Rumours hurt people.

Rumours humiliate.

Rumours cause loneliness.

At the school I used to go to, rumours were being spread around all the time. I remember one time, a rumour was going around that my best friend and I must’ve been adopted because we were too ugly to be from our families. The whispers, stares, and laughing made me feel insecure and sad.

This happened at a time when there was a family issue. We were staying with our dad, but our mum wanted us to be in her care full time. This was a tough period of my life, the last thing that I needed was drama at school.

When I first heard the rumours, it made me feel like I didn’t want to be in class or be around people because I felt like they were talking or laughing at me behind my back.

School was meant to be an escape from home, but eventually, I didn’t want to be at school either. It felt like there was nowhere I could go to get away from the rumours or family issues. After a while, things improved at home, but school was only getting worse because my best friend and I had a falling out, and I ended up moving schools.

If the rumours had continued, it could’ve been more serious. But luckily I was open with my parents and let them know what I was going through, and that’s a really important point, if I hadn’t been as open as I was, I might have ended up like Dolly and sadly, like a lot of teenagers my age.

Dolly Everett was a girl from Northern Territory who took her own life due to severe bullying. Her mother had good intentions when she sent Dolly and her sister off to a boarding school because there were no schools near their isolated cattle ranch.

It wasn’t always easy for Dolly. One time, she sent her mum an email saying that the girls were calling her names and yelling at her to go kill herself. When Dolly returned from boarding school for a holiday, her mum claimed that she looked perfectly fine. One evening, like any other, Dolly’s mum prepared dinner and played a game of cards with the girls. Everything seemed fine, but it wasn’t. Around 30 minutes after the girls had gone to bed, they found Dolly dead in her room.

Her family is now desperately trying to spread awareness of the potentially devastating consequences bullying. Their message is:

“Please just talk to your children and anybody else and remember, speak even if your voice shakes.”