1Adultery- colleagues
2porn-double life led by father of deceased/kidnap victim
3hacking into voicemails
---------
*The two; Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson; were each married at the time
two started adultery for six years.
**Dowler; murdered 13 year old with sick-parent-living-double-deception
*** Levi Bellfield- murderer and Bellfield's daughter speaks of the monster
Levi Bellfield...
---------------
...it didn't help that the kidnapped and then murdered 13 year old
was traumatized by her father's double-secret-sick-deceptions;
may link her father's hired p ro s ti tut e s exposed the 13 year old
to the corruptions- to have this 13 year old
be target of her murderer living a block away from the abduction locale
only a block from criminal's girlfriend's home;
 Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 9:34 am Post subject: |  |
| First up, I think anyone who has ever been a teenager would know well enough not to read anything too sinister into the poems and diaries of a teenage girl exhibiting even quite profound depression and low self-esteem. It is, for most people, the vilest time of one's life, and I would say from what I've read that there is nothing in Milly's writing that you would not expect to find in plenty (I dare say most) teenager's diaries at some point or another. Certainly sounded familiar to me. I also don't see that anyone could, or is, 'blaming' her for being unhappy. It is, of course, sad, but not really relevant. What is relevant (at least for the purposes of the defence) is her recent discovery of her father's secret sex life and that sex life itself. First up, I would say that no 'fetish' is 'mild' or 'extreme' in and of itself - it is how the individual pursues their desires that can be extreme. This is often very hard to judge - but again, from what has emerged, it seems Mr Dowler was expanding on his interest in S&M in a secretive fashion, not sharing his desires in a frank and honest way with his life partner, and had (apparently) gone to the extent of using prostitutes to indulge this secret desire. Milly's discovery of this forced the revelation to his wife, against his own obvious desire to keep his secret. While none of this is evidence that he, rather than Bellfield (the evidence against whom is compelling) killed her, it does provide an alternative narrative, made more plausible by the fact that most people who are murdered know their killer, and the fact that he was the last person Milly spoke to before she disappeared. I think the defence would not be doing their job properly if they didn’t bring it up. Unless I undertand it wrongly, in situations where a manifestly guilty client refuses to plead guilty, it is the job of the defence to raise issues that cast the prosecution’s narrative into doubt; and it is the job of the prosecution to point out when they are simply muddying the waters with irrelevancies. The defence will seek to find fault with the evidence, with the police process, they will attempt to substantiate alternative narratives that exonerate their client (or at least, put enough doubt in the jurists’ minds that conviction is not possible). Personally, I don’t know how anyone can bring themselves to defend a convicted murderer. But someone has to, or the rule of law collapses. How would you defend him, if you were his lawyer? _________________ We have normality; I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem. ======================= http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jun/23/milly-dowler-family-court-verdict
Robert and Sally Dowler craved justice for their "darling Milly". But claiming it exacted a high personal price. Milly's father and then her mother broke down in the dock as they gave evidence during Levi Bellfield's trial.
Robert Dowler, now 59, was forced to admit he had been an early police suspect. He was stripped of his paternal dignity as details of his sexual proclivities were extracted.
The wail of Sally Dowler as she finished her evidence and collapsed into her husband's arms, haunted a stunned court long after she was helped from the room.
Waiting outside for her turn as a witness, Milly's sister, Gemma, 25, broke down on seeing her mother shaking and overwrought. Court officials and family liaison officers flustered round helplessly as she too convulsed in sobs.
"Harrowing" was how someone described the scene as a first-aider was summoned. No one disagreed. In the end Gemma was spared when lawyers consented to her statement being read to the court.
Her parents faced question after question. Did Sally Dowler know Milly felt her mother favoured Gemma? "No, no," she cried, distraught at the idea. "And it wasn't true. Not true," she wept.
And what did Milly's father think of the fact that his young daughter had once found pornographic magazines belonging to him, and that further bondage magazines and paraphernalia were hidden in the loft? Had he told the police that had Milly found those too it would have been "a complete betrayal of her as a father?"
"Yes, I did say that," he replied quietly, his humiliation complete.
There was scrutiny of verses and letters Milly had written and hidden in her bedroom. Discovered after her disappearance, nothing indicated when they had been written.
Laced with self-loathing, questioning of her looks and her peer popularity, they could have been the all-too common jottings of a typical teenage girl on the brink of young womanhood. Taken in isolation, though, subjected to the analysis of lawyers, and dissected word by word in the environs of a courtroom they are capable of darker interpretation.
She should have been "aborted or adopted", wrote Milly of herself. She could only dream of being like her sister, "Gemsy", who was "pretty, smart, intelligent, wanted, loved".
Milly was a talented musician who loved writing song lyrics. But she "was always way below" everyone else, and she should "just go", she wrote in a goodbye note to her parents – which she signed "Your little disappointment, Amanda [her given name]" – but which she never gave to them.
Heartbreaking for any parent to read, the words are unimaginable if your daughter is dead. Little wonder Robert Dowler broke down as they were read aloud, his shoulders heaving as he sobbed in the witness box.
"A lot of young girls pour out their deepest thoughts into diaries," said Sally Dowler, a maths teacher at her daughter's school, who added that she taught girls of the same age. She knew what girls were like.
"We were a happy family," she kept repeating, bewildered at the thrust of questions.
It probably did not matter what was thrown at her in the witness box. She had suffered a nervous breakdown, she told the jury. Whatever the legal system might inflict, was, it can be imagined, nothing she had not already tortured herself with.
After their ordeal in the witness box the couple found the strength to sit through the rest of the trial, listening as the case against Bellfield was laid out over four weeks.
Ludicrous theory
But in the trial's closing hours, Milly's mother and sister again left the court in tears as Brian Altman QC accused Bellfield of trying to blame her family for her death.
"The grieving parents are not on trial here. That fact may have been forgotten when they came to give their evidence to you," he told the jury.
Altman said that the defence implication was – might Milly have run away, to meet her tragic end somewhere other than Bellfield's backyard? The implication was that the disappearance was somehow to do with her father's lifestyle. He dismissed that as a "ludicrous theory". Or perhaps it was to do with aspects of Milly's character, he added.
The defence, he said, was "desperate to put as much clear water as it can between Bellfield and the prosecution allegation that Milly disappeared on his doorstep".
He added: "No one, absolutely no one in this court other than Mr and Mrs Dowler and their daughter Gemma can possibly know or understand what it is like to have a child or a sister in dreadful circumstances. Not knowing, month after month, what had become of her – only years later to have their lives laid bare in this court."
The Dowlers did know. And nine years on from the loss of their youngest daughter, they know their scars will never heal. It cannot have helped, though, to have had those wounds prodded and poked by the legal process, leaving them as raw as the day they learned she had died.
But as her family limped away, one message was clear. What price justice for Milly? For her parents, no price could ever be too high.
murderer;
24 June 2011 Last updated at 07:06 ET
Levi Bellfield's daughter recalls father's brutality
Levi Bellfield's daughter says "it wasn't a surprise at all" when he was arrested for the murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Childhood memories for Bobbie-Louise Bellfield, 20, who is the oldest of Bellfield's 11 children, include him raping and beating her mother Becky Wilkinson.
Ms Bellfield also says her father used to leer at schoolgirls during the school run and would take her along as he conducted drug deals and burglaries.
She now says she hopes she never sees him again and he "rots in hell".
Murder scene
Ms Bellfield also fears her father took her to the murder scene after Milly's disappearance in 2002.
They went to his then-girlfriend Emma Mills's empty Walton-on-Thames flat during the night, while Milly's missing posters hung everywhere in the area. Bellfield moved out of the flat two days after she disappeared.
 Bellfield's daughter said she knew he was capable of the murder
Thirteen-year-old Milly, who had been abducted while walking home from school in the Surrey town, was found dead six months later.
During their visit to the flat, Bellfield tried to get his daughter to break in through the letterbox. When she refused, he broke in himself with a coat hanger. He disappeared into the bedroom, and when she tried to follow him, he shut her out.
She said: "He would never shout at me. But that night, he was shouting at me to get out of the room. He was on edge. I was scared thinking 'Why would he do that?'
"There was something in there he was hiding, you could tell. At the time I didn't think he had Milly in there. Now I do think that."
Ms Bellfield added: "I feel very angry. I hate him that much. I feel sick to my stomach that someone can do that to a human being.
"I've cried myself to sleep. She was only a few years older than me. How terrified must she have been?"
Daily beatings
Ms Bellfield also recalled how her father would sound his car's horn at girls whilst on the school run.
She said: "He was always beeping at girls walking down the street. They were clearly in uniform. He would shout 'Oi! Oi!' and things like that."
Bellfield had four children with Ms Bellfield's mother Ms Wilkinson, 40, who he was with for six years. He raped her twice - once at knifepoint and again after she had left him - and beat her so badly she ended up in hospital several times. He also stalked her, trashing her house when she left him.
Ms Wilkinson has waived her right to anonymity over the attacks.
Ms Bellfield, who witnessed what became daily beatings of her mother, said: "He beat mum up quite a few times - I saw it happen. I felt scared and shocked. It was bad. It wasn't just a few slaps, it was more horrific than that."
'Hatred and shame'
Bellfield used his daughter for cover whilst he dealt drugs, getting her to hide his marijuana stash from the police, and he once kept her in his burglary get-away vehicle.
She said: "In 2000, when we were coming back from a drug deal, he told me what to do if the police came. He told me to hide as much 'puff' as I could. There was a lot of it. The police pulled us over, but he talked his way out of it.
"Another time we went to a massive field full of weed. I'd gone with him to collect it.
"Then there was a burglary at a hairdresser's. He was the driver. There were a couple of other blokes. They got out, the alarms went off and then they came out with loads of black bags full of hair straighteners and hairdryers."
Ms Bellfield lost touch with her father before his arrest on suspicion of a separate murder, of which he was later convicted, in November 2004.
The next time she heard from him was in a letter to her mother in which he claimed he was innocent.
She continued: "When mum told us about his arrest over the Amelie Delagrange murder, I can't really say I was shocked, because I wasn't. I knew he was capable of it.
"When he was convicted I felt hatred, shame and humiliation. And when he was arrested over Milly Dowler's murder, it wasn't a surprise at all.
"Milly's parents have now got closure and justice. He hasn't just ruined our lives but those of all the victims as well.
"I hope he rots in hell. I know it sounds harsh but I really do. I don't ever want to see him again."
| |
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2007543/Blunders-police-insisted-Milly-Dowlers-dad-did-it.html
The 'kidnap/murder' case of 13year old British girl's voicemail
being 'hacked into' by "News of the World" editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson
who replaced Rebekah Brooks surfaced 'corruptions'.
An extraordinary anti-terrorist-style surveillance operation was launched against Milly Dowler's father in the weeks after her disappearance.
So convinced were police that Bob Dowler had killed his daughter that they were blind to the possibility of other suspects.
Instead of hunting the real murderer, they bugged IT consultant Mr Dowler during the crucial early stages of the bungled inquiry.
Suspected: Bob Dowler in happier times with his daughter, Milly
Recording and tracking devices were placed in his home and car, while a surveillance team was on standby 24 hours a day to clock his every move in the belief that he would lead officers to his daughter's body.
The operation was launched because police had initial doubts over Mr Dowler's alibi. Officers also found pornography and bondage equipment during a search of the family home. None of the material found was illegal.
Detectives admit the surveillance operation on Mr Dowler was a 'major distraction' in the early days of the investigation, but insist it had to be carried out to rule him out of the inquiry. They also point out that abductions by strangers are notoriously difficult to solve.
But critics claim the bugging initiative was one of many blunders which enabled Bellfield to go on to murder Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange.
DESPERATE MEASURES
Milly was last seen alive at 4.08pm on March 21, 2002, as she walked along Station Avenue in Walton-on-Thames, and police were soon deluged with information.
There were 70 different sightings in the UK plus others as far away as Fiji. So desperate were senior officers for a breakthrough that two detectives even visited a psychic medium in Ireland (not surprisingly, nothing came of their trip).
A month before Milly vanished, Bellfield is believed to have exposed himself to an 18-year-old girl as she walked down Station Avenue, Walton – the very street from which Milly was snatched.
The flasher followed her along the road before dropping his trousers. The case was reported to police but incredibly not linked to Milly's disappearance because the victim was five years older.
For nearly three years, officers in the Milly inquiry were unaware that at the time she vanished, Bellfield was living with his girlfriend Emma Mills in Collingwood Place, Walton, only yards from where his victim was last seen. He fled the property days after the murder.
Officers called at the property ten times during the following two years before finally getting a reply on the 11th visit in May 2004. Even then, they failed to establish that Bellfield had been living there at the time of Milly's kidnap.
Had his links to the property been realised, background checks would have identified him as a strong suspect, and possibly saved lives.
Bellfield was no stranger to police. Between 2000 to 2002, officers received 93 reports linking him to sexual assaults, threats, obscene phone calls and physical attacks.
And in August 2002, five months after Milly vanished, another unit in Surrey Police identified Bellfield as being behind a credit-card fraud operation at the Collingwood Place address. But still the murder officers failed to spot his links to the property.
Bellfield was arrested over the fraud on August 23, 2004, in West London. Even then he was quickly released by detectives who failed to link him to his trail of murderous destruction.
Four days earlier, he had bludgeoned Amelie Delagrange to death, having killed Marsha McDonnell a few miles away 18 months earlier.
It was only after Bellfield was arrested that November over the murder of Amelie that Surrey officers belatedly discovered his links to Collingwood Place and began investigating the theory that he abducted Milly.
They were tipped off by top Scotland Yard murder squad officer, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton, about Bellfield's links to Walton-on-Thames.
THE RED SPLODGE
Surrey officers then carried out more research and found that Bellfield had access to a red Daewoo Nexia car, his girlfriend's, which was reported stolen 24 hours after Milly vanished.
Officers re-examined CCTV footage and discovered the car (a 'red splodge' later identified as a Nexia) coming out of Copenhagen Way into Station Avenue about 22 minutes after Milly was last seen.
Fresh analysis also revealed the N-registered Daewoo parked in the street half an hour before Milly vanished. Bellfield immediately became the prime suspect.
The delay in identifying him as the culprit meant Surrey officers were unable to retrieve any forensic evidence directly linking him to the crime, let alone find the red Daewoo, and prosecution lawyers initially ruled there was insufficient evidence to charge him with Milly's murder.
The terrible price Sally Dowler paid for justice
By PAUL HARRIS
Time has done nothing to make Sally Dowler's pain any easier to bear.
She has carried it from the moment she realised her daughter was missing, for the six months it took to find her skeletal remains, and for the nine years it took to bring Milly's killer to justice.
In that time, she would learn that her husband had a secret sex fetish and indulged in rubber and bondage sessions.
Me and my mum: A happy family album shot of Milly with Sally Dowler
Then it emerged that Milly – a 13-year-old making the difficult transition from childhood to adolescence – suffered such self-loathing and inner anguish that she once considered suicide.
The strain drove Mrs Dowler to the brink of insanity, she admitted. Emotionally wrecked by the trauma and tormented by visions of her daughter, she had a nervous breakdown.
She still does not know exactly what happened to Milly, how she died, whether she suffered or was sexually assaulted, or how her last moments were spent.
The schoolgirl: Milly in uniform
Yesterday the 51-year-old teacher fled from court in floods of tears as the monster who murdered her daughter was sent back to prison – still refusing to tell what happened that day in March 2002.
Now – fragile, haunted and bitter – only her loyalty to Milly remains undamaged.
Her tearful defence of her daughter in the face of heartbreaking disclosures about the teenager thinking she was ugly, and that her parents favoured her big sister Gemma, was stoical but tragic.
It was 'absolutely not true', she said, bursting into tears.
Likewise her refusal to believe Milly would contemplate taking her own life was resolute, despite the dark poetry and poignant farewell notes police found in the schoolgirl's 'award-winningly untidy' bedroom, as Mrs Dowler once labelled it.
It was a portrait of the teenager that didn't match her mother's image of the clever, determined and pretty little girl who loved playing the saxophone and making her friends laugh with funny voices.
Unfortunately for Mrs Dowler, the picture was drawn from her testimony in the witness box under extraordinarily punishing cross-examination by Bellfield's defence council, reducing her to tears and the verge of collapse.
Milly, just short of her 14th birthday, had an email account with the user-name 'sexmeslow', it was revealed.
She visited chatrooms, sent questionable messages and made poignant, diary-style notes about how unhappy she was at school.
But Mrs Dowler insisted Milly was a happy girl from a happy family. As a teacher, she knew teenage girls often put anguished comments like that in their diaries.
Asked about the email account, she said she 'had words' with her daughter. Milly simply replied that all her friends used similar names for their emails.
To the mother's obvious distress, the notes Milly wrote were made public for the first time in court. One, which Mrs Dowler was shown as police were still searching for her daughter, was achingly bleak.
'By the time you find this letter I will be gone, up there or down below,' it said. 'I've always been that way – below other people. I'm sorry – you deserve a better daughter, so I have left, and you can concentrate on lovely Gemsy without me getting in the way.
Strain: Mrs Dowler during the trial and Milly's elder sister, Gemma, yesterday
'You should have had an abortion or at least have had me adopted. At least I wouldn't have made your life hell as well.
'I think it's best if you can just try to forget me. It's nothing you've done – I just feel I had to go.'
She addressed it to 'dear mummy and daddy' and asked them to look after themselves and Gemma, adding: 'Remember I'll always love you all. I'm sorry, but goodbye.
'Lots of love as always, your little disappointment.'
She signed it in her real name, Amanda, written inside a heart. A verse she wrote was either a poem or intended as the lyric for a song the musically talented teenager might have been writing.
It started:
'I don't know what it is I do; they all just seem to hate me.
'All they do is slag me off; force everyone else against me.
'I know I'm pathetic and helpless; and I know I'm not pretty or fit;
'But what do they have that I haven't? Let's face it – I'm just total sh*t.'
Milly suggests 'maybe I should just go', and adds: 'Sometimes I wonder how life would be without me'. She imagines life as someone more like her sister: 'She would be everything I'm not … smart, intelligent, wanted, loved.
Embarrassment: Bob Dowler was forced to confess to police that they would find bondage equipment and a ball-gag in the attic
Then I hit myself and wake up to reality, and how bad is school going to be in the morning. I hate it. But not nearly as much as I hate myself.'
At one stage she wrote a note to a friend in which she referred to 'the whole dad thing' – a reference, it was suggested, to the 'distressing' discovery of her father's extreme pornography bondage magazines.
Milly had come across them in a bedroom drawer and was deeply upset.
She showed them to her mother, who, the Old Bailey jury was told, had no idea about his fetish. She told Milly: 'It doesn't mean daddy doesn't love me.' But privately – at a time when her entire life was about to be turned upside down – she would have still more distress to deal with.
When Milly disappeared, Bob Dowler was forced to confess to police that they would find bondage equipment and a ball-gag in the attic when they searched his house in Walton-on-Thames for clues.
'Mrs Dowler insisted Milly was a happy girl from a happy family. As a teacher, she knew teenage girls often put anguished comments in their diaries'
Also there were contact magazines on which he had written notes alongside adverts for kinky services.
It was an excruciatingly embarrassing admission for a father to have to make, and one he was forced to repeat in court. It was, he said, 'a complete betrayal of Milly as a father'.
Because he initially lied about his movements on the day Milly vanished, in an attempt to cover up the fact that he had become aroused by a porn magazine, it made him the prime suspect in the case.
That mistake cost valuable time in the hunt for Milly's abductor. And six months would follow before the search for Milly ended. Her remains were discovered an hour's drive away at the lonely woodland spot where her abductor dumped her naked body.
At last the wait was over – but it compelled Mrs Dowler to struggle with the emotionally crippling conflict of devastation and relief.
It also meant that in a cruel twist, the killer had robbed a mother and father not just of their daughter, but the chance to lay her immediately to rest.
Scientists were still examining Milly's remains when Mr and Mrs Dowler led a celebration of her life at Guildford Cathedral
Such was the potential importance of evidence from the scene that scientists were still examining her remains when Mr and Mrs Dowler led a celebration of her life at Guildford Cathedral.
They placed a single white rose at her miserable, makeshift grave before they were eventually allowed the dignity of a coffin and a private funeral.
Who can tell what effect all this must have had on the Dowlers' marriage? Outwardly in court, it was clear they were facing the ordeal together as they relived the ordeal. Both wore wedding rings. Both wept.
Mr Dowler held his wife's hand as they listened to the evidence and was at her side when she ran from court in distress after giving her own witness testimony.
They have attended every day at court and listened to virtually all the proceedings. And today they are expected to stand side by side outside court to make a statement on the case.
The guilty verdict can never bring Milly back, of course, but at least it finally affords her parents some justice. And now, like Levi Bellfield, Sally and Bob Dowler must continue their life sentence.
======
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1390935/Milly-Dowlers-secret-self-hatred-shows-little-know-childrens-inner-lives.html
The secret self-hatred of confident Milly shows how little we know of our children's inner lives
By TANITH CAREY
As she poses for the camera, confidently showing off her first attempt at ironing, Milly Dowler appears as the sort of confident, carefree girl we’d like all our daughters to become.
But these precious images of happy family life captured on a home video are not only hard to bear because they are Sally Dowler’s last keepsake of her child before her abduction.
They are poignant for another reason. They remind us parents of how little we know of our daughters’ complex and secret emotional lives — and the growing pains they so often face without us.
Emotional turmoil: A seemingly carefree Milly Dowler in the now familiar home video of her ironing
Even a mother as loving and attentive as Sally was forced to admit she had no idea of what has been described in Milly’s murder trial as her ‘double life’.
Unbeknown to her, her apparently happy-go-lucky daughter suffered such low self-esteem that hidden away in a box in her bedroom was a farewell letter saying it would have been better if she’d been aborted or adopted.
In notes and poems that revealed flashes of her self-loathing, Milly told of a life where the thought of school every morning filled her with dread and how she felt both ‘helpless’ and ‘pathetic’.
Two years earlier, at the tender age of 11, it now transpires Milly had already had a go at slicing into her wrists with a dinner knife because she’d been teased at school.
Of course, every teenage girl riding the roller-coaster of hormones during adolescence has written melodramatic, self-pitying rants she later regrets. Thankfully, few get a public airing.
Unbreakable bond: Milly's mother, Sally was clueless about what the court dubbed as her daughter's 'double life'
A mother's love: Sally Dowler with the 'Milly' sweet pea at Chelsea Flower Show that has been created in memory of her daughter
Yet it’s still a painful reminder of how our girls go to war with themselves — and how fiercely they fight that battle every day of their fragile youth.
At the age of just 13, Milly was already counting herself a loser in the popularity and beauty contests of life. For girls today, the two are inextricably linked.
When we look at our daughters, all we see is how lovely they are. When they look in the mirror, all they see are flaws.
Even for effortlessly pretty girls like Milly, who have nothing immediately obvious to obsess about, she still found something — the size of her nose and nostrils.
When I interviewed teenagers for my latest parenting book, I discovered how profound that self-loathing can be. Lovely girls, just like Milly, said they were already saving up for nose jobs and liposuction.
One girl, who would be considered flawless to the naked eye, was still tormented by the fact that one front tooth was marginally longer than the other.
Depressing discovery: Tanith Carey, pictured with her daughter Lily, became aware of just how profound young girls' self-hatred can be when interviewing teenagers
But then this is more than a contest to be pretty. In our schools, looks also determine whether or not you belong.
Even in these days of anti-bulling awareness, much of this interaction is so subtle, it’s imperceptible to the adult eye. Most of it is in coded language of heavy sighs, raised eyebrows and shared looks.
For a sensitive girl like Milly, who like most children her age ‘just wanted to be liked’, even the merest hint that others were whispering about her would have been enough to send her world crashing down around her.
Who knows for certain the real reason why Milly felt left out. When girls start secondary school, there’s always a scramble to redefine the social hierarchies, and she probably fell between the cracks.
But then it doesn’t matter how popular or pretty your daughter is, or how well she seems to fit in; eventually, like Milly, she will face problems with friendships. As parents, we need to warn our girls, so it doesn’t seem like the world is ending.
Eventually, she will learn how to navigate this stormy sea. But, in the short-term, those experiences will shape how she dresses, how she speaks, her hobbies, who she spends time with — and ultimately how she feels about herself.
When I spoke to girls as part of my research, I was shocked by how rigid and uncompromising the boundaries are around teenage social groups — and how brutally they are enforced.
As one girl, Amelia, 14, told me: ‘I have a spots, so I could never be in the popular group. If I went up to them, they’d walk off and laugh.’
Julia, 13, said it made her week when a member of the Ace Gang — the self-styled ‘in crowd’ in her class — suggested they go jogging together out of school.
In school, however, this girl’s esteemed position in the clique of the most beautiful, and most thin, meant she wouldn’t have given Julia more than a passing hello.
Maybe Milly was too pretty. Maybe she was too clever. But most probably there was no good reason why she felt ostracised.
Secondary separation: When girls start high school there's usually a scramble to redefine social hierarchies and establish roles within friendship groups
The tragedy is that Milly didn’t know it wasn’t her fault — and it happens to everyone in some shape or form. Instead, like so many young girls, she turned that insecurity inward on herself.
Yet as much we are there to help, it’s parents who are the last to know of these secret agonies.
Girls invest so much in making their families believe all is perfect that they find it too humiliating to admit when it’s not. They know how desperately we parents want them to belong, and how much it hurts us if they don’t.
Our ignorance of their parallel lives is also abetted by the fact that teenage girls are brilliant secret keepers. Most of the time, the truth only comes out when they have no choice. The last thing teen girls want to do is tell their mums and dads for fear they will wade in to try to fight their corner — and heap even more humiliation on them.
One teenage girl told me of her devastation at being labeled ‘stuck-up’ on Facebook. ‘I cried every night for a month. But I never told my parents. I felt like such a failure — and I didn’t want them to make it all blow up by making a fuss.’
A family affair: Milly, centre, with her parents, Bob and Sally Dowler and sister, Gemma
With all this happening in their lives, it’s not surprising that a time when looks and approval feel so important, girls project an idealised, perfect version of themselves into cyber space.
For Milly, that alter-ego was her screen name Sexmeslow, which she used in chat rooms. But just as she was testing her own sexual identity, Milly came across her father Bob’s porn collection hidden in a drawer.
Many girls go through a phase in early adolescence of looking for evidence of their parents’ sex lives. But when Milly found more than she bargained for, it’s easy to see how this would have been desperately confusing. That’s because all young girls believe that how a father views other women is how all men will judge her.
To see that her father Bob had an interest in these images would have shaken her in-built sense of what’s right and wrong — and knocked her trust in the most important male role model in her life.
But perhaps the most heart-rending detail of Milly’s inner feelings was her description of herself to her parents as ‘your little disappointment’.
It’s a reminder that, however much teenage girls sneer at what we say and pretend not to be listening, they still want our admiration and respect. For whatever reason — and even though they were no doubt loving parents — Milly felt she had failed Sally and Bob Dowler.
Somewhere along the way, she had come to believe that their love was conditional, that they loved her sister more than her because she was cleverer and prettier.
Even so, the chances are that Milly would have survived her teenage angst to grow into a well-adjusted young woman if she’d been allowed to live. But many others don’t.
New global research published in March found a girl’s harsh inner critic moves in by the time she is in her early teens, and continues to erode her self-esteem as she ages.
Sisterly support: In a farewell letter Milly, pictured with her sister, Gemma, said it would have been better if she'd been aborted or adopted
Statistics on depression, anxiety and self-harm show our girls are more unsure than ever before, and their fragile sense of self is too often based on where they come in the classroom catwalk.
But if there is anything we can learn from Milly, it’s that parents have to stay close, and that if we don’t make it a goal to help our children find their inner worth, then the trials of being a teen can quickly corrode it.
As a parenting author, I hear a lot of parents rush to say how ‘bright’ their children are, patting themselves on the back when their sons and daughters get a string of A-star GCSEs, A-levels and university offers. But while parents speak glowingly of their daughters’ ‘confidence’, I rarely hear them extolling what’s more important — a healthy sense of self-esteem.
Probably many of us with daughters who have seen the Milly Dowler case unfold have hugged our own girls a little tighter. You may have told her you loved her. Indeed, she probably expects you to say it.
But Milly’s legacy is a reminder to tell our girls we love them unconditionally — not by comparison to their siblings, or for how they look or how good they make us look.
She is a reminder that when we tell our girls we love them, we need to add just three crucial words: ‘Just the way you are.’
She is a reminder that when we tell our girls we love them, we need to add just three crucial words: ‘Just the way you are.’
