A woman who suffered catastrophic brain injuries after she was found in the road after a horror kidnapping at the hands of her ex was saved at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre. Angel Lynn, 22, was just 19 years old when she was left unable to speak or move following the horrific incident on the A6 near Loughborough, Leicestershire, in September 2020.
Her former boyfriend Chay Bowskill is serving a 12-year jail term for kidnap, coercive and controlling behaviour, and perverting the course of justice, after grabbing her off the street and forcing her into a silver transit, driven by his accomplice, friend Rocco Sansome, of Birstall, Leicestershire. Sansome was found guilty of kidnap and sentenced to 21 months in prison.
A new Channel 4 documentary - The Kidnap Of Angel Lynn - shows horrifying CT scans revealing how her skull was fractured from top to bottom. Bowskill claimed Angel had fallen or jumped from the van as it travelled at 60mph, but her mother Nikki Lynn believes that she was pushed.
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Stuart Smith, Consultant Neurosurgeon at Queen's Medical Centre, tells the moving documentary: "As soon as Angel arrived in hospital, it was very clear she had suffered very severe injuries. This is the CT scan of Angel's head.
"This area here is a fracture that has been split open by the force of the impact, and the fracture continues on into other parts of the skull. A fracture to the skull of that degree takes a really incredible degree of force. Her injury was so devastating, and so severe, that there was a very real chance that Angel wouldn't survive".
Mrs Lynn revealed on the programme how she "fell on the floor" when she opened the curtain on her daughter at the intensive care unit, as photographs showed Angel's face swollen and unresponsive after medics shaved her head to give her treatment.
During her weeks in a coma, her father Paddy recalled how Angel would breathe for a few seconds every minute before eventually she regained the ability to breathe for herself, in what he described as a 'miracle'.
Jeremy Janes, counsel for the prosecution in Bowskill's trial, is head of Chambers at KCH Garden Square, which has offices in Leicester and Nottingham. He told the documentary: "Over and above the very serious offences that Mr Bowskill was facing; kidnap, perverting the course of justice, he was on trial for being responsible for Angel coming out of that van at high-speed and suffering the horrendous injuries that she did.
"He gave evidence - but there wasn't ever a full acknowledgement that he had been responsible.
"He also told the jury, Angel wasn't controlled or put down by him, but there was a series of messages between Chay Bowskill on the one side and the phone or the phones Angel was using on the other - and that ran to many thousands of separate communications the jury had to consider. The text messages, his own words, were an example of how somebody's controlling the other and coercing them through the medium of messages. Ultimately, they proved the type of person he was with Angel", said Mr Janes.
Bowskill had called his mum a "******* idiot," with Mr Janes adding that the calls were extremely important, as part of the prosecution case, not just for those counts that they directly related but also to the much bigger picture and "a real window into the man he was".
He said: "It was telling that this was a man charged with controlling and coercive behavior and we saw echoes and shades of that in his own treatment of his mother; what we say he was doing towards Angel.
"He was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison, but in terms of the impact upon her, the Court of Appeal decided that the sentence was too low to reflect consequences of this nature and what they did was to increase the overall sentence to one of 12 years".
Mrs Lynn told the programme: "In the end he (Bowskill) had complete control. He would threaten to leave just to make her beg. She must have felt so trapped".
"He said she was rolling down the road 'like a football'", said added. As Angel was in ICI, she added: "When they opened the curtain to let me in, I just fell on the floor".
Mrs Lynn told the Sun newspaper Angel has recently been able to stand and is communicating more.
Speaking previously on BBC Breakfast, she said: “She’s doing really good actually with the moving. The physios what she’s got are amazing, they are really good.
“She gets a bit moody sometimes when she’s being bent around but yeah, it’s doing her the world of good.”
Mr Lynn confirmed that she is even beginning to take some steps and has had an operation to straighten her left foot.
The family want to raise awareness of the dangers of coercive control by abusive partners. Mrs Lynn said: “(We’re) just absolutely devastated that we didn’t spot it. Because we wouldn’t be here today had we spotted it earlier.”
She went on: “It can happen to anyone. It doesn’t matter how strong you are. It can happen to men and women.
“We’ve had to do this because this is how we tell other people about being coerced and how easy it is, even if you’re strong minded, that it can happen to you and to just get out of it, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through what we’ve been through.”
Angel’s family, including her five siblings, has been devastated by what happened, Mrs Lynn said.
“I just don’t want it to happen to anyone else. Our whole family has been devastated.”
They hope that she will be able to move from a rehabilitation centre back to the family home once building work has been completed to make it suitable for her needs.
Angel’s cousin has set up a GoFundMe page to support her recovery https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-angel-lynns-recovery - which has already raised more than £200,000.
Mrs Lynn is also doing the Great North Run to raise money for the air ambulance team that treated her daughter.
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