked up by police, Steve says he and his father thought, 'Look, at least he's safe. He's not sleeping in his car on the street somewhere. He's safe. He's in care.' But the 51-year-old was placed in a cell with a known hanging point and self-harmed the next morning. He died in hospital two days later. Darren's death is one of at least 57 across 19 Australian prisons from hanging points that were known to prison authorities but not removed, as revealed by a Guardian Australia investigation. But his story also exemplifies what experts say is the broader story behind Australia's hanging cells crisis. None of the 248 deaths examined by the Guardian could merely be blamed on the presence of a ligature point. In most cases, those prisoners' placement in an unsafe cell was just the final failure in a litany of them. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email The investigation has also revealed repeated failures to properly assess, review or treat inmates with mental ill health, meaning their suicide risk was either missed or not properly mitigated. Of the 57 deaths, Guardian Australia has identified 31 cases where inmates who had been previously deemed at risk of suicide were sent into cells with known hanging points. There were 13 cases where inmates who had previously attempted self-harm in custody were sent into such cells. Guardian Australia has spent five months investigating the deadly toll of Australia's inaction to remove hanging points from its jails, a key recommendation of the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. The main finding – that 57 inmates died using known ligature points that had not been removed – was made possible by an exhaustive examination of coronial records relating to 248 hanging deaths spanning more than 20 years. Reporters combed through large volumes of coronial records looking for instances where a hanging point had been used repeatedly in the same jail. They counted any death that occurred after prison authorities were made aware of that particular hanging point. Warnings were made via a prior suicide or suicide attempt, advice from their own staff or recommendations from coroners and other independent bodies. Guardian Australia also logged how many of the 57 inmates were deemed at risk of self-harm or had attempted suicide before they were sent into cells with known hanging points. In adherence with best practice in reporting on this topic, Guardian Australia has avoided detailed descriptions of suicide. In some instances, so that the full ramifications of coronial recommendations can be understood, we have made the decision to identify types and locations of ligature points. We have done this only in instances where we feel the public interest in this information being available to readers is high. In one 2018 New South Wales case an inmate known only as GS had warned officers he wished to kill himself, begged for psychiatric review for months, and was placed into a cell at Goulburn jail with a hanging point that had been used in five previous hanging deaths. That ligature point has since been covered. In another, an inmate assessed as having a high chronic risk of self-harm, and who had attempted suicide months earlier, in 2007 was placed into a cell at Sydney's Long Bay jail with what a coroner described as an 'obvious hanging point'. Staff at Arthur Gorrie correctional centre in Brisbane were told that an inmate had 'expressed an intention to commit suicide by hanging if the opportunity arose'. In October 2007 that inmate was placed into a medical unit that contained an obvious hanging point that had been used by another inmate in an attempted suicide just two months earlier. The hanging point was allowed to remain, despite one guard telling his superiors it needed 'urgent attention before we do have a suicide hanging'. The overwhelming majority of hangings from known ligatures points involved inmates on remand. Thirty-six of the 57 inmates were on remand, or awaiting trial or sentencing, which is known to be a time of elevated risk for mental ill health. Most people who experience incarceration have mental health problems but investment in prison mental health care is 'woefully inadequate', according to Stuart Kinner, the head of the Justice Health Group at Curtin University and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. The fact that prisoners do not have access to Medicare 'is a somewhat perverse situation', Kinner says. 'We have a system that concentrates a very high burden of mental health issues and simultaneously almost uniquely excludes those people from a key source of funding for mental health care.' It is unlikely that Australia will ever be able to make all areas in all prisons 'ligature free', he says. 'Therefore, we don't just prevent suicide by removing ligatures, we prevent suicide by providing care and connection.' Ed Petch led the State Forensic Mental Health Service in Western Australia before returning to clinical work as a psychiatrist in Hakea – the state's main remand prison. He says that while the removal of known ligature points is important, improving access to health services should be the primary focus, in and out of prison. 'We had more mentally ill people in the prison than Graylands hospital,' he says, referring to the state's main mental health hospital. It has 109 beds. Hakea housed 1,143 men in mid-2024. Between 2018 and 2023, Petch says he saw more than 12 people every day. 'They weren't adequate mental health evaluations,' he says. 'It was quick in, see what the people are like, decide what treatment to give them and see them in a few weeks' time, if I was lucky. 'The rate of mental illness – acute mental illness and psychosis and depression and loads of mental health disorders – was absolutely vast.' A scathing report published in February by WA's Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services emphasised that Hakea is overcapacity and a prison in crisis. After a 2024 visit, the inspector, Eamon Ryan, formed a view that prisoners in Hakea were being treated 'in a manner that was cruel, inhuman, or degrading' and noted suicides, suicide attempts and assaults. There were 13 attempted suicides in the first quarter of that year, the same number as took place in the whole of 2023. Physical and mental health services 'were overwhelmed', with a nurse-to-prisoner ratio of approximately one to 86, and only three full time-equivalent psychiatrist positions for the state's entire prison system. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Often the most severely mentally ill people are swept up by police, Petch says. 'The courts can't send them to hospital because they are full – or too disturbed – and cannot release them to no address or back to the streets so have no option but to remand them into custody where it's assumed they'll get the care they need. But that assumption is quite often false.' The WA Department of Justice said it was 'expanding the range of services provided to meet the needs of an increased prisoner population, including those with complex mental health issues'. This includes 36 beds in a new mental health support unit. A statewide program to remove ligature points had been running since 2005, a spokesperson said. Experts largely agree that a focus on hanging points, at the expense of all other problems, would be dangerous. Programs to modify cell design are expensive and can leave rooms inhospitable and cold, something that in turn may cause a deterioration in inmates' mental health. But Neil Morgan, a former WA inspector of custodial services, says a balance must be struck. 'I came across examples where changes were being made to cells … where the new beds were riddled with hanging points,' he says. 'Now that struck me as absolutely ludicrous in this day and age. Changes were only made after I raised my concerns.' Darren Brandon was a brilliant mechanic before his brain injury, Steve says. He had a coffee machine at his workshop and loved to host visitors and chat. 'He worked on Porsches and BMWs, all the high-end stuff,' he says. 'But he could work on anything.' But the motorbike accident hit him hard. The coroner noted his repeated attempts at suicide and self-harm. 'The up and down, the depression – this was the side-effects of his brain injury,' Steve says. '[Some days] he could go back to being like a standup comedian. I mean, he was so sharp and just witty and funny.' After the family home was sold, Darren began a residential rehabilitation program but left, and was reported to police as a missing person. When he went to a police station accompanied by a case manager, he was taken into custody due to a missed court date. Prison staff were not fully aware of his history of self-harm. This meant he was given a lower risk rating and was placed in a unit with a known hanging point and which was not under hourly observation. The coroner overseeing the inquest found that the design of Darren's cell was the 'proximate cause' of his death. He wrote that the 'rail inside the cell was known to be a ligature point well prior to Darren's death'. A spokesperson for Victoria's Department of Justice and Community Safety said the state's prisons had strong measures in place to reduce self-harm and suicide, including the use of on-site specialist mental health staff and training in the identification of at-risk inmates. Inmates are now required to undergo a mental health risk assessment within 24 hours of arriving in custody and are seen by a mental health professional within two hours of being identified at risk of self-harm. The state government has aimed to build all new cells in accordance with safer design principles for more than 20 years. 'The Victorian Government continues to invest in modern prison facilities to improve the rehabilitation and safety of people in custody,' the spokesperson said. Steve and his wife, Annie, keep a photo of Darren on their fridge. There are so many what-ifs. So many moments when something could have gone differently. 'If he'd been assessed properly, they would have said, 'Oh, this guy's had some attempts in the past, brain injury … OK, let's put him in a safer spot where there's no ligature points,'' Steve says. 'He'd still be alive.' Annie says: 'The system certainly failed him, and us as a family.' In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
