The mom of murdered teen Brianna Ghey says she now courses the mum of her daughter’s killer “a friend”. Esther Ghey revealed how she has shaped an unlikely bond with Emma Jenkinson, the mom of Scarlett Jenkinson, who together with Eddie Ratcliffe murdered 16-year-old transgender schoolgirl Brianna in February 2023. Ms Ghey advised how the pair had grown shut within the aftermath of the tragedy and mutual horrors of discovering what kids are viewing on-line through their smartphones.
She mentioned: “I really appreciate Emma. I would call her a friend now. She’s just a normal mother and she had no idea what her child was accessing – this is the danger with smartphones. I suppose it’s helped me in a way: you can make up stories in your own head about the way people are. It was important for me to meet her, to understand that she was a normal person. It’s helped me to see that we are both navigating something extremely difficult – and she’s lost a child too.”
In an interview with the BBC’s Laure Kuenssberg programme, Mrs Ghey additionally expressed her frustration on the Labour Government’s Online Safety Bill, which can be “watered down” to appease US President Donald Trump.
She mentioned: “While we are questioning whether it’s strong enough or whether it should be watered down, young people are at harm, and young people are losing their lives.
“Young people shouldn’t be struggling with mental health because of what they are accessing online, and we really do need to take a hard stance on this.”
Brianna, 16, was murdered by classmate Scarlett and her buddy Eddie, who had been each 15 on the time of the homicide, after the pair lured Brianna to a park in Cheshire the place she was stabbed 28 instances with a looking knife on February 11 2023.
The pair had a fascination with violence, torture and homicide, and after viewing horrific on-line content material had deliberate the killing for weeks utilizing a messaging app.
The pair had been convicted in December 2023 at Manchester Crown Court and had been sentenced the next February to life imprisonment, with a minimal of twenty-two years for Jenkinson and 20 years for Ratcliffe earlier than being eligible for parole. The court docket concluded that the offence was primarily motivated by sadistic tendencies and that hate towards transgender folks was a secondary motivation of Ratcliffe. The homicide was deliberate.
Mrs Ghey says she now helps a “blanket ban” on smartphones in faculties throughout the nation and demanded authorities backing to empower head academics.
She added: “We need to support teachers in a blanket ban across England.
“If a school has banned phones in one area and in the same area another school hasn’t – it becomes an issue with parents.
“It needs to be done across the board to make it easier.”
Ms Ghey has beforehand met Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his predecessor Rishi Sunak to debate the problem and has criticised the Online Safety Act, saying it doesn’t go far sufficient.
She has campaigned for an age restrict on smartphone use, stricter controls on entry to social media apps, more durable motion on knife crime and for mindfulness to be taught in faculties.
On her campaigning work on on-line security and trolling, Ms Ghey mentioned she helps a ban on social media for underneath 16s.
“It is an absolute cesspit,” she mentioned in March on the screening of ITV movie Brianna: A Mother’s Story, which explores the homicide of her daughter.
“Even if, say, if I do an interview, and I’ll try not to look at comments, but I can never help myself, and I’ll look at the comments, and you’ll see people saying about my child, trying to tell me what gender my child was, and also really, really horrific comments too.
“And it’s mentioned in the documentary as well, that when you report things, the support isn’t there.
“I’ve reported so many comments, and I always get the response that they haven’t done anything wrong, that it’s not something that they can take down, and our children have access to those comments.
“No matter how much love and compassion you pump into your child when you’re bringing them up, and how much empathy you can teach them as well, they will then go online and they’ll see the way that other people are speaking about other people, and they might think that that’s right.
“And that’s without even going into the amount of harm that’s online, like the dangerous challenges where young people are losing their lives due to these sick challenges that people are uploading, misogyny, hate, misinformation, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Roxy Longworth, who spoke to the BBC alongside Ms Ghey, was coerced into sending nude photos to a boy at college when she was simply 13, and subsequently skilled severe psychological well being issues.
Ms Longworth, 21, mentioned she needed to bridge the rising “generation gap” round social media.
She mentioned: “A lot of young people I’ve spoken to have said that they’re scared to tell their parents about anything they see online, because they’re worried their phones will be taken away as punishment.
A government spokesperson said: “The Online Safety Act is about protecting children online from harmful content like self-harm and eating disorders as well as making sure what is illegal offline is illegal online.
“These laws are not part of the negotiation and our priority is getting them in place quickly and effectively, while exploring what more can be done to build a safer online world.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2037755/mother-murdered-teen-brianna-ghey