IT was supposed to be the best weekend of their lives: six young friends at a music festival, dancing to FatBoy Slim and making memories to last a lifetime.
But what happened that weekend in August 2006 will haunt Teresa Clark, from Uckfield, Sussex, now 45, for the rest of her days.
Teresa was used to taking ecstasy when she was younger and admits she had done so before driving in the past[/caption]
The then 27-year-old made a fatal error of judgement, taking class A ecstasy tablets hours before driving her five friends home from the festival and falling asleep at the wheel, crashing their hire car.
The tragic accident took the lives of three of her best friends – two who weren’t wearing their seatbelts – and injured the other two.
It took a terrifying 2.5 hours for emergency services to find the car, during which time Teresa – who was still conscious but had been impaled by a fence which had perforated the car door – lost almost seven pints of blood from her own life-threatening injuries.
By the time paramedics reached her, a distraught Teresa begged them not to save her.
“I didn’t want to be saved, my only concern was the other passengers,” an emotional Teresa, 45, tells Fabulous as part of Life Stories, our YouTube series where ordinary people share their extraordinary experiences.
“There are no words that can possibly describe the pain I was feeling, I was heartbroken and I kept trying to tell myself that my friends would all be OK.”
Tragically, Teresa was one of only three that survived the horror crash and says she would give anything to swap places with those who lost their lives.
“I just wanted to be gone too,” she explains. “I wish it had been me instead of them and if I could have changed that I would, I wouldn’t even think about it.”
A fatal decision
Teresa, then 27, had been the group’s designated driver as they headed to the popular V Festival in Staffordshire on August 20, 2006 in a hire car.
Even now she can recall the buzz in the days leading up to the festival as they looked forward to seeing headliner Fatboy Slim.
“We were all really excited,” Teresa says.
“I graduated about two years before and if I’m honest I was a little bit lost so I was looking forward to us all spending time together at the festival.
“I was a bit apprehensive because I was working two jobs at the time and I was pretty tired but I was really looking forward to it.”
The day before the festival Teresa made the hour-and-a-half drive to her job at a travel agency in Maidstone from her home in Uckfield, Sussex.
After finishing her shift, she drove back to Uckfield to her second job at a social club where she finished at 1:30am.
Against her better judgement, Teresa made the trip back to Maidstone that same evening to stay at a friend’s the night before the festival.
“Back then I wasn’t very assertive,” she says.
“My body was already telling me that I was exhausted, but I was a people pleaser so I drove to my friend’s and I didn’t arrive until 3am.”
The group of six, who ranged in age from 18-27, arrived at the house the next day at 7am meaning Teresa had less than four hours sleep before the eight-hour round trip to the festival in Staffordshire.
The group arrived safely and Teresa recalls: “It was a really lovely day. My friends were drinking beers and there was such a good vibe and a good energy between us.”
The group had spent the weekend at V Festival[/caption]
‘I’m not proud, but I’d done it before’
However, while Teresa didn’t drink alcohol that day she admits she made a fatal decision.
She joined the group, who had been taking ecstasy that day, taking one and a half tablets herself after they decided together she would be ‘safe’ for her to do so.
“I’m not proud of this but I had taken ecstasy and driven before,” she reveals.
“I took my last half around 8pm.
“Ultimately my priority was to keep everyone in that car safe and I knew my limits.
“I think if I had been really impaired by the ecstasy, I wouldn’t have made it five minutes down the road.”
That has tortured me ever since – if only I’d done that, things might not have been as fatal as they were
Teresa Clark
The group left the festival together at around 12.30am in the hired Vauxhall Zafira estate car with Teresa behind the wheel.
According to drug charity Talk to Frank, the effects of ecstasy and MDMA last between 2-4 hours on average although users might still experience some after effects such as a raised heartbeat or insomnia in the hours after.
But Teresa reacted completely differently and found herself struggling to stay awake on the four-hour journey back to Sussex.
“We had agreed that someone would stay awake with me on the drive back to stop me from falling asleep,” Teresa says.
“But it didn’t quite work out that way and everyone was asleep fairly quickly.
“I didn’t tell anyone to wake up, but I wish I had.”
The group made one stop where they all got out of the car and Teresa drank coffee before continuing their journey.
After her friends fell asleep again, Teresa made a further toilet stop at a motorway service station but none of the others woke up.
It was then she realised that two of her friends cuddled up in the back seat weren’t wearing their seatbelts.
“I thought to myself, I should wake them up and tell them to put their seatbelts on,” Teresa says.
“That has tortured me ever since – if only I’d done that, things might not have been as fatal as they were.”
FINAL STRETCH
Around 4am and half an hour away from home, tiredness set in so Teresa decided to take one last stop.
But the group, who by this time were travelling on the M25 between junction 28, at Brentwood, Essex, and junction 29, near Basildon, didn’t make it to the next exit.
The fatal crash happened on the M25[/caption]
“I remember being about half an hour from home and just all of a sudden just thinking, gosh, I’m really tired,” Teresa recalls.
“I was in the middle lane and I went over to the left hand lane and I was going to get off at the next junction because I just needed to get out and have some fresh air.”
Exhausted Teresa fell asleep at the wheel for a brief moment, clipping the curb and sending the car down an embankment.
It overturned and the two passengers in the middle seats were thrown from the car, killing them instantly. One was due to celebrate her birthday the following day.
The passenger in the front seat also died as a result of their injuries whilst the two in the very back of the car escaped with minor ones.
Meanwhile, Teresa was impaled through her left leg, into her groin and out of her right leg by the fence the car had crashed into.
Her right shoulder was dislocated and her little finger on her left hand was completely severed.
However, the car wasn’t spotted for another two and a half hours which saw Teresa lose a total of six and a half pints of blood.
She ‘died’ at the scene – her heart stopping – and had to be resuscitated by paramedics before being transported to Darent Valley hospital where surgeons worked for two days to save her legs.
I wanted to go to prison. I know that sounds really weird, but I really just wanted justice for the families.”
Teresa
“I don’t remember much of that week but I was extremely overwhelmed,” she says.
“I had a queue of people coming to see me every day and I do remember feeling so loved.”
It wasn’t until a week later she was told about her friends’ deaths by the two other survivors.
“I was in this state of mind where I was trying to convince myself that they were fine, but in my heart I knew they were gone”, Teresa says.
WHAT ARE THE SIDE EFFECTS OF ECSTASY?
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH) explains: “MDMA is a drug that acts as both a stimulant and psychedelic, producing an energising effect, as well as distortions in time and perception and enhanced enjoyment from tactile experiences.
“Typically, MDMA (an acronym for its chemical name 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is taken orally, usually in a tablet or capsule, and its effects last approximately 3 to 6 hours.
“The average reported dose is one to two tablets, with each tablet typically containing between 60 and 120 milligrams of MDMA.”
Taking the stimulant may have impacts on brain activity and potentially cause long-term damage.
The NHS explains: “Ecstasy can make you feel alert, affectionate and chatty, and can make music and colours seem more intense.
“Taking ecstasy can also cause anxiety, confusion, paranoia and even psychosis.”
The NIH states: “MDMA raises body temperature.
“On rare but largely unpredictable occasions, this has led to severe medical consequences, including death.”
“At that moment I felt like my world had ended, that nothing would be the same again.
“They say only the good die young and they were just the most wonderful people to lose.”
Her two friends acted as the go-betweens from Teresa and the families of the passengers who had died, allowing her to share letters with them.
“I really hope that I was able to get across to them just how incredibly full of remorse I was,” she says.
DOING TIME
Shortly after leaving hopsital, Teresa was arrested and in September 2007, Teresa pleaded guilty to three counts of dangerous driving and was sentenced to four years in prison.
She was also banned from driving for three years at Snaresbrook Crown Court, and she made a vow then never to drive again.
It brought her an odd sense of peace.
“I wanted to go to prison,” she says.
“I know that sounds really weird, but I really just wanted justice for the families.
“When I was sentenced, it was a day that I think everybody had been waiting for and it was perhaps closure for the families but also a bit of a weight off my shoulders as well.”
Teresa served two years of her sentence behind bars, spending her first four months at Holloway prison before being moved to Downview in Surrey before her release in 2009.
She struggled to adapt to her newfound freedom.
“I went back to this small town where you walk down the high street and everybody knows who you are.
“I was diagnosed with severe PTSD, anxiety and depression, I had suicidal thoughts every day for about seven years, I was very, very broken.
“I was grieving still and shouldering so much guilt and shame with no idea how to talk about it.”
During her time in prison, Teresa began volunteering as a Samaritan which led to her role with charity Certitude in South London which supports adults with mental health and learning difficulties, and at the time they were supporting offenders to rehabilitate.
Now, she runs The Wellness Revolution, a business that helps to support employee wellbeing.
And Teresa says it was work which gave her reason to get out of bed each morning.
She says: “Gradually through that work of helping other people, I started to be able to look at parts of myself which needed love and needed forgiveness and it was a gradual step one day at a time.
“Equally I felt I could give so much back to the people I was helping having suffered so much with my own mental health.
“In a that was I was in this unique position where I could empathise fully and understand what they needed perhaps more than they could.”
While she is no longer in touch with the two friends who survived the crash she says a day doesn’t go by without her thinking of them.
“Sadly, we lost touch, I think it just became very difficult for us all to kind of move on with our lives,” she explains.
“We all felt so much guilt towards each other too.
“I still love them both endlessly. I only want the best for them, but I feel like it was something that we almost had to do just to kind of survive.”
Teresa says that it was a promise she made to her late friends that helped keep her going to where she is today.
“I didn’t think I’d ever be able to live a normal life,” she admits.
“But I made a promise to my friends to make good of the life I had survived and do good in their memory.
“It meant I kept putting one foot in front of the other.”
