The woman who saved her rapist's life

A woman made the choice to save the life of her rapist. Why?

Susan Copestick, 56, manages to remain calm while reliving the moment in November last year when she effectively chose to save the life of Peter Drummond. Her former partner had held her at knifepoint and sexually assaulted her earlier that day.

"There was a split second when I was watching for Peter to stop breathing, waiting for him to die. Then I stopped myself and thought 'no'.

"I couldn't bear thinking of people sympathising and saying what a great guy he was at his funeral. He wasn't going to get away with what he did."

She had been sitting in the kitchen after the attack, forced by her former partner to make a cup of tea. By this point, 62-year-old Drummond - his hands curled in his lap - had gone grey in the face, having overdosed on paracetamol tablets. Susan would need to call an ambulance to give him the best chance of surviving.

It had only been two weeks since she had ended their 10-year relationship, over Drummond's inability to find a stable job, and moved to her mother's home in Rochdale.

Drummond had been planning the attack since their break-up, Susan remembers him telling her. He had brought with him a rucksack containing tape and Viagra.

"He said to me that he was going to slit my throat and let me die on the kitchen floor, and he would die on the sofa from the overdose. That was what he wanted my mum to come back and find after her holiday."

It was these comments that had left her paralysed with fear, able to do little else than watch the clock tick slowly by. She hoped the tablets would take effect on Drummond before he tried to kill her, but she also wanted to call for medical assistance.

After he became too unwell to prevent her, she did just that.

"It was a rational and straightforward choice. I thought 'I'm not judge and jury' - it wasn't for me to make that decision for him to die," she says.

"I also didn't want him to have the easy way out - to escape justice. I wanted him to realise what he'd done and pay for it. That way I could put this all behind me."

Drummond has since pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in April this year, though he may be eligible for early release - a fact Susan finds "depressing".

She also remains confused about Drummond's psychological state at the time of the attack, which she sees as out of character.

"He looked like a completely different person - I'd never seen him like that before," she explains. "His eyes were wild. If you'd have asked me the day before if he could have done this I'd have said 'not in a million years'."

Drummond had been stalking her since the break-up of their relationship, but at the time she saw that as little more than a phase.

"One morning I woke up at 6am and he was sat on the bench outside my mum's house. Another day he waited for me in the supermarket car park. On the day of the attack he told me he knew I'd left work early and who I'd spoken to," she says.

When he came to visit Susan at her mother's home, Drummond did so under the pretence of seeking advice about council forms. After letting him in, he approached her when she had gone to get a drink from the kitchen.

"He put his hands on my shoulders and I thought 'oh no, he's trying to get back with me'. I said 'no Peter', and that's when he put a knife to my throat and said: 'That's right, no more nice Peter.' Those words have haunted me ever since."

Drummond then made her lock the front door and marched her upstairs to where the sexual assault would take place. "Mummy's room or yours?" he asked.

Susan, who waived her right to anonymity to give this interview, says she has since suffered "recurring nightmares" over the attack that followed. For the first few weeks she would keep the lights on in every room at home.

"I would drop off to sleep and wake up terrified, thinking he was by the bed with a knife."

Her fear was accentuated in the days following the attack by her reluctance to tell police she had been raped. Drummond had left hospital and been released on bail before she went to the authorities with the full truth six days later.

"Saturday night [four days after the attack] he even went to the local pub where I had been about half an hour earlier," she remembers.

Susan, however, is full of praise for how the authorities in Rochdale have dealt with the case. "The police have been amazing," she says, giving her the confidence to slowly rebuild her life and retain her job as a delivery driver.

Perhaps most importantly, she also has little regret about saving Drummond's life.

"People might find it odd that I saved the life of my own rapist, but I am far happier in the knowledge that he will suffer for the next decade, rather than taking the coward's way out."

The Victoria Derbyshire programme is broadcast on weekdays between 09:15-11:00 BST on BBC Two and BBC News Channel.

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