Bullies must be punished
Parents of teen victim speak out
A BULLYING consultant should be made available to every school to stop kids taking their own lives, and offenders should be publicly punished, the parents of a 15year-old girl who suicided after she was targeted on Snapchat have demanded.
High school student Matilda “Tilly” Rosewarne was relentlessly targeted after a faked porn photo of her was created and shared online and her alleged abusers, who have never been punished, then urged her to take her own life, and joked online about her death in February.
Her parents, Murray Rosewarne and Emma Mason, said schools should have a bullying expert to deal with cyber abuse disputes and principals needed greater powers to detect and punish bullies.
Mr Rosewarne, 58, found
his daughter’s body in the garden of their Bathurst home, in central western NSW.
Ms Mason, 49, said principals and police had no powers to stop the abuse and the esafety Commission – set up to help those being bullied online but which the couple were unaware of until after Tilly died – was a “toothless tiger” and “ill-funded”.
Ms Mason said bullying began in schools and therefore every teacher needed to undergo training in how to deal with this issue.
“It has to start with education and there needs to be repercussions in the schools,” she said. “The children that did this are still at school ... the same school.”
Ms Mason said the family was moving to Sydney because her two youngest daughters cannot cope with having to face the people who allegedly abused their sister.
The couple spoke out following Sky presenter Erin Molan’s documentary Online Haters: Erin Molan Fights Back, that aired this week, in which Molan detailed the online abuse she received during her TV career.
The esafety Commission, the only one of its kind in the world, has removed online content on behalf of more than 4200 children and said following Tilly’s death it had ramped up its efforts to raise awareness of its work with police, educators and mental health organisations so they referred victims to its services.