Georgie* had excellent prospects when she left primary school. She’d done well in her SATS, was popular, social and academic. Her teachers and parents expected great things for her. But when she hit year nine, things started to go wrong.

‘She began to receive mean text messages, and her friends started ignoring her,’ Georgie’s mum, Jenny*, tells Metro. ‘One boy started slowly turning their friendship group against her – and even commanded a group of girls to attack her.

The bullying contained to get worse, Jenny contact the school for a meeting but this didn’t stop any of it. As time went on the incidents became more severe.

Georgie became volatile and Jenny became her punching bag. ‘She’d slam the door in the morning if she had a ladder in her tights, and when I took her to the doctor, she would yell and scream while refusing to get out of the car,’ she remembers. ‘It was hard to have had a good child who never put a foot wrong to see her behaviour decline and have her take everything out on us.’

Meanwhile, Georgie was still being bullied.

‘Social media is horrendous. We changed her phone number, and a girl from her year left her a message in the middle of the night saying: “You f***ing bitch, I’m going to stamp on your face if I ever see you again.” ‘We had a lad from her year group push her over in the supermarket,’ says Jenny.

‘After that, she didn’t want to leave the house. She was terrified. She wouldn’t walk to the shop or even look out of her bedroom window.’

‘Her dad would take her out for hours driving in the car every night, letting her play music just to get her out of the house. It became so, so bad.’

A few months later, Georgie attempted suicide.

The family finally found help from TLC (Talk, Listen, Change), a charity that provided Georgie with one-on-one sessions with a woman called Bonnie.

‘She was absolutely phenomenal and they formed this lovely bond. Georgie talked to her about everything and she was there for me too; coming to see me on my own to talk about how I was feeling, coping with work and dealing with the rest of the family,’ explains Jenny.

‘Even when she had the lowest of the low days, Bonnie would ring and say she was coming round, and Georgie would get out of bed to see her.’

Bonnie also connected Georgie and Jenny with other families going through similar experiences through a 12-week family course, and they formed close friendships.

More than two years after the bullying began, Georgie left school without any GCSEs. But she summoned the courage to apply to college, where she is resitting her exams and working towards becoming a social worker.

‘She gets very tired, but it’s amazing to see her going in every day and going to her lectures. To see that girl, happy, getting on the bus, going into town, is amazing. She’s even seen one of the bullies, who looked awkward and avoided her.

‘Phil and I have had been through hell and back these last three years. We took it for granted that our daughter would get her qualifications, get a job and always be that popular, social, academic girl and we still see changes in her.’

*Names have been changed

Credit to Metro for the original article.

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