'Outstanding' Wesham teacher died after 20-year battle with eating disorder

Natalie Turner, 36, was found unresponsive at her Sanderling Way home by her husband, Andrew, at around 7.20am on October 27 2020. A post-mortem found her cause of death was laxative abuse, as her intestines showed evidence of long-term use of the drug, and a huge amount of tablets were found in her stomach.

At her inquest at Blackpool town hall today, the court heard that the mum-of-one, who set up as a private tutor after previously working at the Outwood Grange Academies Trust in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, had suffered from an eating disorder for 20 years, and regularly used laxatives to attempt to control her weight – consuming vast amounts of tablets each day.

But she hid her illness from her family and friends, and blamed her weight loss on Crohn’s Disease.

Her husband said: “Natalie loved her son to the core. She loved me. There was no way she was doing it on purpose. Two weeks before she died, we took my eldest son to play football and went to McDonalds, through the drive-thru. I ordered a couple of cheeseburgers, and while we were waiting, Natalie said, ‘you don’t understand how much I want a McDonalds’.

"I said, ‘why can’t you have one?’ She said, ‘I just can’t. I’m not allowed. There’s something inside me telling me I’m not allowed, and if I do eat, I’ve got to punish myself’.”

READ: Hundreds of children in Lancashire seek help for eating disorders

The court heard that Mrs Turner had previously maintained a healthy weight, but after suffering a leg injury in 2018, her eating disorder had spiralled, and she plummeted from 9st to just 5st 9lbs.

On October 30 2019, she was admitted to Royal Preston Hospital with sickness and diarrhoea as a result of her laxative abuse. However, doctors believed she was suffering from Crohn’s Disease, which she had suffered from in the past, and was put on fluids to improve her weight.

On November 9, nurse Tracy Early noted that Mrs Turner became ‘distressed’ after learning her weight had increased, and ‘pleaded’ to be allowed to go home.

Ms Early said: “She seemed incredibly genuine. She would cry and tell stories about wanting to be at home with (her son), and how he would be missing her.”

Mrs Turner was eventually discharged on November 12 – but was readmitted just six days later after her husband found her consuming large amounts of laxative tablets.

Mr Turner said: “Nobody knew, not even me. When she was released from hospital the first time, it very quickly became apparent. I would find tablets in the bathroom and question what they were. She would say she used to take them before we met, they must’ve dropped out of her clothes.

"I only really found out she was abusing laxatives two days before she went into hospital that second time.

"I would liken it to an alcoholic. Everything she said, from when she was in the mental health assessment to the conversations she had with the eating disorder service, she told them what they wanted to hear, and nobody questioned it.”

Mrs Turner was spoken to by a Royal Preston Hospital mental health practitioner on December 5, and again on December 6 in the presence of her husband.

He said: “20 minutes before that assessment, I was downstairs with Natalie. She knew sugar-free sweets have a laxative effect, and as I came out of the toilets I could see she was stealing sugar-free sweets from the hospital shop. She denied it. Afterwards she went into the toilets and I could hear her rustling and consuming vast quantities of sugar-free sweets.”

He said he informed the mental health team about the incident, but Mrs Turner denied the allegations. She was discharged on December 9 2019 to continue treatment under a care plan with a mental health team and the Lancashire Eating Disorder Service.

She was also placed on a waiting list for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) on the NHS, while also paying for a private therapist.

But when she eventually reached the top of the list, she turned the offer down.

"She was telling them things like ‘I’m having three meals a day, I’m having Sunday dinner, we had a Chinese takeaway on Friday’, and it just wasn’t true,” Mr Turner said.

He explained: "She wouldn’t eat much in the week. She would allow herself to have food on the Friday and Saturday. Then she would punish herself and purge on Sunday. Quite often on a Sunday she would spend all day in bed. During that day, we would have rows, I would say ‘this can’t go on’. Then on Tuesday she would bounce back and say, ‘see? You’re being ridiculous’."

He said that his wife only began to open up to him about the true extent of her laxative abuse four weeks before she died.

Ms Early said: “I was surprised that she was discharged (on December 9). Physically she was fit, but concerns had been raised about her behaviour and the laxative abuse, and that she may revert back to that. There was a feeing that she would require inpatient treatment, an eating disorder bed or a mental health bed, acknowledging these are not easy to come by. That was certainly the one of the options that we were expecting.”

The inquest continues.

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