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How their lives went terribly wrong

Hasan Suroor

The main question in the debate over the Ipswich murders is: what made five women from `normal' families take to drugs?

— PHOTO: AP

Floral tributes for one of the five women killed, on a barrier overlooking a stream near Ipswich, England.

FIVE YOUNG women from "normal" families inexplicably turn to drugs and subsequently take to walking the streets in order to feed their addiction. And, then, one by one they are killed for no apparent reason — their naked bodies are found in different locations, in some cases not far from where they grew up, went to school, had boyfriends. and dreamed of a happy life.

Except one who came from a broken family, others were described as "normal" and "happy" girls. One was only 19 and wanted to be a pop star; another aspired to be a model; a third wanted to be a beautician; and one of them — daughter of a businessman — trained in social healthcare.

So, what happened? Why did they end up the way they did? Were they victims of circumstances? Or casualties of the choices they freely made for reasons they alone knew? And, most crucially, could they have been saved?

People across Britain are asking these questions in the wake of the murders of five young street-walkers in Ipswich, a quiet and picturesque tourist town in the east of England, famous for its medieval architecture. Their bodies were found on separate rural sites around Ipswich between December 2 and 13 — days after they mysteriously disappeared one after another. Until December 2 when the first body was found, nobody even knew they had gone missing.

The killings have revived memories of "Jack the Ripper" who struck in the red light area of East London over the summer and autumn of 1888, and the "Yorkshire Ripper" who murdered a number of sex workers in Yorkshire in the 1970s and early 1980s. After two weeks of nationwide hunt, one man — Stephen Wright, a local 48-year-old fork-lift driver — has been charged with murdering all five women. Another man, arrested earlier in the week, has been released.

Meanwhile, the focus of debate remains on the personal histories of the victims — Gemma Adams (25); Tania Nicol (19); Anneli Alderton (24), a single mother; Annette Nicholls (29); and Paula Clennell (24). As their faces stare out of newspaper front pages and television screens with endless dissection of their family background and private lives, opinion is divided on whether so much media coverage is titillation-by-other-means, or a serious attempt to understand how their lives went so disastrously wrong.

The fact is that despite the saturation coverage — 24/7 live reporting, editorials, commentaries — the only thing known for certain is that all five were drug addicts and took to street-walking to support their habit. Why they turned to drugs in the first place is a question that nobody has been able to answer. All that their close friends would say is that at some point they fell into the "wrong company."

Britain shocked

The case has shocked Britain and led to calls for legalising prostitution so that sex workers are not forced to walk the streets and put their lives at risk. There have been suggestions that they should be allowed to work within a "regulated" environment by introducing a system of licensed brothels as in some other countries, or by setting up "managed areas" on the Dutch model. It has also been suggested that to keep drug addicts off the streets the Government should set up clinics where they can get the drugs they crave for, and also be treated for their addiction. A "clean and orderly" place where they could get drugs as well as treatment would obviate the need for them to "go on to the streets for money for the drugs they are desperate for," argued The Times columnist Mathew Parris.

Others say that such schemes have not worked in countries where they have been tried. According to a consultation paper prepared by a former Home Office official, licensing schemes in Australia and elsewhere have "failed to deliver the safe working environment they set out to achieve." In the Netherlands, some "managed areas" have closed down because not all sex workers were willing to comply with the conditions and preferred to walk the streets.

As happens on such occasions, everyone has an opinion on what should be done to prevent a tragedy like this in future — as though if only the government were to do what they want it to do, the streets of Britain would be suddenly rid of psychopath killers, drug addicts, and women who sell their bodies and men who buy them.

There is, of course, an argument for liberalising laws that drive certain activities underground. But the question remains: what made those five "normal" and "happy" girls turn to drugs in the first place? The question will continue to haunt their families and friends long after the case is forgotten.

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