‘My sister was groomed to her death online. It’s a national scandal’

G rowing up, Adele Zeynep Walton and her sister Aimee did everything together.

With a gap of just 18 months between them, Ms Zeynep Walton recalls how their mother often used to dress them in the same clothes. Despite being younger, Aimee would always know exactly what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go.

“She was a really cool younger sister,” Ms Zeynep Walton tells The Independent . “She was super independent and had really niche interests from a young age.”

Despite this closeness, Ms Zeynep Walton hardly heard from her sister over the last year of her life. She knew Aimee had been struggling with her mental health , but felt helpless as the then 21-year-old became increasingly distanced and isolated herself from their family, often disappearing for weeks at a time.

Then, in October 2022, Aimee was found dead after ingesting a substance she had bought online . Police would later tell her family she had spent time on a forum that glorified and enabled suicide, where she had been promoted the substance by a man called Kenneth Law .

Adele Zeynep Walton (R) with her sister Aimee (L) as teenagers (Molly Rose Foundation)

Three and a half years later, Law, 60, formally admitted causing the deaths of 73 victims in England and Wales. Despite this, he will face no court in the UK.

Last month, Ms Zeynep Walton joined other grieving families on a video link as, more than 3,000 miles away, the man who sent her sister the killer poison faced a Canadian court.

Appearing at Newmarket Court in Ontario, Law pleaded guilty to 14 counts of aiding suicide. Prosecutors previously indicated he is suspected of sending at least 1,200 packages – many containing a toxic substance – to more than 40 countries including the US, Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

His UK victims, potentially the biggest group, were included in the case only as “agreed facts” – factors that could increase Law’s sentence, but not individual counts of their own. The National Crime Agency (NCA) has confirmed it will not seek to prosecute Law in the UK and said the decision “guarantees all victims and families in the UK will see justice”.

For Ms Zeynep Walton, the outcome feels like a “slap in the face”.

The decision was compounded by the government ’s announcement that it had rejected calls for a public inquiry to be held into the pro-suicide forum where the substance was promoted to Aimee.

Ms Zeynep Walton says she, along with the seven families involved in the Families and Survivors to Prevent Online Suicide Harms (FSPOSH), are now taking advice on challenging the refusal in the High Court.

‘A national scandal’

Aimee, who was from Southampton, was found dead in a hotel room on 14 October 2022. With her was an American man who had flown to the UK to be by her side while she died. The man was later charged with assisting suicide, but no further action was taken.

Aimee Walton was found dead age 21 in a hotel room (Families and Survivors to Prevent Online Suicide Harms (FSPOSH))

Ms Zeynep Walton described her family’s horror at finding out that Aimee had been interacting online with people encouraging her to end her life.

“We were obviously really shocked that something like this even exists and that it's so easy to access,” she said.

“We thought, ‘Oh, this is just something that's very hard to reach. It's maybe on the dark web’. But since losing Aimee, I've realised the dark web does exist, but most of the harmful stuff is also accessible on mainstream internet.”

She believes her sister was “groomed” into taking her own life. An inquest into Aimee’s death has not yet been held.

“That’s what grooming is,” she said. “They isolate you from your loved ones”.

As she began to pull together the pieces of her sister’s online life in the months leading to her death, she realised Aimee was far from the only person whose tragic end had been linked to this forum and to Law. Speaking to other bereaved families, the group began to paint a far wider, bloodier picture of Law’s offending, and the dark network in which he operated.

“There were immediately alarm bells to me,” she said. “I felt like, this is a national scandal but no one knows about it and no one's talking about it.”

Aimee and Adele did 'everything together' growing up (Molly Rose Foundation)

Ms Zeynep Walton, who describes Aimee’s story and her own reflections in her book Logging Off: The Human Cost of our Digital World , was put in touch with David Parfett whose 22-year-old son Tom took his life under strikingly similar circumstances to Aimee.

Together, they formed FSPOSH. The group have spent years campaigning for Ofcom to shut down the site and for the government to act to stop the sale of the substance to vulnerable people.

Seeing Law brought to court should have been a moment of vindication for them. Instead, they say it was a pale imitation of the justice they are seeking.

“We all feel let down,” Ms Zeynep Walton told The Independent . “We all feel really angry and disappointed.

“The scale of…