Bereaved mother: Social media firms ‘awful’ in search for answers on son’s death
11 January 2025, 18:04
Jools Sweeney was found unconscious in his bedroom in April 2022.
A bereaved mother has said social media firms have been “awful” with allowing her to access her son’s accounts after he took his own life.
Ellen Roome, 48, a businesswoman from Cheltenham, is seeking answers about why her 14-year-old son Jools Sweeney died in April 2022, believing it could have been an online challenge gone wrong.
Ms Roome said technology companies have refused to give her access to the accounts, which “could shed light” on his death, saying she requires a court order to do so.
She has been campaigning for “Jools’ Law” to give parents the right to access their children’s online activity after they die, and the issue is set to be debated in Parliament on Monday.
Ms Roome told the PA news agency that she is particularly interested in Jools’s Instagram and TikTok accounts because her son did “a lot of” challenges which are frequently shared on the platforms.
Asked how companies have acted after her requests for data, she said: “Awful. They haven’t cared at all.”
She went on: “They’re not remotely interested. They don’t give a damn, and they just, quite frankly, don’t care… they all say it’s down to privacy that they can’t release data, well, that’s ridiculous, because they can redact people’s data.
“I don’t need to see who said what, I want to know whether it was some kind of blackmail? Was it sextortion? Was it an online challenge?
“But my child had no mental health issues offline, he wasn’t being bullied.”
Jools was discovered unconscious in his bedroom.
A coroner found that he took his own life, but was unable to confirm that he was in a suicidal mood before his death, Ms Roome said.
She said Instagram have told her who Jools’ contacts were but “refused” to give her messages and browsing data, while TikTok told her that information has been deleted, leaving her “not knowing what is truth”.
A petition to have the issue debated in Parliament has surpassed 126,000 signatures.
Asked her message to MPs ahead of the debate, she said: “If they lost one of their children, I guarantee you they will be doing what I’m doing, saying they want answers, and they need to really think about that.”
She added: “I fell apart at Christmas, the grief paralyzes you sometimes, my world has shattered, and it’s going to be like that for the rest of my life.
“I’m just trying to stop it happening to somebody else.”
TikTok explained to Ms Roome that Jools’ watch and search history was deleted as required by law, though data may be preserved if requested by police, the firm said.
The company said that officers did not request the data until 2024, after it had been deleted, and clarified it was not trying to withhold information.
Instagram has been approached for comment.
