In a case that brings to light just how necessary it is to address bullying, a 15 year old British-Indian boy took his own life after months of harassment in school. The Leicester schoolboy was taunted by bullies his age, who called him a paedophile and a f**got every day for more than a year. They even threatened him about knowing where he lives and raping his mother.
Brandon Rayat did everything he could to fit in. He suffered physical and psychological abuse every day until he could no longer feel he could go to school. “The bullies got in his head sucked the life out of him. It just wasn't Brandon. He was a handsome boy and a lot of girls took a shine to him as he got older, I think the bullies were jealous of that,” his mother Mina, said. “He even shaved his hair off so he could be like them, he just wanted to be accepted. He wanted to go to university and become a doctor, he had his whole life planned out. But these boys were relentless.”
However, it took a “breakdown” for the victim's parents to realise just how serious things were at school. “He came running into the house one day and he was screaming 'I want to die, I want to die'. I had never seen him like this before, so I made a GP appointment,” Mina said. The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service prescribed antidepressants in December 2015, and recommended him to return to school. The dosage was increased four times over an eight month period. An inquest held last month heard coroners conclude that opportunities had been missed by mental health services to assess Brandon face-to-face after he had told a psychiatrist 11 days before he took his life, that he had tried to strangle himself.
Brandon's parents, Mina and Raj have now started the Stop Ignoring Me campaign. It aims to criminalise bullying and introduce mental health and anti-bullying training into the school curriculum. Also, CAMHS has introduced an outreach crisis team to help mental health professionals treat children in their homes.
