The mystery behind the small Welsh town of Bridgend where 23 men committed suicide in ONE YEAR revealed
A decade ago, a small area of Wales gained notoriety when dozens of young people began taking their own lives
EVERY day, as Elaine Beecham looks out of her window, she’s faced with a stark, painful reminder of the worst night of her life.
The mum of four still lives in the same house that overlooks the tree from which her son Justin hanged himself almost seven years ago.
Just a few months before it happened, 20-year-old factory worker Justin had been interviewed by an American documentary crew about suicide and assured them it wasn’t something he’d do.
“He said he couldn’t put his family through that type of heartache,” says Elaine, 45, a housewife.
But he did. And he wasn’t the only one.
Justin lived in Bridgend, South Wales, where 10 years ago something chilling began to happen.
The area became known the world over after dozens of young people started to take their own lives.
Most were male, many knew each other and hardly any left notes. All except one died by hanging. Parents were terrified and experts were mystified.
The official number of suicides in the spate, which the Welsh Assembly classified as taking place over 2007-2008, was 23.
However, the deaths continued far beyond that time frame and reports suggest that in the five years up to February 2012, 79 people took their lives in the wider county borough of Bridgend. There were rumours of internet suicide cults and pacts, and even a conspiracy theory that suggested young minds had been damaged by radio frequencies.
Worryingly, no one knows why it happened.
Although the area has its share of problems and many young people there say they feel a sense of isolation and hopelessness about the future, it’s certainly not the most deprived town in the UK.
The first recorded Bridgend suicide in 2007 when the spate started, was 18-year-old Dale Crole in January.
His friend David Dilling, 19, took his life six weeks later, and another close friend Tom Davies, 20, committed suicide the following week.
In 2008, as the death toll reached double figures, an anti-suicide task force of health and education officials was launched.
Members of a local youth club were taken to the coast for the weekend to get away from it all and talk about what had happened to their friends and peers.
But it still didn’t stop the suicides. It was on February 27, 2010, that Justin Beecham hanged himself.
He was the 28th young person to have taken their life there in just a few years.
In the last weeks of Justin’s life, Elaine says her son – who she describes as a happy boy, full of laughter – had started displaying signs of mental illness and depression following a hernia operation earlier in the month, as he struggled with the pain.
Then, on February 26, Justin tried to take his own life at the same spot where his best friend Tom Davies had committed suicide three years earlier.
Justin was found alive and taken to Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend, accompanied by his brother Jarrod, now 28.
Four hours later, Justin was discharged after a psychiatric nurse deemed him low-risk – despite the fact he hadn’t seen a psychiatrist and said he had voices in his head telling him to do “bad things”.
Later that night, at around 1am, Justin left the family home.
“His girlfriend Ashleigh was staying with us and she came into my bedroom screaming, saying Justin was going to kill himself, so I called the police,” remembers Elaine.
A desperate search of the land around their home followed.
Elaine can still recall the flashing blue emergency services’ lights and the chilling shout from the officer who had found her son calling for a knife to cut him down from the tree.
But it was too late, and Justin died in hospital shortly after.
“Nothing can prepare a mother for the loss of her son,” says Elaine. “You never get over something like that. Even now when I remember that night, I start crying. It’s still just so raw.”
Elaine has no doubt that the combined effects of the suicides in the surrounding area had an impact on Justin’s actions.
“Before it started to happen, if any of my sons were angry or unhappy, they would never have said: ‘I’m going to kill myself,’” she remembers. “After, it was something they said. I don’t understand why.
“When the American documentary crew filmed in our home and asked Justin if he would ever commit suicide, he looked me in the eye and told me firmly that he would never kill himself.
“I felt so relieved, it was like someone had lifted the worry off me.”
Following his death, Elaine says she lived with the terror that one of her other children – as well as Jarrod she has a son and daughter – would be next.
How could she believe them when they said they wouldn’t do it? Still, she felt unable to move – Bridgend was full of memories of Justin.
“It never gets easier. You learn to take every day as it comes,” says Elaine. “I think of all the good moments with Justin and that gets me through.”
In 2013, Elaine sued the Princess of Wales hospital for an undisclosed amount.
“They didn’t admit liability and settled out of court,” she says. “It wasn’t a lot and wasn’t about the money. It was more about getting recognition for these youngsters who
were saying: ‘I have a problem, please help,’ and were not listened to.
“If the hospital had sectioned Justin, he would still be here today. I wanted them to change the way they did things – to have a psychiatrist on call and section people until they could be seen.”
Soon after Justin’s death, the media was asked to stop reporting on the phenomenon in a bid to stop copycat behaviour.
But a suicide subculture continued through social media, where the dead were given online memorials on sites such as Bebo and Gonetoosoon.org.
The victims even had their own funeral song: R Kelly’s The World’s Greatest was played, its lyrics evoking heroism and escape.
Eventually, the numbers normalised.
In 2014, 59 people aged under 35 committed suicide in Wales – the lowest number since 2002 and down from 92 in both 2012 and 2013, according to Office For National Statistics figures.
And the Bridgend spike levelled out – there were just four suicides in the county among people aged under 35 years old, placing it below Cardiff, Swansea, Caerphilly and Powys.
Sociologists still struggle to understand why Bridgend became “Suicide Central”, but now agree what happened was a rare cluster and deaths spread by behavioural contagion.
Throughout history, there have been similar events. For example, in the month after Marilyn Monroe took her life, there were 197 recorded suicides, mostly of young blonde women who appeared to have used the movie icon’s death as a model for their own.*
For youngsters, the “permission” to commit suicide can come in the form of sentimental eulogies on social media.
In his book The Dark Net, author and academic Jamie Bartlett explores the idea.
“It operates at a subconscious level,” he explains. “People will go on sites and see other people who have killed themselves being admired within the community, and it does have an effect.
“There are still some cases of people who actively encourage suicidal behaviour online, but a lot of it is far more subtle. It’s the accidental glamourising or romanticising of a behaviour to people who are vulnerable.”
In September 2015, Public Health England issued a report to agencies about suicide clusters and how to deal with them.
The document was prepared by Oxford University Centre For Suicide Research and recommended measures that local health and education services should develop to deal with suicide contagion.
The report explained the role the internet can play in developing clusters, stating that suicidal behaviour is spreading on social media, and advised suicide surveillance groups to monitor online accounts and identify those at risk.
Helen Burns is a suicide prevention advisor with charity Papyrus.
She regularly monitors platforms such as Twitter, which she says can be used as an early warning system to highlight suicidal thoughts and behaviours.
“I search the word ‘suicide’ and see how people are discussing it and how they’re reacting,” she explains.
“I’ve never seen someone encourage it, but I also don’t see people encouraging another person to seek help.”
Helen maintains that someone would have to have suicidal thoughts in the first place to be influenced by social media.
“You can’t put the thought of suicide into someone’s head unless they’re feeling that way already,” she says.
“Online memorials could perpetuate those thoughts, but suicide is not something you catch. You have to be entrenched in something to begin with.”
She advises any parent who is worried about their child to discuss the subject openly with them.
“People contact us saying they’ve seen something their child wrote on Twitter and they’re concerned,” says Helen.
“If this is the case, ask your son or daughter if they’ve had thoughts of suicide. There’s still a stigma and a taboo around asking the question. We are trying to encourage people to discuss it.”
Back in Bridgend, people still say that nothing has changed.
Many young people there continue to feel isolated.
However, local agencies are now geared up to act if it looks as though history might repeat itself.
But like many of the parents whose children died, Elaine still struggles to understand why it happened in the first place.
“There was speculation that it was a cult,” she says. “But these were mostly teenage boys – they weren’t making pacts to go and hang from trees. It was something they did because they were feeling the way they were: that life had nothing to offer them.”
For help with mental health, call the Samaritans on 116 123.
*Internet Journal of Criminology
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HOW YOU CAN HELP YOUR CHILD
“If your child has lost a friend to suicide, check what they’re writing on social media and look for behaviour changes,” advises Helen.
“Are they isolating themselves? Who are they talking to? What’s
their group talking about? It’s OK to ask them directly how the death is affecting them and whether they’re having suicidal thoughts themselves.” For more information and support, visit Papyrus-uk.org.