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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tortoise Investigates.
I've been thinking so much about what went on inside those walls. You walk past a car park where I can only guess that Chloe parked up with her mum or her dad, left the car, crossed the road, walked in, pressed the buzzer, and then in they went. From the age of 18, this is where Chloe, Jess's half-sister, would come for her counselling sessions.
It's a boxy, three-storey NHS building, not far from the centre of her local town. When Chloe first starts coming here, it isn't a great success.
Chapter 2: What shocking discovery does Jess make about her birth mother?
Chloe doesn't really click with the community mental health nurse she's been paired with. But after a year or so, she begins having sessions with a new counsellor, one she really likes. Each time, for about an hour, she sits in a room inside this building and tells the woman everything.
I should tell you now, by way of a warning, in November 2023, before we began reporting this story, Chloe died by suicide. She was 23 years old. Chloe's mental health had been fragile for years. According to Chloe's mum, Debbie, there were times when she would sort of disappear into herself, lying in bed for days, not speaking, not engaging with anyone.
So this counsellor she begins seeing in the autumn of 2019 feels like a new start, a sort of hope. She trusted her.
She thought she were all right. She thought she were nice. She was quite responsive. And she'd usually try and get Chloe an appointment as quick as she could if she thought she needed one.
Their sessions aren't always regular. At one stage, Chloe is discharged and then referred back again. In the end, Jennifer counsels Chloe for roughly a year. But after this, she's still in the background. Someone Chloe can ask for help if she needs to. So this is where things are at when, in August 2022, Jess arrives on the scene searching for her biological father.
For Chloe, at that point, Jennifer is simply someone she trusts. But that's about to change. I don't know, I just thought it's a bit of a coincidence if it's the same name. The news breaks slowly. First, Debbie learns of Jess's existence. A few days pass. Details come out in fragments. Debbie asks more questions. And then it hits her.
The woman who's been counselling her vulnerable daughter is Jess's birth mother. Without realising it, Chloe has been sharing her deepest anxieties with a woman who'd had a secret relationship with her father. A woman who'd had his baby, abandoned it and never told a soul.
She just kept saying she felt violated. That's the word that she kept using. And she was angry. because she trusted Jennifer. And not only that, the fact that Dad had allowed that to happen, so that meant that, really, did he care about her at all? What more important to him, keeping his secrets covered up or putting his daughter in a situation that she shouldn't have been in?
Having this woman that he'd had an affair with, counselling her. So I think it kind of shook her because obviously she trusted my dad and she trusted Jennifer. She really liked her and we thought that she cared about her.
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Chapter 3: How did Chloe's mental health struggles shape her counseling experience?
And yet Chloe has an unusual surname, one her family believe Jennifer would have instantly recognised.
Chloe's surname is not really very common. I mean, yeah, there are other people where we live with that name, but it isn't a very common name.
I've scoured the electoral register and there are very few people living in the town who share this Germanic surname. If it rang any kind of bell for Jennifer and she wanted to double check whether Chloe was related to anyone she knew, she had only to look at Chloe's medical notes.
These notes tell a devastating story of her struggle with mental health, beginning with her self-harming at the age of 13. When you turn 18, your folder goes with you from the youth service to the adult mental health team. We've seen Chloe's folder. Years of records and documents. A tower of paper heavy enough that you need both hands to lift it.
Everything about her life, her struggles, her family. It's all in there. As the service manager, Jennifer would have seen this folder before she ever met Chloe. And as her counsellor, she surely would have spent some time reading it.
She would have seen from Chloe's notes that who her parents were, it would have been on her notes.
Not just her father's surname, but his first name too, Lewis.
And again, his first name's not really, I mean, it might be more common now, but it's not that common and the spelling of it. was kind of unusual for a person his age.
Is it possible that Jennifer had completely forgotten this name so that when her eyes scanned it, nothing registered? To me, it's a stretch. If you've had a relationship with someone, let alone had their baby, it's hard to imagine you'd ever forget their name, no matter how many decades have passed.
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Chapter 4: What significant event changes Chloe's perception of her counselor?
I'm hoping he can help me understand the rules. And I've made a start by reading the latest Nursing Code of Conduct, published in 2015.
You won't find anything to cover this situation.
It's true, there's nothing in there about this exact situation because, let's be honest, what's happened here is pretty unusual.
What you will find is you'll find overall topics about standards which will, I think, be relevant to this situation. It sounds very much to me as if there was a serious breach of the code.
But why do you say that? Why are you so sure?
Why am I so sure? Because there's clearly a conflict of interest which hasn't been disclosed.
Professional boundaries in mental health settings are considered critical. There has to be a clear separation between personal and professional roles. And the therapist is supposed to have the patient's best interests at heart. A conflict of interest is anything that gets in the way of that, another relationship, a personal connection, something that means they can't be fully impartial.
Jennifer had two conflicts. She had a hidden connection to Chloe's family, which Chloe knew nothing about, and she had a personal stake in the situation. She had had a baby with Chloe's father. Now, even if, at that stage, she wasn't certain the baby was Lewis's, his paternity must have still been a possibility, so it's still a close connection.
Either of these things might shape her questions to Chloe and influence decisions about her care.
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Chapter 5: How does Chloe's family react to the revelation about Jennifer?
To Chloe and her family, this sounds a lot like a dismissal.
It's not good enough. Saying it's not a conflict of interest and just sort of batting her off, it's not a good enough answer.
For her sister Kim, nothing in the letter speaks to Chloe's sense that her trust has been betrayed. Even just...
acknowledgement, like genuine acknowledgement rather than just being brushed off. Acknowledgement that it was wrong, she shouldn't have been counselling her. Even that would have felt better than what we got.
Chloe doesn't appeal the decision. Instead, she tries as best she can to move on. Six months pass after that NHS response in the summer of 2023 and Chloe seems to be in a good place. She's busy with college, she's living with her boyfriend and they're trying to buy a house.
She'd never really been in a better position than what she was, it seemed anyway. She'd just finished her uni course, she was doing really well with that. She was throwing ideas around about starting a family and whatnot.
She was in a really good place. I remember her telling me that she'd bought a new car, you know, she'd just finished her degree.
On Friday 10th November 2023, Chloe takes her own life. Despite her long history of mental health struggles, her death comes as a huge shock.
The other times, she'd been down and we knew she was down. Whereas this was just completely out of the blue.
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Chapter 6: What evidence suggests Jennifer knew about her connection to Chloe?
We'd love to hear from you. We'll be back next week for our final episode.
In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered.
I wonder what's the emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.
For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.