Lyrics 'helped Jill Saward' with rape trauma

The husband of rape campaigner Jill Saward said he sang to her in her final hours words that helped her "overcome the trauma" of her 1986 attack.

Ms Saward, 51, who became a victims' rights campaigner after being raped in the Ealing vicarage attack, died after suffering a stroke earlier this month.

Her husband Gavin Drake and Ms Saward's twin sister sang lyrics to "Bread of life; all things new" at her bedside.

He paid tribute to his wife before her funeral at Lichfield Cathedral.

• 'Repeating her pain helped us'

Ms Saward, who was the first woman in the UK to waive her right to anonymity following rape, had lived in Hednesford, Staffordshire.

Gavin Drake attended his wife's funeral with the couple's three sons

Mr Drake's written tribute told how Ms Saward wrote in her memoir that she heard the song by Garth Hewitt at a Christian festival and remembered it the evening after being raped by intruders who broke into her father's vicarage when she was 21.

She wrote she "cannot stop my mind going back to that terrible hour. The violence of the attack", but the song's chorus helped her "think of something more positive".

More tributes, plus other Staffordshire news

The Liverpool-born campaigner said she had "sung the words quietly to myself" every morning, believing "I will be made new. It says all things".

Mr Drake, a journalist, said the song had remained important to his wife, and would be sung at her funeral.

Jill Saward was the first rape victim in the UK to waive her anonymity

"The pain of losing Jill has been hard. And is hard. I think that I am too numb to really know what I am feeling," he wrote.

Mr Drake added the couple were "very proud" of their three sons Myles, Rory and Fergus, who had shown "incredible courage and strength".

'Saved lives'

He told how the couple had often been away from each other through work but "whenever I have been away from Jill, I have never been apart from Jill. That is, until now."

Her family invited "all those who knew and loved Jill" to pay their respects at the cathedral service.

Mourners remembered Jill Saward's "courage and strength"

In his homily, the Reverend Prebendary Gary Piper praised Ms Saward's enduring courage and strength and how she "campaigned successfully to bring about changes in the law where rape cases are concerned".

"In addition to this she gave comfort, help and advice to literally hundreds of women who had been victims of violence and abuse," he said.

"In so doing she saved a number of lives."

Ms Saward became a Christian as a child following the death of a friend, her twin sister Sue Lancaster said

Mr Piper, who knew Ms Saward for more than 40 years, said he would remember her sense of humour and for bringing "a smile and a giggle".

Mr Drake said his wife's remains would be interred at Nefyn in Gwynedd, north Wales, a place she had loved.