Bridgend Watch: A Look At The Cult Of Suicides In The Media
SUICIDE Watch: Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of teenage suicides in Bridgend
THE SUN: Jenna Parry’s face looks out from the cover of the Sun
“ANOTHER MYSTERY TEEN DEATH,” says the paper. “17 hangings, 13 months, 1 town, 1 question..WHY?”
Above a picture of swings, a see-saw and a climbing frame, the legend: “Place where shadow of death stalks the young”
“The stunned people of Bridgend found themselves living in the shadow of death yesterday after yet another young suicide victim was found hanging from a tree…While police and politicians maintained there was no link between Jenna Parry’s death and SIXTEEN previous hangings in the area, local people feared otherwise”
Who needs facts and the results of a police investigation when you have “fear”. And the shadowy internet
Michael Bennett found Miss Parry’s body as he was out walking his dog, as is ever the way of things. “In an apparent reference to Bebo, he added: ‘Youngsters need to talk to people like their family, not spend all their time on computers or watching television’”
Reports the Sun: “Like many of the others, Jenna had her own pages on teenage social networking website Bebo. Police will examine her computer.” Rachel White, a friend of the dead girl, says: “Her Bebo site will probably be turned into a memorial as well”
David Morris, Assistant Chief Constable of South Wales, “admitted the cluster of suicides in the Bridgend area was unique because of the ‘exceptional’ numbers involved. But he claimed there was no evidence of a mass pact”
He says:
“A number have access to social networking sites such as Bebo and MySpace. But we have not found any suggestion of any links or influence from these sites to have encouraged these young people to take their lives. These are vulnerable young people and there is a view that taking one’s own life may become an acceptable option, but we have found no evidence of any link between them”
Not to worry, though, because the Sun is on the case, and it has one line of questioning
DAILY MIRROR: “SUICIDE No 17 IN THE TOWN OF NO HOPE - JENNA, 16 FOUND HANGED.”
“There is only one topic of conversation amongst a group of teenagers outside an off-licence in Bridgend - the apparent suicide of Jenna Parry,” says the Mirror’s man on the scene, stood by a group of teenagers who - and this a bonus - are hanging out by the booze shop. If reporter Nic North can mention the teens’ weight - and let’s pray to god they are obese - and their smoking, his story will have the lot
But before he asks them for their views on Iraq, he brings the economy into it: “Young people are pessimistic for their Jobs in local retail parks or fast food outlets is the best they can hope for.” Pretty much all teens, unless you’re Peaches Geldof, a Royal earning a crust, a model of a footballer, are pessimistic about the low-paid work they are offered
Gareth says bleakly: “I can understand why they’re killing themselves. It takes a trigger, a row with your girlfriend, another job rejection, to push you over the edge.” He says the mood in Bridgend is “fear”. He explains: “Every morning, you’re waking up thinking, Who’s it gonna be today? It’s got really freaky. There’s a sense that the place is cursed, a losing town’s curse.”
A curse! Now the Mirror is getting somewhere.
DAILY EXPRESS: “More suicide mystery”
Says David Morris: “The link between the deaths isn’t the internet - it is the way the media is reporting the news”
“Jenna belonged to two websites,” says the Express. “Experts warn of internet link”
Says the Express of Mr Morris’s comment: “This is nonsense. Many of the deaths occurred before there was any news coverage.” But then many suicides never make into the pages of the national press. Maybe when they did, impressionable teenagers read about it? Maybe all 17 suicides read the Daily Express?
DAILY MAIL: “The tragedy of Jenna, suicide town’s 17th victim”
It’s the town that’s killing them
THE TIMES: “Schools on alert after 17th Bridgend suicide”
Says the paper: “Experts are to be sent into every school in Bridgend as part of an urgent strategy drawn up to halt the spate of suicides in a small area of South Wales that claimed a 17th young victim yesterday.”
Says David Morris: “These are vulnerable young people. Taking one’s own life may be becoming an acceptable option to young people for issues that they are facing.”
So no curse? No Internet plot? But this mass suicide is a phenomenon, Bridgend is like Jonestown with a broadband connection?
Notes the paper: “Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 20 people – 14 of them young men – took their lives in the Bridgend area in 2006, while Merthyr Tydfil had 10 suicides and Rhondda Cynon Taff 18″
Jenna Parry is the 17th suicide in Bridgend since the start of 2007
THE INDEPENDENT: “Task force considers the ‘Werther effect’”
The Sorrow of Young Werther is the story of a young artist who shoots himself after an ill-fated love affair. “Following its publication in 1774 there was a series of reports of young men who took their own lives in the same way, which led to the book being banned”
Was Master Werther on Bebo?
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “What hope can we offer Bridgend’s teenagers?”
Jan Moir pictures the scene in her mind’s eye: “It is hard to imagine what kind of despair inched each of them towards the thought and then the deed: to fashion the knot, to slip the fixings before the final swing into oblivion.” Is it so hard? “Teenagers are emotional creatures whose taste runs to the gothic,” says Moir. Was she ever a teenager?
“In each case, the method was the same; only the location changed. One youngster strung himself up from a washing line, one in a park, yet another from a tree; terrible and strange fruit hanging in the Welsh valleys. Most were hanged in their own bedrooms; the worst of surprises for a parent opening the door on to an unforgettable scene… Exposure to suicide can lead to what psychiatrists call contagion, and the fear is that more vulnerable teens will succumb to the death talk in the air and copycat-kill themselves. Is this what happened yesterday?
The more excitable newspapers have a weakness for outrage. Together they make an uncomfortable alliance. Certainly, the repeated and sensational suggestion that the dead youngsters are part of a internet death pact or cult is particularly unhelpful. Apart from anything else, if it were a cult, the deaths would be more ritualistic and flamboyant, there would be more of them and they would have happened in a shorter space of time for maximum impact”
Moir does not try to imagine how cult members might kill themselves. But Anorak readers can feel free…
Posted: 20th, February 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Tabloids Comments (15) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
March 13th, 2008 at 1:19 am
I also live in Bridgend. There are many similar towns to it. In fact I used to live in a worse area and was glad to move to Bridgend to get away from it.
You can crack a joke about it but deep down I think you realise this could happen anywhere that has little for teenagers to do other than hang around on the streets.
About five years ago I would walk through the town centre and there would be a couple of homeless men with dogs, friendly enough to approach and give money to.
Now there are young drug users sitting on the pavements.
This is one of the main problems.
I do think it very strange that a young girl should choose the method of hanging herself in a wood, also that another girl should hang herself after seeing her cousin suffer before death in the same way.
Although some are obvious suicides - others look quite suspicious in this community.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:58 am
The deaths around the bridgend area have left a huge impact on the family and friends of the teenagers. As a friend of one of the victims, it’s going to be hard moving on, but we have to go on for the living, and hold onto the memories. They’ll last a lifetime.
Something needs to be done about this, i think we all hope it’s soon.
x
February 20th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
June
No - we’re ok. I only know one Julian, and he had other tendencies. Nice boy though.
Have to agree with Clartmaster. Bridgend is not as it has been painted in the press. And like all welsh people I do wish the media would stop picking on the “bad elements”, we have a lot of very intelligent people here, good businesses and beautiful countryside.
This is tho’ very very tragic.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Strangely, he didn’t, Gilly flower (now and then a girl needed a break, and a more constant swain in attendance) but he was called Julian ( I think) vintage 1968, again I think, may have been the year before, or after.
(I was into the J’s for some reason then)
February 20th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
#
8
JuneJohnson Says:
February 20th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I agree with Carmen, its Bridgend, its awful, but there is a road out.
I used to go out with someone from Bridgend in the dim and distant.
D’you know even the trains heave a sigh of relief pulling out of the station.
Seriously though, its very sad, but are teenage suicides heavier there than elsewhere? Or just more public?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We really do need to compare black books June.
Did he play rugby?
Oh my god … we could be related….
I think these are just more public, but terribly, terribly tragic.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/hsq/HSQ31suicide_trends.pdf
In 2004 the rate of suicides per 100,000 people in UK was 18 for males and 6 for females. Bridgend with a population of 40,000 (Wiki) must be now the regional area in the UK with the highest rate of suicide.
Scotland especially Glasgow city tops the league not Wales. Other areas of Wales with high suicide statistics for females is Conwy with 75 suicides 1991-2004, and for males it is Denbigh with 73 suicides 1991-1997.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:07 am
I live in ‘Death Town’ and have done for 22 years. It is nowhere near as bad as the media are reporting. The reason they have come to paint this picture of Bridgend as a bleak desolate scummy town with no prospects is because the only people they have bothered to interview are scummy chavs with no prospects that hand around outside off licences. Surely you could come to the same conclusion in any town in the UK?
And let it be noted that none of the deaths were actually in the town of Bridgend. They were all in the county of Bridgend, which covers about 40 square miles and has a population of 150,000. All these reports wreak of irrelevence.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:51 am
It is very curious that all alleged suicides are by hanging. There are 2000 deaths by hanging each year in England (not sure about Wales). Although it is the most common method of suicide in men, it is only the second most common method for women, with poisoning the most common method of suicide for women. So is there a more sinister reason why hanging is the chosen method ?
http://www.csip.org.uk/silo/files/coroners-report-nov-update.pdf
February 20th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I agree with Carmen, its Bridgend, its awful, but there is a road out.
I used to go out with someone from Bridgend in the dim and distant.
D’you know even the trains heave a sigh of relief pulling out of the station.
Seriously though, its very sad, but are teenage suicides heavier there than elsewhere? Or just more public?
February 20th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Narcisses is the God of our times, at least the God prevailing in the media reaching most of the teenagers. The media and their gloomy, cranky celebrities. The youngsters who committed suicde are now part of them.
Narcisses died from drowning himself in his own image.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Carmen Says:
…There is an interesting connection between teenage suicide and Seroxat, the anti-depressant. …
Yes I think the link is more likely to be drugs than the all powerful media. If it was the media why would be effect be confined (if it is) to Bridgend?
The young people don’t look depressed in the photos though - most of them look as if they care about their appearance.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:13 am
2 Anorak
I think the main reason its causing so much sensation is the fact that there have been so many in a short period of time.
Plus the fact there have been several more in previous years in the area.
It is a worrying time for the parents of teenagers in the Bridgend County, and indeed for the whole of South Wales.
The sensational media reporting of Death Town etc is not pleasant, but I don;’t think it is a contributory factor.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:52 am
“The link between the deaths isn’t the internet - it is the way the media is reporting the news”
OMG, could it be the media is developing ’self-awareness’, next it could be ‘conscience’ and then on to ‘responsibility’. We live in scary times.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I can’t work out why it’s causing so much sensation - every one of us can recall the story of a suicide when we were teens
February 20th, 2008 at 9:30 am
no one seems to have considered yet that something in the air\water etc may be causing people to have suicidal tendencies.
or maybe it’s aliens.
make a great dr who episode.