A terrible spectre haunts Bridgend

Bridgend, in South Wales, mid way between Cardiff and Swansea has nothing particularly to recommend it. It used to be a mining town before the mines closed down but, unlike some other towns, it did recover from this to some extent, the Ford Motor Company and Sony setting up plants there and Logica, the IT company have set up a major office there too. So the area has employment and a reasonably high average wage level.

True the town is - well - a dump, to be honest. There is precious little for its kids to do and loads of them hang around street corners at night and the pubs have been known to harbour the violent from time to time.

Yes, I hear you say, very dismal but what's so different about Bridgend from other similar pretty down at heel British industrial towns?

Well nothing - except that in the last year, in a town of only 39,000 people, 16 children and youths under the age of 20 have committed suicide, most by hanging and at least seven of them knew one another.

Where this starts to sound like a grisly Stephen King novel is that nearly all of the victims engaged in 'social networking' on sites such as Bebo and Facebook, and memorials were posted to some of the dead BEFORE they committed suicide.

The police are saying that there is no connection between the deaths and it is just a series of unhappy coincidences, but the social networking connection would seem to say otherwise.

Of course, we are now getting the wise-after-the-eventers demanding that such sites be shut down, despite the fact that millions enjoy their facilities without doing themselves any harm. Surely the police need to piece together exactly the relationship between these kids - we have had two more hangings today, two young cousins - because this situation is grimly unacceptable. The web site merely facilitates contact, but what in God's name drives young teenage boys and girls, attractive kids just like Natasha Randall pictured below and apparently healthy, to take the extreme step of killing themselves? And why just in Bridgend?



I have read all sorts of crap about peer pressure and one upmanship - but you steal cars or rob post offices to do that. You don't kill yourself. What on earth drives these children to take that final irrevocable step to the grave? Whether there is a cult or some grim influence working on the minds of these children, no one knows - but I think the police and social services need to put a lot more effort into finding out than they appear to have done so far.


Update on 19/02/08

It was announced today that yet another attractive teenage girl has been found dead in Bridgend. The body of Jenna Parry, aged 16, was found in woodland. The police are saying there is no connection with any of the other deaths. They have been saying this for months with every successive teenage suicide. !!!