Parents want answers after suicide by methadone

THE grieving parents of a teenager have called for an inquiry into her death, after the man who provided the drugs she used to take her own life was jailed for ten years.

Vikki McGovern, 19, had attempted suicide once before using methadone – she had tried other methods on another 12 occasions – and James Whitson, 34, knew her intentions when he gave her a lethal quantity of the heroin substitute.

Ms McGovern was found dead in her room in a hostel in Edinburgh, and Whitson was convicted by a jury of her culpable homicide by culpably and recklessly supplying the drugs.

Her mother Pamela Bowmaker, 41, of Piershill, Edinburgh, had told Whitson’s trial that she felt St John’s Hill Hostel in the Holyrood area of the city was “not the kind of place she needed”.

She added: “I felt she was meeting people who weren’t being helpful or nice to her. I felt they were taking advantage of her.”

After the sentencing hearing yesterday at the High Court in Edinburgh, Ms Bowmaker and the dead girl’s father, Kevin McGovern, 41, said an inquiry should be held.

“The hostel was the wrong place for her to stay, with people with alcohol and drug problems,” said Ms Bowmaker.

“The hostel has got a lot to answer for,” added Mr McGovern.

They said they would be putting a Christmas tree on their daughter’s grave because that was “the only present we can give her”.

The trial heard that Ms McGovern, then 17, had changed from a “bubbly, outgoing, happy-go-lucky girl” after the death of a close family friend, a neighbour who had been a grandfather figure to her.

“She didn’t really react to the death – she went into herself instead. She went really quiet, and that’s when her problems started,” said her mother.

Ms McGovern left home and ended up in the hostel, where she met Whitson, a man with a criminal record spanning his entire adult life and involving 47 court appearances for a variety of offences.

On 18 September 2008, he supplied methadone to Ms McGovern at the hostel. She died the next day.

The defence counsel Dale Hughes said Whitson had had a troubled upbringing, much of it spent in care. He suffered from chronic depression and had been prescribed methadone for some time.

“It is a tragic case. Vikki McGovern was a troubled young woman who made many attempts at suicide and was actively seeking methadone from a number of people. He is deeply remorseful for the death of Vikki McGovern and for the tragic consequences that came out of his conduct,” said Mr Hughes.

Whitson was found guilty of the culpable homicide of Ms McGovern and jailed for ten years in 2009, but won a retrial on appeal.

Lord Pentland decided on the same sentence.

The ten-year term was backdated to August 2009, when Whitson had been taken into custody.