A coroner has called on the director of public prosecutions to provide details of her investigation into why a criminal case was pursued against a rape complainant with mental health problems, who then went on to kill herself.
The west London coroner, Chinyere Inyama, adjourned the inquest into the death of Eleanor De Freitas and said he would await a report from Alison Saunders, head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), on bringing a case for perverting the course of justice against the 23-year-old woman.
Saunders has been asked by the coroner to provide the full remit of her investigation, by Monday. Inyama also ordered full reports from police, De Freitas’s doctor and mental health team.
De Freitas, who had bipolar disorder and had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act in the past, killed herself in April this year, three days before she was due to face trial in a criminal prosecution, initiated by her alleged rapist.
He spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on a private prosecution accusing her of making up the rape claim, which the CPS later took over. The CPS pursued the case despite police refusing to mount an inquiry into claims De Freitas had made up the allegation, and in the knowledge of her psychiatric condition. In notes left for her family, De Freitas talked of her fear at having to give evidence.
Speaking before the hearing David de Freitas, Eleanor’s father, blamed the CPS for causing her death. “We can see no reason whatsoever why the CPS pursued Eleanor. If the CPS had put a stop to it at the time I would still have a daughter. She would not be dead. It is as clear as that.”
De Freitas was due to face trial at Southwark crown court, in London, on 7 April. She took her own life on 4 April.
Saunders said on Thursday that she would personally investigate why a decision was made to proceed with the prosecution. She said she was saddened by the death of De Freitas and had asked the legal team involved for a full explanation. She said she would welcome a meeting with the family to discuss the case and the law surrounding it.
David de Freitas welcomed the adjournment of the court hearing. He is fighting for a fuller inquest that examines whether the CPS’s decision to prosecute caused his daughter’s death.
After the hearing, he said: “I am pleased that the DPP is now starting to take this matter seriously. I had written to the DPP before and I got a standard acknowledgement, and then heard nothing more.”
Harriet Wistrich, his lawyer, added that the family welcomed Saunders’s invitiation for a meeting.
De Freitas had accused a male associate of rape in January 2013. She was interviewed and the alleged attacker was arrested and bailed. But the case did not proceed because the police did not consider there was a realistic chance of conviction.
It was then that the alleged attacker began a private prosecution against De Freitas, claiming she made up the allegation.
