What is Cyberbullying?
Article link:
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/598017/Cyber-bullies-killed-our-son-Matthew-Jones-inspires-click-bullying-into-touch-campaign.htmlArticle Title: Cyber Bullying Killed Our Son
THERE was simply no hiding place for tormented schoolboy Matthew Jones.
For the evil bullies that battered him at school even clawed their way into the safe haven of his bedroom . . . through his computer screen.
Day after day, click after click, they attacked the 17-year-old through social network sites Facebook and MSN, urging him to KILL HIMSELF.
And the torrent of hate drove the intelligent but vulnerable lad into the clutches of another sinister form of bullying - internet suicide sites where sickos egged him on towards the edge.
Until, one afternoon, he did what they wanted.
"I got the sh** bullied out of me," he wrote in a suicide note his devastated parents Lin and Roger found on his computer.
"Life simply isn't for me. I have found that I have no fight left. So this is me saying goodbye."
Today the devastated couple join our anti-bullying campaign and reveal the full depths of what Matthew suffered - from playground beatings and 'happy slapping' attacks recorded on mobiles to psychological torture, leading him to self-harm.
"His death has totally destroyed our lives," says grieving mum Lin, 56. "Bullies and these sick websites took our boy from us." Matthew's nightmare began when he was just five at Norbreck Primary School in Thornton- Cleveleys, near Blackpool.
"Another boy constantly kicked and punched him and told him he was worthless and should be dead," says Lin, who keeps her beloved son's ashes in a shrine in her lounge surrounded by flowers.
Once she found Matthew with a length of cable. Lin added: "He said he was trying to kill himself like the boy had said.
"Another time we were in the car and he was sat in the back. He'd been quiet for a while and I turned round and he was blue in the face.
"He was holding his breath to try and end his life. It was terrifying. The seeds of his suicide were planted then." His little tormentor was dealt with by the school - but the bullying followed Matthew to senior school at Montgomery High.
After only a few days there, his mountain bike was smashed to pieces in the school bike shed. Dad Roger, 56, says: "He was heartbroken - but that was just the start. A group of around 15 to 20 pupils picked on him constantly. He was kicked and punched and had football boots pinched and even his blazer."
Lin adds: "I just thought he was being careless and losing stuff but then he broke down and told me he was being bullied."
Once Matthew bravely tried to stand up for himself after being surrounded by a gang of 20 lads but he was battered to the ground and trudged home with blood covering his shirt. Lin says: "The school did nothing to discipline the boys involved - even though we told them the names of the main two ringleaders.
"The bullies even filmed attacks on him and passed them around as some kind of sick entertainment.
"All the school did was appoint a bullying mentor - an older boy who accompanied Matthew at break time. But this just made him more of a target."
Damage
Lin and Roger, a barber, had several meetings with the school's staff but unhappy at their inability to prevent their son's bullying they moved him to the private Emmanuel Christian School in nearby Poulton-le-Fylde in 2004. "He was more settled there but the damage had been done," says Lin. "He was always worried about making friends because he felt he didn't fit in or wasn't part of the crowd."
Then the internet attacks were launched by tormentors from his old school.
"Matthew had his own Facebook and MSN pages and was often very upset by some of the messages he received," says Lin. "It was like there was no escape for him.
"He'd changed schools but someone can just type in your name and find you and the bullying starts all over again.
"After his death we found one boy on Facebook we knew had bullied him every day for years."
So Matthew - a talented pianist whose own compositions were played at his funeral - turned to self-harming in a bid to release the pain. "He would cut himself with razors or the blades from pencil sharpeners," says Lin. "There was nothing we could do to stop him.
"Another time, I went into his bedroom and he was sat there slashing his arm with a pencil sharpener blade.
"The blood was running down his arm.
"I asked him why he was doing it and he said the bullying had made him feel useless and worthless and doing this made him feel better."
It wasn't long before Matthew began to think of suicide.
Twice, at 15 and 16, he took overdoses of pills he found at home and needed hospital treatment.
Beforehand he had been chatting to users of an internet suicide group online. "My husband checked his computer and he'd been telling his problems to two girls on MSN," says Lin. "They'd left messages calling him a coward if he didn't go through with it and saying if he wasn't online the next day then they'd know he was dead.
"That's another form of bullying. People egging on and goading vulnerable youngsters to take their lives is absolutely repulsive. The sites should be closed down."
After Matthew made a third attempt at an overdose last October, Lin and Roger took hospital advice that he should be assessed at a psychiatric unit.
"We agreed for him to go for six days but it didn't help him," says Lin. "He was locked in with extremely disturbed adults and was terrified when he came out.
"He hadn't washed the whole time he was there and had barely eaten." After the shock of being in the unit, Matthew - by now on medication for depression - seemed much happier."
Matthew even started to chat about buying goods from the internet. Roger adds: "I took it as a sign he was growing up."
But it was all part of Matthew's final elaborate suicide plan. He used the card to buy a gas canister.
Sketch
"He said he was expecting a delivery and when it came I should make myself scarce because it was a Christmas present for us," says Roger. When the parcel arrived last December, Roger duly kept out of the way as Matthew took it to his bedroom - and gassed himself with the canister. By the time Roger went to check on his son, Matthew was dead. Next to him was a harrowing sketch he had made of himself taking his own life. We publish it today with details removed to protect other vulnerable children.
At Matthew's inquest, Blackpool's deputy coroner Michael Woosnam said more needed to be done to crack down on web forums advising young people on how to take their own lives.
Today Matthew's bedroom is just as he left it almost a year ago. The bed is neatly made. On his computer table is his mobile phone. Lin says: "We can't bear to touch anything. It is like he has just popped out for a few minutes and will be home soon.
"I am right behind your campaign. If it prevents one child from going down the same route as Matthew then it will have been worth it."
Matthew had been bullied for over a year at school and online and he had been egged on to commit suicide daily online in suicide groups and chatrooms. it started when he was young and kept on growing until he was even in high school, trying every form of suicide from cutting and hanging himself to holding his breath and overdosing.
this makes me feel horrible that nothing was done, if it were my kid i would have changed school districts and tried my hardest to make him fit in. ezpecially with a child who is talented like matthew was i would have made sure he had a better life than he lived.
NOT FINISHED!!!
