Schoolgirl, 16, killed herself after she was bullied online by youngsters and their PARENTS

Trixie Hart has been described as a ‘natural’ singer who was ‘destined’ to be a star until she took her own life in September

A 16-year-old schoolgirl and Britain’s Got Talent singer killed herself after she was mercilessly bullied online by teenagers and their parents, her bereft grandmother said today.

Trixie Hart, from Cornwall, was allegedly the target of ‘vicious’ online abuse due to her ‘alternative’ look and jealousy over her singing voice, her family has claimed.

Miss Hart, who twice auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent, would often be found in floods of tears in front of a computer screen and was often called a ‘slag’ and ‘ugly’ by bullies. 

Her grandmother April Gunn, 66, said the abuse she faced was ‘horrendous’ and the attacks by children and some adults made Trixie’s battle with anxiety impossible to cope with.

Mrs Gunn says her granddaughter died at home in September, having waited for her mother to go to work before showering and putting on her make-up and taking her own life.

A full inquest will be held at a later date to explore all the circumstances around her death.

But grandmother Mrs Gunn, of Gunnislake, Cornwall, said today she felt online bullying was to blame.

She said: ‘She [Trixie] was horribly misunderstood, and subjected to bullying online. This was not just from children but also from their parents saying horrible things about her. 

‘People called her a slag and told her she was ugly. She had an amazing singing voice and I think there was jealousy about that. It was relentless’.

She added: ‘It wasn’t just bullying, it contributed to an already anxious girl.’

Trixie, who auditioned for BGT twice, took her own life after alleged 'vicious' online abuse due to her 'alternative' look and jealousy over her singing voice

Trixie, who auditioned for BGT twice, took her own life after alleged ‘vicious’ online abuse due to her ‘alternative’ look and jealousy over her singing voice

Trixie Hart, from Cornwall, was allegedly the target of 'vicious' online abuse due to her 'alternative' look and jealousy over her singing voice, her family has claimed

Trixie Hart, from Cornwall, was allegedly the target of ‘vicious’ online abuse due to her ‘alternative’ look and jealousy over her singing voice, her family has claimed

Trixie’s grandmother said bullying via social media was particularly vicious because it couldn’t be easily switched off.

The teenager did eventually delete her Facebook – but this also made her paranoid about what people were saying about her.

One night when Trixie was staying with her grandmother, she came down to find her looking at a screen while sobbing.

She said: ‘It is so easy for a gaggle of girls to sit doing this, making these nasty comments, feeling almost that it isn’t real because they can’t see the tears that have been prompted by the spiteful remarks. 

‘Trixie took everything to heart right from the start really, she always did. I think her intensity and her anxieties were very difficult for her peers to comprehend’.

Mrs Gunn says Trixie was diagnosed with mental health problems which were variously labelled by professionals as ADHD and a personality disorder.

She was a student at Callington Community College until her family took her out of school and started self-harming at the age of 12, her grandmother says.

April says she had also overdosed a number of times.

She added: ‘I think she had ingrained issues that would have been difficult to manage anyway.

‘Social media didn’t cause her problems but it certainly didn’t help her mental instability and depression which was part of her make-up.’

April, who herself is a singer, said she would sometimes perform with Trixie at open mic nights throughout their home town and said her talent was there for everyone to see.

She added: ‘She was better than me, much better than me. I can hold a tune, but Trixie… she had the edge on me. I have to say she had something special, she really did.

‘She loved drama on and off stage. She had a really flamboyant side. She had a natural flair and a beautiful singing voice. She had a couple of piano lessons and once she had the basics, she would sit down, listen to a piece of music and then sit at the piano and just play it.

‘It was instinctive. It just seemed to be there.’

Trixie loved to perform and sing but also struggled with anxiety and other mental health problems

Trixie loved to perform and sing but also struggled with anxiety and other mental health problems

Trixie loved to perform and sing but also struggled with anxiety and other mental health problems

April said they had no inkling of Trixie’s intention to kill herself in the days before she was found dead, on September 20, at the home where she lived with her mother and mother’s partner in Gunnislake.

She recalled that just a day or two before she had been pleading with her grandmother to drop her at the supermarket to buy false eyelashes, because she just had to go to a party.

Trixie (pictured as a child), whose full name was Beatrix, had started self harming as a 12-year-old and took her own life four years later

Trixie (pictured as a child), whose full name was Beatrix, had started self harming as a 12-year-old and took her own life four years later

Just a week or so earlier she had also asked her grandmother to come with her to Totnes shopping for ‘the hippy clothes she loved’.

She was found dead on the afternoon of September 20, when her mother and her partner returned from work.

Her grandmother said: ‘She must have planned it. That morning, my daughter went off to work. Trixie got up.

‘She showered, dressed, put her make up on, then killed herself, with no indication to any of us that that was her intent.

‘But that must have been her intent because it was so well orchestrated.’

She added: ‘Every day was too hard work for her, she was tired of trying.

‘I can’t allow myself and neither can her mother, to think we failed her in any way. We tried everything and if we didn’t have the tools to help her it is because we are human. 

‘We are sad for us, and we were very sad for her but we were sad for her when she was alive because we felt her pain. A little bit of us has to feel that she doesn’t have to feel that anymore. That she has found some peace.’

April said that while Trixie was ‘in the system’, she did not feel her problems were being addressed.

She said there would be meetings with social workers who were ‘making remarks in front of Trixie that the trouble she got into with boys and bad girls was her own fault’.

But April says ‘when it came to having some sort of consistency there was nowhere for her to go’.

April said: ‘She’d overdose again, cut herself again and ended up in Derriford A&E. They’d put her in a ward. Then she’d be discharged but it isn’t right.

‘It was doing my head and her mother’s head in, let alone a vulnerable and unhappy child who was being pushed around from pillar to post with all these people.’

When Trixie went to live with her father and older brother for a year in Southampton she was sectioned but was then released from the facility, still ill.

April added: ‘It was difficult recognising, even for us as her family, the difference between normal teenage angst, which they all have – heaven knows I brought up four daughters myself – and the genuine real anxiety and depression part of it.

‘We didn’t know if she was just being a pain in the butt on any particular day or she was in some of her more desperate times – it was very difficult for us to differentiate.

‘You can’t see inside someone’s head,’ she added. ‘You can try, you can understand a bit and empathise as best you can but you can never quite know what is in their mind.’ 

  • For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see Samaritans.org for details

 

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