The father of a woman who killed herself after being charged with lying about a rape believes a full inquest compliant with article 2 of the European convention on human rights is his only hope of finding out whether the decision to prosecute her contributed to his daughter’s death.

Writing on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website, David de Freitas, the father of 23-year-old Eleanor, said that part of his daughter’s fear before she took her own life was that the court process she faced for allegedly perverting the course of justice might reveal details of her life that her parents were not aware of.

“At least part of that shame we believe is due to information gathered by her prosecutor suggesting she may have previously acted as an escort,” he said. “This is irrelevant to the question of whether she was raped, but I think she was frightened of it coming out in court as we did not know about it.”

Eleanor de Freitas – who had bipolar disorder and had been sectioned in the past – killed herself three days before the start of her trial for perverting the course of justice in April this year. The prosecution had been instigated by the man she had accused of rape after the case against him was dropped and it was later taken over by the Crown Prosecution Service.

An inquest is due soon. Lawyers for De Freitas are pressing for the hearing to be enhanced and held under the terms of article 2 of the European convention, the right to life, on the grounds that the state failed in its duty to protect her life.

The Guardian revealed on Tuesday that police officers who investigated the alleged rape and carried out a specialist interview with De Freitas maintain sheshould never have been charged with perverting the course of justice. But the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, has vigorously defended the prosecution after personally investigating the case.

The specialist detectives involved in investigating De Freitas’s rape allegation consistently refused to support prosecutors in a case against her for allegedly making it up.

They were supported by their senior officer, and the force only began to cooperate with the CPS after prosecutors held a meeting with a much more senior officer, Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt.

In correspondence this month, DI Julian King, of Sapphire, the sexual offences investigation unit, said: “I stand by my decision in that I do not believe that Eleanor should ever have been prosecuted for PCJ [perverting the course of justice].”

In his article on Wednesday David De Freitas said: “I am still astonished that the CPS decided to prosecute a very vulnerable young woman in circumstances in which the police had thought it should not take place.”

On Tuesday, Saunders said the case was unique and tragic but that the evidential and public interest tests were both met, and the evidence against the young woman was strong.

She said she had expressed her personal and heartfelt sympathies to the woman’s family, but defended the actions of the CPS and said it was better for the authorities to take on a private prosecution that met the tests than to leave it to a private prosecutor.

Saunders said the case involved careful consideration because De Freitas had mental health problems, but also because it was the subject of a private prosecution without a full police investigation.

“The evidence in this case was strong and having considered it in light of all of our knowledge and guidance on prosecuting sexual offences and allegedly false rape claims, it is clear there was sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction for perverting the course of justice,” she said.

“This evidence included text messages and CCTV footage that directly contradicted the account Ms De Freitas gave to the police. This was not an assumption based on her behaviour or actions which fall into myths or stereotypes about how alleged rape victims should behave.”

She dismissed the concerns of police officers about pursuing De Freitas for allegedly making up the complaint. She said the police were not in a position to give a view, as they “never undertook an investigation into the alleged perverting the course of justice nor did they consider all the material provided to us by the private prosecution”.

The DPP said that she was satisfied that her lawyers had taken the necessary steps to assure themselves De Freitas’s mental health problems had been properly considered.

Medical experts provided by De Freitas’s legal team found that she was fit to stand trial. “We do not take on these kind of prosecutions lightly, but the medical evidence provided to us could not justify dropping such a serious case,” Saunders said.

De Freitas reported an alleged rape to the police in January 2013, a few days after the alleged incident in which she said she had been drugged then raped. The police investigated the incident, interviewing her and the alleged perpetrator, before telling her that they could not proceed further as there was not a realistic chance of a successful conviction, partly due to inconsistencies in her account.

It was then that the man who had been at the centre of the allegations mounted a private prosecution against her, gathering evidence from text messages and CCTV cameras. His prosecution was taken over by the CPS in December 2013, and the trial had been due to start on 7 April 7 this year.