Julia Debyshire died in October 2015 at the age of 16. The teenager had
hanged herself at her home in Warrington, Cheshire, but was found by her
father, Adrian Derbyshire, 42, who rushed her to the hospital where she
was placed on life support for five days, before her father was forced
to make the tough decision to switch off the life support when she
remained unresponsive.
Just before Adrian turned off the life support, he took a photo of his
daughter on her hospital bed, but he never shared them until recently,
on the day when his daughter would have been celebrating her 18th
birthday.
Adrian who is a two-time Paralympic gold medal winner became an
advocate against online bullying and set up an anti-online bullying
campaign in memory of Julia. He revealed that he had not viewed the sad
photo of his daughter ever since he took it until he had to upload it on
her 18th birthday to highlight the consequences of online bullying. He
said that revealing the photos was a hard choice but he had to make it.
"Releasing these photos was one of the hardest things I have had to do in my life. I took the photos in the minutes before Julia's death and buried them on my phone until now because I didn't want to look at them and I still don't. But I knew that I was going to them, obviously to help raise awareness, because I think that the cause is too vital to not use them. Instead of taking her out for champagne to celebrate her 18th birthday, I was placing flowers on her grave," he said.
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Adrian had tried to help his daughter when he first noticed she was suffering due to online bullying.
He moved her back to Warrington, UK, where she was born before she moved
to the US at age 4. he also got her into his Inspire Belief Succeed
campaign that works with children to help them prosper through sport. He
had no idea that his daughter was still being abused online and she was
already using a false identity to visit online groups that promote
self-harm and suicide.
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