Vunderkind
Social Member
A distraught father last night spoke on how a website popular among twitter users drove his daughter to hang herself after a long-drawn internet bullying episode.
David Smith has asked for legal action to be carried out against Ask.fm, the website where his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah Smith had turned to for help with her eczema condition. Instead of getting help, she was barraged with series of online posts asking her to ‘die’.
She was later found dead in her bedroom by her elder sister, Jo last Friday. Investigations are currently going on into her death.
But the vileness of the trolls didn’t end with the death of Hannah. They hijacked her Facebook tribute page and made even more hurtful and damaging attacks on her. One of such trolls called her a coward for killing herself.
David Smith has said: “How many more teenagers will kill themselves because of online abuse before something is done? These sick people are just able to go online and hide behind a mask of anonymity while they abuse vulnerable teenagers. “We’ve lost Hannah in the most horrendous way imaginable. It’s time something was done so that no other family has to go through this.
“When you’re sitting behind a computer screen you can say whatever you want and there’s no comeback. But these trolls need to realize that they are affecting people’s lives in the most horrific ways imaginable.
“If you’re bullied in the workplace something is done about it and if you’re bullied at school something is done about it. So why, when people are being bullied on social networking sites, is nothing being done about it?”
As the story goes, Hannah was getting ready to write her GCSE’s and had logged on to Ask.fm for advice for her eczema problem, which had been a problem for her since her early childhood. The eczema had stopped temporarily, and returned again, and she was in need of a solution to the problem. Instead of getting help, however, she was abused.
Some replies to her ask.fm question was: “u ugly f*** go die every1 wuld be happy”, “do us all a favour n kill ur self”. Someone even suggested that she cut herself and die.
According to Hannah’s Step mother, Deborah Smith, “Hannah was bubbly, bright, cheerful and never had a glum face”
A day before she killed herself, Hannah posted an online note with the sentence: “You think you want to die, but in reality you want to be saved.”