A woman died after performing "degrading" sex acts online for a "snuff porn" fan, an inquest heard today. Hope Barden was encouraged to perform dangerous acts over three months in online videos for a man before she suffocated to death last year. The year was a graduate who worked as a carer for people with learning disabilities and also worked as a webcam girl for extra money on the side.
Hope, from Staffordshire in the UK, was in an online relationship with Jerome Dangar β a year-old pub landlord who lived more than km away in Cornwall, the Sun reports. Police said the man was watching Hope online when she died of asphyxiation on March 15, , during "sexually related role play", but he made no attempt to call emergency services "to the danger he had put her in".
Dangar, who ran the King Arthur's Arms Inn pub in Tintagel, North Cornwall, was arrested in connection with her death in May last year after police launched an investigation. Police also found a collection of abuse videos, which showed threats to life and serious genital injuries. He was convicted of possession of extreme pornographic images in January and jailed for 15 months. Her family revealed today how distraught they were as a coroner returned a verdict of unlawful killing. The woman's mum, Kate Barden, said she was devastated by her "beautiful" and "intelligent" daughter's death and that the man involved would never face justice.
A pathologist who examined Dangar's extreme pornography collection said there was a strong possibility that other subjects died during the filming process as the videos weren't staged. Staffordshire Police confirmed the pair had been in contact via an adult website, but the act that led to her death was a "private arrangement conducted on social media".
Barden's mum Kate Barden said: "Had this gone to court, this would be a landmark case, the first of its kind in the UK. A duty of care exists in any relationship.
