🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
This is about my little sister, Katie, who I have been fighting for since the day she died.
This is for the people who quietly judged her and assumed she somehow brought this upon herself because of her lifestyle.
Katie struggled with her mental health. She was autistic, lived with BPD and Bi Polar. Katie did self-medicate with alcohol, but that was because she wasn’t getting the support she desperately needed. Alcohol became a way of coping with the pain she was carrying and a way of masking what was really going on inside her mind. Like many vulnerable young people, there were also occasions when she used drugs in social settings. We have never denied that. But that does not make Katie a hardened drug user, nor does it mean she somehow deserved what happened to her.
What Katie needed was understanding, protection, and effective support. Instead, too often she was left to manage overwhelming struggles on her own.
Far too many people looked at Katie’s struggles and reduced her to labels. Instead of seeing a daughter, sister, auntie, friend, and a human being who was vulnerable and needed support, they saw her difficulties and made assumptions. Some even seemed to believe that what happened to her was somehow inevitable.
It wasn’t.
Katie mattered. Her life mattered. Her death mattered.
What has been hardest to accept is not only losing Katie, but witnessing the judgement that followed. There are people who wrote her off because of her mental health struggles, her vulnerabilities, or mistakes she made during her life. Some people seemed willing to accept that because Katie had difficulties, her death somehow deserved less scrutiny.
If you were one of those people, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Nobody deserves to be dismissed because they are vulnerable. Nobody deserves less compassion because they have mental health difficulties. Nobody deserves less justice because of how others choose to label them.
Ask yourself this: if this was your sister, your daughter, your mother, your son, or your best friend, and you genuinely believed there was a third party involved in their death, what would you do? Would you simply stay silent? Would you stop asking questions because you were told there was nothing more to investigate? Or would you fight with everything you had to find the truth?
That is exactly what we have done and exactly what we will continue to do.
I sincerely hope that none of those people ever find themselves in the position our family has been in. I hope you never have to bury someone you love and then spend years fighting for answers while feeling like their life has been judged rather than valued. Because if it was your loved one, you would be doing exactly what we are doing now.
For nearly two years, our family has fought to have Katie’s death properly investigated. Throughout that time, we have faced doubt, criticism, and attempts to dismiss our concerns. We firmly believe that assumptions made about Katie’s vulnerabilities and lifestyle contributed to a failure to properly recognise the seriousness of the circumstances surrounding her death.
Katie was failed not only in death, but while she was alive. Lancashire County Council Adult Social Care, NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Foundation Trust (LSCFT), Inspire, and NHS mental health services were all involved in Katie’s life. These were the very organisations and professionals entrusted with supporting and safeguarding vulnerable people, yet Katie remained vulnerable, exposed to exploitation, and without the level of protection and support she desperately needed. We will be actively pursuing answers regarding those failings and expect full openness, transparency, and accountability from all those involved. If those answers are not provided willingly, we are prepared to pursue every available legal avenue. We have already sought legal advice and will not hesitate to take further action where necessary.
Now, with the case officially reopened, it proves that the questions we have been asking all along deserved to be heard.
The decision to reopen the investigation validates what we have believed from the very beginning – that there were serious unanswered questions surrounding Katie’s death and that further investigation was needed.
This does not bring Katie back.
It does not erase the pain our family has lived with every single day since losing her.
But it does give us renewed hope that the truth will finally be pursued with the seriousness it always deserved.
Katie deserved better.
She deserved to be protected.
She deserved to be listened to.
She deserved the support she was asking for.
She deserved a thorough investigation from the very beginning.
Most of all, she deserves justice.
To everyone who has supported us, believed us, signed petitions, shared Katie’s story, and stood beside us when others doubted us — thank you. Your support has helped us keep going when giving up would have been easier.
Katie’s life mattered.
Katie matters.
And we will continue fighting for Katie, for the truth, and for justice until every question has been answered and every possible avenue has been explored.
None of this would of been achievable without the support from James Brannigan and his team at The Katie Trust ❤️🌻
Please read newly published articles with The Sun News & Beyond Radio Lancaster
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/39284737/sister-murdered-cops-new-probe/