The suicide of a 13-year-old girl in France warns about the deficiencies in the fight against bullying

The white T-shirts have a phrase written with a pen: "Stop the harassment." In some of them, placed on the bars of the school of Vendin-le-Vieil, also appears the name of Lindsay, the 13-year-old girl who committed suicide on May 12 in this town in northern France, of 8,400 inhabitants. Her mother, Betty Gervois, had been denouncing the insults and beatings suffered by her daughter for months, first at school, then on social networks. They continued even after his death. Their calls for help went unanswered. The case, which has shocked the country, has brought to the fore the failures of the authorities to tackle a problem that affects about one in ten students in the country.

Lindsay's ordeal, and that of her friend Mailys, began in September at the Bracke-Desrousseaux school, a school of about 600 students. The girls were subjected to insults, taunts and beatings recorded on video and disseminated on social networks. Despite the warnings of the mother, who alerted the pedagogical team of the school of the situation, the situation deteriorated over time.

The girl's death is a "collective failure," French Education Minister Pap Ndiaye said in a television interview on June 1, three weeks after the tragedy. A few hours earlier, the family of the teenager had announced that it was filing four complaints, three of them for "not assisting a person in danger."

The first was addressed to the management of the center that, according to the family of the young woman, ignored the multiple alert calls. Two others were filed against the regional body of the Ministry of Education and the police in charge of the investigation. And the fourth, against Facebook, the social network where, even after the death of the young woman, messages of harassment and threats continued to appear.

The harassment suffered by the teenager highlighted the deficient tools of the authorities to tackle the problem, despite the implementation in 2023 of the pHARe program, aimed at dealing with cases of bullying at school. The scheme had begun to be implemented in the center where Lindsay went, but the formation of the teams that were going to deal with the issue had yet to be completed, according to the newspaper Le Parisien.

A letter "that everyone ignored"

Lindsay's situation was widely known, the family's lawyer, Pierre Debuisson, told a news conference. Before the media, he read a letter written by the victim months before his death in which he already mentioned his desire to end his life. Its content, he denounced, was communicated to the Academy of Lille – the regional body of the Ministry of Education – to those responsible for the school and to the police. It was a message "that everyone knew and that everyone ignored," he lamented. In the letter, Lindsay apologized to her parents for what she was going to do and explained that she could no longer handle the insults and threats.

The region's Prosecutor's Office announced on May 25 that four minors had been charged with "bullying that led to suicide," as well as one adult for "death threats." The five are under judicial control, he said. Experts always explain that suicide is multicausal, it does not obey a single motive. In Spain, more than half of the cases of suicide in adolescence is related to violence, among the multiple forms in which it occurs, is school abuse.

Lindsay's mother, Gervois, had also filed a police complaint in February. "I tried everything, I did everything, they didn't help us, they abandoned us completely, [there was] no support, not before, not while, not after," she denounced after the death of her daughter. "If they had supported us, I'm sure my daughter would still be with us," she said.

According to Ndiaye, the Minister of Education, the student considered the main harasser was temporarily excluded from the school on November 14, and permanently on May 27. But the harassment continued, this time online.

"We activated the protocol" after receiving a notification of harassment, said Jean Roger Ribaud, the academic director of the National Education services in the Pas-de-Calais region. "But sadly, it wasn't enough," he admitted. The institution will open an administrative investigation to clarify the facts.

The responsibility of social networks

The teasing of the young woman on Instagram and Facebook continued even after her death. Her friend also continued to receive threats. For Ndiaye, these social networks have part of the responsibility. It is necessary to put them "under pressure in a more accentuated way," he said in the television interview.

More than two weeks after the tragedy, the ministry announced new measures to fight what it considers "a scourge." Among the measures are the increase of subsidies to the two associations that manage the collection of testimonies, but also try to force social networks to fulfill their responsibility in terms of content moderation.

The ministry also sent an email to school principals to remind them of the protocol to follow in case of suspicion of bullying, according to local media. The regulation stipulates that the testimony of the victim must be collected, witnesses must be spoken to, the alleged perpetrators of the harassment and their legal representatives. In case the situation of bullying is confirmed, it is necessary to communicate it to the prosecutor's office.

For Lindsay's mother, Ndiaye's statements came late. "The Minister of Education is waking up, better late than never," he lamented on FranceInfo on June 2. Ndiaye will receive the teenager's family and her lawyer at the headquarters of her ministry on Monday, according to the weekly Journal du Dimanche.

People with suicidal behaviour and their relatives can call 024, a hotline of the Ministry of Health. You can also contact the Telephone of Hope (717 003 717), dedicated to the prevention of this problem. In cases that affect minors, the Anar Foundation has the telephone 900 20 20 10 and the chat of the https://www.anar.org/ page of Help to Children and Adolescents.

An earlier version of this article listed 14 years as the age of the youngest.

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