Suicide of Lewisham girl, 14, prompts coroner to write to website CEO over thread she read before death

A Silicon Valley boss has questions to answer after the tragic suicide of a South London teenager who read a popular website before she died. Isabella Shere was only 14 years old when she tragically took her own life by hanging at her home in Lewisham on February 2 2023, London Inner South Coroner's Court heard at an inquest in February this year.

Isabella's family left the house at around 8am, and she was found at 1:21pm with a timer running for five hours and 13 minutes, the court heard. The youngster was known to be struggling with her mental health, and a check of her internet search history from the final four months of her life revealed she was researching suicide methods. Isabella also left a note, detailing her intentions.

Now Assistant Coroner Fleur Hallett has sounded the alarm about easily accessible information available on a popular website, which MyLondon has chosen not to name to avoid signposting others in distress to the same content. In a prevention of future deaths report, addressed to the CEO, the coroner said the thread Isabella viewed immediately before her death was still online and had 169,700 views at the time of writing.

READ MORE: Lambeth man, 33, took his own life just 2 days after being sent home by NHS mental health team

Ms Hallett also noted the content was not marked as 'Adult Content' when accessed with a phone or computer, and that children are able to access the site through search engines without being required to make an account, confirm they are an adult, or input their date of birth.

The coroner also highlighted the website's list of related questions, which encourage consumption of similar material when viewing the content, and a function which allows users to follow questions, again encouraging the consumption of like material. An upvoting function also allows users to vote on the most useful answers to questions, and there is a pop-up question which can appear, the court heard.

In reference to a function that allows users to vote on the most useful answers to questions and a pop-up question which can appear, Ms Hallett said both 'detract from user appreciating the seriousness of the subject matter that is being consumed'.

Ms Hallett added: "There is not sufficient monitoring and/or moderation of the content of questions/answers in accordance with [the website's] own platform policies... In my opinion action should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe you and/or your organisation have the power to take such action."

Coroners issue such reports when they believe there is a risk of other deaths happening in similar circumstances. The report was sent to Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer KC and Ofcom as well as the CEO of the website.

What does the law say?

The Online Safety Bill came into law in October 2023, aiming to make the internet safer for children. It put the onus on tech firms to protect children from legal but harmful material, with regulator Ofcom given extra enforcement powers. It includes forcing porn sites to check ages, and getting sites to think about how they manage illegal suicide and self-harm content.

The act also makes it easier for bereaved parents to get information about their children from tech firms, and created a new offence of maliciously encouraging or assisting self-harm. Campaigners have included Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter Molly took her own life in 2017 after viewing suicide and self-harm content on sites such as Instagram and Pinterest.

Samaritans described the new laws as 'an important moment for suicide prevention' but highlighted the Act's failure to give protections for over 18s and said it 'falls short' of making the UK the safest place in the world to be online. The website in question was approached for comment but had not responded at the time of publication.

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