Joanne Garnham, the mother of 39-year-old Darren Salituri who died in prison on Monday, said that from the minute she found out about her son’s death, ‘the entire experience was a shambles’.
She was informed about his death while she was alone, via a phone call from a prison chaplain.
‘At 9.40am I received a call from a private number, and I picked up the phone expecting it to be about housing as we are in the process of moving,’ she said.
‘They said that they were really sorry but they had some sad news to tell me.
‘They didn’t check and I was on my own. I was alone when they told me my son had died. I couldn’t breathe.’
Mrs Garnham woke her husband, who had just come off a night shift, and they went round to her sister’s house.
After not hearing anything else, they called the police and asked for an officer to go and speak to them.
‘He walked in and just stood in the middle of the room. He told us that they opened his cell that morning and found him hanging,’ she said.
‘It was blunt, and we were told like it was a normal conversation. I told him that was probably the one thing I didn’t want to know. He said he’d go off to find more information and we didn’t hear from him.
‘When we called later in the afternoon, the same police officer came round and was confused whether he’d even spoken to Darren’s mum the first time round.’
Mrs Garnham said she spent the remainder of the day and the entire night imagining her son hanging in his cell.
‘On Tuesday an officer came to see me and my daughter, we then found out it wasn’t even true,’ she said.
‘He hadn’t died that way and I was put through the torment of imagining my son dying like that.
‘My son is gone, but whichever way he went, that shouldn’t have happened that we were told that.’
The family were told he had written on his calendar in his cell only a few days earlier, with signs of what he was going to do.
Mrs Garnham learned that it was her son’s fourth suicide attempt and he had not been placed under increased supervision.
She has since received a message from someone whose relative is also in prison. The message said that they had found out about Darren’s death at 8am.
‘The cell doors had been opened and everyone came out, but Darren didn’t. A friend he had made in there went into his cell to wake him up, discovered him and then everything went into action,’ she said.
‘Everyone was locked in their cells but the news leaked out of prison straight away. It was on social media before I was told.
‘No parent or anyone should have to go through this, and be told by a phone call when they’re alone.’
She has spoken to the prison, criticising the way she was informed about her son’s death, and was told that she and her children would be able to visit the cell where her son took his life.
‘I was told by the prison that that’s the way they do it. I’m not stupid, the reason they had to it that way was because it leaked out of that prison so fast, they had to try and recover it,’ said Mrs Garnham.
‘The news just filtered out of the prison walls like I don’t know what. They told me they were under pressure to release it because it got out so quick, but why weren’t they under pressure to tell his mother? He told me that it was because they all have phones.
'Maybe I’m naive, even after having a son like Darren, but you think that the police and the prison will protect you.
'Things should not be leaking out of the prison like that.’
Some prisoners have access to an in-cell phone facility with restricted numbers they can contact.
Mrs Garnham has had an apology from a police officer, she said, but she felt that the police were blaming the prison and the prison was blaming the police.
‘I think they’re clapping that Darren’s gone because they felt he was a hassle to them. They didn’t look after him the way they should have done because he could be a nuisance, but that’s not the point,’ she said.
‘As his mum, I knew that I would be burying Darren before I went.
‘I played the story over and over in my head, a policeman knocking on my door telling me my son had gone, but it should never have happened in this way. I’m doing this so no other mother has to go through what I’ve gone through.’
Director of operations, justice and regulation, Dave Le Ray, said on behalf of the prison service that it would not be appropriate for the prison to comment further than the statements issued about Mr Salituri’s death on Monday.
‘The circumstances of this incident remain under police investigation and have been formally referred to the Prison and Probation Ombudsman for independent investigation,’ he said.
‘Our condolences remain with the family and anyone affected.’
'Social media abuse something no family should have to deal with’
ABUSE on social media is ‘something no family should have to deal with’, Darren Salituri’s mother has said.
Since his death was announced publicly on Monday, his family has been subject to harrowing comments online about him.
Mr Salituri was in prison on remand when he died, accused of drugging a woman before sexually assaulting her.
His mother, Joanne Garnham, admits that her son ‘was no angel’, but said she will not accept people saying that he was a paedophile, which was happening across social media on Monday.
‘I will hold my hands up now and say that my son was no saint, and if he is looking down on me now he’ll understand because he’s always been like this,’ she said.
‘I accept anyone telling me they hated my son, I accept anyone telling me how vicious his mouth was, but I will not accept people saying that he was a paedophile.
‘He has had charges put up [against him] but nothing has ever related to paedophilia, nothing he has done is in that world, and now people are creating AI videos of him in prison.’
Mr Salituri had been in prison on remand since October.
He was accused of drugging a woman before sexually assaulting her, facing two charges of administering substances to the woman without her consent with the intention of stupefying or overpowering her, and one of sexual assault, and a separate assault on another female.
He was also accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
He had several previous convictions for various offences.
The comments fuelled Mrs Garnham to post her own comments defending her son, in attempts to defuse the trolling.
She said that there had been false rumours everywhere, including at her grandson’s school, and the police telling her the wrong cause of death of her son.
She said that she had had a ‘tremendous’ response from her posts, with many messages from people who knew the ‘real Darren’.
‘I will not sugar-coat that my son was an angel, but I will say that a lot of what people are saying online is purely rubbish and needs to be stopped,’ she said.
‘We have seen things we never should have had to see and we refuse to do it any more, we will not let it break us.
‘I will never be able to clear my son’s name but for mine and my family’s sake, stop with the trolling.
‘If anyone’s got a grievance with Darren, they’ve left it a bit late to take it up with him.’
'Darren was troubled but we knew he loved us'
‘DARREN loved us in Darren’s way’, his family has said after his death.
The 39-year-old died in prison on Monday.
His mother Joanne Garnham described him as a ‘tortured soul’.
‘Darren was troubled from a very young age. As his own mother I will say he was not an easy character,’ she said.
‘As he got older, he got darker and that wasn’t a lot I could do.
‘He was let down from reception, he was let down in education and let down by doctors.’
She said that he was all mouth and no action.
‘The people that knew the real Darren loved him, but he didn’t show many people that side of him,’ she said.
Mrs Garnham posted on social media about her son’s death, and has received messages from people who knew him.
The messages describe him looking out for neighbours, helping people with their gardens, cleaning gravestones and enjoying fishing.
'People would call him Darren tell-a-story, because goodness, couldn’t he tell a story,' his mother said.
‘Messages like those are what will keep me going.
‘Nobody understood him, and no one is thinking about the people who loved him.
‘I’m not painting him as whiter than white, but I want to show him as the person he was to us. Darren loved us in Darren’s way.’