Georgie*, from Greater Manchester, had excellent prospects when she left primary school. She’d done well in her SATS, was popular, social and academic. Her teachers and parents expected her to get good exam results and achieve great things.
Her first two years of high school passed easily, but when she hit year nine, things started to go wrong in her friendship group.
‘There were mean text messages, and her friends started ignoring her. Then one boy started slowly turning the group against her, eventually commanding girls to attack her, ’ Georgie’s mum, Jenny*, tells Metro.
‘He told a new girl who had joined the friendship group: “I want you to fight Georgie”. So they waited for her after school on a Monday and followed her. Many other children from years 10 and 11 were standing near the tram stop, chanting “fight, fight, fight”, and children had their phones out videoing. It was a horrible situation.
‘She was on her own and didn’t know what to do. She tried to ring me, and I was in a meeting at work, and it was the same with her dad. Then she called the police, who came and stopped it before it had properly begun, and they brought her home to us,’ remembers Jenny, a teacher.
That evening, Georgie’s phone started to buzz with videos of what had happened and horrible comments from children, some of whom she knew and others she didn’t.
Jenny contacted the head of year, who, the next day, held meetings with Georgie and four of the bullies.
‘We’d never had any issues with her at all to that point, but when I picked her up after the meeting, she was sobbing and looked shocking.’
The following Friday, some boys from her year group told her they’d heard about what happened, and one of them called Georgie a ‘slag’ and pushed her over. She pushed him back and cried – and the boy’s friends wrote a report to the school saying Georgie had attacked them.
‘She’d never had a detention in her life, and the head of year put her in isolation because these boys had written a statement. She was really struggling, emotionally,’ Jenny explains.
That day, another child approached Georgie and told her she was going to get beaten up after school. As she left after last period, the bullies were waiting for her at the top of the road. She turned and ran, calling her dad Phil* and begging for help. But then Georgie’s phone went dead.
With no idea where she was and no way to get hold of her, Phil rushed to school to hunt for his daughter, with his two younger children in tow. Meanwhile, Jenny went home and rang the police, who filed a missing persons report across the area and sent units out looking for her.
Desperate to find her daughter, Jenny then frantically knocked on neighbours’ doors, in a bid to gather any information she could.
‘We thought she’d been attacked, that these children had got her again. Then, at about half past six, Georgie walked through the door in an absolute mess,’ Jenny remembers. ‘She told us that she’d been hiding in an alleyway, behind a bin, having panic attacks, being sick and was in a dreadful way.
‘She was there for a good two hours before a lady found her and kindly took her into her house. There Georgie charged her phone and then the woman dropped her off at our house. Luckily, this lady was lovely – but to think about what could have happened in that situation…’ she tails off.
That night, a distraught Georgie struggled to sleep. When she did, she woke screaming from nightmares that she was being attacked. Jenny took her to the GP who diagnosed Georgie with PTSD and instructed her to take a fortnight off school.
A ‘terrible two weeks’ ensued, while Jenny and Phil juggled work with Georgie’s distressed state. They tried to keep things calm for their daughter and her two younger siblings.
Jenny contacted social services, CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) and the local education authority and pleaded for help with supporting Georgie, and two months after the attack, she was enrolled in another local school.
For the first few weeks, things appeared to be going well. Georgie made new friends and seemed to get on with her schoolwork. Then overnight, her personality changed.
‘It was behaviour that we had never seen before the bullying. She became overwhelmed, stressed, and had no concentration. She struggled to understand anything or to complete any work. Sometimes she’d have to leave the lesson, crying, and out of control,’ Jenny explains.
Teachers drastically reduced her timetable, but Georgie’s friends started to turn on her, and she felt rejected, hopeless and began self-harming.
‘It was awful because you just want to jump in and say: “Darling, stop it”. But that was her mechanism for coping with stress. It was terribly upsetting, and we were worried about the effect on her siblings.
‘When I saw what she had done to her arms, I had to move everything out of the house – knives, razors, even pencil sharpeners.’
Georgie became volatile and Jenny became her punching bag. ‘She’d slam the door in the morning if she had a ladder in her tights, and when I took her to the doctor, she would yell and scream while refusing to get out of the car,’ she remembers. ‘It was hard to have had a good child who never put a foot wrong to see her behaviour decline and have her take everything out on us.’
Meanwhile, Georgie was still being bullied.
‘Social media is horrendous. We changed her phone number, and a girl from her year left her a message in the middle of the night saying: “You f***ing bitch, I’m going to stamp on your face if I ever see you again.” We had a lad from her year group push her over in Morrisons. Children can be so cruel,’ says Jenny.
‘After that, she didn’t want to leave the house. She was terrified. She wouldn’t walk to the shop or even look out of her bedroom window.
‘Her dad would take her out for hours driving in the car every night, letting her play music just to get her out of the house. It became so, so bad.’
Then, after Christmas, Georgie attempted suicide.
‘It was the worst day of my life. When she came out of hospital, we were scared to leave her alone, and I was trying to cope with work, as was Phil. CAMHS said we couldn’t let her become housebound, because then it would be difficult for her to reintegrate into society. It was just a dreadful time.’
The family finally found help from TLC (Talk, Listen, Change), a charity that provided Georgie with one-on-one counselling with a woman called Bonnie.
‘She was absolutely phenomenal and formed this lovely bond with Georgie, talking to her about everything – friends, boys and so on. And she was there for me too; coming to see me on my own to talk about how I was feeling, coping with work and dealing with the rest of the family,’ explains Jenny.
‘Even when Georgie had the lowest of the low days, Bonnie would ring and say she was coming round, and Georgie would get out of bed to see her. Or she would go to school and provide her with coaching and counselling during the day.
‘When we were absolutely clutching at straws, Bonnie appeared in our lives, and the difference it made was immense. She was such a lovely, nurturing person and the first sign of positivity that we got,’ Jenny says tearfully. Bonnie also connected Georgie and Jenny with other families going through similar experiences through a 12-week family counselling course, and they formed close friendships.
‘Bonnie supported Georgie when she was self-harming and when she stopped, got her an app on her phone which would count how many days she’s been clean. If Georgie had a stressful week, slamming her door and swearing, Bonnie would kind of give us tips on things that we could put in place that would help and to keep things calm.’
More than two years after the bullying began, Georgie left school without any GCSEs. But she summoned the courage to apply to college, where she is resitting her exams and working towards becoming a social worker.
Georgie came home from her first day in September last year and told Jenny she loved it there.
‘She’s doing so well and in a much better place. Georgie picked her course because she wants to help children who are struggling,’ she says.
‘She gets very tired, but it’s amazing to see her going in every day and going to her lectures. To see that girl, happy, getting on the bus, going into town, is amazing. She’s even seen one of the bullies, who looked awkward and avoided her.
‘Phil and I have had been through hell and back these last three years. We took it for granted that our daughter would get her qualifications, get a job and always be that popular, social, academic girl.
‘We still see changes in her, too. Last week, she had an exam and she forgot what room she was in, and she screamed down the phone to us, all upset and stressed. But she’s socialising, making new friends, going into town and having dinner in a cafe, which is an enormous step. It’s great to see her have a really close friendship group again, and we’re trying not to put too much pressure on her. We just want her to be healthy and happy.
‘Everything is a win now, compared to how she was and what she’s been through. We are just so proud of her, going to college and restarting her life.’
*Names have been changed
If anything in this article has impacted you, and you believe you and the young person in your care could benefit from support, please reach out to TLC: Talk, Listen, Change.
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