An undergraduate who was charged with rape while at university travelled across the country with his late mother’s ashes before killing himself at an isolated beauty spot, a coroner concluded.
Thomas Wright was left anxious and stressed after being charged and ended up dropping out of his philosophy course at the University of Reading, a court heard.
Coroner Michael Bird was told the 22-year-old had spoken to his grandfather – a former Kent police officer – on the day of his death and had been 100 per cent adamant’ that the sex had been consensual.
But Mick Wright said his grandson was fearful of being found guilty and facing a 20-year jail sentence which he ‘just could not deal with’.
The hearing at Exeter, Devon, was told that Mr Wright’s death in April came 18 months after he had been charged by Thames Valley Police, in what his grandfather described as a ‘botched’ investigation.
Mr Wright relayed how his grandson said: ‘He had been told not to worry, she has done this before.’
The ex-policeman said he had made complaints about the Thames Valley police investigation telling the coroner: ‘It was a botched, very, very poor investigation into this matter.’
He blamed the police for the stress and anxiety caused to Thomas who left his university course and took a job with Thames Water.
Thomas Wright, 22, who committed suicide on Dartmoor after he was accused of rape
Thomas Wright ended up dropping out of his philosophy course at the University of Reading
The family believe the decision to charge Mr Wright may have contributed to his death, the court heard.
News of the tragedy comes after a coroner last month found that Oxford undergraduate Alexander Rogers took his own life when he was ostracised by fellow students.
Assistant Devon coroner Mr Bird heard Mr Wright’s mother Janet had died aged 49 in December 2022 and he had travelled with her urn to the ‘sentimental’ site at Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor from his home in Reading. The wood is one of Britain’s last remaining ancient temperate rainforests and is thought to have inspired Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit author JRR Tolkien, who kept a holiday home nearby.
The inquest at Exeter today heard that Mr Wright had not told his mother about the rape allegation because he did not want to worry her.
The coroner was also told the avid reader was interested in the afterlife but he did not know what significance this had on his death.
On the day Mr Wright died, he had called his father Chris, a control room dispatcher in Cambridgeshire, that he had headed west by train ‘for an adventure’.
But Mr Wright had told a friend what he was going to do and where he was going. Emergency services were alerted and a Dartmoor search and rescue team found him hanged beside a river. A small bag of personal possessions were next to him, including the urn.
Mr Bird said he would reference the criminal sexual assault charge and the 18-month period the matter had been hanging over him, but said this was outside the scope of the inquest.
Wistmans Wood in Dartmoor in Devon. A woodland in the area where Wright was found
In recording a conclusion of suicide, the coroner acknowledged that the charge in October 2022 had been ‘a source of anxiety and stress’ for Mr Wright.
Last month, an inquest at Oxford heard how Mr Rogers, 20, killed himself after being ‘socially ostracised’ by his peers over a sexual encounter he had with a woman.
The court heard Corpus Christi College Mr Rogers, from Salisbury, was a victim of cancel culture before he jumped to his death from a bridge into the River Thames in January this year.
He had suffered a head trauma.
An inquest at Oxford coroner’s court was told that Rogers had been confronted by friends after the woman had expressed ‘discomfort’ about their sexual encounter. They told him he had ‘messed up’, that they needed space from him and would check up on him in a couple of weeks, the court was told.
Nicholas Graham, the coroner for Oxfordshire, later wrote to the Department for Education to warn students were ‘self-policing’ at universities. In a Prevention of Future Deaths report, the coroner outlined his concerns that ‘exclusionary behaviour’ was becoming commonplace on campuses.
