Bullying: a fate worse than death?

GRIEVING mother Collette Wolfe still waits at home for the daughter she knows will never return.

Thu, 13 Dec, 2007 - 00:00

Paul Kelly

“Part of me is waiting for her,” she says.

“Outside the front door is reality but inside I have a bit of her and photographs of her.

“I’m waiting for her to come home with her music blaring in her car — you would hear her before you would see her.”

But the 18-year-old will never come home to the family house in Carrigtwohill, Co Cork.

In March this year, she took a fatal overdose of painkillers, prescribed to her mother after she had two discs in her spine removed.

Only after Leanne’s death did the family learn the full extent of the bullying that her mother insists claimed her daughter’s life.

“What she had to deal with was disgusting,” says Collette.

The day Leanne died, the teenager received what, by anyone’s standards, is a horrendous text message from one of six bullies the family say targetted her.

“You whore. On my nan’s soul I swear you would not want to bump into me. I’m coming down. I’m going to break your face. You prostitute,” the message reads.

The sender — whose identity is known to the Wolfe family but cannot be revealed for legal reasons — is a young mother who lives in one of Cork’s estates.

Leanne’s mother still has her daughter’s phone containing the text message, and reads out the abusive message in a faltering voice.

Only today — nine months after the death — does the family know the full extent of Leanne’s ordeal after the inquest into her death concluded on Monday.

On the day of Leanne’s funeral, her sister Tríona, 24, found the teenager’s secret diaries recording her daily anguish and torment.

On Monday, Cork county coroner Frank O’Connell prevented the mother from reading out extracts, ruling that the inquest could not consider such evidence.

Instead, the family made the diaries available to RTÉ Radio, which last night repeated a documentary featuring an actress reading out Leanne’s harrowing entries. But listeners only heard a fraction of what Leanne wrote — and Collette says the rest also makes for grim reading.

“She wrote down everything and had tried to take her life twice before,” says Collette.

“The first time was when she was 16 and then the second was not long afterwards.”

Before the first attempt, Leanne wrote two pages she wanted her family to read out at her funeral.

“The bullying was so physical at that stage and she could not cope with it,” says her mother.

“Every detail is in there and she wanted them named and shamed.”

Six weeks after Leanne’s death, Mrs Wolfe plucked up the courage to ring the sender of the abusive text message: “At the end of the conversation, I was not able for her.”

The family are still wondering why Leanne left them and did not tell them about the pain she suffered for five years.

“I lost two sisters to cancer but the grief of death when it’s suicide... they are in full health and they have left you,” says Collette.

“Leanne left a note and I said to myself, ‘Leanne, girl’, it’s like as if she was doing us a favour,” she says in disbelief.

Every night her grave is visited by her 26-year-old brother Anthony, a professional footballer who played in defence for Welsh side Wrexham, as well as Cobh Ramblers and Limerick FC.

Just a week ago, her sister Tríona had her second child, a baby girl she has named Holly Leanne in memory of the tragic but much-loved teenager.

Collette, 46, and husband Anthony, 47 — who met as teenage sweethearts at Cork’s Stardust club — are facing a future without their youngest daughter.

“Our lives have stopped: you go through the motions and make the efforts for the grandchildren.

“I look at Holly. She’s eight days old. And I remember Leanne, imagining 18 years previous — and to think it has come to this,” says Collete.

She finds solace in her twice-weekly visits to a church in Donnybrook, Cork, and is comforted by her husband and family.

“Leanne went through so much. She was a normal teenager but never brought any trouble to my door.

“Wouldn’t I be happy if she brought a bit of trouble to my door now?”

Help is at hand

These organisations exist to help people with suicidal feelings and can also offer assistance to their families:

* Samaritans

www.samaritans.org

1850-60 90 90