Frankie Thomas: Coroner rules school failed teen who took own life

A coroner has ruled a school's failure to prevent a pupil accessing harmful material online on its equipment contributed to her taking her own life.

Frankie Thomas, 15, died at her home in Witley, Surrey, in September 2018, after viewing explicit self-harm material for several months.

An inquest heard her teachers wrongly believed internet filters were in place.

Surrey assistant coroner Karen Henderson recorded a suicide verdict.

The inquest heard Frankie, who had autism, had access to a laptop and iPad at Stepping Stones School in Hindhead, and that her mother had asked staff to monitor her online activity.

During the inquest, in Woking in July, the former head of Stepping Stones, Melissa Farnham, said a filter provided by an external IT company could not have been working.

The court was told that on the day of her death, Frankie was left unsupervised on an iPad for more than two hours.

She went on a platform called Wattpad where users can write and share stories, with the last piece she read mirroring the method she used to take her own life that afternoon.

Ms Henderson ruled the failures of the school and Wattpad "more than minimally contributed" to Frankie's death, criticising Wattpad for what she called a "lack of robustness" in their policies to remove inappropriate content.

She questioned whether 600 moderators where sufficient to police one billion pieces of content.

The assistant coroner also said that Stepping Stones had since appointed a new e-safety manager and carried out "substantial and rigorous changes" in how it manages online safety.

She said there was "a lack of adequate direction" from the Department for Education (DfE) when it came to implementing e-security, which seemed a bit like the "Wild West".

She would be writing to the DfE suggesting a more robust approach with "minimum standards".

Ms Henderson told Frankie's parents Judy and Andy they had done everything they could for their daughter during her lifetime.

In a statement, Stepping Stones said: "Our entire school community have been devastated by the tragic death of Frankie Thomas.

"We have been proactive in implementing new and highly robust e-safety measures to ensure the welfare and safety of all our pupils.

"Our school leadership team monitors these structures regularly."

A Department for Education spokesman said: "Schools have a legal duty to keep their pupils safe and our statutory safeguarding guidance sets out in detail how we expect them to protect pupils from potentially harmful online material.

"All children are also taught about online safety as part of the new mandatory Relationships, Sex and Health Education curriculum, as well as through Citizenship and Computing, and this Government's Online Safety Bill will deliver ground-breaking new laws which make sure tech companies prevent children from accessing self-harm and suicide content which risks causing them harm."

Wattpad has been approached for comment.

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