A Hampshire man whose wife committed suicide because she couldn't have a child has set up a charity to help the deprived children of Nepal. RACHEL LAMB reports...

PHILIP Holmes has turned a terrible personal tragedy into an international triumph. His story is one of faith, grit and determination. A story of one man's driving force to make positive an unimaginable sad event.

On January 4, 1999, Esther , Philip's adored wife, took her own life. She hanged herself on a wet and grey Monday morning in her home at Church Crookham, near Aldershot and her lifeless body was found by Philip.

With her body he found a brief note saying that her life without a child was unbearable.

Philip and his wife had gone through all the motions of trying to have a baby of their own. Natural measures failed so the couple tried many other of the painful procedures available but to no avail.

At the age of 43, with no sign of hope on the horizon, Esther gave in to her depression and took her own life.

"She ceased to recognise herself in that last year. I was not surprised she had done what she did but it was the most profound, awful shock," said Philip.

"She did not like what she had become. The way she died was the way she lived. She didn't like what she saw, she had a solution and she went for it - she was dead before dying.

"I was devastated. The pain of it will never go away but I have moved on and bear the pain because of Esther."

Following her suicide Philip had a lot of decisions to make. He chose to leave the British Army in which he had served for 17 years as a dentist with the Royal Army Dental Corps and decided to leave his Hampshire home, and England to set up a trust in his wife's name.

He moved to her native Holland unsure in what form this trust would take. All he knew was that the trust would be to help children.

At the time of her death Esther and Philip were sponsoring a child in Nepal after meeting with Gurkha families in Church Crookham and getting to know them and love their culture. One of those Gurkhas, serving in the British army, was asked by Philip to join his team and head-up operations in Nepal.

This connection with this country of outstanding natural beauty gave Philip an obvious lead as to where to begin his venture. Nearly 18 months ago he travelled to Nepal for the first time to find a practical outlet for his overwhelming grief.

Nepal is one of the world's ten poorest nations with 70 per cent of the 23 million population living in absolute poverty. Any traveller can tell you that in the midst of its awesome natural beauty, the degree of deprivation can be just as staggering. Some of the symptoms of this are obvious, like the street children of Kathmandu. However, much is hidden away from the eyes of the tourist and it is upon these most overlooked and neglected groups that The Esther Benjamins Trust (EB Trust) turned its attention.

Nepal is full of child-related problems ranging from prostitution to orphans but one area Philip became very interested in while there was the plight of the jail children. Kids sentenced to the same prison term as the parent they are dependent on because there is no state care homes and no other option for them.

No-one knows exactly how many children there are in the 73 jails scattered around Nepal although the EB Trust estimates 200-250 young children are detained alongside, and in free association with, criminal adults in the squalid, overcrowded conditions of Nepalese. Many of these are on serious charges like murder, paedophilia and drug trafficking. The children are there through no fault of their own.

Other adult members of the family are too poor to support them, and they are too young to venture onto the streets.

During their detention these children, who are from the lower castes and poorest Nepalese families, are at risk of physical and sexual abuse from inmates and prison staff. In addition to their loss of freedom and safety, the jail children are simply not provided and cared for. Food, shelter and play are denied. Jail children have a daily issue of 250g of rice (no meat, fruit or vegetables) and 5p equivalent per day. Little provision is made for schooling is made at Kathmandu City Jail and none in the provincial jails.

Philip said: "Although these children are innocent on entering jail, the lack of education makes it almost inevitable that they will turn to crime or prostitution when they leave jail.

Since the end of 1999 the Nepal Child Welfare Foundation (NCWF) has been investigating alternative care for jail children, specifically existing orphanages in Kathmandu which have spare capacity. The first of these to be identified was the "Nestling Home" run by the Prisoner Assistance Mission (PAM). At the home they found 33 children, all jail releasees, who were being cared for well and attending a local school.

So Philip's trust, now up and running and receiving registered charity status in November1999, had found the perfect partners to set about helping needy and deprived children.

On December 4, 1999, 11 months after Esther's suicide, the Esther Benjamins Trust funded the release, through PAM, of its first seven jail children from Kathmandu jails, three girls and four boys. Six of these children are now attending school along with the other refuge children.

The seventh, Dharma (13), had missed out on too much of the formal education process to adapt to the school environment and has commenced a two-year course in joinery. These seven had become Esther Benjamins' first children.

May 2000 saw the release of three more boys, bringing the occupancy of the Nestling Home up to capacity.

The Esther Benjamins Trust is now funding the care of a total of ten children. However, the main thrust of its work over the next few years will be to address the problem of children in the provincial jails.

"It's in these jails that conditions are even worse for children than in the capitals jails. There are at present no rural refuges for dependent jail children," added Philip.

"Our aim with this new project is to resolve this national embarrassment. Once adequate alternative arrangements are available we will urge the Home Office to introduce legislation outlawing the practice of jailing dependent children. Thereby we will achieve our strategic objective of no innocent children behind bars in Nepal by 2005.

"Unfortunately, on September 1, the very day that our Nepal Jail Children Project, was due to start, we learned that our application to The National Lotteries Charity Board (NLCB) had been unsuccessful. The unwelcome news arrived as representatives of the Trust were in Nepal engaged in a difficult (but successful) operation to remove four innocent children from a provincial jail at Tansen."

Philip has no real idea how much the children the trust saves will cost over the next five or ten years. With no dependants the trust has to be there for them financially once they are released whatever happens.

Now, since the Lottery refusal it looks like he will have to find all the funds himself.

"We were very disappointed but we will not give up," he added.