THEY RAP: # Check this Look, all right
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# Trick or treat, smell my feet
# Give me something good to eat Ah, ah
# If you hear "Knock, knock" and you got that stock... #
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This programme contains very strong language and themes some viewers may find upsetting
She was just a crazy young girl, full of life.
Feared nothing, feared nothing.
LAUGHTER ON VIDEO
If anybody could hold their own, Angel could.
So long, Angel, now. There you go.
Looks beautiful.
Head up.
Angel knows what you're saying to her,
but she's just trapped within herself.
She can't... She can't express it, she can't get it out.
I want up for yes, thumbs down for no,
do you understand?
Yeah?
Are you feeling good...or bad?
You're feeling good today. That's good.
We try and communicate with her in the best ways that we can.
You know how we're doing the documentary, Angel?
Yeah? You know?
Here you go, hold your pen.
Do you want everybody to understand your life
and then what happened to ya?
Can you write it on there, so that I know?
Is that OK?
I want to tell your story, Angel... Look at me.
..so that this doesn't happen to anybody else.
Angel's phone was always glued to her hand.
She kept everything on there - all her photos, messages.
The only way we could find out what had happened
was to go through her phone.
But she had a whole world we knew nothing about.
OVERLAPPING VIDEOS AND TEXT ALERTS
MUSIC PLAYS ON VIDEO
I remember us getting phones.
It was nice being able to have group chats and stuff
with all your friends and joke around.
When she first got a phone,
it was like she had a bit of her own independence.
It was nice but a bit scary,
when they start getting to that age, really.
At college, we both passed our driving test.
We both wanted to be in our cars and just drive around.
ANGEL:Going to beat you, Blem! SHE LAUGHS
It was always McDonald's drive-through.
It was amazing cos both of our mums were quite strict,
like not letting us go out in the dark and stuff.
We enjoyed being able to get out and explore.
It's like the world's opened.
SHE RAPS: # Jeez, my girl whipping a Mercedes... #
She was at college full-time when she came to work at the Brush.
And I think it was just to earn a little bit of extra money.
She was introduced as a new cleaner.
She had long nails and she had the most amazing blonde hair.
I'll be very honest - I thought, "What is a 17-year-old
"going to know about cleaning on an industrial site?
"Are our managers taking the mick?"
And I thought, "Don't put her with me to work, please!"
They did put her with me and she proved me wrong.
She looked like a little glamour queen, but the truth be known,
she was not afraid to get her hands dirty at all.
If anybody was going to do the dirty jobs, Angel was.
She was always doing something that would get us in trouble.
ON VIDEO: What are you doing in the recycling wet paper bin? Sorting it out!
I couldn't find her -
she'd climbed into the recycling bin and hid.
ON VIDEO: You do know I'm going to post this on Facebook
for your managers to see, don't ya?
She was just a crazy young girl - full of life, fun.
ON VIDEO: The life and time of Angel at work at the Brush.
Did it!
On her 18th, I filled her car up with paper shreddings
in the car park.
We got in trouble for it, though, cos we made a mess.
It was hilarious.
From then, we was inseparable at work.
We both got boyfriends that were in the same friendship group.
Her relationship was amazing.
He would go around her house all the time,
she would go around his, meet his family,
they'd all do family things together.
I'd try and be watching telly,
and they'd sit on the sofa, just pinching and punching each other.
I were like, "Shut up and get out cos I'm trying to watch TV!"
They had a really good relationship like that.
And she was happy,
Shame they separated, really.
Naturally, she just pulled away from the friendship group,
cos obviously it was awkward for her.
Not only did she, like, lose her boyfriend,
she kind of lost the whole friendship group.
She went through the emotions of breaking up
and then started to get back out there.
And that's when she met Chay, which changed her life.
Angel, how do ya?
I didn't really like Chay from the beginning.
He didn't have a job. Angel's always had a job.
I was told that he was...a bad one
and that he used to steal cars and motorbikes.
Angel always made out that she weren't going out with him.
She said they were just friends and they just hung around together.
With her first boyfriend,
she didn't really used to hide anything from us.
We knew she was going out with him, we knew where she was.
But everything changed when she met Chay.
She used to tell fibs...
..so she must have been ashamed of him,
probably because he weren't a good boy.
Oi! HE LAUGHS
Come on!
LAUGHTER Angel!
Hello!
Boo! ANGEL LAUGHS
It broke me heart, because me and Angel was always close.
Angel! Hello!
As soon as we found out it was a girl,
I just said, "We'll call her Angel."
And she's always been me angel.
She was just Daddy's girl.
Angel's always been fun and bubbly and adventurous...
THEY SCREAM AND LAUGH
..probably cos she hung around with her brothers a lot.
Angel always used to like doing dangerous things like quadding.
And she'd always want to go jet skiing and sky diving.
ANGEL: No, it's nothing. Stick ya tongue out!
She always wanted to do the things that were scary.
She would do anything and get involved in anything.
We could've got through there.
And she liked derelict buildings.
She used to go with her brothers.
This is mad!
She loved, like, investigating things.
Check that big horn thing!
THEY LAUGH
Oh, my God!
Do you want to play a game?
No cheating.
Here's your pen.
You go first.
She really did want... She did want a life.
You know, she worked hard, she did.
It's horrible, because I think, "What if?"
What if Angel realised what he was like?
Angel always wanted to be a forensic scientist
and work for the police.
She was very ambitious.
I think she would have been attracted to the thrill of it all.
She just liked the adrenaline.
But when she met Chay, all ambitions just went down the drain.
She didn't really want to do anything.
She just wanted to be with him all the time.
She was doing the public services college course,
sort of a lead-up to making a decision on what you want to do.
And they get these trips and only something like three get picked.
Cos Angel was doing so well, she got a place.
You get to work alongside the police.
But she turned it down because it meant going away -
and by this time, she was with him.
I told Angel, "He's not the right one for you, Angel."
But Angel - being Angel - told me to mind my own business
and everything was all right.
It would have been a really good opportunity for her, that would.
Would have probably changed...
Changed her life.
That's when things started to get worse.
How do ya? How do ya? How do ya, Angel?
Wherever he went, she went with him.
I think he sort of used her a little bit as well for driving.
You know, they just used to go from hotel to hotel.
HE RAPS UNINTELLIGIBLY
Get the fuck... THEY LAUGH
At that age, you can't really say,
"You're not doing this and you're not doing that."
She had her own car. Can't ground her.
I just felt helpless.
She got a tattoo on her ankle that says "Chay".
She wanted both excitement and love,
and that's probably what she thought she was getting at the start.
I was told he used to steal cars...
..and he finally got caught.
When Chay was in prison,
I was hoping that she'd see sense and get rid of him.
But it didn't work out like that.
It seemed that Angel was just constantly running around after him,
sending him money.
She'd come in for six o'clock in the afternoon
because he would phone her.
He'd phone her on house phones, so he knew that she was at home.
I just used to make fun of it at the time -
like, "Oh, OK, he's in prison
"and you've got to be in at six o'clock?"
There was never a situation when she wasn't there.
She made sure she was there, so then you think,
"Wow, she's 18. Six o'clock?"
You don't realise till after how serious it was.
The controlling had started.
ANGEL SINGS BADLY
THEY LAUGH
I weren't too happy when he got out of prison,
cos obviously they were together again.
CHAY: Trying to suck your toes, you fucking weirdo!
It's when Covid was really bad as well,
so she stopped at his house all the time.
I do think she did love him,
so it was a bit easier, then, for him to control her.
TEXT ALERTS
It was my daughter's birthday and I'd been out and got a cake.
I said to Angel, "Will you take me to Leicester?"
She said, "Yeah, 'course I will."
That morning, I got the cake and the presents and everything else
and she came.
She noticed him on a back road in another vehicle.
I said, "Well, how would he know you were coming this way?"
TEXT ALERT
All the way to Leicester, the phone calls
and the messages never stopped from the minute she picked me up.
TEXT ALERT
I said, "What is wrong with him?"
He called her a slag, he called her a tramp,
because she'd gone into my daughter's house,
where there were boys.
It was quite distressing. It was alarming.
TEXT ALERT
I started to question what was going on.
And I told her, "Are you sure you're OK?
"Because I will go to your mum and dad, you know,
"if I think you're not." She said, "Yeah, 'course I am."
It was beyond vile. I was shocked.
He would message her wherever she was -
message, message, message, message.
All the time, her phone was lit up.
Where is Betty Boo Boo?
VOICE: Betty. Mmm!
Can you find Tilly?
Where is she, then? Where's Trotter?
Tilly. Yeah!
We're just a strong family, really.
She's probably got it off me and her mum.
So we've got...Something's Wrong, I Want, Quick Words, People.
I Want.
She'd probably talk to her mum more than talk to me.
They are very like each other.
Yeah, they've both got the same sense of humour.
They know how to wind me up, both of them do.
Oh, she's a bit fatty!
SHE LAUGHS
Who's this? Tilly Trotter!
You love Tilly, don't you?
I thought we had that relationship where she would tell us anything.
She's my daughter,
and if she confides in me, I'm not going to tell anybody.
When she starts not coming to you and telling you things
and she's more...
..more distant, it was really worrying.
Got up just as normal, like we would any morning.
Got the kids sorted for school.
Paddy was in the kitchen. I think he was making something to eat.
Angel had come in the house to get some money for Chay.
He came in after, shouting and swearing about £80.
And I heard Paddy say, "Watch who you're talking to."
Chay was supposed to have gave Angel some money to look after
and he said Angel spent it.
So rather him shout at Angel,
I just says, "How much was it?" And I gave him the money.
Oh, Nikki just told him where to go.
I said, "Don't come in here swearing and shouting
"in front of my kids," and Angel come towards me
and sort of, like, walked me into the living room and said,
"Pack it in now, Mum, or you're just going to make things worse."
I didn't think, "Make what worse?"
Oi! HE LAUGHS
We should have thought then, "I wonder if he's hitting her."
They was arguing in his bedroom.
Someone had heard a bang.
He pushed Angel so hard
that her head hit the wall and sent her into a fit.
Someone could hear him shouting, "Get up, you fucking slag!
"Do ya want a bit more?"
INTERVIEWER: What's the hardest part of it for you?
Knowing that he hurt her.
We'd go down the allotment early morning,
myself and Bob and the dogs.
It was the middle of the growing season,
so we've always got endless amounts to do.
I think it was about half eight, nine o'clock,
my phone rings and it was Angel.
And she said, "Oh, I'll come down to you." I said, "OK."
Within about 10-15 minutes, she was there.
I went towards the gates and I saw Angel.
She had a pair of Ugg boots on, a pair of tracky bottoms
and a fur coat. It was red hot.
No eyelashes, no make-up, no nothing, and that wasn't Angel.
Whether she was coming to the Brush or to the allotment,
she'd still be dolled up. You know, it wasn't like her at all.
I said to her, "You're up early." She said, "Oh.
"Chay found some messages in my phone
"and he threw me out of the house."
I think I gave her, like, a bit of a pep talk,
like, "You don't need to be there,
"being thrown out of somebody's house at 7 o'clock in the morning.
"You've got your own home. You've got your mum's home."
You try to be the friend that's not the dogmatic, dictating friend.
You just try and be a good friend, don't ya?
Now I realise why she wouldn't take the coat off -
because she had bruises all up her arms.
She knew that I wasn't happy with the whole relationship.
I'd see her on nights out and stuff.
We always said hello, but we never really hung out.
I could tell that she'd changed.
She'd never post on Instagram, wear nice clothes -
which wasn't like Angel, cos she always used to want to look nice.
She rang me, and she was just like, "Are you OK?"
And I was like, "Yeah, are you?" Then she was like, "Yeah."
It was a really weird conversation.
I do feel like she wanted to tell me something.
I just feel like in that moment that she just quickly decided not to.
I think she wanted to get out of the whole situation.
I feel like if she felt like she had everyone around her
that was with her before she met him,
then maybe she would have felt strong enough to leave.
SIREN BLARES
I feel like she was made to believe that if she left him,
she wouldn't have anyone else.
In the end, he had complete control.
He would threaten to leave just to make her beg.
She must have felt so trapped.
On the Wednesday before her accident,
she'd had a chat with Chay's mum, saying that they was separating.
That's when we got our nails done...
..and she had her hair done.
You see the change.
The make-up comes out...
..she goes out for dinner with her friends,
she goes out and does what she used to with her brothers.
I think this relationship was about to end.
I think she was seeing what he was really like
and I think this is why what happened happened.
She'd had enough of him.
He knew that she was about ready to blow him out.
Chay bundled her into the van and his mate Rocco was driving.
NEWSREADER: She fell from the vehicle at 60mph.
She suffered catastrophic brain injury.
This is where Angel's come out of the van.
So, I think she's come out about here...
SHE SIGHS
..and he said she was rolling down the road like a football.
SHE SIGHS
They took me and Paddy upstairs. They said, "She's in ICU."
When they opened the curtain to let me in,
I just fell on the floor.
Her head was all swollen and she was on all different machines.
Just horrible.
As soon as Angel arrived in hospital,
it was very clear she'd suffered very severe injuries.
This is the CT scan of Angel's head.
This area here is fractured.
Like, it's been split open by the force of the impact.
And the fracture continues on into other parts of the skull.
To fracture the skull to that degree takes an incredible degree of force.
Her injury was so devastating and so severe
that there was a very real chance that Angel wouldn't survive.
The doctor said, "You're gonna have to accept she isn't gonna make it."
And I said, "Do not touch them machines.
"Keep her breathing."
FAHREN: Come on, Angel. I think it's time to come out of this coma, mate.
You're the strongest girl I've ever met in my whole entire life.
LOTTIE: Yo, my G. It's Lotswold, your main bitch!
We've got too many memories together for you to leave me.
You best be fucking listening to me, all right?
I love you, Angel. Please get through this.
I come up here every Thursday,
cos it were a Thursday when Angel's accident was.
Which one is healing?
All right, put that one back. We'll have the big one.
Thank you.
The doctors were saying that we needed a miracle.
And I thought the miracle would happen...
..and it did.
For them to tell me she's not in a coma any more
was one of the happiest days of me life, really.
At the beginning, Angel would breathe for herself
for just a few seconds.
Then it would get to a minute on her own without help from the machines,
and then they took the machine off
and she was just breathing for herself.
Nikki and Angel are Catholics.
I'm not Catholic, but I prayed.
And even though she was still really poorly,
I just thought, "God's answered my prayers."
The CID had come out to see us.
They told us that Chay had been arrested and he'd been kicking off.
We couldn't believe it -
he was trying to deny kidnapping Angel.
He was saying he was looking out for her
and he was doing what was best for her.
And he says he didn't push her out the van.
I don't think she jumped.
She's a driver herself, she knows how fast it were going,
so why not wait till you slowed down at the roundabout
and jump on the grass verge?
Just don't make sense to me at all.
Not one bit.
I think he's pushed her out the van.
Angel was still really poorly at the time...
..so she couldn't tell her side of the story.
My biggest fear would be that Chay would walk free
and get away with what he'd done.
Over and above the very serious offences
that Mr Bowskill was facing -
kidnap, perverting the course of justice
and the controlling and coercive behaviour -
he was on trial for being responsible
for Angel coming out of that van at a high speed
and suffering the horrendous injuries that she did.
He gave evidence,
but there wasn't ever a full acknowledgement
that he had been responsible.
It was heart-breaking to listen to the court
and things that were said.
Even if she did jump, what was she jumping from?
I don't believe she jumped, no, I don't,
but regardless my friend's still got head injuries.
And it's life-changing.
He also told the jury Angel wasn't controlled or put down by him.
But there was a series of messages
between Chay Bowskill on the one side
and the phone or phones that Angel was using on the other,
and that ran to many thousands of separate communications
that the jury had to consider.
The text messages, his own words, were an example
of how somebody is controlling the other
and coercing them through the medium of messages.
Ultimately, they proved the type of person he was
in that relationship with Angel.
In court, we did hear a lot of things that we didn't know,
and I just had to keep walking out of court at some stages
cos I just couldn't bear to listen
to what he'd actually put her through.
Oi! HE LAUGHS
It's scary to think that she was on this road.
He must have got under her skin.
If somebody's telling you every day of the week
you're a slag and a tramp, when does it not get to ya?
Those calls were extremely important as part of the prosecution case,
not just for those accounts that they directly related
but also to the much bigger picture
and a real window into the man he was.
It was telling that this was a man who was charged with
controlling and coercive behaviour,
and we saw echoes and shades of that in his own treatment of his mother,
what we say he was doing towards Angel.
He was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison.
But in terms of the impact upon her,
the Court of Appeal decided that the sentence was too low
to reflect consequences of this nature,
and what they did was to increase the overall sentence
to one of 12 years.
It felt like justice a bit, yeah,
but I still think he deserved longer for what he's done to Angel.
Touch your right eye.
Next, I want you to touch your nose,
and then your left ear.
Yeah, really good.
You're doing really well at these ones.
I really want to say, "Right, Angel, what did he do?
"And why did you feel you couldn't come home
"and just get rid of him?"
Whether he pushed her or not, we won't know until Angel speaks.
High five.
Smashing it!
You see? You're too good!
It can be very difficult early on in people with severe head injuries
to estimate how people will be six months,
a year, two years down the line.
A combination of the neurosurgery, the intensive care support,
you know, Angel's strength and determination
have led to her surviving.
And she clearly has mounted a degree of recovery from her injuries.
You will get there, you know?
You've come so far in the last year.
She does have age on her side. She's a young woman
and we know younger people do recover better
from even devastating injuries such as this.
You know, I'd hope that as the months and years go by,
that she may regain some function to enable her
to interact and communicate her thoughts and feelings better.
I love you.
Ah, I know you do, baby. Two, yeah.
Go on. You can do it.
Good girl.
She's so tough, Angel is,
to have got through everything she has got through.
And I just do believe miracles can happen.
And a miracle has happened, cos Angel's still with us.
You make me happy when you give me a smile, don't you?
It's coming! SHE LAUGHS
Sneaking one out!
Love you.
CHATTER
It's really difficult,
because I think, "What if I'd have known?
"And what if Angel realised what he was like?
"We wouldn't be in this position now."
You know when you know something is wrong,
but you haven't done anything about it
and you should've done and you could've done?
That's the hardest one for all of us.
I do have loads of regrets -
that maybe if I just listened to her more
or gave her the opportunity to speak to me more
and not just distance myself,
maybe I would have been able to help.
You just... Looking back now, you think...
SIGHS: .."I should've seen that coming,"
but I didn't.
I wouldn't want anyone to think,
"Oh, you've got to be stupid to let someone control you,"
because Angel was far from stupid.
For this to have happened to Angel, it can happen to anybody.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media