Mental Health Campaign: Susan begged for help, instead she was sent to prison

Susan Jones was only 11 when she started self-harming after years of mental and physical abuse at the hands of her disturbed mother.

By the age of 17, the mentally ill teenager was hooked on drink and drugs and had tried to kill herself by overdosing nearly a dozen times. But instead of getting the care she needed, Susan was sent to prison for assault.

Locked up alone in her cell for hours a day, she cut herself so badly that prison medical staff had to take her to hospital for blood transfusions on a regular basis.

Now 20, she is a patient in a psychiatric hospital, is responding well to treatment and has not self-harmed for a while. But witness statements seen by The Independent on Sunday reveal how custody contributed to the deterioration of Susan's mental state.

They document how she thought she was going to "flip" while in prison and how she begged to be moved to a safe cell.

One statement reads: "I felt like harming myself every day. I had to keep moving otherwise I would feel sick. My time [in custody] has not helped me and I feel that my mind is getting worse. The worst times are being stuck on the segregation unit with nothing to do, which makes my mind mad. I don't want to be in that situation again."

The Government will open an official inquiry next month into Susan's treatment while in prison in response to lobbying from campaigners. Stephen Shaw, the prisons and probation ombudsman, will chair the investigation and hear evidence of how Susan was let down by social services despite her history of self-harm.

Susan, who is now in Rampton hospital in Nottinghamshire, was sent to a young offenders institution in 2004 after she and a friend tied up a woman who owed them money.

At the time, Susan was living alone in a council flat without any support after being passed around from placement to placement. Her deteriorating mental health had been extensively documented by social services, especially her self-harm. Susan was only a teenager when she was first seen by a psychiatrist who prescribed anti-depressants and tranquillisers.

There is no doubt that her dysfunctional family background contributed to her mental decline. Her mother tried to hang herself and Susan was forced to watch as her mother axed her father in the head. So bad was her home life that Susan actually asked to be taken into care because of her mother's aggression.

The Howard League, which has been acting for Susan, said her case highlights the "medieval" treatment of children in prison and added that the failure to provide appropriate care contravenes child protection laws. The prison reform charity, which has spent several years pressing for an official inquiry, is demanding that children under the age of 18 not be put in prison service custody.

"Susan needed safety for her own sake and a caring environment," said Frances Crook, the director of the Howard League. "Prisons can't offer that. It's medieval and a kind of child abuse, and the general public is unaware of that."

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