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3T Vakil

Artist Rooted In The Rainforest

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Lorraine Benson, & the use of genetic science in solving crimes.

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I watched a documentary recently about sexual violence in the UK and the use of genetic science in solving crimes. It brought back memories I have carried for decades.

Just out of our teenage years, my high school best friend Lorraine Benson was murdered in London.

I can still remember the train journey back from Wales to London after hearing the news. Every carriage seemed full of newspapers opened wide. The Sun. The Mirror. The Guardian.

Lorraine’s face was everywhere. It was a surreal morning; my friend staring back at me from every direction while strangers quietly read about her death over their morning train commute. 

I created this ai image below to illustrate the cruelty of that train ride for me.

For years, many of us believed Lorraine had been raped before she was killed. In 2026, through information revealed in a documentary about advances in forensic genetics and crime investigation, I learned more details about the case.

Lorraine was not raped. She died fighting a man with a history of rape, violence, and murder. A man who had somehow continued living an ordinary life while loose within the system.

That realization shook me deeply. Not because it lessened the horror, but because it revealed something else: her resistance. Lorraine fought for her life.

Not long after Lorraine’s murder, I myself was raped in London. I had been drugged. I could not fight back. I survived. Lorraine did not.

People sometimes ask why I left England, why I ended up on the ocean for three years, the New Mexico high desert, and now in the forests and mountains of Puerto Rico, why nature and my painting became so central to my life. Part of the answer lies in those years. Violence changes the trajectory of a human being. It changes your nervous system, your sense of safety, your relationship to cities, crowds, strangers, even memory itself.

What struck me most in the documentary was not only the crimes, but the normalization surrounding them. The way women learn to navigate danger from a young age. The constant calculations. The adjustments. The silences.

These are not isolated stories.

Lorraine should still be alive. So should many others.

 

https://youtu.be/WepzhIoC0-w?si=63wOEtY7fNmOHoQy

Crimewatch UK – The Murder of Lorraine Benson (1988) Lest We Forget – R.I.P.

https://youtu.be/Qub9trzE2ro?si=ewts8D7cO9BRBgir

 

Added info about the murderer.

The man charged with Lorraine’s murder was 19-year-old John Dunne. Forensic evidence linked his DNA to Lorraine’s handkerchief, and his teeth were matched to bite marks on her arm.

What is almost impossible to comprehend is that only a year earlier, Dunne had been released after serving three years in a treatment centre for the brutal rape of a young woman whom he had beaten over the head with an iron. Those who had dealt with Dunne had advised that he should remain locked up. He was released anyway, and within a year, Lorraine was dead.

Six weeks after her murder, Dunne was arrested for another attempted rape.

Had the decision been made to keep this convicted and demonstrably violent rapist confined, Lorraine would still be alive.

 

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