Victims' families call for end of 'death cult' online forums

‘Shut down these sick suicide sites’: Victims’ families call for end of ‘death cult’ online forums where members encourage others to take their own life

• Suicide forums blamed for death of ex-Army cadet and ex-Aintree chairman
• The ex-Army cadet left a suicide note begging for the forums to be taken down 
• Families of victims demand people behind forums should be probed by police

The sites have been blamed for the death of former Aintree racecourse chairman Rose Paterson, pictured above with Tory MP husband Owen

Grieving families and politicians last night called for the shutdown of ‘sick’ online suicide forums where members encourage others to kill themselves.

Websites, found through a simple internet search, connect vulnerable people with thousands of forum members who provide instructions on how to end their lives – even offering to obtain poison and ‘suicide kits’.

The sites have been blamed for the deaths of former Aintree racecourse chairman Rose Paterson and an ex-Army cadet who left a suicide note begging for the forums to be taken down.

Last night a leading psychiatrist urged the Government to implement tougher measures over suicide in its upcoming Online Harms Bill.

Labour’s former justice spokesman Richard Burgon called for ‘urgent action’ and families of victims demanded that the people behind the forums should be probed by police.

Former Army cadet Joe Nihill, 23, of Leeds, was among three men, unknown to each other, who died between February and April last year after taking a toxic substance used in food processing. It was bought online from a company in the South of England

A Daily Mail investigation reveals:

• Three British men killed themselves within weeks of each other last year using a toxic substance bought from the same UK seller after being advised by members of a forum;
• A Ukrainian chemicals dealer whose details are shared on the forum ships substances to the UK packaged as ‘paint pigments’ to thwart customs checks;
• Forum users approach vulnerable members offering to die together in a suicide pact or even murder them and make it look like an accident;
• Members use slang for suicide such as ‘catch the bus’.
• Families campaigning to shut the sites down have received threatening messages and sick phone calls from people pretending to be their deceased loved ones;
• A former member who left one site described it as a ‘death cult’.

Former Army cadet Joe Nihill, 23, of Leeds, was among three men, unknown to each other, who died between February and April last year after taking a toxic substance used in food processing. It was bought online from a company in the South of England.

All three had been advised by members of a forum to buy from the seller, with detailed instructions about how to take their lives. Mr Nihill begged police in his suicide note to shut the website.

On February 8 last year, shop fitter Jason Thompson, 49, of Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham, took the same substance and was found with a printout of a step-by-step suicide guide from the forum. Two days earlier, Lee Elliott, 30, from Workington, Cumbria, died after taking the same chemical bought on eBay from the firm.

MP’s wife among those urged to die by strangers 

Rose Paterson

The former chairman of Aintree racecourse was found dead in woods near her Shropshire home after secretly accessing suicide forums. Her husband, Tory former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson, believes the forums had ‘drawn her in’. He said: ‘Many of these suicides are on impulse. The narrative these sites use is so beguiling and it’s written in such calm language. Yet these sites never talk about the damage to those you leave behind.’

Joe Nihill

The final line in Joe Nihill’s suicide note asked police: ‘Please do your best in closing that website for everyone else [and] look after my mum and family.’ 

The chip shop worker, 23, from Leeds, had begun seven discussion threads on a forum site and exchanged 57 messages with 17 users. 

His mother Catherine, 49, said: ‘Within days of becoming a member… Joe was told exactly what to do, how to act and within a week of joining he was gone. He was driven to his death by strangers.’

Callie Lewis

The 24-year-old animal rights activist, pictured, from Dover, in Kent, took her life using a ‘suicide kit’ she learned about in an online forum. 

The last people she spoke with were forum members. One wrote to her: ‘Good luck. We all wish you a swift travel.’ Another said: ‘May you find peace, my friend.’

Jason Thompson

The grandfather-of-two, 49, died 12 days after buying a substance on eBay after being given advice by suicide forum members. 

His sister Karen Black, 53, of Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham, said: ‘You can’t buy more than a couple of packets of paracetamol, but you can find step-by-step guides to kill yourself and how to buy this poison on these websites – it’s sick.’

The substance is reportable rather than regulated. This means the buyer is not required to have a Home Office licence to purchase it, but the seller must report the transaction to police if it is suspicious. 

The firm, which the Mail has decided not to name, said it stopped selling the substance immediately after it became aware of what it had been used for. 

Callie Lewis, a 24-year-old animal rights activist, pictured, from Dover, in Kent, took her life using a ‘suicide kit’ she learned about in an online forum

There is no suggestion it acted unlawfully. Bosses at eBay said they had banned sales of the substance.

Other sellers include Ukrainian chemicals dealer Leonid Zakutenko, 49, who boasted to an undercover reporter that he ships to Britain every day, labelling the packages ‘paint pigments’.

Other deaths linked to the chemical include Robert Coates, 17, of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, in 2019, and Samuel Dickenson, 33, who died in Bolton in the same year.

It took less than a minute for a Mail reporter to find messages on a forum website providing detailed instructions about where to obtain it and how much to order. Other messages encouraged users to ‘catch the bus’. 

One of the largest forums even has its own profile on Twitter. It claims to have almost 17,000 members who have exchanged 1.1million messages.

A mother of two, from Brighton, said she used the forum for months to discuss her suicidal thoughts until she realised it was ‘nothing more than a death cult’.

Crime that could lead to 14 years in jail 

It is illegal to encourage someone to take their life under the Suicide Act 1961, with a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

Experts yesterday said technology is available which can identify and dismantle websites that break the law.

Marykate Collins, of Vulcan Consulting, which advises over regulation, said: ‘If the political will is there then this can be addressed.’ She insisted: ‘Algorithms exist which can identify and block harmful content at the point of upload and are used for extremist material online all the time.

‘The tech companies that host the sites can be alerted and penalised for failing to act. But the will has to be there to do so.’

She said: ‘Part of its allure is that there is nowhere else to go where you can talk freely about these things without being censored.

‘But it’s a dark, evil cult – full of sick people whose motivation is driving vulnerable people towards suicide.’ 

Jeremy Keeling, 31, from Norwich, was banned from a forum after he tried to discourage members from taking their lives. He was told he was barred for being a ‘pro-lifer’.

The Nihill family’s MP, Mr Burgon, has requested a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss expanding the Online Harms Bill. He said: ‘The Government needs to address the issue of suicide forums immediately.

‘They need to ensure that search engines like Google are across this and don’t make it easy for vulnerable people to find these forums.’

Dr Bernadka Dubicka, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: ‘When people are feeling suicidal it is all too easy for them to be influenced by what is going on online. We need to ensure there are much more stringent safety measures in this area. Age verification is very important. We know there are people who actively encourage others to kill themselves and self-harm. The reporting mechanisms aren’t effective enough and there is still no date for the Online Harms Bill.’

A Government spokesman said new laws would ‘address content which encourages suicide online by making tech firms take action to prevent this sort of vile material spreading on their platforms’.

For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 116 123 or go to www.samaritans.org

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