WARNING: CONTAINS REFERENCES TO DOMESTIC ABUSE AND VIOLENCE THAT SOME READERS MAY FIND DISTRESSING
A woman from Leicestershire who was left paralysed after she was kidnapped by her abusive ex-boyfriend has said her first word in three years.
Angel Lynn was just 19 when she was bundled into a van by ex Chay Bowskill after she tried to break off her relationship with him. She fell out of the van head-first onto the road while the vehicle was being driven at over 60mph in 2020 on the A6 near Loughborough.
Angel - who is now 22 - miraculously survived the ordeal, but suffered life-changing injuries.
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She was left unable to speak or walk after the horrific attack, with doctors saying the extent of a fracture on her skull was so severe she could have easily died.
But despite the harrowing prognosis, Angel has defied expectations.
Angel’s mum, Nikki Lynn, was interviewed on Good Morning Britain today (11 September) along with Angel's dad Paddy and shared her fears that her daughter would ‘never speak again’, before Angel suddenly said the word ‘mum’ during a hospital visit.
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“I just walked in and she was groaning,” Nikki recalled. “So I said to her, ‘Angel, you know if you’re making those sort of noises you must be able to say something’.
"And that’s when I just started making noises myself and she just came out with it.
“I had no warning or anything that she was going to speak. I never thought she would speak again. You don’t like to get your hopes up about anything really.”
The incredible update comes just a few months after Angel’s family revealed she is now able to stand.
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In May this year, her parents gave an update on their daughter while appearing on BBC Breakfast, saying she's doing 'really well'.
"She can write, she is taking small sips of drink and they [her physiotherapists] are standing her up now," Nikki said.
"They are really good. She gets a bit moody sometimes when she is being bent around but it's doing her the world of good. She's loosening up."
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Dad Paddy added that Angel had 'an operation on her left foot to straighten that' which will mean she is able to take her first steps.
Angel’s story was featured in a recent Channel 4 documentary, The Kidnap of Angel Lynn, during which Nikki opened up about seeing her daughter in the intensive care unit: "When they opened the curtain to let me in, I just fell on the floor.”
Stuart Smith, Consultant Neurosurgeon at Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, said it was clear Angel had suffered ‘very severe injuries’ as soon as she came into hospital.
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A CT scan showed she had a fracture on her skull that continued across her head, which Smith said will have been the result of ‘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,” he explained.
Bowskill is now serving a 12-year prison sentence for kidnapping, coercive and controlling behaviour and perverting the course of justice.
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article and wish to speak to someone in confidence, call Refuge’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit their website here. In an emergency always dial 999.
Gregory Robinson