Bullies were responsible for the end of Martin Holder’s life, aged 16, after a lifetime of torment at school and online. In an emotional interview, his mother Marj Hamlett-Hughes tells Helen Raine how her family is finding the strength to use his death as a force for good, by tackling bullying.

A new school year is about to start and for most children, it’ll be a time of excitement, seeing their friends again and getting back into a routine. But for children who are being bullied at school, they are about to return to a scholastic version of hell.

Sixteen-year-old Martin Holder, from Cheltenham, UK, had always been a sensitive child and small for his age. He loved music and posted videos of himself singing on YouTube. But not for long. His mother says that he was so tormented by online bullies that he had to take the videos down.

The cyber bullying came on top of long-term physical bullying, where his lunch was stolen, his school bag kicked into trees and his clothes torn. It was the last straw. Shortly after taking a last family holiday in Malta, Martin wrote a message in the dust on his bedroom window: “The darkness ahead is not what you imagine.” Then he hung himself.

Losing Martin

“Martin loved music. He was always writing songs, most with dark lyrics but that was the music he was in to. We have some of those lyrics as keepsakes.

As soon as Martin started reception class at school, he was bullied. One kid was his bully throughout infant, junior and two years of his senior school. This shaped Martin into being the insecure, anxious kid he was. There were many other bullies at his school. As soon as one stopped, another was there, lined up waiting to take the place. He never ever had a true friend; never had someone who was watching his back; was never treated as an equal.

“He joined a band in the last year of school called Within these Walls. The frontman seemed to be a good friend to Martin and things were going really well. For their first gig, Martin, just 16, was lead singer.

“I was so proud to see him up there. He was nervous but got through it and was flying at the end. I could here taunts from the crowd and the band did a teasing song about Martin and a girl he liked who was in the crowd. You could see he didn’t like it.

“Two weeks after, his so-called friend dropped him from the band, saying there were bad things being said about him and he was trying to protect him from it all. It was all lies. This friend was worried that how people felt about Martin would stop the band becoming famous. Martin tried forming his own band, but others interfered with that too.

“He was at college studying forensic computing and the bullying carried on. It never left him. He felt worthless, friendless and so very, very alone. So then, to that horrible, life-changing night.

“He took his life. His sister Charlie found him at 7pm on November 7, 2012. She now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and no brother. She is forever changed. I have lost my beautiful son, forever changed too. All I’m left with are ifs, buts, maybes and the big question of why? If only I could turn back time. Martin’s dad Colin is forever feeling the same way too, while my husband Mark struggles with trying to keep the family going forward.

“We knew about some of the bullying and did act to try to stop it. I wish he could have told me the full extent though, as we only found that out after. I wish he could have talked to me more about his feelings, but parents are usually the last to know. I wish he had someone he felt he could have trusted enough to open up to. But it would have been just something else to pick on.

I wish he could have talked to me more about his feelings, but parents are usually the last to know

“He was bullied for just being himself. He tried to laugh and mess around; that got him bullied. He tried the mature way; that got him bullied. It was verbal, physical, mental, isolating and cyber too. There was never a break from it.

“Before he reached 15, he always reported the bulling at school. He followed their rules but it never got him anywhere. There was never a proper conclusion. So he lost faith in the system and stopped reporting it to the school.

“At parents’ evenings we would bring up instances of bullying that Martin had mentioned, expecting the school to act in the correct way.

“We would ask Martin if it was getting sorted. He would say they would get statements from all concerned and that would be the end of it.

“How I would change that now! Hindsight is a marvellous thing.

Martin became clever at hiding his true feelings. He was ‘always smiling’, people said. Again, in hindsight, there were subtle signs. The research I’ve now done about suicide and bullying has helped me see these. He was anxious, nervous and sensitive, quiet at times too, but that is also what teenagers are like. So at the time we didn’t see suicide anywhere near our family.

“I now believe that parents should take every instance of bullying seriously, making sure that there is a proper end result that the victim is happy with. They must also write all of it down and keep a record. That probably is the most important thing to do.

“During the inquest into Martin’s death, we had the coroner referring to Martin’s bullying as “teasing “. This was an insult to Martin and to us, the family. The idea that it toughens them up is a typical old-fashioned response.

“There are several things that I think need to change. For example, schools don’t tend to tell the victim’s parents or the bullies’ parents when bullying has taken place. The school should have made us more aware of how bad it was for Martin. We only found out after reading his school report after his death.

“The schools have changed their bullying policy since Martin’s death, not that it was a direct result of him taking his life. But they still don’t enforce the rules as they should. I have had parents telling me their child is being bullied and it is not being dealt with properly. My daughter still goes to the school and she says they haven’t been made aware of any new policy. This is the school’s duty.

“Schools need to support the victim so much more and give the bullies the punishment that they deserve, be that exclusion or being taken out of the school all together. Why should the victim be the one to have to change school? Schools have a duty of care to our children. They should ensure that they feel safe at all times. The police, if called in, should be more supportive of the victim too. If it were an adult complaining, it would be harassment or actual bodily harm. Why does age matter?

“I also believe that bullying should become a criminal offense. That would be a proper consequence for these actions.

“Stopping bullying involves everyone. At home, we need to teach our kids right from wrong; teach them that their actions can and do affect others in terrible ways. Martin’s bullies will have to live with the guilt of having bullied him and knowing that their actions had a part in him taking his own life. May it live side by side with them all their lives.

“The only good thing to come out of it all is that my daughter Charlie and I now have such a lovely relationship. She doesn’t keep secrets anymore. We talk and listen to each other. Her friends also talk to her and me about their feelings. That’s a gift from Martin.”

What can we learn in Malta from Martin?

This is a story to strike fear into any parent’s heart. All of our children will suffer some degree of conflict with their peers as they grow up. But how do we differentiate normal arguments from hardcore bullying? And when children are being bullied, how do we make sure that we know about it and what do we do when we find out.

Stan Davis is an internationally-renowned expert on bullying prevention. He has worked for 40 years as a school counsellor, youth therapist and recently, as the co-leader of the Youth Voice Project. This innovative scheme has collated the responses of thousands of young people to questions about bullying and offers some surprising insights into the things that do and don’t work when it comes to bullying.

Spotting the signs

Davis says: “If young people are having trouble sleeping, enjoying life, doing the things they used to love, or showing similar marked negative changes, we should be concerned, whether we think they are being bullied or not. In other words, we should be aware of the signs of depression.”

If parents are worried and can’t get through to their children alone, then they should try a friend or close family member or seek professional help to do so.

If parents do discover that bullying is going on, then Davis says that it’s important to take it seriously. “It is clear from our research that it does not work to tell young people to solve this problem themselves, to tell them that they are tattling, or to tell them to just ignore the behaviour,” he says.

“Instead we need to get involved to increase connectedness, to increase resiliency and to decrease mean behaviour.” In other words, to solve bullying as a community.

Through his research, he has established that “when youth are bullied, they benefit most from emotional support and inclusion from other teens; from not being told that they are at fault for what is being done for them; and from being listened to. It also helps to increase supervision and support from adults”. He goes on: “Some of us in this field, including me, have moved away from the ‘is it bullying or not?’ question, to instead to focus on whether each person has done something wrong.”

Where schools should start

Schools need to be clear about unacceptable behaviour and they must follow through, says Davis. They should also build support and inclusion for all students from both adults and other students. His book Youth Voice Project gives concrete examples of how this can work.

A good starting point in changing attitudes is to gather data through student surveys to find out what is currently being done; how many students feel part of school; how many students feel connected to adults; and how many students feel respected at school. This is important because according to research by the British Council, 62 per cent of Maltese pupils consider bullying a problem in their school (in Spain, it’s only 15 per cent).

Research by Susan Swearer in the US also found that teachers aren’t always able to identify bullies. Worse, they don’t realise this and usually overestimate how effective they are at dealing with bullying, meaning that victims continue to be targeted. It’s often the case that those being attacked play down incidents to adults as they don’t want to inflame an already difficult situation. Anonymous surveys can help make the situation on the ground clear so that a cohesive strategy can be developed.

No place to hide in Malta

Davis notes that our small, close-knit community can be both a blessing and a curse. “It can lead to people having a lot of access to support,” he says, but adds; “It can also lead to people seeing families and individuals as fixed; seeing this family as a ‘good’ one and this as a ‘bad’ one; seeing this student as ‘good’ and that as ‘bad’. This can lead to a lack of effort to change situations or behaviour.” Labelling people as ‘bully’ or ‘victim’ is also dangerous because human interactions are rarely as black and white as this. The US site www.stopbullying.gov says: “Every human being acts in mean or excluding ways toward other people at one time or another.” Rather than labels, we should use terms such as “youth who perpetrate bullying behaviours”. This labels behaviours, not people, and leaves room for change.

Bullied to death?

Davis cautions that when it comes to bullying and suicide, we have to tread very carefully. He says that, in general, research suggests that suicides have multiple causes, rather than being a direct response to one situation; someone may already be depressed and then is stressed by circumstances, makes a choice not to ask for help and then chooses suicide. “I believe that in the US we have gone in negative directions by having people claim that bullying causes suicide.”

Instead, Davis suggests we need to “respond to youth suicide by increasing support for young people who are feeling overwhelmed or depressed, by increasing a sense of belonging for all, by increasing opportunities to do meaningful service to others and thus develop a sense of positive meaning.” Clearly, anti-bullying practices are essential.

Taking responsibility for yourself

• Based on his research, Davis has five key pieces of advice for young people who are being bullied (his book also has a great breakdown on which strategies work best).

• Don’t keep someone else’s mean behaviour toward you a secret. Get help if what someone does bothers you. Even if the person you seek help from can’t stop the behaviour, they can help you see that you are not at fault, that you have strengths, and that mean behaviour doesn’t have to ruin your life. If you ask for help and the person you ask won’t help you or says you are ‘tattling’, ask someone else.

• Don’t take other people’s mean words or actions into your own head or into your heart. You don’t have to help other people hurt you by believing what they say about you. Maybe someday soon they will grow up a little and find other ways to have a good time. Until then, what they do to you is their fault, not yours.

• Don’t lose hope. When you get older you can choose your work, your friends and where you live. You will get much more control over your life as you get older and often that means that your life will get better.

• Find things you love to do and people you love to do those things with. Find ways to make other people’s lives better. When you are involved in a hobby, music, sports, art, you will have ways to find the joy that comes with accomplishment.

• Know that things get better. Most people have times in their lives when things seem desperate. Yet things do get better. People who care about you can help you if you feel this way. Tell them, and let them help.

• What stands out in Davis’s research is that the single most effective strategy for beating bullies was to have a peer group that would support a pupil. That could mean walking and talking with a victim at school, offering advice and encouragement, helping them tell an adult and including them in activities. Bullies are more likely to target lone pupils and that’s where a strong school community can win out over mean behaviour.

• This is exactly what Marj says Martin was lacking – a group of friends to support and advocate for him. The solution to the kind of bullying that can contribute to suicide is tragically simple but incredibly hard; kids being brave enough to pull the bullied into their social circle and to look out for them. That means that each and every member of the community has a part to play in forming those kind of protective circles; we can no longer look the other way and think it’s not our problem.