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Dad of JFS pupil believed to have taken her own life calls for social media reform
The distraught father of Mia Janin says young people are especially vulnerable after the social isolation of the pandemic
September 23, 2022 09:26
The distraught father of Mia Janin says young people are especially vulnerable after the social isolation of the pandemic
September 23, 2022 09:26A father whose teenage daughter died after she suffered online bullying has spoken out about the tragedy, and is now pushing for changes in the regulation of social media.
Mariano Janin’s 15-year-old daughter, Mia, is believed to have taken her own life on 12 March 2021 after being bullied online and in person.
Mr Janin said he was now working alongside other bereaved parents and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to campaign for changes to social media regulation, including rules on parental access.
His comments come amid an inquest into the death of 14-year-old Harrow teenager Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing online material relating to depression and self-harm.
Mr Janin will also spend this year’s High Holy Days without his late wife Marisa Neumann-Janin, as she passed away just four months after her daughter. She had been diagnosed with a sudden aneurysm followed by acute myeloid leukaemia.
In the interview with Jewish News, he said that his wife never again entered the upstairs of the family home after Mia’s death.
“Last Yom Kippur I spent the whole day at home. I didn’t want to go to shul. I fast on Yom Kippur, but I felt I didn’t need to go. In this house I have yizkor every day,” he explained.
Mr Janin has also expressed frustration regarding the response of his late daughter’s school, JFS, to the tragedy.
He told JN that “No one” at the Kenton-based Jewish secondary school “took accountability for what happened to Mia and nothing has changed. The same governors were still at the school. It had happened before. If bullies get impunity, they don’t learn any lessons.”
He suggested that “something is missing," in the school’s approach, and argued that overall young people are “much less resilient after spending two years being socially isolated through the pandemic.”
He said that his wife often said that if her late father, Alexander Neumann, a survivor of several Nazi concentration camps, heard of his grandaughter’s bullying at a Jewish school, he “would turn in his grave”.
Mr Janin’s late wife and daughter were laid to rest on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Following Mia's passing, her mother had decided that she “wanted to take Mia out of this country to Israel.”
“Everybody said it would be impossible, but we found space for her in the Chabad section of Har ha-Zetim.”
Following an inquest review hearing into Mia's death on September 2, a date for its resumption has now been set for March 29 and March 30, 2023.
The Office of National Statistics has reported that 110 teenagers aged 15-19 committed suicide in 2010 compared to 160 in 2020, the equivalent of a 45 per cent increase.
If you need support or are supporting someone who needs help, visit jamiuk.org/get-support or contact 020 8458 2223.
You can also go to samaritans.org or call 116 123.