THE public are being urged to support the grassroots Justice for Gaia (JfG) campaign to improve support for survivors of sexual abuse after a BBC documentary on the 19-year-old’s death prompts “big conversations.”

Gaia Pope-Sutherland ran away from home while experiencing a mental health crisis in 2017, after reporting to Dorset Police for two years that she had been drugged and sexually attacked by Connor Hayes when she was 16.

Ms Pope-Sutherland died after suffering hypothermia and was found in undergrowth between the Dancing Ledge and Anvil Point coastline 11 days after she went missing.

At the time of her disappearance, she was anxious about Hayes’s imminent release from prison where he was serving time for other child sexual offences.

The first of the three-parts documentary called A Death on Dancing Ledge airs on BBC Three and iPlayer today.

Last year, an inquest into her death revealed over 50 missed opportunities by police, healthcare and social services after Ms Pope-Sutherland reported the attack.

Her cousin, Marienna Pope-Weidemann, said: “Despite her bravery, like so many survivors, she was failed time and time again by the system that was supposed to protect her.

“We don’t want anyone else to lose their lives this way but we need your support to make stories like Gaia’s, history.”

JfG is calling on the Dorset Police to invest in specialist services and has a petition already signed by over 2,300 people, supported by national campaign groups.

Inquest director Deborah Coles said Ms Pope-Sutherland’s death is “part of a broader pattern of deaths of survivors of sexual violence who are being systematically failed by public services.”

Centre for Women’s Justice director Harriet Wistrich said that Ms Pope-Sutherland’s “legacy must lead to real change,” and Rape Crisis CEO Jayne Butler said JfG “holds the institutions that should have protected Gaia to account.”