This article deals with content describing bullying and suicide.
The parents of a 12-year old girl who died by suicide last week have spoken out about the inadequate support they said they received from their daughter’s school, accusing them of having a “duty of care” to its students.
Over the past three years, their daughter Charlotte had been the victim of bullying from fellow students at Santa Sabina College in Strathfield, an independent Roman Catholic girls school in Sydney’s inner west. According to Charlotte’s father, his daughter had been “broken down…because the toxicity was allowed to breed” at the school.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Mat described the school’s culture as “toxic”, explaining that Charlotte had endured years of bullying and that other parents have confirmed the legitimacy of his concerns.
He explained that some of Charlotte’s peers had taken some personal information about his daughter and “weaponised it, teasing her about it, embarrassing her about it”.
“When the most recent case of bullying was raised, the school simply said it was investigated and the girls denied it,” he said. “That’s it. Case closed. Move on.”
Charlotte’s mother, Kelly, said her daughter had experienced friendship issues throughout her time as a student in Year 5, Year 6 and Year 7 at Santa Sabina, and that she’d once told her mother, “‘Everybody hates me. I’m a monster. I’ve got no friends. They’re so mean to me. They hate me. They hate me. Everyone’s mean to me’.”
According to Kelly, a few weeks before her death, Charlotte had been found in the school toilets crying and saying she wanted to end her life.
“She got sent home,” Kelly said. “[The school] told me what had happened and that she needed to come home and she needed a medical certificate before she could come back to school.”
According to Kelly, the pressure was placed on her daughter to “cope better”, while the students who were perpetrating the bullying were not sufficiently interrogated.
“We felt the onus was always on Charlotte to cope better and not enough time spent to uncover why she felt that way,” she said. “As parents we increased her visits to see her GP and had her attend regular external counselling sessions.”
Charlotte’s GP described the behaviour she was encountering as “harassment.” Kelly returned to school armed with this information and was told “‘This is not harassment, this is just very juvenile behaviour’.”
After her daughter’s tragic death, the principal of Santa Sabina released a statement, defending her school’s management over the issue of bullying among its students.
“In the past week, I have been overwhelmed by the number of emails and messages from our families that talk about their children feeling safe and cared for at SantaSabina College, and objecting to the portrayal of our College as failing to deal with matters that cause distress amongst our students,” Paulina Skerman said.
“Our Anti-Bullying Policy is available on our website, and was developed in consultation with the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, and further approved earlier this year by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA).”
“Our students and our families are highly informed on the policy and the procedures for reporting and resolving matters of concern, and they utilise this as needed.”
The statement goes on to claim that the school is focused on providing support and care to its students, their families and staff, and “to supporting Charlotte’s family through their unimaginable grief.”
“We are continuing to work with Headspace and other providers to ensure that we follow the most supportive and safest practices for our community at this time.”
Sadly, this is little comfort to the parents of Charlotte, who described their daughter as “the sweetest, kindest, toughest, strongest little diva you’ve ever met in your life.”
In an especially heart-breaking revelation, Charlotte’s parents disclosed the contents of a letter their daughter had written before she took her own life.
The letter, addressed to her parents, had listed the names of the students who had made “life too hard” for her, and urged her parents to “tell the school please”.
“Mama, please share my story to raise awareness,” the letter read.
Charlotte’s father is urging the school and other schools to do more. According to him, correspondence between himself, his wife and the school throughout the past three years (including emails, conversations and phone calls) had not amounted to any substantive changes or improvements for his daughter.
“We as parents give schools responsibility for our most precious children,” he said. “We put them in their care, and they have a duty of care and that duty of care isn’t to go ‘oh no, we can’t intervene’. It is to resolve it.”
“I don’t care if it’s a public school, a private school, independent or Catholic. You have a duty of care for those kids, and you have to step in as an adult.”
“There needs to be a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying,” Mat continued. “This is about preventing this from happening again moving forward.”
“Absolutely every school, off the back of reading this article, needs to organise a meeting on Monday morning for a full review of their policy. Say, this policy we have, is it the most appropriate policy for us now, bearing in mind lessons we’ve learnt?”
Charlotte’s parents believe that their daughter’s experience of bully should have been stopped when it was first raised several years ago and that the responsibility of its management should not fall on the victim.
“Yes, the school had offered Charlotte counselling but equally they should have stopped the issue when it was originally raised,” they said.
“It shouldn’t have to be raised multiple times and again, why is the focus on those that have been affected rather than those that are causing it in the first place.”
The parents also described their final evening together as “great”, saying that they didn’t see any signs of distress from Charlotte. They were later told by the police that individuals who die by suicide frequently do not exhibit any signs of distress towards the end of their lives.
“This is not a girl that was planning on doing this,” Mat said. “Something happened when she went to her bedroom.”
News of Charlotte’s death was first reported on September 16, when Kelly sent a letter to 2GB’s Ben Fordham show. Fordham read the letter on air, in which the distraught mother pleaded: “These issues cannot be swept under the carpet. I will not let my daughter’s memory be swept under the carpet either.”
“How many more children need to lose their lives before they get it? How many parents need to feel the pain of never being able to pick up their child from school again before they get it? We’re broken forever.”
“What they should have said was Kelly, Mat please come in, let us hear what you think, where you think you’ve been let down because we want to do better. Clearly, we have failed together. We’ve lost a little girl.”
According to the father, Santa Sabina has still not reached out personally to him after his daughter’s death.
“While the school has sent a few text messages to Kelly I am yet to hear from the school,” Mat said. “No email, no text, no call.”
He and his wife have encouraged the public to make donations to the Kids Helpline in memory of their daughter.
This year in Australia, over 3,000 people die by suicide each year, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
In 2022, a total of 77 deaths by suicide were recorded among children and adolescents aged 17 and below. In the past few years, several cases of teenagers taking their own lives have made headlines, erupting a new wave of public discourse on the issue.
In 2022, Matilda “Tilly” Rosewarne, 15, took her own life after enduring bullying from students at her school. Like Kelly and Mat, Tilly’s parents said that they hoped that the education system would ensure that “real, hard conversations are had, and that bullying behaviour is challenged and stopped, and that genuine repercussions are followed through.”
In January this year, 14-year old Oliver Hughes, who had lived with anorexia nervosa for years, died by suicide. He was also a victim of bullying — picked on for being “a ginger” among other things, according to his mother, who described such comments as “dangerous, especially for teenagers trying to find where they fit in life.”
In March, 17-year old Pennsylvania teenager Brandyn Truscott died by suicide after suffering years of bullying at school. In June, 10-year old Sam Teusch had died by suicide after enduring days of “relentless bullying” he experienced at a school in Indiana.
A 2023 study by LEGO Group’s Play Well found that more than half of Australian children aged between 5 – 12 experience gender-based bullying during play.
If you need support, help is available. Please contact Lifeline 13 11 14; Beyond Blue 1300 224 636; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; eSafety.gov.au; headspace.org.au and au.reachout.com