The principal of Santa Sabina College has met with the family of Charlotte O’Brien, the 12-year-old girl who died after years of relentless bullying, after a memorial to the schoolgirl was removed at the school.
Paulina Skerman met with the O’Brien family at their home today, and it comes after the school enlisted the help of a crisis PR firm.
In the meeting, 9News is told Skerman apologised for the removal of the memorial to Charlotte from outside the gates of the catholic school in Strathfield, in Sydney‘s inner west.
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Skerman reiterated that she believed she was following advice from mental health organisation Headspace when the memorial was removed.
The advice from Headspace is not straightforward – it cautions against inadvertently glamorising suicide, but it also says stopping memorials is not the way to avoid this.
Crucially, the advice from Headspace says to communicate and include family and friends in creating memorials.
While the school did not consult the family before removing their tribute, all parties are now working together to create another memorial for Charlotte.
The family told 9News this will involve butterflies, which were Charlotte’s favourite.
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The family is hoping that the conversation can shift from Charlotte’s death to protecting children from bullying.
The memorial that was removed had been made by Charlotte’s aunty Melinda Rodger and her children on Sunday night. By Monday afternoon, all traces of it were gone.
“We were absolutely devastated to find out late Monday afternoon that it had all been removed … words cannot express how devastated we were,” Rodger told 9News.
She said they had created the memorial 50 days after Charlotte’s death “because we didn’t get the opportunity to say goodbye”.
“It was our special way of giving her something to say you mattered and we miss you.”
Charlotte’s father Mat told 9News that he was “running out of words” to describe how he felt about the way the school had handled his daughter’s death.
“My niece and nephew wanted to honour her … we’re not following a playbook on how to grief, so I’m not going to tell her cousins how they should grieve the loss of their cousin.
“From the school’s perspective, If I was given advice to remove those things, I wouldn’t have touched them.”
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