My son was bullied to death at 15
Powerless to stop it, Julie Steward, 54, from South Wales, watched as her son’s sparkle faded each day...
Simon tried to numb the pain
Some people don’t believe in angels, but I certainly do.
When my son Simon was born in 1999, his little tuft of red hair and rosy cheeks had me fall in love with him instantly.
He’d come as a complete surprise – my then partner David, now 58, and I already had Stephanie, then 10, and Michael, six – we hadn’t expected another baby!
But Simon filled my heart with so much love the moment he came into this world.
Bringing him home, he and I settled on the bed, fell asleep together, our hearts in sync.
David made a short video of us together, and when I watched it the next day, I swear I could see angels around us, and I knew they’d brought Simon to me especially.
Growing up, Simon and I were as thick as thieves, doing the shopping together, going to the playground, and staying up late to read.
‘He’s your favourite,’ Stephanie and Michael would joke.
Wise beyond his years, Simon was intelligent, kind, and had such a wickedly dry sense of humour.
At family weddings, he’d be the centre of attention amongst the guests, nattering away to all the grown-ups with all the confidence in the world, more comfortable with them than with children his own age.
He was an amazing artist, too, dreamed of becoming an architect.
But I suppose it was his intelligence and his wisdom beyond his years that made him an easy target.
Aged just four, my little angel started to be bullied at primary school.
‘It’s rough on the playground,’ he told me.
Simon was being teased every day, being called all kinds of cruel names.
With each day, I saw my son’s smile fade a little more.
I’d hoped that by secondary school, Simon’s classmates would be a bit more mature, but I was wrong.
Simon was walking into school every day with a target on his back.
Walking to class, he’d be shoved around in the corridor.
Kids would steal his shoes, throw them back and forth to each other while Simon had to humiliate himself by trying to get them back.
As he got older, Simon started getting the train to school, but even in a public space, the bullying continued.
Another child hitting my son was caught on the train’s CCTV, and when I called the police, I was told there was enough evidence to prosecute.
‘I don’t want to,’ Simon said. ‘I don’t want to get him in trouble.’
One day, I was called to the school, where the head teacher informed me that Simon, then 14, had been caught with alcohol.
He’d decanted some wine into a plastic bottle, and the school was looking to suspend him. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked him later.
‘I wanted to numb the pain,’ Simon replied.
It broke my heart.
My fun and flamboyant son had lost his sparkle.
Soon he was coming up with all kinds of excuses not to go to school, even tucking a hot water bottle under his shirt to raise his temperature.
In the afternoons, he’d come home from school, exhausted and so withdrawn.
By the evening, he’d relax, as if a switch had gone off, and he’d be his bubbly self again.
But as the night wore on, he’d retreat into his shell, the idea of school the next day filling him with dread.
He hardly slept, resorted to sleeping with me in my bed.
By 2014, aged 15, enough was enough.
Simon and I agreed that he
would finish the term, and then be homeschooled.
On 28 March that year, I’d gone to lunch with friends. David, Stephanie and Michael were out, and Simon was due at an after school ice skating event, so I knew he’d be home late.
After lunch, though, I suddenly got this awful feeling. ‘Something’s wrong,’ I said. ‘I need to get home.’ My friends raced me home to find an ambulance in the drive, and my heart was in my throat.
Racing in, Simon was at the kitchen table talking to paramedics –a girl from his school and her mum looked on. ‘What’s going on?’ I cried. It turns out, Simon had missed his last class of the day, and his friend Emily had text him to ask why. I don’t want to be on my own
at the end, he’d replied.
His worried friend had informed her mum, who called an ambulance.
Looking around, I saw pill packets strewn across the table.
Simon had taken a mixture of medication – he had tried to take his own life.
‘What have you done?’ I cried, rushing over to him. ‘Sorry Mum,’ he said. Despite the amount of pills he’d taken, Simon seemed OK, and paramedics were in no rush.
It was 6pm by the time he was taken to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, and even then, he seemed alright.
‘I wish I hadn’t done it, Mum,’ Simon said.
‘It’s OK, love,’ I replied. ‘You’re going to be OK.’
Inside though, I was furious.
The constant bullying at school had forced my 15-year-old son to feel that taking his own life was the only way out.
Simon was hooked up to a drip, and I believed he would be home in a few days.
By the following morning, though, he’d started vomiting, and the day after that, monitors showed that his heart was out of rhythm.
‘Things have taken a turn,’ a doctor said, ordering Simon to be transferred to the intensive care unit at Cardiff’s University Hospital of Wales.
The next day, Simon was being sick all the time, his temperature was through the roof and his body was swollen from the fluids that had been pumped into him. The pills he’d swallowed had taken their time, but now they were coming into effect – all at once.
His organs were failing. ‘We’re going to have to put him into a coma,’ a doctor said. ‘To give his body a chance to rest.’ Simon could hear what was going on, had a terrified look on his face. ‘Mum, am I going to die?’ he asked.
I clutched his hand, unable to answer.
It turned out, those would be his last words. A few minutes later, Simon was in a coma. I reluctantly went home to freshen up, but when I returned, doctors and nurses were frantically swarming around my boy. ‘He’s had a heart attack,’ a nurse said.
Doctors had managed to bring him back, but it was touch and go.
Falling to my knees, I closed my eyes and saw those angels that had appeared around Simon as a baby.
In that moment, I knew it was over – the angels were here to take him home. Simon survived a second heart attack, but it was the third one a few minutes later that ended his life. I felt my world crumble around me as I listened to the machines around him go silent. Simon knew he’d made a mistake – he didn’t want to die.
But now he was dead – my 15-year-old son gone forever because of the bullying he’d faced for most of his life. My
He asked me if he was going to die
world went dark in that moment, my angel had been taken away.
We held Simon’s funeral two weeks later, and afterwards, reading a remembrance book we’d placed out, I was driven to tears once again.
So many kids from his school had written about what an amazing person he was. When I was being bullied,
Simon helped me, one wrote. Even though Simon was going through his own hell, he was always willing to help others – it was typical of him. After the funeral, I fell apart. I was living from moment to moment, losing weight, and suffering with night terrors.
Each morning when I woke up, I’d remember that Simon was gone, and my heart would break all over again.
Diagnosed with PTSD, I felt like a zombie.
The loss had taken a toll on my marriage, too – David and I separated that July.
Today, it’s been six years since I lost Simon, but I still feel that pain every day, like a part of me has been ripped out. He would have been 21 now. I feel so angry knowing that his future was taken away by a bunch of thoughtless kids.
Stephanie, now 31, and Michael, 27, are here for me as much as they can, and I’m now involved in the Safer Schools Campaign, joining forces with other parents to plead with the government to implement policies that ensure bullying complaints in schools can never be ignored.
My son wasn’t safe at school, and I want to make sure this tragedy doesn’t happen to any other family.
Bullying needs to be reported and dealt with before another innocent child takes his or her own life.
Simon’s medical cause of death was listed as ‘multiple organ failure due to deliberate self harm with unknown intent’.
But I know that really, his cause of death was bullying.
Simon couldn’t see a way out, and decided to end his pain in the only way he knew how.
But he’s with the angels now.
Visit the Safer Schools Campaign page on Facebook.