Did French school fail Dinah, 14, who took her life after being bullied?

“Dinah“Dinah. Born December 18th 2006, died October 5th 2021. She loved life so much, but she was made to believe that life didn't love her. And now?” Dinah's mother, Samira Gonthier, put this sentence in the form of an epitaph on her Twitter account just after her 14-year-old daughter took her life. She uses the account to post photos of her “baby”, articles about the tragedy or simply words that she is gradually finding: “I love you and I will love you, mother and daughter for life.”

Since Dinah hanged herself in her bedroom wardrobe on the night of October 5th at the family home in north-east France, her parents' lives have been turned upside down. Samira and Serge, Dinah's father, are both seeing a psychotherapist, take antidepressants and have been signed off work until 2022. Their two sons are also traumatised. Dinah's big brother Rayan has developed a form of asthma and frequently gets panic attacks. Her other brother, Réda, has been largely silent since the tragedy.

“We want to understand why the middle school did nothing. Why they didn't take our warnings seriously. Why they didn't protect Dinah,” said Samira, who has little doubt about the cause of her daughter's suicide. She accuses the Émile-Zola collège or middle school at Kingersheim, close to Mulhouse in north-east France, of “never having done something” to tackle the bullying to which Dinah was subjected there before she moved up to high school in September. Her family says that Dinah, who is described as having been a very sensitive girl, an excellent pupil, and passionate about Japanese culture, had gone through an “ordeal” in her 4th and 3rd years at school - equivalent to years 9 and 10 in England or the 8th and 9th grades in the United States. The periods of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic were apparently her only respite.

Dinah's brother Rayan, 21, shares the same view and is unable to conceal his anger. “I feel hatred towards the middle school, it's crazy,” he said. He said the school's principal told him on the phone that he had been “completely unaware” of what Dinah had been going through. Rayan then sent an email to the head of the education authority in Strasbourg on October 22nd to castigate what he called “lies”.

“The middle school claims it wasn't aware of anything with my sister. They claim that everything that took place happened outside the school. They claim that they did everything for her, but if that was the case she'd still be alive today,” he wrote in the email after his conversation with the principal. “Towards the end of her time there the school even called us to tell us that my sister was perhaps exaggerating her reactions and that she sometimes made up stories. You see, even the school, the people who work there, they were not on her side.”

An administrative investigation

After Dinah's family first made their accusations in the press, the education authority denied that there had been any breakdown in procedures on their part and was quick to deny any responsibility. “As far as we are aware … there is no information from which one can conclude that the situation was underestimated nor that the family's calls or correspondence were not responded to,” the education authority told L'Obs magazine. It told newspaper Libération: “The management and support staff as well as the medical and welfare staff were not only aware of this type of issue, but also trained in the issue of bullying, in particular in spotting small signs.”

The prosecution authorities initially launched an investigation to discover the “causes of death” though now the probe also encompasses “bullying”. The Gonthier family has meanwhile filed its own formal legal complaint, seen by Mediapart, for “psychological bullying”, “being an accomplice to psychological bullying”, “incitement to suicide”, “failure to provide help” and “manslaughter”. Mediapart also understands that the Ministry of Education, which did not wish to comment, has begun an internal administrative investigation led by the education inspectorate, the Inspection Générale de l’Éducation Nationale.

When contacted by Mediapart the state prosecutor in Mulhouse, Edwige Roux-Morizot, promised “swift responses” but also pointed to the difficulties of the case. “I think it's a little more complex than that,” she said. “Bullying could be one of the complex factors among others. Was it the cause of the victim's psychological frailty? We will have to wait to see what the investigation establishes in an objective fashion,” said the prosecutor. Dinah's mobile phone and computer are currently being analysed and this could provide the investigators with important information.

According to information gathered by Mediapart, Dinah suffered from considerable psychological frailty. In several messages she talked of suicidal thoughts, had sharp exchanges with some people and showed signs of great distress. Nonetheless, other information suggests that she was subjected to serious bullying and may have been humiliated by fellow pupils. Nor, from the information gathered, could Émile-Zola middle school have been unaware of her difficulties. The establishment has also been accused of under-estimating bullying by other parents to whom Mediapart has spoken.

Samira dates the start of Dinah's ordeal to 2019 when she entered the 'quatrième' year at middle school - equivalent to 8th grade in the US and year 9 in England – and got her first mobile phone. She was good at schoolwork, loved learning and asked lots of questions. That apparently annoyed some of her classmates. “The girls in her class would speak about her in a WhatsApp chat, insulting her or making fun of her,” said her mother, who is now trying to collect proof of the bullying.

These include messages that Dinah sent to show her distress. “Mum, the girls in the group don't like me the way I am. They speak about me behind my back and don't like my craziness,” the teenager wrote on November 17th 2020. In a text message sent on January 3rd 2021 she said: “But I don't want to go to school. I don't want to go to school tomorrow … I don't feel great … I'm ill.” Two weeks later on January 17th she noted: “I did nothing to them. Nothing, mum. I've got no friends left.”

Psychologically frail and seeing a psychiatrist, Dinah was criticised and made fun of for her “swotty side” and the “questions that she asks”. One of her few friends, Maëva, said: “The people in class called her a 'dirty whore', 'dirty swot'. They said that she 'gave blowjobs to get good marks' or that she prostituted herself.” Dinah's mother Samira said: “She told me that no one in her class liked her, but I didn't think it was absolutely no one.”

According to other messages seen by Mediapart, one of the pupils in her class also got revenge on the teenager by putting her private messages online. 'Lisa' – not her real name - had been unhappy about Dinah's behaviour during online role play, in which the latter had made the mistake of “kissing virtually” a boy whom Lisa was trying to date. “Lisa thought I was hitting on him when I wasn't,” Dinah explained in a message she sent in June 2020. To a friend she said that “everything got out of hand” when Lisa sent screen grabs of her messages to “everyone”.

On several occasions Dinah spoke about cutting herself with a compass or said that she had tried to take her life by slashing her veins or trying to throttle herself. After 2019, the period when Dinah announced that she “also liked girls”, the bullying apparently also became homophobic. Several days before her suicide she had encountered her bullies in the school canteen and had been unable to cope with it.

“The middle school will perhaps try to say that there was cyber bullying,” said the family's lawyer, Laure Boutron-Marmion. “The fact remains that in Dinah's case it is perfectly clear that she was the victim of bullying inside the establishment and by her classmates!” Her friend Maëva, who was interviewed by the police, confirmed: “People insulted her in class, jostled her to make her fall over.”

In March 2021 the situation got worse when Dinah was tricked by a girl in her class with whom she was in love. That girl apparently pretended to have feelings for her before revealing the trick. Dinah tried to kill herself by swallowing all the medicines she could lay her hands on and had to be hospitalised. She sent this message to her mother: “I know that I should stay strong, blah blah blah. I know the old refrains by heart: it's because I'm a teenager, that I've got my whole life ahead of me, that I shouldn't feel the pain. It's tough to lose friends from one day to the next for no reason … Each day I wonder if it's Saturday tomorrow and I dread Sundays.”

“I called the middle school to explain the situation. But they didn't take me seriously and told me that it was a question of puppy love between girls,” said Samira Gonthier. “I thought that they were at least going to punish the bullies but nothing was done.” Rayan sent his sister a letter in an attempt to give her some perspective. “If you're no longer there, my own life will stop. So don't think about people who don't love you, who don't deserve you,” he wrote.

“As proof of the knowledge that the Émile-Zola middle school had of the worrying bullying which Dinah suffered and which led her to do the unthinkable, a team intervened to make the pupils aware of bullying just after her attempted suicide,” the family's official complaint states.

Meanwhile Dina's crises became more frequent. They apparently got worse after the sending of a letter “written by some of her fellow pupils” and which has since been destroyed. “Don't worry, you're going to die soon … We're going to send you links on the internet so you can die,” the pupils wrote, according to the family's official complaint.

According to Dinah's family the middle school thought that Dinah “exaggerated”. Maëva, who said that she had helped Dinah during two crises, said: “The monitor [editor's note, an employee in French schools whose job is to maintain discipline] said that she was making a spectacle of herself. Once we were sitting on a bench in the school yard and I saw that she could no longer feel her arms and legs. She was doubled up in pain,” said her friend. “I panicked and took off her mask [editor's note, a requirement in school during much of the Covid pandemic] so that she could breath and I went to the monitor so they could warn the CPE [editor's note for 'conseiller principal d'éducation', a non-teaching employee in French schools whose job is to monitor pupils, including their welfare, and organise the school day.] She was annoyed and said she [Dinah] just had to get some air and didn't want to call the nurse.”

As a result, in its official complaint the family accuses the middle school of failure to assist a person in danger. “Dinah's middle school didn't even make the smallest gesture, take the slightest measure … to help her, not even one member of its staff, even though everyone knew the state of peril the girl was in,” said lawyer Laure Boutron-Marmion. The family's official complaint notes: “The middle school's nurse, to whom Dinah went regularly, particularly when she had panic attacks, never took the measures that were needed given the girl's state of peril, which was known to all.”

Despite Dinah's demonstrable distress, the school's principal never approached her family; indeed, Samira Gonthier was unaware if the principal was a man or a woman. According to Laure Boutron-Marmion the normal protocols for bullying situations were not applied by the school and the family had just one meeting with the CPE counsellor in two years.

Mediapart has seen the family's phone bills and they also give a glimpse of the seriousness of the situation. In the month of January 2020 alone Dinah contacted her mother eighteen times while she was at school. The middle school was also contacted around ten times. In March 2021, after her suicide attempt, Dinah contacted her mother around thirty times during school hours. Her father Serge contacted the school more than five times.

Did the middle school ignore the family's requests? Why did the principal never meet Samira or Serge Gonthier to discuss Dinah's distress? When contacted by Mediapart on these various issues, the education authority in Strasbourg declined to comment. “The middle school does not accept all the points raised by the family but reserves its version of events for the legal system and for the inspectors in charge of the internal inquiry,” it said simply.

Middle school accused of under-estimating other bullying cases

Dinah was not the only pupil to have complained about bullying at the middle school. Her brother Rayan says he experienced a similar situation, in an atmosphere that was also homophobic. “Everything went well until the 4th year,” said Rayan, who is now studying psychology at university. “A rumour started that I liked a boy. After that it was hell,” he said.

According to Rayan and his mother the torrent of homophobic insults was virtually daily. On occasions he locked himself in the school toilets and asked his mother to come and fetch him. “One day he had a fight with one of his bullies. He explained the reason for the violence but the middle school also excluded my son for two days,” said Samira, who regretted the fact that, as had been the case with Dinah, “nothing was done to fight against bullying or homophobia at the school”.

'Sophie', whose son 'Guillaume' is now a 3rd year pupil at the middle school – their real names are being withheld to protect their identity – also told Mediapart that the establishment “remained passive in the face of bullying”. In 2019, when Guillaume was two years younger, his mother got the feeling that his behaviour had changed and that he had become withdrawn. “He told me of problems he had with some girls in his class,” she said. “I alerted the CPE who in the end asked him to give the name of the bullies. They were called in but they were told that it was my son who had reported them. So things got worse as they then started calling him the 'bullied boy'.”

The boy's suffering continued. In a text message sent on December 12th 2020 and seen by Mediapart the boy confided he had even had “suicidal desires”. “When, after this text message, I alerted the CPE she asked me if I was sure that the problem didn't stem from home,” said Sophie, who criticised the “complete inertia of the management”. Her son's situation finally improved when she sought help from the local Maison des Adolescents (MDA), an organisation that assists teenagers and their families with problems associated with adolescence.

Séverine, whose two daughters went to the middle school, is similarly critical of the establishment. One of them, who is today aged 17, was bullied when she was in the volleyball group at the school. “In the end she told me about the insults that she endured from the girls in her class. They called her a whore, a slut, a pain,” she said. After the CPE at the school was informed “the girls who insulted my daughter were spoken to but never punished”, said Séverine. “My daughter had to change volleyball club so she no longer played with them. I was expecting more from the middle school, it's not acceptable to make no real efforts to stop this kind of situation.”

On Thursday December 2nd 2021 the private office of the gender, equality, diversity and equal opportunities minister Élisabeth Moreno, which is in regular contact with the family, sent a text message to Samira announcing that the National Assembly had voted to create the specific offence of bullying in school, a vote that was prompted by the current tragedy. The new offence will be punishable by a custodial sentence. Meanwhile Samira keeps re-analysing events leading up to Dinah's death. “I ask myself if I did enough,” she said. “And about what more I could have done. My daughter didn't tell me everything. And the middle school told me nothing.”

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The original French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter