Police investigating the death of a 14-year-old schoolgirl, believed to have committed suicide after receiving social media reports, have 64,000 pieces of information to investigate, an investigation finds.
Mia Janin, who attended the Jewish Free School, sent a voice message to a friend before returning to school from the Covid-19 lockdown saying she was “mentally preparing to be bullied”.
Tragically, she took her own life on March 12 last year, while her father Mariano Janin expressed concern that she had received toxic messages on social media that may have tipped her over the edge.
She is known to have opened a social media app just hours before her death, but her family is still waiting for what she sent or received.
Mr Janin described Mia as a ‘bubbly’ girl who had just been invited on a holiday to Greece with her best friend from school
Janin became the third pupil at the Jewish state school in North London to commit suicide since 2017 when she committed suicide one day after returning to school after lockdown last year
During a pre-inquest review hearing at Barnet Coroner’s Court yesterday, Detective Inspector Gail Steele said police officers had accessed Mia’s phone and a download was in progress.
Via a video link, he said: ‘With regard to the phone, I spoke to one of the people who reviewed it and they said that if you printed out the information from the phone, it would contain 64,000 pages of information.
“So, as you can see, the task is quite big.”
In an earlier hearing, it was revealed that students at JFS were ordered by teachers to delete a Snapchat group with Mia and other students just five days after she committed suicide.
Mariano, who lost his wife four months after Mia’s death, has previously begged the students and parents of Mia’s school, the Jewish Free School, to provide information.
In an earlier interview with ITV’s Good Morning, he told Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary: ‘I believed she had a really bad day at school on the first day.
He also believes that parents should have access to any posts or videos their children may have seen on social media sites before they died.
Under current legislation, social media forms such as Meta and TikTok are not required to hand over their data.
Via a video link, Mia’s father said, “I think it would be helpful to reach out to the social media platforms we talked about at the last hearing.”
In an earlier interview with ITV’s Good Morning, Mia’s father Mariano told Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary: ‘I believed she had a really bad day at school, the first day.
“And then through social media, because she was online late into the night, but the problem is, we need access to the phone.”
Mia, a grade 10 student, had asked her parents if she could move out of school the night before her death, and her family believed she was being bullied.
She is the third student at JFS to commit suicide since 2017, with the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell sparking an emergency investigation by Ofsted into the largest Jewish school in Europe.
The report downgraded JFS from ‘good’ to ‘unsatisfactory’ after it was found that many students were being bullied without staff intervention. Molly had similarly committed suicide after viewing social media posts.
At a recent hearing on the review of the inquest on Sept. 2, senior coroner Andrew Walker ordered senior executives at Meta and Pinterest to appear at her inquest to provide evidence.
During today’s hearing, DI Steele said additional questions were being asked of JFS staff after communicating with Mia’s family.
She added: “Two have refused to give information and we are waiting for a third who no longer works there.”
Two teachers from the school and the rabbi had been contacted, but they refused to make statements.
Jewish Waldorf School in Kenton, north London, was branded ‘inadequate’ in an emergency inspection of Ofsted after Mia’s death last year
New laws introduced before Mia’s death gave schools the power to delete accounts and records on social media.
Meanwhile, in June 2021, a change.org petition was created by a fellow student, who wrote that Mia had been “brutally bullied for so long” and urged mental health improvements at the school.
She said, “Since then, JFS has only brought in counselors for a week and then left us alone.
“We had a meeting the same day where we introduced our interim headteacher and not once did they mention Mia or bullying or prioritizing mental health, but they pretended that the school was going to become a military compound where all they care about is punctuality and uniformity of behaviour.’
Since September 2022, the petition has received more than 6,000 signatures.
In response, JFS principal Dr David Moody, who joined the school after Mia’s death, told MyLondon: “The school cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation, but as the new director of JFS I am confident that every possible information has been made available to the police to support them in reaching a conclusion.’
“OfSTED recently rated JFS as a good school and was pleased with the ongoing changes made by both the governors and the new leadership team.”
Speaking with the Sunday TimesMariano said, “This whole experience has been a nightmare too horrible to explain.
“Every day feels like I’m living in slow motion.”
He begged, “Parents with information – please take it to the coroner. We need to know what happened for the sake of other kids and Mia too.”
Due to the “extensive” investigation of Mia’s phone records and the potential need to contact other witnesses, an investigation date has now been set for March 29 and March 30, 2023.
https://www.change.org/p/jewish-free-school-prioritising-mental-health-at-jfs