An inquest heard that a school worker who was haunted by an ‘innocent’ incident from her childhood was found dead in a Travelodge after telling her parents she was meeting a friend. Rebecca Blezard developed a ‘mental block’ as a result of an incident in her adolescence for which she blamed herself for years, South Manchester Coroners Court heard on Wednesday. (March 22).
The 36-year-old from Oldham was living in Wakefield while working as an inclusion manager at a West Yorkshire school. However, her mental health started getting worse in September 2020, and Ms. Blezard finally moved back in with her mother and father.
Health professionals stated in court. Ms. Blezard frequently said she didn’t want to be alive, and she was found standing on the hard shoulder of a highway just weeks before her death. Ms. Blezard’s parents believed she was on the mend when she announced in May 2022 that she was meeting a friend for a night out in Manchester city center, where she would stay at a Travelodge.
Ms. Blezard, on the other hand, had booked a room at the hotel in Audenshaw, Tameside, where she slept for three nights before being found dead by a hotel employee. Her father, James Blezard, said in court that he first learned of his daughter’s mental health difficulties after getting a phone call from her employment in September 2020.
Ms. Blezard took time off work and returned to an Oldham house she owned before returning to Wakefield, but she was sent to A&E in December 2020 due to mental health issues. Ms. Blezard decided to sell her home in Oldham two months later before finding a partner in Rotherham reports the MEN.
Mr. Blezard told the court that his daughter ‘seemed quite happy at the time’ since the couple bought a house together, but she returned to her parent’s home in Oldham in September 2021.”She felt she couldn’t carry on,” Mr. Blezard said.
“She came to us and that’s when we knew the full impact of her mental condition. She wanted us to take her to A&E so she could be admitted to the hospital.”
Ms. Blezard spent roughly eight weeks in a hospital in Barnsley, where she was ‘in utter anguish’ and would ‘tear her eyes out’ during visits from her relatives, according to the court. Ms. Blezard returned to her parent’s home in Oldham after being released.
Mr. Blezard said: “Rebecca had a way of keeping things to herself. She didn’t want to alarm us. But she was in distress every day, she told us she didn’t want to be here. On numerous occasions, she said she wanted to kill herself.”
Ms. Blezard began seeing a private therapist, Dr. Karin Adamson, according to the investigation. Dr. Adamson described how a childhood trauma had formed “a block” in her client’s thinking.
“She couldn’t make decisions,” she said. “There was something going on that she was not able to break. [Her] mum told me that something happened when she was younger that she carried a lot of guilt and blame for.”
Assistant coroner Adrian Farrow described the event as “relatively innocuous-sounding” and occurred when she was 10 or 11 years old. Ms. Blezard went to Rotherham for a short time before returning to her parent’s home in early 2022, despite her mental health continuing to deteriorate.