Agony of parents helpless to save daughter from heroin

The parents of a teenage drug addict told today of their torment over their daughter's death from heroin.

Bonny Milan was a happy schoolgirl and huge animal lover. Her mother and stepfather, Mandy and Colin Milan, moved out of London to the country to give her a safe upbringing.

But when she was 14 she was introduced to a man of 30 by a friend and began to take drugs. The encounter with Mark Beardsmore was to lead to addiction and two prison terms.

Ultimately - even though she had taken out a court order to prevent him seeing her - it led to her death, aged 18, at his flat in Hackney.

Today her parents told how they had left Enfield for Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire because they thought it would be a safe place to raise Bonny and her brother John, now 16.

Mrs Milan said: "We bought her first horse when she was one. She started showjumping when she was nine and won lots of competitions. She wanted to be a vet so we bought more animals for her."

But after she began a relationship with Beardsmore, her attitude changed and she started disappearing for a days. When she turned 16, they moved into a council flat.

Mrs Milan said: "Things started to go missing from the house, she stole two cheques which she made out for ?3,000 and gave to Beardsmore.

"She asked her brother to steal from us. We tried to get help from the police, social services and drug counsellors to get her away from him, but we got nothing. She was up and down in court."

Then, after losing contact for four months, the Milans received a call from the British Embassy in Ibiza telling them Bonny was being deported for shoplifting. Weighing only five stone, she was sentenced to five days in Holloway Prison. On her release, Mrs Milan took her to stay in Enfield with her grandmother to keep her away from Beardsmore.

Then 17, Bonny stopped taking heroin, went back to college and moved into a flat near her f amily. But Beardsmore tracked her down and she fell back into the cycle of drugs and crime.

Mrs Milan said: "She'd pop round if she was hungry or out of money. I would feed her and plead with her to stay."

In February, Bonny and Beardsmore were caught shoplifting again. She spent four weeks in prison without telling her family. While there she wrote an anti-drugs poem that was read at her funeral.

Mrs Milan said: "She came back to live at home looking like a bag of bones." Bonny began rebuilding her life again, working at the family wholesale company. Her mother said: "She said she regretted everything and couldn't stop apologising. She said she didn't want to go back to that life any more."

Bonny, who had taken out the injunction against Beardsmore, started learning to drive. After passing her theory test in July she met old schoolfriends to celebrate.

But she bumped into the girl who had introduced her to Beardsmore and met him again at his flat after buying ?20 of heroin. An inquest heard she took the heroin there and the next day her friends could not wake her.

She died shortly after 9.30am on 29 July. Mrs Milan said: "There was nothing we could do. He was a grown man and she was just a little girl."