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Latest news and features from theguardian.com, the world's leading liberal voice
Updated: 19 hours 8 min ago

My sister was found dead. Then I discovered her search history – and the online world that had gripped her

Wed, 05/28/2025 - 05:00

Adele Zeynep Walton’s sibling Aimee was a talented artist who loved music. It was only after her death that Walton realised Aimee had been lured into a dangerous community – and that others may also be victims of it

Adele Zeynep Walton knew something was wrong when she stumbled out of her caravan in the New Forest at 8am – she was camping with her boyfriend – and, through her sleepy fog, saw her parents’ car driving towards her. Initially annoyed by the idea of a family walk so early in the day, she then noticed that the car was veering off the track and, as it drew closer, her mother looked “hysterical”. “Straight away,” she says. “I was like, ‘It’s Aimee.’”

Aimee, Walton’s younger sister, was 21 and had suffered from poor mental health for some months. She loved music technology and art – her accomplished self-portraits dot the walls of the family’s home in Southampton, where her bedroom has been left exactly as it was before her death. She was such a big fan of the singer Pharrell Williams that he called her up five times to dance on stage at his concerts. But, with her mental health deteriorating, she had become harder and harder to reach. For two months, “we didn’t know where she was, what she was doing,” Walton says.

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Categories: National News

On trial for having an abortion - podcast

Wed, 05/28/2025 - 03:00

Nicola Packer, with Guardian north of England correspondent, Hannah Al-Othman, describes her four-and-a-half-year ordeal after being prosecuted for having an abortion in the UK

In November 2020, in the middle of a national lockdown, Nicola Packer found out she was pregnant. It was a shock, she tells the Guardian’s north of England correspondent, Hannah Al-Othman. Nicola hadn’t really thought she was pregnant, didn’t even believe she could conceive and had never wanted children anyway.

After a call to the UK’s largest abortion provider, she was sent pills to terminate her pregnancy. They believed, she was told, she was about six weeks pregnant. But when Nicola took the pills, she found out that her pregnancy was far more advanced than she could have imagined.

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Categories: National News