Sonia Forsythe, the schoolgirl who was murdered in June 1991, had tried to kill herself in the months before she disappeared, Belfast Crown Court heard yesterday.
Her neighbour, Mr Junior Craig (26) denies murdering the 13year-old girl whose remains were found five years later hidden in a coal bunker at his Sydney Street West home in west Belfast.
The girl's mother, Mrs Audrey Boomer, revealed that in November 1990 and again in March 1991 Sonia had overdosed on tablets. She said her daughter was sexually active and after her last overdose was being counselled by a psychiatrist and a social worker.
She told Mr Eugene Grant QC, defending, that she learned of Sonia's sexual activity from her diary and informed the police. Mrs Boomer denied that Sonia resented her step-father and blamed him for her problems and that she had been hard to handle.
Earlier Mrs Boomer told Mr John Creaney QC, for the Crown, that the night Sonia disappeared she went to Mr Craig's flat to ask him if he'd given her money.
She said when Mr Craig appeared he "seemed panicked and a wee bit nervous". Mr Craig's neighbour, Mrs Deborah Murray, who lived opposite him, and was described by the prosecution as a "nosey neighbour", claimed she saw Sonia in his flat the night she vanished.
Mrs Murray said she had been looking out her livingroom window for her mother when she noticed Mr Craig and a young girl walking "side by side". She said Mr Craig had a carryout of beer and the young girl had a peculiar habit of "flicking her hair with her right hand".
When the lights went on in Mr Craig's flat Mrs Murray said she went upstairs to watch through the net-curtained windows of his upstairs flat. "I could see with the light on the shape of a girl.
"I would say the same girl because she was flicking her hair in the same way and the shape and reflection of Junior," she said. Later when shown a photograph of the missing girl, Mrs Murray said she was "99.9 per cent sure that was the girl I saw with Junior that night". The case continues.