Violent killer ‘missed at least five meetings with substance misuse worker’
Damien Bendall did not tell the truth about the extent of his drug and alcohol use when he finally attended a meeting, a coroner has been told.
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Your support makes all the difference.A substance misuse worker who met with violent offender Damien Bendall days before he murdered his pregnant partner and three children said he missed at least five earlier appointments to address his drug and alcohol use.
Rebecca Pashley met with Bendall, 33, on September 17 2021, just days before he brutally killed 35-year-old Terri Harris and her children, 13-year-old John Paul Bennett and 11-year-old Lacey Bennett, who he also raped, with a claw hammer at the family home in Killamarsh, Derbyshire.
He also murdered Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, also 11, who was staying over.
Day eight of the inquests into Bendall’s victims’ deaths was told by Ms Pashley it was 10 weeks between the killer’s referral to the Derbyshire Recovery Partnership (DRP), a requirement from the court to address alcohol dependency, and his first meeting – something she said is “unusual”.
The inquests, held at Chesterfield Coroner’s Court, were told Bendall was offered a number of meetings, on July 21 and 30, August 13 and 18 and September 8, so his substance use could be assessed by the DRP.
But he missed all of them, citing different reasons, such as a lack of money or ability to travel to the appointment.
When he finally attended a meeting, on September 17, Bendall told Ms Pashley the last time he had drunk alcohol heavily was the previous Christmas and that he had stopped smoking cannabis a week before the assessment because he was starting a job as a forklift driver and wanted to pass any random drug tests.
Ms Pashley, who had been in the job since July 2021, said she had no reason to doubt what Bendall told her – but had not been informed by the probation service he had admitted to them on August 2 that he had started smoking cannabis again.
She was also not told about a comment Bendall made to a probation officer about his plans to buy a 65% proof bottle of rum he had seen in his local corner shop.
Ms Pashley said that, because Bendall was on a six-month alcohol treatment requirement order, she had the power to breathalyse him at their meeting, though he could refuse a drug test.
Asked if she was made aware of his admissions to the probation service about his drug and alcohol use, Ms Pashley said she was not.
She said: “It would have been useful to know that as what he told me on September 17 was different to what he told his probation officer, so I would have questioned him more and it may have prompted me to drug test him.
“If I received that information before the assessment, I would have read through it and been aware of the discrepancies in what he was saying to me.
“Due to his appearance on the day and what he told me, I had no reason to suspect what he was telling me wasn’t true.
“There was nothing on the referral form (from the probation service) that said he was dependent on alcohol. There was nothing that made me question what he was saying.”
Ms Pashley said she had already deemed Bendall to be a high risk to himself and others because he had been open with her during their 45-minute meeting about his history of violence and his potential for future offences and that he had been in a gang when he was younger.
But she said she may have changed his “treatment and goals” if she had known about his alcohol and drug use.
She said: “I had scored him as high risk already but the 65% rum would have given me more reason for that score.
“It may have prompted me to breathalyse him at the appointment and determine if he was alcohol dependent rather than just here and there, as he said.”
Ms Pashley said she was also not given any information about Bendall’s previous offences by the probation office.
She told the inquests Bendall had given her “full disclosure” to contact Ms Harris if needed because she was his next of kin, but she said future meetings with Bendall would have involved a visit to the home in Chandos Crescent he was sharing with his partner and her children.
Those meetings did not happen because Ms Pashley was told on Monday September 20 that Bendall had killed four people.
Bendall was given a whole-life tariff in December 2022.
The inquests, being heard by senior coroner for Derby and Derbyshire Peter Nieto, continue.