Bullied girl's parents sue school 2.12PM, Fri Jun 3 2005 The parents of bullied schoolgirl Laura Rhodes, who died in a suicide pact with her best friend, are suing the secondary school she attended. Michael and Yvonne Rhodes discovered the unconscious 13-year-old at their home in Cimla, Neath, last September. She had taken a drug overdose. Her best friend, who was 14 and from the Birmingham area, took an identical number of pills but survived. Mr and Mrs Rhodes have insisted Laura's death was triggered by bullying at Cefn Saeson Comprehensive School. Last month, a two-day inquest in Neath heard that the schoolgirl was taunted over her weight and her sexuality. It also heard she left the school a year before she took her life and attended a local pupil referral unit instead, where the bullying stopped. The girls ran away together after a family holiday but were found in a Bath hotel. While travelling back to Wales in a police car, the girls made a "spur of the moment" decision to take their lives, which proved fatal to Laura. At the inquest, child psychiatrist Dr John Talbot ruled out any responsibility on the part of the school for the tragedy. He said the prime motive was the girls' fear of separation from each other, fear of homophobia and punishment. Mr Rhodes said: "The school were never going to admit the truth at the inquest but we had to wait until it was over before we took any action ourselves. At the moment the school will not accept that it had any part in what later happened to Laura. "What they are saying is that name-calling did not kill Laura, which is, of course, true. It was a drugs overdose. But you pester someone and call them abusive names constantly and it can do something. It can drive them to despair. "At the inquest the school said its conscience was clear. They came out and said that they refuted that bullying took place. "All we want is the truth to come out and an inquest was not the place for that. Nobody needed to answer any questions if they didn't want to. But in a civil case, when you ask a question you can get an answer and what we want is the truth. "This has never been about money. We want to get at the truth so other parents do not have to go through what he have gone through." http://www.itv.com/news/britain_168529.html |