A transitioning teenager took her own life after finding out about an ‘upsetting’ Instagram post that was being circulated around her school.
Emma Boland, 15, was said to have been caused ‘great upset’ when the social media post circulated around Faringdon Community College in Oxfordshire.
The details of the Instagram post’s content were not revealed by senior coroner Darren Salter who carried out the inquest at Oxford Coroner’s Court.
A fellow pupil, however, described Emma, who was born Christopher Boland and was in the process of transitioning from male to female, as holding her ‘head in her hands’ and saying that the Instagram post had been ‘misunderstood’.
Emma Boland, 15, hanged herself after a ‘upsetting’ Instagram post had been circulated around her school in Faringdon, Oxfordshire. Her father, Stuart Boland, said the girl had previously struggled with her mental health
After school that day, on January 17, Emma returned to her home in Bampton at around 3.20pm but left to see a friend 10 minutes later.
When her parents noticed she had not returned by 6.30pm they tried to contact her and her friends.
Emma’s mother, Rachel Boland, then ‘found out something had happened at school that day and it was concerning social media,’ the inquest heard.
She then rang the police and reported Emma missing.
Her father, Stuart Boland, discovered his daughter by Shill Brook, around a 20 minutes’ walk from her home – a post-mortem gave the cause of the girl’s death as hanging.
Mr Boland, in a statement summarised by the coroner, said that Emma, a high-achieving student, had previously struggled with her mental health.
Around Christmas 2021, a few weeks before her death, Emma decided that she wanted to be known as Emma and began the process of transitioning from male to female.
The inquest was heard at Oxford Coroner’s Court yesterday. The court was told that the upsetting post, which had not named anyone directly, ‘included details of a past personal relationship that Emma had with a girl of the same age previously’
Yesterday the coroner’s court revealed that the upsetting post, which had not named anyone directly, was said to have ‘included details of a past personal relationship that Emma had with a girl of the same age previously’.
On the day of her death, the post had been reported to Joe Winter, the deputy headteacher of the Farringdon college, by a pupil.
Mr Winter was said to have decided that an investigation into the post would continue the following day.
Shortly before 8pm that evening the school was informed that Emma had been reported missing.
Reading a conclusion of the suicide, Mr Salter said it appeared Emma had intended to take her own life but that it had happened ‘in the context of what appears to be great upset and that, of course, is very, very regrettable indeed’.
He added: ‘It is right that the school and others review the processes in this sad case.’
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