The father of Eva Rausing, the wealthy American socialite whose death made headlines around the world, has accused her sister-in-law – the author of a forthcoming memoir about Eva’s drug addiction – of contributing to her decline, and questioned “the agenda and objectives” of her book.
Eva, the 48-year-old wife of the billionaire Tetra Pak heir Hans Kristian Rausing, was found dead in 2012, under piles of bedding and plastic in a squalid room in the couple’s London mansion. The body was only found two months after she died, during a police search of the property when Hans Kristian was arrested on suspicion of possessing Class A drugs. He later pleaded guilty to preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body and was given a suspended sentence. An inquest found that his wife had died from the effects of cocaine on a damaged heart.
Mayhem, a memoir about the Rausings by Hans Kristian’s sister Sigrid, is scheduled for publication at the beginning of September. Eva’s father Tom Kemeny released a statement on Tuesday opposing the book, damning it as “self-indulgent and pretentious” and saying it had “greatly harmed and upset the family”.
Kemeny alleged that his family had been trying for 18 months to prevent Sigrid from publishing Mayhem, as they felt her depiction of the couple was “totally distorted”. Describing Eva as “a kind, warm-hearted and loving mother who did much to help others who battled with addiction”, Kemeny said Sigrid’s book “overlooks this side of Eva’s personality in favour of its author’s justification for instigating a painful legal battle to take Eva’s children from her”.
Sigrid, a philanthropist and the editor of Granta magazine, temporarily took in the couple’s four children after rehab centre staff contacted social services because Hans Kristian had left before completing treatment, as was required by child protection legislation. In Mayhem, Rausing quotes letters in which Eva begged her not to adopt the children, at one point allegedly contacting social services “claiming that [my husband] Eric was homosexual, and that I was depressed and on drugs”, in an attempt to stop the adoption.
In Mayhem, Sigrid says: “I write, knowing that writing at all may be seen as a betrayal of family; a shaming, exploitative, act … Anyone reading this who thinks so, please know that I thought it before you. Anyone reading this who thinks so, consider also how we were brought up: wealth, privacy, silence, discretion.”
Asking readers to “question the agenda and objectives of Sigrid’s memoir”, Kemeny said: “She feels she needs to tell the world, like a catharsis, that she was right and somehow saved the children by removing them from their parental home. I think she wants the public to praise and absolve her.
“We feel that Eva would be alive today if the children had not been taken from their loving mother, who was battling addiction. The unbearable pain of being separated from them ultimately led to her death, in our opinion. My family have long ago forgiven her and the Rausing family but the publication of this book has brought to the surface again very difficult feelings from which we have tried to recover. We need to concentrate on the future and free our hearts of resentment. We forgive but do not forget.”
After meeting in rehab and marrying in 1992, Eva and Hans Kristian had a long and public battle with addiction, with Eva arrested in 2008 after attempting to smuggle crack cocaine and heroin into the US embassy in London in her handbag.
“Relapse does not automatically label someone a failure, and it does not mean that they lose the capacity to love, or feel pain,” Kemeny’s statement reads. “I do not deny that Hans Kristian and Eva relapsed. However, I do wholeheartedly deny that their relapse made them bad or unloving parents, which is in stark contrast to the descriptions in Sigrid Rausing’s book.”
In a statement, Sigrid told the Guardian: “Any parent losing a child goes through unimaginable pain. I have some sympathy for Tom Kemeny’s wish to protect his daughter’s memory, but most of the claims he makes about me, and my book, in his recent statement are simply not true.”
Sigrid disputed Kemeny’s accusations that her gaining custody of the children increased pressure on Eva in her last days, and denied that she imposed “onerous and insulting” conditions on her subsequent visits. She added: “Tom Kemeny also denies that a drug relapse makes people bad parents, which he must know is an astonishing denial of the reality of drug addiction. However much parents love their children, if they are suffering from drug addiction they are not able to take care of them, or, indeed, of their household.”
She said Mayhem is not “mainly about Eva – it’s about the experience of living with addiction in the family, and watching people you love self-destruct in front of your eyes” … I was trying to find a language for that experience, and to understand and think about what it means to live with addiction … That is, I think, an important conversation to have – but it’s not an easy or a comfortable one.”
The Kemeny family confirmed to the Guardian through their lawyers that they will not launch a legal challenge to prevent Mayhem being published in September.
