Nora Anne Quoirin’s parents shocked by new documentary on her

PETALING JAYA: The parents of Nora Anne Quoirin, the disabled teenager who was found dead 10 days after disappearing in Malaysia while on a family holiday in 2019, are shocked by the release of a new documentary on their daughter.

Meabh and Sebastien Quoirin said they were neither consulted nor informed about the documentary, which they said shared deeply sensitive and incredibly personal images they had never seen before.

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“One week ago, we learned from a member of the international press that a documentary on Nóra would be aired on national Malaysian television.

“We had not been consulted or informed. It was commissioned as part of a series called Court File which chooses public interest cases to report on.

“We were utterly shocked by this news and by the broadcast,” the couple said on Monday (Dec 11) in a press statement published by LBT Global, a charity providing support for British nationals missing, killed or in crisis overseas.

The Quoirins said what was even more shocking was how much critical material was missing from the narration, which was largely handled by a member of the police involved in the search for Nora.

They also said the documentary focused too much on elements that had been well documented, such as the extensive search but neglected to tackle or even mention any of the difficult and numerous unanswered questions that remain.

This includes questions such as how Nora – a mentally and physically impaired child – could have made her way through an impenetrable jungle in darkness or why the police did not trigger any investigation into the physical evidence secured such as fingerprints and DNA from the abandoned camp near where Nora was found.

ALSO READ: Misadventure verdict overturned in Nora Anne’s death inquest

The Quoirins said the question of why there was no trace of Nora despite previous searches with sniffer dogs around the precise area where she was found, also went unanswered in the documentary.

“Instead, the documentary chose to focus repeatedly on utterly irrelevant information such as a drop of blood found in our bathroom which was quickly found to belong to our other daughter, in place of the critical evidence we possess.

“For instance, the several full sets of unidentified fingerprints found on the window which was forced open the night Nora disappeared,” said the Quoirins.

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They also said that disappointingly, the official open verdict that was secured, whereby there was no conclusion on whether Nora’s death was as a result of criminal means or misadventure, was mentioned as an afterthought at the end of the programme with no interpretation or contextualisation.

The Quorins added that this served to show that the public interest in Nora’s case remains global and substantial.

“We as a family, and the Malaysian people deserve better answers.

“We will never stop asking the questions and remain dedicated to the truth, in honour of our beautiful Nora,” said the Quoirins.

Nora, 15, went missing on Aug 4, 2019, a day after she and her family arrived in Malaysia for a two-week holiday at a resort in Pantai, Negri Sembilan, about 60km south of Kuala Lumpur.

On Aug 13, 2019, 10 days after she went missing, her body was found near a creek in a ravine, about 2.5km from the resort where she and her family stayed, following a massive search.

Police said the post-mortem on Nora conducted on Aug 14 revealed that she had died of gastrointestinal bleeding after having gone without food for a long time, as well as prolonged stress.

On Jan 4, 2021, the Coroner’s Court here returned a verdict of misadventure in the inquest into her death.

However, on June 16 that year the Seremban High Court overturned misadventure as the cause of death and substituted this with an open verdict.