A woman who cleans crime scenes for a living says one case still haunts her and it leaves her gagging and sobbing

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

Lauren Baker, who featured in Channel 4 series Crime Scene Cleaners, was interviewed on Monday's instalment of This Morning, where she revealed the one case that continued to haunt her years later and leaves her gagging and crying.
The trauma cleaning specialist, from Kent, England, wore a hazmat suit on ITV's daytime show and spoke about how she dealt with 'dirt, grime filth - anything that can cause harm to the human body'.
Lauren explained how her job meant she'd walk into anything, from 'someone's bowels exploding' to 'needle sweeps'.
Co-host Ben interjected: 'Can we just go back - did you say bowels had exploded?'
Lauren said: 'When you pass, your organs start to shut down, sometimes when we attend properties and unattended deaths, their bowels have erupted before they've actually passed... and then you've got the clean up from that.'
Lauren revealed the precautions the cleaners took to ensure they remained safe, including the wearing of double masks and gloves.
Domestic cleaner Lauren recalled helping at a property where the elderly person had dementia and didn't want carers anymore, and their home had 'deteriorated'.
Lauren said: 'That's when I soon realized that there is actually other people suffering like this and obviously hoarders come about and hoarding is a thing, and that can come in many shapes and sizes.
'I just wanted to help people.'
To describe the range of work she carried out, the specialist said: 'We do unattended death, so that can be anything from a crime scene to someone falling and passing [away] at home, or it could be where there's been an assault.'
Co-host Cat asked Lauren if she had ever tried to figure out what happened.
Lauren admitted 'it's natural instinct' to try to guess what happened: 'You like to think you're a detective, but we're not, we're just cleaners.'
Lauren recalled one particularly shocking job: 'A lot of people don't realize these things happen on a daily basis. We went in once to a hotel room and were told a couple were in there and some arguments had broken out. There was blood everywhere.'
Ben asked if she found the work 'tough' given the situations she might be exposed to.
Lauren said: 'Unattended deaths and suicides, they can be quite difficult. They can be tough ones to deal with.'
When asked how she processed such situations, she said: 'You become sort of, not immune but... it's a job at the end of the day and somebody has to do it.'
Despite the difficult aspects, Lauren said of her role: 'I love my job and I wouldn't choose to do anything else... I help so many different people on a weekly basis and that for me is everything. I love helping people.'
Where someone's passed away, Lauren would open the windows of rooms to allow their spirits to 'be free': 'I do walk in and I do have a little chat with them. I don't believe you pass and that's it you're gone.'
She also explained that it was not always obvious that someone had passed away and sometimes 'there isn't much cleanup'.
Ben asked: 'What's the hardest thing? What never leaves you?'
Lauren said: 'Suicides. People calculate their suicides and we've been in some before where we've found notes... We have to go back to the family and say this is what we've come across.
'People don't know that cleaners like us exist and they end up having to deal with that trauma by themselves...'
Lauren explained she and her colleagues would take that element of stress away.
There was one incident where she discovered a cat inside a freezer that had died and the owner who struggled with hoarding 'couldn't part with it'.
The cleaning specialist managed to get the person to bury the beloved pet in their garden with a 'ceremony' for it.
Speaking with Metro, Lauren told of her first ever job, which was a suicide case.
She said: 'I went straight in at the deep end and it's always stuck with me. The person had planned every step and left notes saying not to come in and we had to tell the family.'
Lauren admitted it 'lives in my head quite a lot - I'll never forget that'.
She added: 'There are other tough cases as well where I've come home and had a little cry in the shower ... I've taken it home with me.'
She also described how the smell of death can sometimes be really strong and overwhelming: 'I didn't always have a strong stomach at first, I had to develop it. I used to gag quite a bit but I learnt that on the job.'