A complaint against Facebook after the suicide of a 13-year-old teenager harassed in France

“If everyone had done their job to protect Lindsay, she would be alive”: the family of a French teenager who killed herself at 13 after being the victim of school bullying, announced Thursday that they had filed a complaint, in particular against Facebook.

• Read also: 4 young people accused after the suicide of a teenager in the north of France

After pointing out this undone “work”, the family’s lawyer, Me Pierre Debuisson, read a letter written by the young girl several months before her suicide, which occurred in mid-May in the north of France.

“If you are reading this letter, it is because I have surely left (…) I could no longer take the insults morning and evening, the mockery, the threats (…) despite everything that happened they will always wish me harm,” the young girl had written there.

“If we had been helped, if we had been supported, I am sure that my daughter would be among us,” said her mother, Betty, during this press conference.

“I tried everything, I did everything, we weren’t helped, we were let go, completely, no support, neither before, nor during, nor after,” she lambasted.

The judicial inquiry opened into Lindsay’s death resulted in the indictment of four minors for “school harassment leading to suicide” and an adult for “death threats”.

The social network was “completely faulty” by allowing “hate words” to proliferate, even after the death of this student, who was educated in Vendin-le-Vieil, in the north of France, detailed Me Pierre Debuisson.

“Lindsay’s death was not enough, since after Lindsay’s death, insults (…) continued to circulate on social networks and continue to circulate,” said the lawyer, pointing to publications on Instagram, owned by Facebook, gloating over the teenage girl’s suicide.

According to the lawyer, the American group is guilty of a “total violation” of the obligation which imposes on it to moderate and control the content published on its platforms.

Lindsay’s family also announced Thursday that they have filed a complaint against investigators and education authorities for their alleged failure in the case.

Contacted by AFP, the rectorate of the Lille academy did not wish to comment.

He announced last week the opening of an administrative investigation, conceding that the school services could have “gone further in the follow-up” of the young girl.

“All my thoughts for Lindsay and her loved ones as despicable attacks continue on social networks,” National Education Minister Pap Ndiaye tweeted on Wednesday.

All my thoughts for Lindsay and her loved ones as despicable attacks continue on social media. In addition to the criminal proceedings already initiated, I have seized the General Inspectorate of an administrative investigation. Harassment has no place at school.

— Pap Ndiaye (@PapTheDay) May 31, 2023

The “family needs answers, we must give them,” said government spokesman Olivier Véran on Thursday, traveling in northern France. He insisted on “parental responsibilities” in the fight against bullying.

In France, a school bullying prevention system, the pHARe program, has been tested since 2019 in elementary schools and middle schools in six academies. It should be generalized this year.

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