Girl aged 14 found hanged after school bullying

A 14-year-old girl who was suffering from an eating disorder after being bullied at school was found hanged at home, an inquest heard.

Public schoolgirl Fiona Geraghty was being picked on because of her weight and felt “unwantable” among her peer group.

The teenager, who attended £5,910 per term King’s College in Taunton as a day pupil, was developing bulimia because of her fears about her weight.

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Her parents were planning on moving her and her older sister to Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire but Fiona was found hanging on July 14, last year at home in Nailsbourne, near Taunton, by her father, John Geraghty, a pathologist.

The hearing in Taunton yesterday heard after he found her body he discovered a note she had left in her bedroom.

Details of its contents were not disclosed.

Fiona’s mother, Elspeth Geraghty, a GP, said her daughter had difficulty in settling in at the Taunton school after starting there in September 2010, with “relationship issues” with some of her peers during the first term, The school became involved in dealing with the problems with the other girls.

She told the hearing she was first alerted to the possibility her daughter, whom she described as having a “fear of growing into a woman”, was suffering from bulimia when contacted by her housemistress in February last year to say she had seen Fiona vomiting.

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Dr Geraghty said she was concerned because there was a history of eating disorders in their family.

“Fiona said she started vomiting following taunts about her size,” Dr Geraghty said.

Fiona was referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Taunton, where she saw Ross Gillanders, a community psychiatric nurse, four times before being discharged.

“Fiona was a clever girl and I believe she would have told Ross Gillanders what she felt he wanted to hear,” Dr Geraghty said. “I believe that Ross Gillanders was naive.”

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The court heard the cause of Fiona’s death was hanging and toxicology tests came back negative for alcohol or drugs. She weighed around nine and half stone at the time of her death.

Mr Gillanders told the inquest she presented as someone suffering from disordered eating rather than an eating disorder.

He said her weight had stabilised and some of the other problems she faced were being resolved.

Mr Gillanders said Fiona had told him ‘I am not wanted’ by members of her peer group. “This had been addressed as she was leaving the school and looking forward to going to Yorkshire.”

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The nurse, who said he had assessed her as “low risk of suicide”, defended the decision to discharge Fiona after four sessions and a follow up a month later.

But expert witness Professor Bryan Lask, an emeritus professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, told the hearing: “I do not think her full clinical picture could be evident after just four sessions.”

The hearing continues today.

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