Earlier this year, 16-year-old Elle Trowbridge died by suicide after being cyberbullied for five years.
The Tyrone-born teenager had been suffering targeted abuse for years on an app that allows users to send anonymous comments to people.
Online bullies had been encouraging Elle to self-harm, with one unknown user telling her to cut herself “so deep that she would bleed to death.”
The 16-year-old’s mum, Mandy, has recently spoken out about her daughter’s abuse, warning others about the dangers of anonymous apps.
Speaking on Today with Sean O’Rourke, she said that after Elle’s death, she wasn’t even able to find out who had been saying such horrible things to her daughter.
“There was no proof of anything, no hard evidence of anything or anyone in particular. We weren’t able to find out who started this.
When Elle was eleven she came into my room one evening crying hard and she said, ‘Mummy, look at this.’ I could not believe what I was reading.”
Mandy said she took the messages very seriously and went so far as to report them to the police and move Elle to a different school.
However, because of the app’s anonymous nature, there was very little the police could do.
“It was a tough five years because you’re constantly on edge. I could see she was scarred and damaged by this,” she said.
According to Mandy, the bullying started again in February of this year.
One user sent the 16-year-old a message saying that she should “go and get hit by a bus.” The Tyrone mum said that her daughter could not understand how people could say such horrible things to another human being.
She has urged parents to be more vigilant about their children’s online activity, and the use of anonymous apps.
“Everybody is aware of these things but I think we bury our heads in the sand. We have to be proactive, we have to know what is going on on our children’s devices.
I know you have to allow children to have a little bit of privacy but the mobile apps that are allowed to be downloaded onto any device, there seems to be no control over them.”
Images via Facebook.
