‘I need to make sure his death was not in vain and bullying is taken seriously’

THE last words Simon Brooks said to his mother were: “Mum...am I going to die”.

Simon, who was just 15 at the time, had taken a cocktail of pills he had found in his family home. He had also left a suicide note. He died on April 1, 2014, at the University Hospital of Wales.

His mum said he was a sensitive soul who was wise beyond his years, but that he was “relentlessly bullied” throughout his childhood.

Now she is campaigning with other parents from across the UK for the Government to implement laws and policies that ensure bullying and violence complaints ignored.

She said: “Simon was bullied for pretty much all of his life. He was a flamboyant character and was the life and soul of the party, but he was also sensitive and didn’t always understand social situations.

“He was very articulate and was much more comfortable socialising with adults than people his own age and I think this made him a target.

“But he was a beautiful person and he had a very good group of close friends”.

Julie Steward said Simon’s bullying started at primary school when other children would “name call or steal his bag” – but progressed to physical violence when he started secondary school. can never be

“It was relentless,” she said. “He couldn’t get away from it. On the day he took his own life, he’d had a fall out. It was over something trivial, but I think it had built up inside and this was what tipped him over the edge.

“Just before Simon died we had agreed to home school. He loved subjects such as design and technology and he was very inquisitive, he loved learning.

“But it got to the point where he just didn’t want to go to school anymore.”

Ms Steward said that while Simon was a “happy teenager who was full of life”, the bullying started to take its toll on his home life.

She said: “He would come home from school and for the first hour or so he wasn’t himself. But then he would relax for a bit and would be back to normal.

“But then by nighttime he would be tense again. He wouldn’t sleep at night. By the end, he was sleeping in my bed and his father would sleep in his.

“It was the same at the weekends. On Friday evenings he would have a sudden burst of energy, it was like a switch had gone off, but then by Sunday evening he would be saying he didn’t want to go to school.

“But despite all that he loved life completely. He was always the first person to volunteer to speak in front of a crowd and he was a daredevil. He loved bungee jumps and skydives and he was a real thrill seeker.

“I just think that at the moment in time he didn’t know what else to do.”

In the afternoon of March 28, 2014, Simon skipped his last lesson of the day and made his way home early. He then took a cocktail of medication.

A suicide note written by Simon was later discovered in the house.

Ms Steward first learnt about