Mum Eleri Linden battled for a frantic 45 minutes to save her dying daughter Ceri after the 20-year-old took an overdose.
Ceri – snatched off Hough Green in Chester and raped on a night out with friends – had been terrified of reliving her nightmare in court.
And tragically, she had made sure she took enough of her mum’s pills to spare herself more torment.
Herself a mum with a two-year-old daughter, Ceri was attacked as she was out celebrating after landing an interview to finally get to university.
But everything she still had to live for stood on the other side of one unendurable obstacle – standing up in court and facing the lies of the man who raped her while he claimed she had come on to him, had kissed him and had consented to his sickening advances.
Eleri, 50, said: “Ceri was my best friend and I’ll never forget watching her die.
“She couldn’t cope with what had happened to her and the idea of going to court made everything so much worse.
“It’s no wonder rape conviction rates are so low, no victim wants to relive that in court and be torn apart by lawyers.”
Ceri’s overdose came just five days after she climbed into the back of a BMW, on Hough Green in Chester, believing it was a taxi.
She gave the driver the name of a bar in town and asked him to wait for her friends. Instead, he sped off, taking her to his own house in Saltney.
Before she took her own life, Ceri had helped police catch her attacker, Masood Mansouri of Saltney.
In a videoed interview so distressing that Eleri has never been able to watch it, she told in detail of the attack.
She told officers how she managed to escape when Mansouri, 33, went to the toilet and of hiding in bushes as he prowled the streets trying to find her again.
And in April, Ceri’s case made legal history as her video evidence helped convict him.
Mansouri was jailed for 13 years for kidnap, rape and sexual assault, and is likely to be deported to his native Iran on his release.
It was the first time that a rape conviction had been secured without the victim being cross-examined.
Now Eleri wants other rape victims to be spared the trauma of taking the stand against their attackers.
The mum from Colwyn Bay, North Wales, who is now helping to raise her granddaughter Bethan with Ceri’s ex Sam Brammer, said: “Ceri’s case proves it’s possible to get a conviction without it.
“Why should they be punished even more if there is enough evidence to convict their rapist without taking the stand?”
Police had assured Ceri she could testify via video link but the ordeal of facing Mansouri’s defence team was too much.
“She couldn’t face the thought of being cross-examined,” said Eleri, a college support assistant.
“In rape trials, the victims are often made by defence lawyers to look like the guilty ones.
“Like most rape victims, she was really fragile and was worried they’d bring up the fact she’d been drinking and make out that what happened to her was somehow her own fault.”
"I've been kidnapped"
After flagging down what she thought was a taxi on Hough Green, Ceri had happily climbed in – but as the driver sped off she frantically texted her friends.
Her first message said: “I’ve been kidnapped.”
A second read: “I’m not joking,” before another, seven seconds later, which just said: “Literally scared.”
Mansouri took her back to his house in Saltney, where he raped her before she managed to flee.
Eleri, who also has daughters Becky, 19, and Emma, 17, said: “Ceri was in such a state she didn’t know where to go, so she wandered the streets for hours on her own.
“Her friends tried to reach her but she was so distressed she stopped answering her phone. One called the police but no one knew where to find her.
“That broke my heart, that she hadn’t called me. She said she didn’t want to worry me.”
Ceri eventually confided in Eleri. She said: “I texted her to see if she wanted to go for a walk and she replied saying something terrible had happened.
“I went straight to her house and found her hiding under the covers.
“I was devastated, but I had to be strong. The police had been calling constantly and I encouraged her to speak to them. I said we had to do our best to get this predator off the streets.”
Painstaking detail
Officers took Ceri to Manchester for forensic examination before she was asked to give a video interview.
That meant having to recall the attack in painstaking detail. Eleri said: “I wasn’t allowed to go in with her, so I haven’t seen the video. I don’t think I could cope.
“But she was a very intelligent girl and although she had a lot to drink, she was able to remember lots.
“She gave the officers crucial details which helped identify the man who attacked her.”
Mansouri was arrested two days after the rape in August last year.
But Ceri, who had a history of depression, was at rock bottom. “She was pleased they’d got him but she was in a very bad place,” Eleri recalled. “She feared he’d be found not guilty.
“Five days after the attack, I decided to make a big roast to cheer her up. I went to the supermarket. I was only gone for half an hour.”
When she got home, Eleri said, everything seemed normal. “Ceri seemed fine. I gave her a pasty and we had a conversation, like nothing had happened.
"I've overdosed"
“I think about five minutes passed before she said, ‘Mum, I’m going. I’ve overdosed on your pills’.
“I was hysterical. After that she started to drift in and out of consciousness and she was struggling to breathe. Becky had to hold her mouth open.
“The ambulance took 45 minutes to arrive and as she was being placed on the stretcher she had a heart attack.
“At the hospital the doctors told us there was nothing they could do and advised us to switch off her life support machine. They asked if we wanted to see her one last time.
“But she was such a bright and beautiful girl we didn’t want to remember her lying lifeless on a hospital bed. We just clung to each other and cried.”
Eleri could not face attending Mansouri’s trial at Chester Crown Court, where Ceri’s video was played to the jury.
She said: “I couldn’t listen to my daughter’s rapist stand there and tell awful lies about her, so I kept up with the case by reading the papers.
“It was even worse than I imagined. He told the jury that Ceri had come on to him, and she’d been kissing him every time he stopped at traffic lights.
“Why would my beautiful girl be attracted to a monster like him? It was sickening.”
Eleri added: “Ceri had everything to live for. Bethan asks for her mummy and we have to tell her she’s in the stars.
“I don’t want her death to have been in vain. I understand every case is different but Ceri’s ordeal proves it’s possible to have the evidence to convict a rapist without putting the victim through the hell of cross-examination.
“I can only hope a precedent has been set here. We need to encourage rape victims to come forward and, quite frankly, they’ve suffered enough.”
