Twenty-six years may have passed since Julie Maughan’s daughter Heather died but the pain never goes. ‘It’s post-traumatic stress, isn’t it, where you flash back? You are there and it’s quite visceral. It’s hard to put into words,’ says the 58-year-old.
Some of Julie’s memories of that time – ‘which was like a bomb exploding in our family’ – are hazy and confused. Some horrifically vivid, however. She remembers Heather, just eight years old, being gently lifted by the nurses after the life support machine was turned off and placed across her parents’ laps to die.
Afterwards? ‘They took her away and it was pure shock. I remember thinking, ‘Thank you for that. We will go then?’ It was surreal. We went on holiday a family of four and came home a family of three.’
How can a perfectly healthy little girl go on a family holiday to the seaside in Devon and not come home again? Heather Preen should be a household name; her death – and her broken father Mark’s death, by suicide, years later – a national scandal. Some mothers who have lost a child in brutal circumstances never want to be reminded of how their child suffered. Julie has always needed to go there ‘to understand’.
Heather contracted the pathogen E. coli O157 while playing on the beach in Dawlish with big sister Suzanne, who was ten. While commonly associated with food poisoning, the bacterium can also be present in contaminated water.
Julie had selected the resort carefully: ‘The beach had a Blue Flag [meaning it was clean and safe to swim] which was why I picked it.’ Yes, the family, from Birmingham, had noticed ‘yucky’ water, which had toilet paper dotted through it, flowing from a pipe. ‘I didn’t know the term ‘combined sewage outlet’ then,’ she says. It had made a puddle which Heather had to leap over – and fell in.
Over the next few days, Heather became increasingly ill, first with explosive diarrhoea, then bleeding from the rectum.
Julie thought she had done everything right – first taking advice from the pharmacist then taking Heather to a local GP.
Julie Maughan’s (pictured) daughter Heather died after contracting E.Coli from swimming in the sea in Devon
Heather (pictured) contracted the pathogen E. coli O157 while playing on the beach in Dawlish with big sister Suzanne, who was ten
She packed Mark and Suzanne off to continue their holiday activities and ‘stayed at the chalet with Heather, telling her we would play games’. She pauses, weeping: ‘I didn’t realise that, even then, Heather was dying. Her body was shutting down.’ E. coli O157 is not always fatal but in rare cases it can lead to a kidney failure called haemolytic uraemic syndrome.
Even after Heather was rushed to hospital by ambulance after a second visit to the GP, she had no chance. ‘I do want people to know what it does,’ Julie says. ‘It ‘liquifies’ the organs. I will never forget them showing us a brain scan and where you’d normally expect to see squiggles, there was nothing, just pure white.’
Now, finally, the story of Heather Preen – and others like her – is being told. Dirty Business, a three-part Channel 4 factual drama, looks set to spark the same sort of anger over water pollution – and how the water companies are regulated – that ITV’s Mr Bates Vs The Post Office did for the Horizon scandal. Why was merry hell not created about this at the time of Heather’s death? People tried. Julie tried. She remembers confronting environmental health officials, once a food source had been ruled out, begging them to close the beach.
She was consistently told this was not an option, as South West Water moved quickly to rule out sewage as the cause – a position the company has maintained. Heather could have contracted E. coli from dog poo, her family were repeatedly told. ‘I would have noticed if she’d stepped in dog poo,’ her mother insists.
While no link was proved between Heather’s death and the raw sewage that was confirmed on that beach in Dawlish, at her inquest it was revealed that there had been 14 complaints about the sewage there, and that the E. coli outbreak had also resulted in five other cases, including one where three children were hospitalised.
But while Julie took it as ‘a win for Heather’ when the coroner ruled her daughter had died from misadventure rather than natural causes, giving evidence at the inquest was ‘traumatic’.
In the drama, Mark is subjected to what can only be described as interrogation by lawyers for South West Water over his statement about the puddle Heather fell in, and the toilet roll fragments in it, suggesting he couldn’t have seen what he thought he saw.
‘He was devastated,’ Julie remembers. ‘I’d worried that he would become angry and I told him ‘keep it together – stay calm’, but they really laid into him. They implied it was his fault, challenging him about the toilet roll. I couldn’t understand why it was so adversarial. It was very ‘them and us’. We only wanted to know the truth about how Heather died and for us it was a public health issue.
Julie Maughan with her daughters Heather (left) and Suzanne (right). While no link was proved between Heather’s death and the raw sewage that was confirmed on that beach in Dawlish, at her inquest it was revealed that there had been 14 complaints about the sewage there
Heather (in the boat) with sister Suzanne and her father Mark. Julie is finally able to look at pictures of Heather and her dad playing together and remember the happiness ‘because she was full of joy’
‘I think they [the water company] thought I was going to sue them. I’ve always said I didn’t want their money. I stand by that. This wasn’t about money. I’m not accusing them of killing Heather.
‘It was about stopping this happening to another family, about getting them to acknowledge that there was a danger.
‘That’s still my greatest fear, that I will one day get the call from some devastated family who have lost a child. Because there but for the grace of God.’
What an extraordinary woman Julie Maughan is. The issues she has been shouting about for years are of the utmost importance
but talking about them is like consistently ripping off a scabbed-over wound. She apologises for crying during our interview but it’s astonishing that she has maintained the composure she has.
Because when that ‘bomb’ exploded, every single member of the Preen family was affected.
She recalls that in the aftermath of Heather’s death ‘poor Mark’ got the brunt of the questions from police and environmental health investigators. ‘Where did you go, what did you eat? I think he shielded me from that side. It was Mark who sat with Heather all night in the chapel of rest.’
As Julie says: ‘Heather was a casualty but so was Mark, so was I, so was Suzanne. She lost her sister and her best friend. Then she lost her dad.’
Even after Heather was rushed to hospital, she had no chance. ‘I do want people to know what it does,’ Julie says. ‘It ‘liquifies’ the organs. I will never forget them showing us a brain scan and where you’d normally expect to see squiggles, there was nothing
Heather on her birthday with her mother, sister and grandmother. Heather is still everywhere in their home. Julie has kept all the shells her youngest gathered up on that final holiday. She tells how she and Suzanne buy a new bauble for ‘Heather’s Christmas tree’ every year
The Preens’ marriage had never recovered from Heather’s death. While she ‘went in one direction’ – poring over scientific papers about water pollution, trying to raise public awareness – Mark turned inward.
‘He [just] couldn’t cope. The depression hit. He was drinking heavily. He was carrying this guilt. I wonder if I didn’t put too much pressure on him.’
For years they stayed ‘together but not really together’. ‘It was for the sake of Suzanne, because I didn’t want her to have to deal with her parents splitting up on top of everything else. But by the time she was doing her GCSEs, it was obvious things were bad.’
Mark moved out and things for him spiralled further downwards. ‘I couldn’t reach him but I was angry with him, too. I remember saying, ‘You have lost a daughter but you have another daughter who needs to live. Don’t waste your time with her. Life is precious. You, of all people, know that.’
In 2016, aged 55, Mark took his own life. That scene in the drama is graphic, difficult to watch even for a stranger. How on Earth must it have been for Julie?
‘I was shocked,’ she nods. ‘I took a sharp intake of breath. But I think it was right to include it. This is what that bomb under us did. It came out of nowhere but it went on and on and on.’ All in all, Dirty Business is a devastating watch, one you will find yourself thinking of every time you paddle in the sea, walk by a river or even drink a glass of tap water.
The Preen family’s tragedy is just one strand woven into the story of how two Cotswold neighbours – Peter Hammond and Ash Smith – became ‘sewage sleuths’, investigating why their once-clear local river was now a murky grey.
They are ‘the heroes of this whole thing,’ says Julie. Hammond, a retired professor of computational biology, and Smith, a retired detective, used hidden cameras, Freedom of Information requests and AI models to uncover sewage dumps on an industrial scale all over the country. Meticulously researched, the drama traces what happened to the water industry once it was privatised in 1989, then again after regulation was eased when David Cameron was prime minister.
Julie and her daughters. As Julie says: ‘Heather was a casualty but so was Mark, so was I, so was Suzanne. She lost her sister and her best friend. Then she lost her dad’
Mark with Heather. He moved out and things for him spiralled further downwards. ‘I couldn’t reach him but I was angry with him, too. I remember saying, ‘You have lost a daughter but you have another daughter who needs to live’
The bottom line is: investment dropped and water companies extracted billions in profits.
The drama raises troublesome questions about the cosy relationship between the Government regulators of the water industry and the water company bosses, and draws largely on information provided by whistleblowers.
There’s a shocking scene where inspectors are told that they will no longer be required to examine certain incidents of pollution – it will be up to the companies themselves to effectively self-regulate. And issues remain. In 2024, Thames Water dumped raw sewage into waterways for a jaw-dropping 300,000 hours. And last May, it was fined a record £122.7million after it was judged to have broken rules over sewage treatment and paying out dividends.
Yet just last month it was found to have dumped raw sewage into the River Mole in Surrey.
Despite soaring bills, Thames Water is mired in debt – £17.6billion in December – in part blamed on money being taken out of the company in loans and dividends.
Julie cannot fathom why our water is in any way connected to profit. As she puts it: ‘I thought it then and I keep saying it now – water is a life source. The water companies should never be run for profit. I would like to sit down with Keir Starmer and say, ‘Stop this ball rolling, NOW.’
In response to publicity around Dirty Business, South West Water has said: ‘We haven’t yet been given access to review the programme, so can’t comment on what will be aired in connection with Heather’s death in 1999. However, the tragic death of a child is devastating and our thoughts remain with the family affected.
‘Bathing waters are subject to stringent testing, real-time monitoring and public reporting. The bathing water at Dawlish Warren was tested as part of the investigations at the time by Environmental Health and samples were clear of E. coli.’
Finally, the story of Heather Preen – and others like her – is being told. Dirty Business, a three-part Channel 4 factual drama, looks set to spark the same sort of anger over water pollution
Somehow, Julie and Suzanne have survived the bomb that went off in their family. Julie went on to complete the degree she was taking when Heather died and has since remarried. Suzanne, now 37, also went to university and has grown into ‘a woman I am just in awe of – she’s a rock-solid person’.
Heather is still everywhere in their home. Julie has kept all the shells her youngest gathered up on that final holiday. She tells how she and Suzanne buy a new bauble for ‘Heather’s Christmas tree’ every year. And she says her daughter’s ‘energy’ is still with her. ‘I don’t know what she would look like as grown woman – that was denied me – but I still feel her. It’s that energy I cling to. And miss. I desperately miss it.’
At first, Julie refused to cooperate with the Channel 4 drama but it was the idea that Heather had been forgotten about that forced her to reconsider. She’s now glad she did – partly because she knows ‘this is a public health issue’, and partly because it allowed her to make peace with Mark, finally, understanding why he sought the way out that he did.
‘I was so angry with him for so long but watching Tom [McKay, the actor] play him made me see things differently. I told Tom I’d had a moment when I watched his scenes. I realised the guilt Mark would have been carrying. I think I understood more.’
She is finally able to look at pictures of Heather and her dad playing together and remember the happiness ‘because she was full of joy’. ‘She used to scamper into our bed when her dad was making me a cup of tea. If he was giving me a hug, she’d squeeze into the middle of us.’
This drama will be an education for those who think the issue of water pollution is something for only scientists and campaigners to worry about. ‘I want to sit down with the Prime Minister and make sure he is aware how it affects every one of us,’ says Julie.
What does she think Heather would make of her continued quest, painful though it is? ‘I think she’d be saying, ‘Come on, Mum. Let’s just get this done.’
Dirty Business is available to watch and stream on Channel 4 at 9pm on Monday.