“I do not know where to start. My wife and I are going through the worst days of our lives. Our 15-year-old son Pol tried to leave this world on Monday. He jumped from the fourth floor where we live. I make it public at the express will of Pol. Our son has a degree of autism, enough to have difficulties to relate. This is how Josep Gual began the letter uploaded to his social networks last Sunday in which he made public that his son had tried to commit suicide after suffering rejection and ridicule from his classmates at the institute in La Rápita (Tarragona) where he studies.
The events, according to the father, had happened on Monday, February 20, although they were not disclosed to the media until the family disseminated it. A day later, on February 21, 200 kilometers away, in Sallent (Barcelona), two 10-year-old twin girls, Alana and Leila, fell into the void from the balcony of their house, on the third floor. Alana died instantly and Leila was seriously injured. The Mossos d’Esquadra are investigating whether the minors, like Pol, suffered bullying.
On the Monday in question, Pol came home from school, ate and went to his room. The next thing his parents knew about him was hearing the sirens of an ambulance, looking out into the street and seeing his body lying on the asphalt. “Luckily it was not his day,” Josep Gual continued his account of what happened, “miraculously he has survived a 14-meter fall, broken arms and legs, two broken ribs and two fractured vertebrae, he has already undergone several surgeries, the recovery will be It’s hard, but Pol wants to get well to start a new life and be able to explain his experience and make adolescents aware that with their attitude they can cause these situations,” the father continued his letter, which was accompanied by an image of Pol in the hospital bed. , plugged into a bundle of wires and in a cast.
“In high school, it is not that they bullied him directly, but there are many ways to make people feel bad,” explained Josep Gual. «”This guy is a weirdo, hehehe'” “look how he moves, hahaha”, “he doesn’t do it with anyone, worse for him!”. And so day after day, alone, completely alone. At patio time, in the library so as not to be teased. Until one day, in his logical mind, he says: “What am I doing here? I no longer have moments of happiness. Why continue?” Parents are very important, but in this phase of life the relationship with people his age is vital ».
Pol, his father revealed, had left a suicide note. “In his farewell letter, among other things, he said that he does not want to live in a world where bad people are applauded and sensitive, noble and good-hearted people always have to lose.”
In addition to the cases of Pol and the Sallent twins, at dawn from Sunday to Monday (February 27), that of a minor under 17 years of age who fell from a seventh floor in Oviedo and who is seriously injured in the hospital. The investigation indicates that the fall was voluntary.
I will do my best to give a voice to the rare, the excluded
This succession of attempted suicides of minors in a few days is not an isolated statistical episode. After what happened in Sallent, the Anar Foundation -Help for Children and Adolescents at Risk- warned that in the last decade the suicide attempts of minors had multiplied by 26. The director of Anar, Benjamín Ballesteros, pointed out that among the groups adolescents with disabilities, immigrants and LGTBI minors were the most vulnerable. And he showed special concern for children under 10 years of age, whose suicidal behaviors are mainly associated with bullying. The Foundation provided conclusive data that give an idea of ??the magnitude of the problem and that are collected in its Study on Suicidal Behavior and Mental Health in Children and Adolescents in Spain (2012-2022), carried out based on almost 600,000 requests for help he has received in the last decade through his telephone lines. In ten years, they had cared for 9,637 minors who expressed suicidal behaviour. Of these, 3,097 contacted Anar when they had already started the suicide attempt. 63.8% of these cases are concentrated in the last three years, a period that coincides with the start of the pandemic.
Pol has both arms and both legs in casts and last Friday he underwent surgery for fractured vertebrae which, fortunately, have not affected his mobility. This is how his mother, Julia Herrera, narrated the hours after his intervention in the kind of diary that he has been writing on Facebook to report on his evolution: «The regular night. Well, normal after such an operation. So that you can see my darker side, I have been about to record audios and have them heard by the mothers of the bullies. “It hurts, it hurts a lot, I can’t, how did I get here” and several screams. The voice of my son desperate for pain. That destroys me, more than the hours on duty. But it is a learning. I tell him: “Pol, don’t shut up. Complain, get it all out. You don’t have to put up with so much pain” », he vented on social networks.
In another of the posts, he includes images with whistles in support of Pol at his school: «In Pol’s institute there is movement. They are moving. They have called me from TV. “Pol, do you see yourself strong enough to go on TV?” “Yes, but later””. “This must be stopped, and I am going to do everything possible to give a voice to the rare, the excluded, those who are marginalized by society,” announced the start of the family fight against bullying in another Facebook post.
The Nace association has been fighting against it for more than a decade, since 2010. It serves about 500/600 families a year. «Kira and Hugo in 2021, Alejandro I think I remember that also that year; Laura in 2020, Ilan in 2019…», its president, Carmen Cabestany, recites from memory the cases of children who have taken their own lives. «It is much more common than people believe and not only in adolescents, suicidal ideation is also in primary school children. Since they do not understand what is happening to them, they do not have the tools to face fear, anger, powerlessness, pain, shame, guilt, there comes a time when they feel helpless, condemned and end up thinking that their only solution is to disappear. And in the case of children, suicide is not very thoughtful, they can do it at any moment, “explains Cabestany, very critical of the measures implemented so far to deal with the problem. «Nace has a decalogue against bullying that was approved by the Parliament of Catalonia in 2020, but it seems that there is no interest in applying it. Meanwhile, strategies are put in place that do not work and are not going to work. For example, having a coordinator against bullying in all centers. The coordinator is a teacher at the center, with which there is a conflict of interest. He knows that the theme of school bullying is not pleasant for the directions, he is mediated ».
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