Nicola Bulley Ch 5 9pm tonight

[Wilma55]

Couldn't see a thread on this....

@MagicCat83 yes bitching. At each other. It's clear to see to anyone with reading comprehension skills

@FancyFanny - well said.

Has anyone else thought about a good friend of Nicola is looking after her somewhere and the attention this whole thing has brought has made it difficult come clean? It's just weird there's no trace of her.

I’m thinking of her poor parents who were distraught on camera a couple of weeks back, have endured constant agony since and now this. Seeing their daughters personal troubles aired so widely and they can’t protect her. What a living nightmare. I just hope they get answers and find some peace soon.

The issue here is that the police have conflated alcohol issues/menopause with her disappearance. It’s perfectly possible that harm can come to any woman, regardless of her issues.

The fact they made suicide/accidental drowning their PRIMARY line of enquiry, and have doggedly stuck with their theory even in the face of zero evidence is really very disturbing.

I am genuinely beginning to believe the police have no idea what they are doing - and issuing personal information of this nature about Nicola, about a person that did not give consent to making this highly confidential information public, smacks of pure desperation and deflection.

Lancashire Police are painting Nicola as a crazy, hormonal alcoholic, and it has made my blood boil, how dare they discredit and dehumanise a missing, potentially dead human being in such a flippant and disgraceful way to save their own backsides. To deflect some of the heat from their long catalogue of errors and baseless assumptions.

What the hell does it say to the rest of us?
We are worthless menopausal crazies that naturally will end up in various rivers and not worth the effort of launching serious criminal investigations?

It is going from bad to worse for the police: they now look like a bunch of clueless misfits making blunder after blunder. It’s a damning indictment of policing today.

How on earth is any woman, menopausal or not, supposed to have a shred of confidence in such an institution steeped in such bias and dogged thinking?

Has it been clarified how Paul got the bruising round his right eye yet?

This is such a hyperbolic and disenguenuis argument. Of course they need to take her mental condition in to account. She was clearly suffering serious problems if they were called to the house. And they have always explored ALL possible options. It's why they're looking at 500 lines of enquiry, searching the land and nearby buildings, interviewing over 300 people and looking at hundreds of dashcam films.

It's a shadow, there was no bruising

Given the police will have interviewed and spoken with her friends and contacts I think they'd have fessed up.

Even if there was domestic issues she was trying to escape from, she still needs to be able to access money, can't expect a friend to support you indefinitely. Also she'd be missing her kids. You wouldn't put your kids or parents through this not knowing.

The police releasing this info to ‘stop speculation’ is absolutely bizarre. If they’d said all along ‘we have concerns for this missing woman who could be vulnerable’ or whatever they normally say people probably wouldn’t have been speculating! For police to do a welfare check must have been something very very serious (DV or suicide). I’ve been with an alcohol relative with severe mental health issues who was literally on the verge of taking their own life and getting the police to come out was like getting blood out of a stone. Why has her partner allowed all this media frenzy, the documentaries, the interviews, knowing this info all along? And disagreeing publicly with the police has also fanned the flame of speculation. Don’t even get me started on the mention of menopause. Just why? None of it makes any sense. Can’t imagine how her parents must be feeling.

What puzzled me- apart from the entire case itself- was the fact that NB was suffering from an early menopause (according to police) and it begs the very real question why she wasn't being helped by her GP and given HRT, which is medically advised for women having an early menopause (if she'd had symptoms for some time.) And of course, maybe she was using it, and it wasn't at the right dose etc- who knows.

I am wondering if any of the medical experts like Dr Louise Newson will speak out on this, although I can see how they would not like to get involved in something contentious without knowing NB's true medical history.

I know that they do often draw attention to the fact that the peak age for suicide in women is those peri meno years.

It would be a tragedy if this is suicide and NB suffered because she wasn't getting the medical support she needed.

Would you like to point out how on earth the public knowing that Nicola is menopausal will HELP the investigation? And knowing she had issues with drink - how will that help actually find her Sally?

NONE of this information actually helps Nicola at all. It doesn’t help anyone apart from the police getting their excuses in early.

Pure police deflection with a handy excuse as to why such poor decisions were made from start to finish.

Releasing this additional information (irrespective or whether it was right/wrong to do so) has added context to this case.

What if Nikki was being investigated following the incident on 10th January, what if she was struggling with the potential shame/embarrassment/confusion as a result of that? This could have parallels with the tragic case of Caroline Flack.

What if Nikki felt utterly overwhelmed with life because of menopausal symptoms, trapped in a life that left her feeling unfulfilled, struggling to go through the motions of daily life whilst in despair? What if the delay in getting married (think back to the interview) was having a profound impact on Nikki’s self esteem? Just one of many strands of thought I have around this. Nikki’s use of alcohol to numb her feelings would have spiralled, as it does for so many. This is so much more than ‘one drink’.

This added context actually gives me more hope that she is out there, somewhere. That morning, Paul noted it was more organised than normal. Of course Nikki had to take Willow so as not to cause alarm, and I don’t think she was in a rational state of mind.

Nikki still has strong links to Essex, she lived there for 20 years, and we have a number of mutual friends. It is possible that she is seeking refuge with a friend well away from where she currently lives? Somewhere where she could take time out, seek help and try to heal? Is she forced to stay quiet because she knows she can’t return home until she’s ready to protect Paul and the girls from her alcoholism?

I live in hope, but if the outcome is that Nikki doesn’t ever return home, I truly hope this raises awareness of the hell that some women endure during the menopause and that better mechanisms and support is put in place to help women who are struggling.

@SauteedOwl

Oh so shut up. You don’t stumble across them. You actively search for them so don’t come on here playing the high almighty like you’re some sort of aspirational woman. We don’t all need to get along, be kind, or even agree with each other. Get over it or failing that get off the thread.

I completely agree with you! I'm very uncomfortable that the information was released. It seems wrong and unnecessary to me.
However, I was responding a different point - that the police were onky focusing on one line of enquiry and in the process dismissing all menopaysal women as "old crazies".

I don't remember all this furore over Claudia Lawrence. Is it because there was almost no social media then? I have no idea why people who don't know the family concerned, or the location she disappeared from, are even commenting at all? I mean just why?

A "crazy hormonal alcoholic"? Really?

I just read "someone who's struggling and has been known to drink more alcohol than is wise".

And I took the references to menopause as the police (or more likely the family) offering a (possibly misguided) reason for her drinking, rather than calling her an alcoholic.

"Crazy" "hormonal" "alcoholic" none of those words was used and if that's what people here leap to, may I suggest that perhaps for some of you, that might be reflecting yoru own feelings a little? Please, even if some of are in the menopause, do have mental health problems, do drink too much we are worth more than those old tropes.

@mauvish

Totally agree.

I'm sad to say that I can very clearly see a path by which someone in Nicola's position could choose not to carry on living.

Picture it; feel it, if you will -

Your mood's a bit low. Try to self medicate with alcohol. Get too much into the habit of doing so. Alcohol makes the low mood worse and stops antidepressants working, and interferes with your sleep so you're constantly knackered.

Maybe this is causing arguments at home. Your friends all think you have a lovely life, and you can't admit to anyone else that you've got a drink problem because you feel so ashamed, and that makes you feel even worse.

Maybe your partner issues some sort of ultimatum; "get yourself sorted out, you've got to stop drinking". But it isn't that easy. You're so enmeshed in the worsening feelings of low self-worth, shame, low mood etc etc.

Things get out of hand one night. Maybe one of you raises your hand to the other. Maybe you say you've had enough, you're going to end it all. The kids are crying. A glass gets smashed. The police and HCPs are called. Everyone calms down BUT because of this, social services are now involved.

You "know" that your children are going to be taken into care (you're probably wrong but you convince yourself otherwise). You "know" that you're wrecking their lives. You "know" that the kids and your partner would be better off without you.

You've also not slept well for AGES - hot sweats, alcohol and depression all interfering with sleep patterns, maybe the dog barks at night or the children are restless. How can you think straight?

So, in the befuddlement of alcohol, mental illhealth and lack of sleep, you decide to free your family from the burden of having you around.

I don't have any knowledge of Nicola's family and I am NOT saying that this is just what happened. But I can all too easily see this as a possible pathway. I'm surprised that so many people don't seem to see the same. I would like to be wrong.

(Oh, and regardless if there's any truth in the above re NB, if anyone else recognises themselves on a similar spiral, please PLEASE talk to someone about it. Children are NEVER better off without their mums. People do care. Help can be had).

So Clouseau of the Lancashire Sûreté now reckons Nicola Bulley had a hot flush and jumped in the river?

I hope you're not referring to my post, because that's just about the polar opposite to what I was thinking about. Flippancy isn't great in the circumstances.

I agree with you. The additional information does give context and is relevant.

99.9% of missing person cases get no media attention. The police deal with hundreds of thousands of cases every year (thankfully most reappear quite quickly) and investigations follow a set procedure...

From the BBC: "Police will ask a series of questions to determine what level of risk the missing person is at.

They'll take into account the person's age, whether they have a history of mental health problems, self-harm or attempted suicide, whether they've gone missing before, if they've got financial problems or are being bullied, abused, or have been the victim of a crime, as well as asking about their personal relationships, these are what the police refer to as push factors - the things that might make someone want to run away. The call taker will then assess whether their case is low, medium or high risk."

We know now that Nicola was classed as "high risk" - that is relevant and determines how the police proceed. Getting angry about that and saying that Nicola's issues with alcohol and her recent mental health crisis are irrelevant is naive. Of course they are relevant. Do people honestly think the police should or can feasibly open a murder investigation for every missing person case?

I have personal experience of this. My brother went missing a few years ago. You won't have heard of him - he wasn't on the news. He walked out one day without a word and never came back. No media interest. He was "high risk" too, had issues with drugs and mental health problems. His body was eventually found. He had taken his own life. Sure he could have been abducted, murdered, but given the background it was highly unlikely. Nicola's background makes it unlikely too, but given the circumstances - the additional puzzle of the dog and the abandoned conference call, the police have put hundreds of man hours into trying to find her. They've interviewed 300+ people and searched extensively, viewed hours of CCTV, so accusations that the police have just written her off as a crazy alcoholic are ridiculous.

Do I think that personal medical information about Nicola Bulley should have been released? No I dont, but I understand, given the media circus, why the police reached the point of disclosing she was classed as high risk due to significant vulnerabilities. They needed to address the issue of why the police are not looking for any third party involvement.

It's a tragic case and people need to let the police get on with it.

There’s a lot of projection on this thread. Nowhere apart from here has anyone in a professional capacity referred to NB as a crazy menopausal alcoholic.

The police has no choice but to release this information because it was about to be published in the tabloids.

The authorities revealed that NB was a vulnerable missing person because of the increased speculation around this case, the adamant insistence that disappearing was completely out of character for her and how the police just needed to see it because her partner had told them she wasn’t in the river and he knew her better than anyone. This would be the same partner who told the police in the beginning that NB had alcohol issues brought on by the menopause.

After the police revealed that there were vulnerabilities social media went mad with people speculating over what those issues were, and none of that speculation was pleasant. So the police revealed more information, just before one of the tabloids published a drunk picture of her.

And the police got the information that Nickola had an alcohol problem brought on by the menopause from somewhere. They didn’t make it up, this information was given to them. Think about that.

@mamauvish
A very wise post.