✝️ Karen Anne Cook („Sophie Anderson“), age 36 – 28. November 2023, Basingstoke, England, United Kingdom 🏴💔
Growing up in a broken home to a largely absent dad and a “mentally abusive” mother who flitted in and out of her life, she lost her virginity at the age of 10 and got into drugs soon after. She said she then began seeing older men and women after school, most of whom she met online but some she encountered in car parks and other public places. “The men I used to go and see at [the age of] 10 were older,” she told English. “I would particularly go to this pub in Bradford-on-Avon knowing that I could get a drink. Men would abuse her here continuously. “I’d go and suck the guys off in a car so they’d go and buy me booze and fags and give me weed.”
Describing herself as an “overweight” kid who was constantly “fat shamed”, she developed such severe anorexia by the age of 14 that she “even thought having a drop of water would put on weight”.
The challenges continued into her teenage years, with a stint working in a massage parlour where her youth of 14 years went unchecked. Those early earnings, she said, were often spent on alcohol and drugs.
At age 17 Karen met an older man who “took [her] away from everything”, introducing her to crack cocaine and getting her pregnant.
She went on to work as an escort and then in porn, continuing to battle substance abuse and eating disorders over the years, and finding herself in further toxic relationships.
Her life did not ease upon becoming a mother, as she faced periods of homelessness and struggled to provide for her son.
Karen was known for her engaging personality and her willingness to speak openly about her traumatic experiences to help others, often appearing on talk shows and podcasts.
In March 2022 Karen was left fighting for life with sepsis after one of her left breast implants became infected and later exploded.
Karen lived a life of harrowing abuse and sex trafficking at the hands of her partner, ex-Crystal Palace footballer Oliver Spedding in the months before her death.
She died just weeks after Spedding, age 34, was found dead at a hotel at a motorway services.
A post-mortem examination found Karen had taken a quantity of drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate, often referred to as GHB or ‚liquid ecstasy‘, which was 10 times the strength of a fatal dose
Friends revealed how Karen was subject to extreme physical and mental abuse by Spedding, who would stab her, hit her head against the wall, steal her phone and money and stop her from getting medical attention she desperately needed. The friends are angry at police, accusing them of „letting her down“.
They have further claimed officers „did not take them seriously“ when they made reports about the abuse. Spedding allegedly transported Karen around the country in a campervan, forcing her to carry on her job in prostitution even though she had lost one of her breasts to multiple sepsis infections and was covered in untreated scars from his abuse.
And twisted Spedding would often pretend Karen had died in bizarre hoaxes – as early as February 2023 and again just before her death in September – then exploit his partner’s “death” to ask for donations from her concerned friends and fans,
Shocking pictures shown to The Sun, which were too graphic to publish, show Sophie’s blood-soaked leg with a deep 5 inch gaping wound above her left knee.