A 12-year-old girl who overdosed on tablets after making an allegation of sexual assault “felt like she wasn’t believed”, her mother has told an inquest.
Semina Halliwell died on June 12 2021, three days after she took her mother’s prescription medicine at their home in Southport, Merseyside.
At an inquest at Bootle Town Hall on Monday, her mother Rachel Halliwell said Semina had been a “happy little girl” but began to self harm after starting at Stanley High School.
In March 2021 she told her mother she had been sexually assaulted in January that year.
Ms Halliwell was in tears as she told the coroner’s court: “It destroyed her mentally, physically. She changed into a different person.”
She said after reporting the incident to the police Semina initially withdrew the complaint.
“She felt like she wasn’t believed,” Ms Halliwell said.
Semina Halliwell, 12, who died from an overdose of tablets after making an allegation of sexual assault (Family/PA)
She added: “I think to say to a 12-year-old child ‘it is going to take 18 months to two years to go to court, do you really want it hanging over your head’ and ‘it’s your word against his’ is not what any woman or child who has been through sexual assault or rape needs to hear and she was 12 with autism.”
She said there was not enough support from the police, social services or the school after the report was made.
Asked by Harriet Johnson, representing the family, what difference there might have been if better support had been provided, Ms Halliwell said: “She’d still be here today.”
She said Semina was bullied and beaten up three times after she made the allegation.
But, Ms Halliwell said Semina decided she wanted to go ahead with the complaint after she decided “enough was enough”.
She was due to be interviewed by police in June, the inquest was told.
Ms Halliwell said: “She was determined to do this but in the mean time we have got all this chaos going on in school, outside of our home and she just couldn’t cope.”
Before she took the tablets, Semina had been downstairs with police officers who had visited the home to look at CCTV footage when she said: “I’ve had enough of this.”
Her mother said: “I took it that she’d had enough of police being in the house.”
Semina was found by her brother, who saw empty pill packets on the floor, and taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, where she died on June 12 2021.
In a statement which was read to the court, consultant paediatrician Mark Deakin said Semina asked him if she was going to die.
He said on June 10 she told him she regretted taking the tablets and had only taken them to “make her sleep for a couple of days”.
The inquest is listed to last for seven days.