Ex-pupil wins £145,000 payout over drug use at top boarding school

A TEENAGER left with PTSD after she was given drugs by sixth-form boys at a boarding school has won £145,000 in compensation.

- By Paul Keogh

Irune Pedrayes was only 14 and had just joined £34,000-a-year Buckswood School near Hastings when she was provided with mephedrone-laced vape liquid.

She told a High Court judge she spent a Friday to Sunday vaping the Class B drug and drinking alcohol with others. The binge put her in hospital after she suffered an extended “psychotic outbreak” including hallucinations, anxiety and tearfulness.

Her parents were not told and the breakdown continued for weeks until she left the school to return to her native Spain, where she received anti-psychotic medication.

She sued and, now 20, won a payout after Judge Geraint Webb KC found staff “negligent” in failing to tell her parents. The East Sussex school led them to believe the hospital trip was for an unrelated infection.