Losing your daughter is one of the cruellest things that can happen to a parent, and nobody knows that more that Coral Jones, mother of murdered five year old, April Jones.
Appearing on TV show Lorraine to talk about #AprilsLawUK, a campaign to force search engines to filter out indecent images of children on the internet, Coral bravely revealed that she had contemplated suicide following the loss of her youngest child.
April had been playing with friends when she disappeared from her home village of Machynlleth, Powys back in 2012.
Paedophile Mark Bridger was finally jailed for her murder the following year but has never revealed exactly what he did with April’s body, meaning the family have never been able to lay their loved one to rest.
Five years later, Coral has admitted to suffering with depression and had thought about ending her own life following the huge grief she was suffering.
Without the support of her family and friends, she wouldn’t be here today.
Five years after the murder of her daughter April, Coral Jones tells us how her depression got so bad she contemplated suicide #AprilsLawUK pic.twitter.com/HkLwUrbPWX
— Lorraine on ITV (@ITVLorraine) October 2, 2017
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“My kids and my husband, they had lost a daughter and nearly lost a mum.” She told Lorraine.
“If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here today. It’s been five years, I still suffer depression but not like how I was.”
April’s sister Jazmin, who was 16 when her sister disappeared, also admitted that she had struggled with her grief, turning to alcohol for support.
“I had to grow up pretty much overnight – I was only 16.”
She said, “The second I turned 18 I could drink and it went out of control. I thought it was a normal thing but quickly realised it wasn’t when my friends were worrying about me.”
Now 21, she sees that the way she was dealing with her loss wasn’t right.
“I didn’t see what I was doing to myself never mind everyone else. It was my release. I got what I wanted out of it but it destroyed my friends’ life, my parents’ life, my brother’s life and my life.”
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Admitting it had been a struggle for her family to survive, Coral said: “You learn to live with it but it’s still hard, it’s still there every day with you.”
“It’s the first thing you think and it’s the last thing when you go to sleep.”
For more information on #AprilsLawUK you can follow the campaign on Twitter @AprilsLawUK