Suicide of 14-year-old Lewisham girl prompts coroner to write to website director about subject she read before death

A Silicon Valley boss has questions to answer after the tragic suicide of a South London teenager who read a popular website before she died. Isabella Shere was just 14 when she tragically took her own life by hanging herself at her home in Lewisham on February 2, 2023, London Inner South Coroner’s Court heard at an inquest in February this year.

Isabella’s family left the house at around 8am and she was found at 1.21pm with a timer running for five hours and 13 minutes, the court heard. The young woman was known to struggle with mental health, and a check of her internet search history from the last four months of her life revealed that she had been researching suicide methods. Isabella also left a note detailing her intentions.

Now Deputy Coroner Fleur Hallett has raised the alarm about the easily accessible information available on a popular website, which MyLondon has chosen not to name to avoid alerting others in distress to the same content. In a Preventing Future Deaths report to the CEO, the coroner said the thread Isabella saw immediately before her death was still online and had 169,700 views at the time of writing.

READ MORE: 33-year-old Lambeth man took his own life just 2 days after being sent home by NHS mental health team

Ms Hallett also noted that the content was not marked as ‘Adult Content’ when accessed on a phone or computer and that children could access the site through search engines without having to create a account, confirm they are an adult or enter information. their date of birth.

The coroner also highlighted the website’s list of related questions, which encourages consumption of similar material when viewing content, and a feature that allows users to follow questions, again encouraging consumption of similar material. An upvote feature allows users to vote for the most helpful answers to questions and there is a pop-up question that can appear, the court heard.

Regarding a feature that allows users to vote for the most helpful answers to questions and a pop-up question that can appear, Ms Hallett said both “detract from users’ appreciation of the seriousness of the topic being consumed”.

Ms Hallett added: “There is insufficient monitoring and/or moderation of Q/A content in line with the platform’s (website’s) own policies… In my view, action should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe that you and/or your organization has the power to take such action.”

Coroners issue such reports when they believe there is a risk of other deaths occurring in similar circumstances. The report was sent to the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer KC, and Ofcom, as well as the site’s director general.

What does the law say?

The Online Safety Act came into law in October 2023, aiming to make the internet safer for children. It put the onus on tech firms to protect children from legal but harmful material, with regulator Ofcom given extra enforcement powers. It includes forcing porn sites to verify ages and making sites think about how they handle illegal suicide and self-harm content.

The act also makes it easier for bereaved parents to obtain information about their children from technology firms and created a new offense of maliciously encouraging or assisting self-harm. Activists included Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter Molly took her own life in 2017 after seeing suicide and self-harm content on sites such as Instagram and Pinterest.

Samaritans described the new laws as “an important moment for suicide prevention” but highlighted the law’s failure to provide protections for over-18s and said it “fails” to make Britain the safest place in the world to be online. The website in question was contacted for comment but did not respond at the time of publication.

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