Gaia Pope: Four years on family still have no answers
Gaia Pope's family still searching for answers four years after the Swanage teenager's death.
Last updated 17th Nov 2021
In November 2017 volunteer and police search parties scoured the Swanage area for 11 days in search of Gaia Pope.
The 19-year-old was found dead on the 18th of November, the coroner found she had died of hypothermia.
But Gaia's family say they still don't have answers, four years after the incident.
They claim authorities, particularly Dorset Police, failed the teenager after she made an allegation of rape. Dorset Police investigated but took no further action.
The family say the process contributed to a decline in Gaia's well-being.
An inquest into the teenager's death has been launched, although it's been heavily delayed, partly because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Marieanna Pope-Weidermann is Gaia's cousin. She said:
"This time of year is so difficult for us, and it's very difficult for us to greive the loss because we're still in this legal process. We just have to wait for the inquest when hopefully some of this can start coming into the light of day.
"We want Gaia to be remembered for who she was; a very bright, very brave, kind creative young woman, who had so much to offer the world and was so much more than the terrible trauma, which because she didn't get the support she needed, shaped the last years of her life."
She says Gaia's experience is indicative of problems many women face. She told Greatest Hits Radio:
"We don't just need an independent enquiry into the metropolitan police, we need it nationally otherwise public confidence in police will continue to collapse.
"The hope is that we and the public will finally have answers about what happened to Gaia and what needs to change to save lives like hers in the future.
"The inquest isn't the end of the road, I think the justice that we need to see is going to take a long time to win, but the alternative is to do nothing while the list of names of women who should be here and aren't gets longer and longer, until one day someone you love is on it."