Geraldine Gittens Twitter Email. The Munster-based mother detailed on Monday the sheer hell that her daughter has been enduring over the past year. The cyber bullying started when the teenager was tagged in a video with a dog which wrongfully tagged her as the girl in the video. The concerned mum has said she felt compelled to tell her story so publicly because her daughter had tried to take her own life. That's the reason I'm posting such sensitive details of what is going on for my daughter right now.
It all started with a video involving a dog shared online by a girl who named [her] as the person in the video. Thankfully she was unsuccessful but ended up in hospital. Kids can be so cruel and nasty. The kids in her school at the time did not share the video or message nastily, just ignored her.
She attempted suicide again and had a breakdown after, refusing to go back to the school and wouldn't even get out of bed for weeks. No one will understand fear until you wake up to your teen screaming from inability to cope with online bullying coming in through their phone into what should be the safety of their own home.
She woke up to 57 Facebook friend requests from teens wanting to taunt her and call her names. Numerous kids shared the video as their snapchat story. What is wrong with teens these days? No empathy. So cruel. Maybe if this post is shared and awareness is created of the effects it has on the victim of online bullying, it will stop for her and others. Maybe their parents will see the post and question them if they are involved. The Limerick mother said she lay beside her daughter at night because she was so afraid to leave her on her own.
I will fight it. I lay beside her last night as she slept frightened to close my eyes in case I lost her. Don't always believe what people tell you. That is not [my daughter] in that video, she is disgusted by it. Be strong. You've your whole life ahead of you. One day later, on her daughter's 17th birthday, the mother thanked people all over the world who had shared her Facebook post over 10, times. You have changed [her] life as she now has people besides Nick, the rest of her family and I telling her the bullies are wrong, her life is worth more than letting the bullies win, and she sees she has people behind her from all over the world sharing their stories with her.
