Buzzin Disgrace

On February 18th 2008, British teenager, 15 year old Scarlett Keeling was raped and murdered on a beach in Goa, India.

The Indian police insisted that Scarlett had drowned but her mother, 43 year old Fiona MacKeown refused to accept the findings and spent four week fighting for the death to be investigated.

Mrs MacKeown was on a six month holiday in India with eight of her children and her partner. In February, Fiona decided it was time to see more of the country but Scarlett did not want to leave and wanted to stay with her friend, tourist guide Julio Lobo, 25 years old. Reluctantly, Fiona agreed to let her stay in the custody of Julio in Anjuna, the hippy beach resort.

Mrs McKeown’s eldest son, Halloran 19, had stayed behind in Britain and on the 14 February he was knocked down while crossing the road in Barnstaple and suffered serious head injuries. On the 17th February, Fiona phoned her daughter and told her they would have to make plans to return home, which was the last time she would get to speak to her daughter.

That evening, Julio was unwell and decided to stay at home and so Scarlett decided to go out with her 16 year old friend Ruby for their last night. The girls headed into town where her friend admitted that they got quite drunk before returning home in a taxi. Ruby said “We were quite drunk by the end of it and got a taxi back to my place. Scarlett stayed in my room for about five minutes before we said our goodbyes and promised to stay in touch. It must have been about 1am when she left.”

It is unclear what actually happened in the next few hours, but hard drugs seemed to have entered the equation and at about 3am Mike, a British witness said he saw Scarlett fall over in front of a beach bar. He said “She was wasted, talking gibberish, but she was just about coherent.” Scarlett apparently told him later that she had taken three drops of LSD, two ecstasy pills and cocaine.

Scarlett went into the bar and after only a short time was seen going into the kitchen at the back, for at least an hour, where she was said to be talking and taking cocaine with an Indian man. When Mike left the bar at around 5am, he saw Scarlett lying outside with a barman on top of her, he said he shouted to them but did not intervene at there was no screaming or anything.

One and a half hours later, Scarlett’s semi-naked body was found on the beach.  It was her mother who had to insist on a second post mortem as she would not accept the cause of death as drowning and has been eventually proved right.

It was several days after Scarlett’s death that her mother found her daughters underwear, shorts and sandals, one of which had a strap broken. Ms MacKeown said that the evidence from the post mortem proved Scarlett was killed. Scarlett had suffered at least five abrasions after her death on her face, back and shins and had sand in her mouth and throat. It also found that there was hardly enough water in her body to have drowned.

It was reported today that there has actually been 126 foreign nationals that have died in Goa in the past two years, 40 of them British. Some police officers suggested that 10-12 of the deaths were passed off as drownings last year but looked suspicious.The Indian police are said to be investigating whether her ‘negligence’ by leaving her daughter in somebody else’s custody in any way contributed to her daughter’s fate. Her mother had already said “I feel responsible for being naive and too trusting, I certainly do not feel I was negligent.” That is debatable, leaving a 15 year old girl in the care of a young man that you hardly know, it was just asking for trouble.

The thing that really disgusts me are all the tabloid reports that have been appearing this week. A huge article on the life that this family led in the UK. What relevance to the rape and murder of this young girl does this have, or how many partners and children her mother has had. These children seem loved and well cared for unlike many of the thugs seen on the front of newspapers everyday in Britain. A neighbour of the family said the children were polite and clean and that the family caused no problems. One of the newspapers had the audacity to say ‘She, too, would go on to bring up her children as a single mum’, Scarlett had taken the responsibility of going to family planning, good for her, I should think it is highly unlikely to find a 15 year old virgin in the UK these days!   There have been  photographs printed, supposedly of Scarlett’s bedroom in the UK, So it was untidy, I know for a fact that this is quite normal for any teenager but the room certainly didn’t look like she lived in squalor. The newspapers have tried to dredge up any bit of sleazy information on this family that they could possibly find, give these poor people a break, they have lost a beautiful, daughter and sister to a rapist and a murderer, do you not think that her mother regrets her actions and will do for the rest of her life. At the end of the day it was a rape and murder that was trying to be hushed up in my opinion, concentrate on that and leave this poor family alone!!!!!