Hanged teenager was bullied over hair colour

May 21 2008 by Neil Mckay, The Journal

A TEARFUL mother told yesterday how her teenage daughter, found hanging at home, had been tormented by classmates over her ginger hair.

CarolAnn Winter said her daughter, Kelsey Jade, 13, even bought foundation cream to try to hide her freckles after school friends called her Ginger Nut, Freckle Face and Pig Nose.

“She thought she was ugly, but she wasn’t at all,” sobbed Mrs Winter, while giving evidence at an inquest into her daughter’s death.

Kelsey Jade, of Marwood Drive, Barnard Castle, County Durham, was found by her stepfather, Mark Winter, in her bedroom with a noose tied around her neck in August last year.

Mrs Winter said pupils at Teesdale School, which Kelsey Jade attended, even accused her of “seeking sympathy” because she was upset after her brother, Mark Maughan, a paramedic and Kelsey Jade’s uncle, was killed in a road accident while driving to work in January 2006. “After the inquest into his death was reported in the papers she was even teased about that,” said Mrs Winter.

Her mother added: “Kelsey couldn’t handle the name calling.”

Mr Winter told the hearing at Bishop Auckland that his stepdaughter, a talented gymnast, had appeared “subdued” and stayed up in her room on the day she was found dead.

He said: “That was totally out of character. She was normally lively, bubbly. She was polite and well mannered, a good lass.”

Mr Winter added that Kelsey Jade was part of an “in-crowd” of nine or 10 girls.

“They would take it in turns to pick on one of them. We thought it was just teenage girls. They were always falling out between them.”

School counsellor Joan Edwards, called to give evidence, said Kelsey Jade had come to her for counselling in school on about 10 occasions, the last on July 18, shortly before the beginning of the six week school holidays and four weeks before she was found dead.

Mrs Edwards said marks on Kelsey’s neck, caused by her tying a belt around it on a previous occasion, were brought to her attention by a colleague in June of last year.

When she asked Kelsey Jade about them, Mrs Edwards said: “She was upset but assured me she was not suicidal.

“She was adamant that she wasn’t suicidal. By the start of the summer holidays I didn’t have any concerns about her at all. She seemed no different to other girls.” Mrs Edwards added: “There were issues among a group of eight or nine, all girls. They did tend to fall out.”

But County Durham coroner Andrew Tweddle said he could not be sure, “beyond all reasonable doubt,” that Kelsey Jade, despite being “a young girl who was clearly very troubled,” had intended to take her own life.

Verdict: Open.