Examples
INS Features team has helped many people tell their story through newspapers and magazines.
Here are just a few examples of our work.
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He told me to forget about him, but I couldn’t - Fabulous, February, 2011
Stephanie Goodwin, 28, knew her marine boyfriend was The One, then he went to war...
Sitting on the grass in the sun, I fiddled with some leftover crumbs from our picnic and glanced at my boyfriend, Tristan. I couldn't help myself, I had to say it. Heart hammering, I turned to him, ‘I love you,’ I said. He paused. ‘That’s a big thing to say...’ Then silence. My words hung in the air and I knew he wasn’t going to say it back, not now, and not any time soon. But I refused to give up because deep down, I knew that although Tristan, now 30, was nervous of commitment, he did feel something. Little did I know what it was going to take for him to realise he loved me too, though.
After six months of dating, I needed to know if he really loved me, so I confronted him. ‘Where are we going?’ I demanded. Taking a deep breath, Tristan looked at me, then explained he didn’t want to settle down while he was in the Royal Marines. He’d seen the stress it caused his colleagues when they had girlfriends back home, and he’d heard them having ferocious rows during precious phone time. Being in love was a big distraction when working in a life-or-death situation, he said. If we got serious he’d worry about me too much, plus he didn’t want me to be waiting for his calls or dreading the news every night. Most importantly, he didn’t want me to be burdened with looking after him if he was injured in service. It hurt me beyond belief, but at least I knew why he seemed to be both in love with me and distant...
Guilty Secret - Pick Me Up, February 3, 2011, by Pamela Owen
• A fiancé with something to hide • Murder mystery • A landmark trial
I rushed into the house grinning from ear to ear. ‘I’ve got a new boyfriend!’ I smiled to Mum before I’d even taken off my coat. ‘Who’s the lucky boy?’ she laughed. ‘Mark Weston, the barman at work,’ I beamed. A look of sheer horror flashed across Mum’s face. ‘Oh God, Helen, not him!’ she gasped. I stared at her in shock. What on earth was wrong? Fair enough, 26-year-old Mark was 11 years older than me, but he was lovely. I’d first met him two months earlier, when I’d left school and got a job waitressing at the Carpenter’s Arms pub. Mild-mannered and gentle, he was forever buying me burgers and chips, giving me boxes of chocolates and credit for my mobile phone. Then, a few nights ago, he’d suddenly leant across and kissed me and I was on top of the world. Or I had been until now...
‘There’s something you should know about him,’ my dad began hesitantly. ‘Mark was accused of murdering a local woman called Vikki Thompson six years ago. She was bludgeoned to death with a rock while out walking her dog in Ascott-under-Wychwood. He was found not guilty, but a lot of people think he did it.’...
My 10-year-old son saw a murder - Woman's Own, December 31, 2010
Brave schoolboy Rhys Carthy helped catch murderer Robert Cusworth and mum Jolene Carthy feels incredibly proud...
Crouching low to the ground, 10-year-old Rhys Carthy's heart beat faster. He'd been out looking for grass snakes when he'd seen a tall man with close cropped hair creep up on a woman walking her dog and pull out a knife.
As the rain fell hard on that Saturday afternoon, Rhys watched terrified as the man grabbed her from behind and stabbed her over and over again. Desperately, she fought for her life. But it wasn't enough. As she collapsed in a pool of blood, Rhys - realising other dog walkers were trying to save the woman - raced home.
At first, Rhys was too frightened to say what had happened. It was only when his mum Jolene heard him talking to his best friend, 10 days after the murder in June 2009, that the terrible secret spilled out...
Evil txt that told me my fiance was a murderer - Sunday Mirror, December 19, 2010
How first man to be convicted under double jeopardy law was trapped...
It was the moment that Helen Rusher knew for certain that the ex-fiancé who had threatened and terrorised her was a murderer.
A text message from Mark Weston, father of her seven-year-old daughter, flashed up on her mobil: "I killed her and I would do the same to you."
Helen froze. She knew straight away who he was referring to - mother-of-two Vikki Thompson, who was bludgeoned to death with a rock while out walking her dog nine years earlier. Weston was accused of her murder but aquitted following a trial.
"I'd split from Mark a few months before because he was abusive and tried to strangle me," said Helen, 24. "I seriously believed he was about to come after me, especially as he'd now confessed to a murder."
Helen took the text to the police - but she was amazed when they said there was nothing they could do about it because he had already been found not guilty of the murder. She lived in terror for the next nine months, fearing all the time that he would come for her.
But in 2005, the law changed so that people could be tried again for the same offence if new evidence emerged - nicknamed the Double Jeopardy Law. Legal history was made this week when Weston, 35, became the first murderer to be convicted under the new rules. He was jailed for 13 years.
Only now he's safely behind bars can Helen tell the astonishing story of how Weston groomed he for under-age-sex, assaulted her and their baby in drunken rages - and became obsessed with talking about the crime he had been cleared of.
A chance encounter changed my career - Cosmopolitan, December, 2010
Natasha Baranowski, 24, didn't know what direction her life was going in - until she met a stranger who changed everything.
'I'd been invited to a 21st birthday party in December 2007, but it was for a friend of a friend, and I really wasn't sure whether to go. I was studying history at the University of Edinburgh. and the party was at a local club, so eventually, I decided I might as well.
After I got there, I was queuing at the bar when I started chatting to a girl. I didn't know her, but for some reason she mentioned a book she was reading, called Hidden in Plain Sight, which was about a girl who had grown up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's regime. We didn't talk for long, and I didn't see her again for the rest of the night, so I didn't think much about it.
But then two months later, when I was looking for something to read, memories of the party popped into my head. The book was incredibly inspiring. The author, Zanib Salbi, had dedicated her life to supporting women's rights through a charity called Women For Women International, and it made me realise that was something I wanted to do, too.
I started working for the charity, and last year helped coordinate its 2010 'Join me on the bridge campaign' in the UK, which gathers women together as part of a global pro-peace movement.
Mum's affair destroyed our family - Bella, November 30, 2010
For Portia Bryant, 19, home life was happy and stable but it all fell appart when her mum walked out...
We'd just finished dinner when Mum called upstairs to Clay and me to come back to the dining room. She and Dad looked serious. 'I'm sorry, I'm leaving.' she said. 'What?' I gasped. 'I don't want to be with your dad any more, it's my time now,' she replied. She didn't wait for us to respond. She simply walked out the door as we stared on in shock.
However, the next day she dropped a bombshell. 'I've started a relationship with a woman,' she said. 'I've moved in with her.'
Then in September of this year a friend texted to say I should pick up a copy of the Daily Mirror newspaper. Excitedly, I raced to the newsagent's, wondering what it could be.
To my horror, I saw Mum and Carol's grinning faces splashed across the page under the headline 'Married for years...then I fell in love with a woman!' It detailed how the met, including their first kiss after a cinema date and their physical relationship. It also revealed they had started seeing each other while Mum was still with Dad.
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More of our work
Groom spared jail for attacking bride - Reveal, November 2009
A groom who assaulted his bride on their wedding night was spared jail after his now-estranged wife sent magistrates a letter begging for mercy.
Stephen Grimwood grabbed terrified Denise Manning by the wrists and threw her on the bed of the bridal suite at the posh hotel where they had held their plush reception.
The 38-year-old then placed a pillow over her head in a bid to stop her telling her family of the drunken row before she managed to escape and alert workers at the Hotel in Windsor, Berkshire.
However, at a sentencing hearing, Miss Manning aged 33 years, who has not spent a single night living with her husband since the March 28 incident, begged them to spare the worried defendant jail.
Couple wed after 34 year wait - Sunday Mirror, November 15, 2009
Childhood sweethearts Dee Mair and Gary Matthew, who were split up by their concerned parents as young teenagers,
finally got married 34 years later.
"We were young and in love all those years ago, just like Romeo and Juliet. Although we went our separate ways, there wasn't a day I didn't think of Dee..."
Joanna Kennard - Holiday Rape Victim - Fabulous, May 5, 2009
"The man jumped at me from the darkness and I tried to scream for help, but he punched me harder and harder."
"My mouth was filling up with blood and all I could see in my mind was an image of my seven-year-old daughter Lacey," she says quietly. "I just kept thinking: 'This can't be the last day I ever see my daughter..."