英国7青少年离奇自杀

Enoch

[每日电讯 1月24日 英文报道]

死者在不同时间地点自杀，很多人又相互认识，有人认为是他们认为在网上建立“死亡纪念页”很酷，互相模仿死亡，然而有位死者是电脑盲，警方不得不怀疑这个结论

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml;;?xml=/portal/2008/01/24/ftsuicide124.xml

Bridgend suicides: 'It just seems normal, fashionable almost... '

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 24/01/2008

Bryony Gordon reports from Bridgend, the town where seven young people have committed suicide

Under a sky that is an unappealing mix of muddy brown, tinged with grey, an old man treads carefully past the charity shops along Nolton Street, in the centre of Bridgend. A couple of gloomy-faced teenagers, in Reebok Classics and hooded tops, hang out in front of the cut-price fashion stores, but otherwise the place is deserted. It is 9am and a thick mist swathes parts of this small town on the edge of the South Wales valleys, reducing visibility to a few feet. It is a ghost town in more ways than you could imagine.
       
Natasha Randall
Natasha Randall was the seventh young person in Bridgend to take their own life in recent years

Over the past year, Bridgend has been stunned by the suicides of seven of its young people. Yesterday morning every person in the Aroma Café was poring over a newspaper, absorbing details of the latest tragedy.

Seventeen-year-old Natasha Randall, or Tasha as she was known, hanged herself in her bedroom a week ago today as her father, Kelvin, and stepmother, Katrina, busied themselves downstairs. Her smiling face beams out of the pages as she makes a mock gangster gesture with her hands. Behind her, her good friend Liam Clarke does the same. Liam, 20, is also dead. He hanged himself the day after Boxing Day.

Liam was also a friend of Gareth Morgan. They both drank at a local pub, The West House. The 27-year-old father of one was found dead, having taken his own life on January 5. Before Gareth, Liam and Natasha there was Zachary Barnes, an angel-faced boy of 17 who was discovered hanging from a washing line at a block of flats in August last year.

Thomas Davies, 20, hanged himself from a tree on February 20, 2007. It was just two days before the funeral of his close schoolfriend David Dilling, 19, who had also hanged himself earlier that month. David's best friend was 18-year-old Dale Crole, who went missing in September 2006. His badly decomposed body was found four months later on January 5, 2007 - a year to the day that Gareth committed suicide. Many in Bridgend wonder if they have yet seen the end. Indeed, within 24 hours of Natasha's death two of her friends attempted to take their lives, though fortunately both failed.
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The fact that all seven of those who died were somehow linked has raised questions about a suicide pact. Some have even gone so far as to propose the chilling theory that the propose were part of an internet suicide cult. Several of those who have died had pages on Bebo, the social networking website, and had posted messages on each other's ''memorial walls" - virtual books of condolence.

The truth, say residents of Bridgend, is less sinister, yet no less bleak. As one girl I spoke to outside Bridgend College told me yesterday: "Suicide is just what people do here because there is nothing else to do."

It is a depressing statement, but one born out by statistics - Bridgend has the highest rate for young male suicide in Britain - and by anecdotal evidence gathered on the streets of the town. Almost everybody I spoke to knew of someone who had attempted suicide.

The girl outside the college - where Natasha took Care and Childhood Studies until a week ago - knew Liam and also told me about her friend Jonathan Reynolds, 15, who had thrown himself in front of a train in January 2006 after being bullied.

I also met Kyle, 20, a sweet young man who had turned to youth work after "holding a knife to my wrists". He told me that he'd stopped a friend from taking an overdose when he walked in on her. ''Thankfully she'd only taken four pills at the time. That in itself was because of another friend of ours, who was in hospital after taking an overdose."

I met 21-year-old Joe Courtney outside the police station. He knew Dale, David (or Dai as he called him), Thomas and Zachary. He was on medication for anxiety - Prozac, he said - after trying to take his life in three different ways: hanging, cutting his wrists, and jumping in front of a train. "Mention suicide to anyone and there are plenty to know about around here. People are sort of desensitised to it."

Then there was 17-year-old Katie, hanging around Nolton Arcade during her lunch break from a business course, who told me about a friend's father who had jumped off a bridge last year. "It's become like a bit of an everyday thing. When the first one happened I was shocked but now it just seems normal, fashionable almost. I don't know. It's that time of the year, isn't it?"

For most people, "that time of the year" brings the odd grumble and moan, not a death wish. Yet speak to the people of Bridgend and they seem almost resigned to hearing about yet another person who has taken their life. "It's almost like: when's the next one?" said Amy Leigh, a 17-year-old student at Bridgend College.

How can this be? Why did so many of these youngsters feel so desperate that taking their own lives was the only option? "There is nothing to do here - nothing - but maybe go out at night and get drunk," said Danielle, 17, who knew Liam. "There are lots of people on drugs, too," added Lauren, 19.

"It's really difficult to get a job here," said 16-year-old Jasmin. "Most of them now go to people from abroad. I really do feel sometimes like I will never get out of here."

Like many towns in South Wales, Bridgend, which has a population of 40,000, suffered badly from the closure of the mines. The headquarters of Lidl, the super-cheap food store, is based here, and Ford and Sony have manufacturing bases. But today it is known as "the town beyond Tesco", thanks to the superstore on its outskirts. With Cardiff just a short drive to the east and Swansea to the west, there are few reasons to come to Bridgend - and many to leave.

It is the kind of place where pubs pin lists of people banned from entering on their doors. When I visit a local youth focus group, the woman running it tells me that if I'd come an hour earlier "you would have seen a drugs bust outside". As I talk to a group of girls, one sneers ''smackhead" at some passing boys. Another man warns the Telegraph photographer to put his camera away or "risk getting knifed".

There used to be five youth focus groups in Bridgend - places where teenagers could go for counselling and advice - but funding was withdrawn and now there is only the one. There is another haven for the town's young people, however. Solid Rock is a youth centre on the edge of the Nolton Road, a drop-in centre open every lunchtime and some evenings. Managed by Lyn James, a middle-aged, softly spoken man with white hair, it was set up by a local church 10 years ago. Yesterday lunchtime there were 20 or so teenagers playing darts and pool and surfing the net. "There is obviously a problem here in Bridgend but nobody has any answers. They have set up a task force [of schools, the NHS and police] to try to tackle it. You just wonder what you can do to help," says James.

The scene at Solid Rock is heart-breaking. Four teenagers sit at a table. They do not talk to one another; perhaps they never have. They are loners and this is the only place they feel they can come during lunch breaks. But the seven who have killed themselves did not all fit into this category.

"There isn't a type to commit suicide, I suppose," says Adam Lloyd, a close friend of Gareth Morgan. "But Gareth definitely wasn't the type. He was the joker in the pack. If there was ever a party he'd be the one running around naked. And he was popular with the ladies. He was great at football. The night before he died he picked up his kit for the pub team."

We meet at the pub where Gareth used to hang out. Over the bar hangs a Welsh flag bearing his nickname, Muggsy. "There is no way Gareth was part of an internet suicide pact," continues Lloyd, 28. "He was completely computer illiterate - the amount of times I had to put things on eBay for him you wouldn't believe - and he only knew Liam [Clarke] to say hello to in the pub.

"The truth is that there is no support in this town for people who need help. Gareth was a lad and as a lad maybe he didn't know how to deal with any feelings of depression and let them out. There is clearly a problem in this town and yet there is no support. Where are the Samaritans posters? Maybe if Gareth had walked past one on the way home from here the night before he died, he might still be alive today."

lemonbunny

好恐怖阿:face8