EXCLUSIVE PC Andrew Harper's mother reveals the trauma that made her walk out on her son: Five years after his murder, she shares her guilt and her sadness at rift with his crusading wife By Helen Carroll Published: 11:56, 17 September 2024 | Updated: 12:17, 17 September 2024 e-mail View comments Sitting in the hospital mortuary, beside the body of her beloved son, Debbie Adlam was gripped by a terrible, all-too familiar feeling. Guilt. Dreadful guilt.
For too many years she’d lived with the weight of that guilt after she’d left the family home – when her son was four and his little brother a one-year-old baby – as her marriage fell apart. She can’t even recall the day she left, so confused and worn-down was she by what she now understands as birth trauma and post-natal depression . It meant that for most of their lives she’d been a ‘weekend mum’, returning her two boys to their father on Sunday nights, before making the familiar and wretched journey home, always through reams of tears.
The guilt had left her feeling a failure, like no other mother she knew. In a society where ‘weekend dads’ were - and largely still are - accepted without judgement, back then, nearly 30 years ago, there was nowhere she could go for support. Debbie's eldest son was Andrew Harper, the Thames Valley police officer who was brutally dragged to his death on the road in the line of duty by feral teenagers in August 2019.
Here they are pictured together on Mother's Day in 2018 Nob.