A FATHER who spent £28,000 trying to give his troubled daughter a new life has told of his desperate bid to save her.

A Bradford inquest this week heard the disastrous catalogue of events during 46-year-old Louise Harris’s turbulent life.

They included:

* going into care at 15

* being beaten and raped at 18

* getting hooked on drugs and being smuggled out of the UK to Holland in a converted bus while on bail for drug offences

* smuggling heroin into the Far East for European drug barons

* having her leg broken during an arrest at a Barcelona airport and serving a ten-year prison sentence in Spain

* the tragic death of a son in a road accident.

Ms Harris’s sudden death on December 19, 2016, sparked an extensive police investigation which saw her partner and a local taxi driver arrested on suspicion of supplying drugs found at her home in Main Street, Denholme.

Both Ms Harris’s partner and the taxi driver were later released without charge and the dealer was never found.

The inquest heard that her partner told police he had shared heroin with her the day before she died.

Police had seized a number of drug items including wrapped packages of light and dark brown powder from the scene.

Her partner later told detectives it was Ms Harris who made phone calls to get their drugs and said he just collected them and brought them home.

Detective Constable Ken Robinson told the inquest they never traced the dealer but had arrested a taxi driver during their investigations whose fingerprints were found on one of the wrapped packages.

The driver said he knew the couple and picked them up and dropped them off at their home but denied having any connections with the drugs trade.

He told police he must have picked the package up after it was dropped in his cab by mistake.

However, post mortem tests revealed no sign of heroin in Ms Harris’s system at the time she died.

Instead the tests found lethal amounts of three drugs her GP had prescribed for the long-term chronic pain and depression that had left her bed-bound for several weeks before she died.

Assistant deputy Coroner Oliver Longstaff said Ms Harris had unintentionally overdosed on that medication and therefore her death was by misadventure.

A statement by her father, Albert Harris, read out at the inquest detailed her life after she was adopted as a baby, saying home life became difficult in her troubled teenage years and she left with support from the Roman Catholic Social Services. When she got involved in drugs she disappeared from his life and he lost contact with her until she was freed from the Spanish jail.

Returning to England in 2010, she was reunited with her father and went to live with him. He hoped she would have a new start by getting back into education and employment but her long-existing health problems, including debilitating back pain, escalated.

Ms Harris started a relationship and lived with her partner in Keighley but it was “a rogue landlord situation” said Mr Harris, who moved them into a new home in Denholme.

He also bought her two mobility scooters, paid for driving lessons, and bought “all sorts” to make life easier for them.

“Many times I asked her to explain why she needed money on top of the benefits but I never got an explanation, now I understand why,” he said.

After the inquest Mr Harris, who had believed his daughter had been clean of drugs, said: “We paid for everything. Money was all I had to help, I was caring for my wife who was ill and I was still working.”

The inquest heard how Ms Harris’s earlier involvement in the drug trade took her from Holland to Spain and to the Far East. She was returning from Thailand to a Barcelona airport when she was arrested and her leg was broken.

She was sentenced to ten years for drug offences and for using a false passport.

Mr Harris said he did not want to point the finger of blame at anyone but wanted to speak openly about the chaotic life his daughter had led rather than “hide away”.

And he said he was “happy” it was a cocktail of prescribed drugs that had killed her – and not heroin.

The 80-year-old said the physical pain he witnessed her suffering was terrible and he understood how she would have been desperate to allay the agony.

“My only relief is I’m happy knowing it was not heroin that took her life,” he said. “I still feel outrage that people have kept quiet about who was dealing them the street drugs.

“Whoever it was, and those drug barons abroad, will still be getting to other people’s children but everyone stays quiet.

“I didn’t want to hide our story away. Let’s hope someone can learn something from this.”