“They told him he would go to hell for being gay”

Elias Arthur Fritchley was 12 years old and had a whole life ahead of him, however on November 28 he decided to commit suicide to end his suffering. For some time I was being harassed by peers high school at Cascade High School in Bedford County, due to his sexual orientation.

As explained by the parents, Elias liked to paint his nails and the color pink. Something that was used by his classmates to make fun of him. “I think they probably used the fact that he wore the same clothes every day as a weapon,” says his mother.

Also, quite often They repeated that “if he said he was gay i was going to hell“recall the parents.

At first, the parents thought that Elias was not paying attention to such comments. “He didn’t care, or at least we thought he didn’t care, and that’s the really difficult thing for us because we think he didn’t care.”

However, this constant verbal abuse It began to take its toll on the little boy until he couldn’t take it anymore. “Words hurt, they really hurt. We all fail him, it’s as simple as that,” they lament.

Now, Elias’s family has wanted to launch a message to help other children who are in a similar situation and to make the world aware of the terrible consequences of bullying and bullying.

Victim of bullying

A case that recalls the ordeal that another teenager went through in Barcelona before taking her own life. Last May, Kira, a 15-year-old girl, committed suicide by falling from an eighth floor after being victim of bullying. The girl’s parents then denounced the school for not investigating the case and for not applying the ‘anti-bullying’ protocol.