A jailed university student was being 'terrorised' by inmates and was 'forced to parade naked' in front of prison staff before she took her own life in her jail cell, according to her devastated parents.
Katie Allan, 21, was sentenced to two years behind bars for a hit and run during which she left a teenager bleeding in the road, after she got behind the wheel drunk.
Michael Keenan, 15, was injured but survived the incident in Giffnock, East Renfrewshire, on 10 August last year after suffering a broken ankle.
Katie, 20 at the time of the accident, always insisted she did not realise she had hit anyone after her tyre blew and she hit an island after drinking four pints.
Miss Allan who was studying Geography at Glasgow University was sentenced to sixteen months behind bars despite the boy and his family pleading with the judge not to jail her.
From the moment she arrived at Polmont Prison in Falkirk Katie was relentlessly tormented.
Friends have described the 'lovely lassie' as a 'sheep in a wolf's den.'
A friend told The Sun: 'She was definitely getting bullied. That and the prison environment directly contributed to her ending her life. She should never have been in there.
'One woman was making her give her tobacco, handing over her stamps, posting her letters for her. She had her scared s**tless.'
Katie became so distressed she began losing her hair.
Her parents described how she had to strip in front of jail staff as part of a jail training exercise, according to the Daily Record.
Katie took her own life five months into her 16 month sentence.
Mum Linda, 51, and dad Stewart, 54, are campaigning for change in the justice system – although state they accept she needed to be punished – but were horrified by what happened to her.
During her post mortem self-harm marks were found on her body. Her parents have questioned why Katie was not prevented from self-harming since she was seen naked regularly during strip searches.
Her parents were also furious she was jailed for so long after citing other cases where people were not jailed, for similar crimes.
In Miss Allan's case, Sheriff David Pender told the court it was 'impossible' not to jail her.
Linda said: 'Katie had been bullied and berated and was in clear distress. She had lost her hair.
'On my last visit to see her with her brother, we knew something was wrong. She looked exhausted and hadn't slept because she was being terrorised and bullied.
'We flagged this up with two of the prison officers and we now know that, just before she died, they had told her she might be moved to the adult prison. Katie would have been terrified.'
Margaret Keenan, the mother of road accident victim Michael, said: 'Katie was given a sentence we didn't want and we were all devastated when we read that she had died.
'Katie had written to us again from prison to apologise for a second time and reiterated that she didn't know she had hit Michael.
'The whole thing has been a tragedy for her family.'
This article has been adapted from its original source.
