'Bullying Doesn't Just Happen in the Playground Any More'

Summary

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Last year 13-year-old Sam Leeson was driven to suicide, an act his mother believes was caused by cyber-bullies who taunted him online. Here she tells Anna Moore about the guilt that haunts her, and her campaign to warn other children and parents about the dangers they face in the virtual world .

Sally Cope lives on the outskirts of Gloucester, on a brand-new estate looped by wide, empty, brand-new roads. Eerily quiet, it's a place with no past, the sort of place where you might come to start again - which is certainly the case for Sally.

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Extract

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'Bullying Doesn't Just Happen in the Playground Any More'

Last year, after the suicide of her 13-year-old son, Sam Leeson, she moved her family out of their home in the middle of Gloucester, a loud, happy house where she had raised five children, and has never returned. The family helped clear it out - packing Sam's belongings and dismantling the bunk bed from which he hanged himself. Having fallen behind on the mortgage, Sally now expects it to be repossessed, though that's so low on her list of priorities it hardly figures. She has no intention of going back.

Instead, she lives in a rented house, among pristine fixtures and fittings, with two of her daughters - Victoria, 21, and Katie, 14 - and Victoria's four-ye...

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