Sex role-play death prompts law change plea

The sister of an adult online performer who died during a sexual role play game gone wrong has called for strict new webcamming pornography laws.

Hope Barden, 21, was found asphyxiated after carrying out a degrading sex act on the internet for a pub landlord over 250 miles away.

A coroner ruled she was unlawfully killed and Hope's mother said she was "left to die".

Hope's sister Lily has called for new regulations to prevent more deaths.
Hope was found dead in Burton-upon-Trent after filming herself "for the purposes of sexual gratification" for a "reckless" online voyeur, Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh said.

"The extent of his encouragement to her to carry out this act and his failure to report appropriately when she lost consciousness makes it clear that the male was so subjectively reckless as to amount to manslaughter," Mr Haigh ruled in Hope's inquest last week.

Staffordshire Police said Jerome Dangar, 45, from Tintagel, Cornwall, was online when Hope died, but made no attempt to raise the alarm.

It is understood a file was being prepared by police for submission to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider charging him with Hope's manslaughter.

Police and her family said this would have been a landmark legal first in the UK - but were denied justice when Dangar was found dead at HMP Dartmoor in April.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-48790961