Police promise to return mobile phone belonging to Mia Janin
Father claims school ordered pupils to delete bullying messages to girl who took her own life
THE Metropolitan Police has promised to return the lost mobile phone of a pupil who took her own life, after her father claimed her school had ordered pupils to delete bullying messages they had sent.
Mia Janin, 14, was found dead at her family home in Barnet in March 2021 and an inquest was told she had been bullied at the Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton, north-west London.
The Met said that after the investigation into her death that Mia’s family had requested the return of the sim for her main phone as well as a second handset, but that officers had been “unable to locate them within the property store”.
However, in a statement on Sunday, the force said that the items have since been recovered and that police officers had spoken with family representatives this week about sending them back.
Speaking to BBC’S Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme, Mia’s father, Mariano Janin, said that JFS “organised an assembly” and “asked kids to delete the messages”.
He said: “My common sense says that if you have a police investigation and you have this potential group, you should notify to the police - maybe this group of kids, they have information on their phone, but that’s what they did.”
JFS has said all the information they had was handed to the police and the coroner’s report was not a reflection of how things are at the school today, the BBC reported.
A coroner found in January that Mia “took her life while still a child and while still in the process of maturing into adulthood”.
Before the inquest concluded, Mia’s family released a Whatsapp voice note to the BBC in which she expressed her torment.
In the recorded message, which she sent to a friend, she said: “Tomorrow’s going to be a rough day, I’m taking deep breaths in and out. I’m currently mentally preparing myself to get bullied tomorrow.”
Her death was the third suicide in four years at JFS, the biggest Jewish school in Europe.
In the interview on Sunday, Mr Janin criticised the Government’s plans to ban children from having phones in schools.
He said that the strategy was “not the way”, adding that “we need to learn to live with this technology”.
Mr Janin said: “(They) will have a phone anyway, it’s like this, they will hide the phone, and it’s not the way they need to learn to use their phones in a responsible way.”
Social media platforms need to have “some kind of responsibility as well”, he said.
Det Supt Adam Rowland, from the Met’s north-west policing team, said: “The impact of Mia’s death is acutely felt by all who knew her, particularly her family and close friends.
“Their loss is unimaginable and our thoughts remain with them.
“After Mia died in March 2021, we looked carefully at the circumstances leading to her death in order to provide a full and thorough account to the coroner.
“This included speaking to her family, friends and pupils and staff at her school, as well as in-depth analysis of her phone and use of social media.
“All of the evidence gathered during this investigation was passed to the coroner to consider as part of the inquest.”