00:00 James was 16 years of age, he went to Hodgson High School.
00:04 He owed £400 and he was threatened to pay this £400 and James at the time didn't
00:10 know how to get out of this situation and unfortunately took his own life.
00:15 So did you know that he owed money to somebody?
00:19 No, this came later on.
00:21 After James took his own life, obviously we wanted every stone turning to find out why
00:29 and the reasons for it.
00:32 And basically we got onto his Xbox and on his Xbox there was a threat there that was
00:38 basically saying that James owed some money to some people.
00:41 I had James on Find Your Phone, I did everything that I thought at the time seven years ago
00:46 I could do to find out or know where my children are, what they're doing and so on.
00:50 I think in life now, seven years down, it's even harder because now you've got TikTok,
00:55 you've got Snapchat, you've got a lot more platforms on your computer where you can't
01:00 always see, you can't always find your children or what they're up to, do you know what I
01:03 mean?
01:04 They could use a different name.
01:05 I do think social media has got a very high part to play in suicide, to be fair, I really
01:13 do because like you say, you don't know what conversations they're having, the language
01:18 they're having with other people and if you say something on a phone or even on a text
01:22 message, the message he received on his Facebook gave him, it had a two-day threat around it
01:30 and he died on the second day of that threat so yes, I do believe that that took James
01:35 over the edge.
01:36 The stories I've come across over the last four years at my bereavement group and the
01:40 amount of people that I've spoken to, there's always a different story to James's but they
01:48 were all, could have been rectified, they could have all have been talked about and
01:55 prevented and stopped and to me that's all about talking.
01:59 If you've got a problem, then really you need to talk about it, whatever it is because life
02:03 is too short and a problem should not be a problem to where you take your own life.
02:08 The old-fashioned saying, you know, man put their heads in the sand, no, go and speak
02:12 to somebody, anybody.
02:14 I mean there are helplines out there that you could reach out to, do you know what I
02:17 mean, you've got Mind, young people, you've got Samaritans, you know, there is a list
02:22 of people but if you don't want to go to a professional service, then reach out to a
02:27 friend.
02:28 A friend, do you know what I mean, it's all about talking.
02:30 Talking is the key factor to prevent anything.
02:34 We have just done seven talking benches across the Fowl Coast which we put together after
02:43 the series of Afterlife, which are the talking benches, we got some funding and we thought
02:48 we'd put it back into the community and the seven benches we put across the Fowl Coast,
02:52 some of them are in high risk locations and we've obviously put people's names who are
02:58 bereaved to suicide on them and we've obviously left it with the Samaritans phone number on
03:04 the bottom so that obviously if anybody comes and sits on our benches and want to talk,
03:09 the Samaritans phone number is on there and they are very nice and something which we
03:14 thought was well worth having in the community.
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