The website that took my sister’s life is still online - how many more must die before action is taken?

Despite the increasing public support for online safety laws and decisive action to protect young people online, the pro-suicide website that drew her into a dark path of despair when she was at her most vulnerable has evaded all accountability.

This site has taken at least 133 UK lives, including my sister Aimee, when she was just 21. A talented young artist and musician, Aimee had her whole life ahead of her. But her future was stolen by a site that is encouraging suicide to people like Aimee, people who are in urgent need of mental health support.

I am united with other bereaved families and survivors of this forum, who share my sense of frustration and worry. There are families here who lost their loved ones before we lost Aimee and people we learnt about in the months and years since her passing through our own investigations. As I read news articles and prevention of future death reports, I was shocked by the parallels and patterns that could have been identified.

Then there are families whose loved ones have left us since Aimee’s death. Every time I learn of a new life lost, I’m infuriated that another family has had to go through this preventable tragedy.

Losing Aimee left us with endless questions and for the past three years, I’ve spent my life trying to prevent this harm from happening to others.

But sadly, in that time, I’ve met more families who’ve lost loved ones, like 22 year old Grace from Northumberland, 25 year old Immy from Brighton, and 17 year old Vlad from Southampton, the same city Aimee and I grew up in.

Insidious actors are empowered by gaps in legislation and a failure to take decisive action against this sinister website.

Imagine if the two American men who founded this forum hired billboards across the UK with instructions and resources that allow for the systematic assisting of suicide. Because let’s be clear that is what this is. I have no doubt that the authorities would act within hours.

But in this case, because it’s playing out online, years have passed with no action. Instead, they’ve received nothing more than a kindly worded warning. Multiple red flags have been missed, dots inadequately joined up, and the government has consistently failed to respond to this predictable but entirely preventable harm.

Assisting suicide is a crime under the Suicide Act 1961, but online, perpetrators provide people with the very means and instructions to end their lives without consequence.

Quite frankly, this is a scandal - where mental health systems have failed our loved ones, where families concerns have been dismissed, where police have failed to investigate and approach mental health with the care and sensitivity needed, where the Home Office has refused to strengthen regulation of this poison, where welfare checks were conducted purely as a tick box exercise, where the National Crime Agency have left families including my own in the dark.

Aimee, Vlad, Hannah, Tom, Grace, Lucas, Claire, Immy, Adam, all lost because of missed opportunities to act. This report has come about not because of curious research teams or academic funding pots, but because of the loved ones we’ve lost.

I know I speak for myself and other families when I say we would much rather be able to grieve our loved ones in peace, to leave all of the traumatic experiences we’ve gone through in the past, but we only do this fight to prevent the loss of more precious lives.

Join our campaign to call for a public inquiry to learn lessons and save lives.

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Adele Walton is a journalist, online safety campaigner and author of the book Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World. Adele lost her sister to online harms through forums.

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