The sister of an adult online performer who died during a sexual role play game gone wrong has called for strict new webcamming pornography laws.
Hope Barden, 21, was found asphyxiated after carrying out a degrading sex act on the internet for a pub landlord over 250 miles away.
A coroner ruled she was unlawfully killed and Hope’s mother said she was “left to die”.
Hope’s sister Lily has called for new regulations to prevent more deaths.
Hope was found dead in Burton-upon-Trent after filming herself “for the purposes of sexual gratification” for a “reckless” online voyeur, Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh said.
“The extent of his encouragement to her to carry out this act and his failure to report appropriately when she lost consciousness makes it clear that the male was so subjectively reckless as to amount to manslaughter,” Mr Haigh ruled in Hope’s inquest last week.
Staffordshire Police said Jerome Dangar, 45, from Tintagel, Cornwall, was online when Hope died, but made no attempt to raise the alarm.
It is understood a file was being prepared by police for submission to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider charging him with Hope’s manslaughter.
Police and her family said this would have been a landmark legal first in the UK – but were denied justice when Dangar was found dead at HMP Dartmoor in April.
How did Hope get embroiled in webcamming?
Lily said her sister Hope “lit up a room” with her presence
Cornish-born Hope was an adrenaline junkie who completed a skydive and adored her family and friends.
She completed her foundation degree in adolescent mental health at the University of Worcester and became a support worker for people with learning disabilities in Burton.
But in a bid to supplement her income, she began working in the “unregulated” online adult film industry and used several adult webcamming platforms, her sister said. She soon became acquainted with Dangar.
“It started when Hope was still living down here in Penzance.
“It’s not a joke, but the things he (Dangar) was saying we were laughing at.
“I know he was asking her to blow fag smoke down the camera and paid her £50 for that, which is bizarre.
“Then he was asking for very random and extreme things. He was giving her thousands of pounds and she liked designer clothes.
“They weren’t in an online relationship. It was the money and I think it just escalated too quickly.
“She didn’t mean to hang herself and she had no mental health issues. It was a terrible accident, which that sick man didn’t report.”