Hillsborough was a nightmare for years – opening up about it to a stranger saved my life

Daniel Taylor survived the Hillsborough disaster, but the mental scars of that day took decades to heal – Paul Cooper

My dad took me to watch Liverpool play every other week from as soon as I could walk. Being taken to football was something I always looked forward to. It was a shared passion and my dad kindled a lifelong love affair with Liverpool.

I was 15 on April 15 1989. Dad got us tickets for the Liverpool vs Forest match quite late, so we were in different parts of the stadium. I was in the Leppings Lane end, he was on the south stand. As far as either of us knew it was a match like any other.

There was already a crowd outside the stadium. Some people were climbing out just to escape the crush. Already I was sensing the atmosphere in the air: policemen on horseback seemed aggressive and tetchy.

As we entered the ground, I remember this confusion about what was going on around us. As people started being forced together, I noticed a woman beside me. I couldn’t see but she was watching her husband being crushed ahead of us. She was distressed and her legs were buckling. I focused all my attention on keeping her upright. I knew something was terribly wrong.

People are lifted to safety in the Hillsborough terraces – PA

When I look back, I can’t recall how I got out of the crush in the stadium. I remember this disorientation, knowing something awful had happened, feeling the panic around me.

The first thing I remember seeing was an unmarked police car with the lights on the roof. I’d never seen one before, except in American crime television programmes. Around me there was pandemonium. It was like something out of a horror film.

My dad had been on the pitch. He saw people using advertising hoardings as stretchers for those who’d been injured, or lost their lives. The only thing he ever told me about in detail was how he watched a kid about my age being knocked down by a policeman while trying to get medical attention for his dad.

It took me two hours to find dad’s car. I remember a queue of people waiting beside it. He was one of the few who had a phone then, so people were queuing to tell their loved ones they were safe.

Daniel was still in his teens at the time of the disaster

Dad was a tough man, an old-school Scouse bloke, but he was white as a sheet. I will never forget seeing him like that. He looked broken. He thought I’d died. His biggest fear was going back to my mother without me.

We drove home in silence, listening to the radio, hearing the death toll. It was 50, then it was 58, 59, 60. It wouldn’t stop going up. A total of 97 people died as a result of the events of that day.

The next day at school, everyone knew I’d been at the match, but no one spoke to me. There was a big thing at Anfield where flowers were laid, but no one discussed it.

I felt like I had nowhere to take the trauma. I went to the Hillsborough survivors groups but that became a space for the families of those who’d died, who were seeking justice.

Gradually, stories started to come out in the press: fans urinating on bodies, being drunk, stealing from corpses. I felt I was being held accountable, that I was one of the fans who’d caused people to die. I internalised all of it.

Had I done something wrong? Was I responsible for those deaths? Was there more I could have done? When I went to bed at night, I would see the whole day playing before my eyes like a tape in slow motion; the lady, the crush, my dad completely pale. I found it difficult to be in spaces with lots of people.

Hillsborough wasn’t out of the news for years and I would struggle whenever I saw it. Every time I read something about it or saw the headlines on newspaper stands, it sent me into a very dark place where I felt the burden of having been there.

The Kop acknowledges the 35th anniversary during Sunday’s game – Paul Ellis/Getty Images

I went to London to study acting. After graduating, I got involved in a play called Waiting For Hillsborough. I thought it might help me deal with it but I could never shake the guilt out of my head. I was 21 when I first tried to take my own life.

When you’re suicidal, you get tunnel vision. Your mind doesn’t work properly. Any rational thought has gone by that point. I had given up on myself. I’d spent time on the internet to find ways to do it. I had no hope, I’d lost all regard for myself.

I’m lucky that someone found me. I was taken to the mental health unit at Hammersmith Hospital. They told me I had bipolar disorder and I could only see a counsellor if I agreed to take medication. I knew I didn’t need medication, and that the diagnosis wasn’t right (I was proved correct, eventually), so we went around and around. I just needed to talk.

There were a couple more occasions where I attempted suicide. I went to the memorial; I went to the family groups; I campaigned; I got involved in activism on behalf of the family groups, but nothing would shake it.

I never wanted compensation – I only ever wanted to talk – Paul Cooper

Around the time of the Jimmy McGovern film Hillsborough coming out in 1996, things felt awful. I felt like I was getting closer to what was going on in my head. After one attempt, a nurse at the Royal Liverpool Hospital diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder. I’d never heard of it but as she began to explain it, I realised it clicked with exactly what I was going through. It was comforting, but I won’t pretend the diagnosis solved all my problems.

What started my journey to escaping the shadow of Hillsborough was a trip to Anfield in 2013. I wandered around on my own. I ended up sitting by the memorial and I just cried. A young lad who worked there, who was only about 16, found me. He said: “I’m too young to remember Hillsborough, but maybe you can tell me.” He just sat and listened. That young man saved my life.

There was an inquiry in Warrington in 2014. I sat with the families on the day when David Duckenfield, the police match commander, came in. No one was expecting to see him. To hear him admit he’d lied was jaw-dropping, but ultimately proved cathartic. I wished he’d admitted this years ago instead of putting these mums and dads through all this.

On that day everything changed. I left the inquiry and called my mum. I said: “I’ve had this weight dragging me down, following me around all these years and today it went.” I felt free.

A tribute to those Liverpool fans who lost their lives, placed at the gates of Anfield – Paul Ellis/Getty Images

Nowadays, I do some work in schools and I’m a spokesman for the mental health charity CALM. I remember taking great strength from listening to other people’s struggles. If they could survive it, maybe I could too. So I hope my experience has something to offer others, particularly young men. We have a duty of care to them.

Suicide is still the biggest killer of young men. They live in this constant pressure cooker; achieving at school, finding a good job, getting on the property ladder – how are young people supposed to get started?

I do a lot of things to keep my mental health in a good place. I do a lot of exercise, I run, I do yoga. But most important, I think, is communicating.

For me, Hillsborough was a nightmare for years. I couldn’t escape it so I relived it. There has to be a different way of approaching the struggles we go through. It’s about getting people to talk, to feel like it’s OK to feel stressed.

I never sought any compensation for this. I never wanted it. I only ever wanted to talk. If I can make a world where the next generation grows up being able to talk about their mental health struggles, if I can make someone think twice, then it’ll have been worth it.

Daniel Taylor is a supporter and advocate for CALM, the mental health charity for men’s mental health.

As told to Jack Rear

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