Bullied 12 year old's final video message before he was found dead

News.com.au

2 days ago

Sydney schoolboy Hamish Carter recorded a video message for the kids who had tormented
him for so long and called him a 'pussy'. And then he was gone.
He took his life just 50m from his family home. His mobile phone and school jacket sat right where his little feet had stood just minutes before.
The phone's home screen displayed a screenshot of his full name and the numbers needed to
unlock the device.
Hamish had left a clue to his heartache.
He had left on his phone a video which contained no vision, only his voice over a black screen. It seems he wanted everyone to hear his final message and to know he wasn't a 'pussy'.
He'd proven them wrong, and he'd done what he said he would do.
Hamish had died by suicide after a sustained campaign of bullying. He was just 12 years old.
In a harrowing interview with news.com.au, Hamish's mother Jodie Carter said she had finally found the strength to speak up after a debilitating two years of drowning in grief.
'We've had to see our beautiful boy's body laid out in the coroner's room to formally identify
him, that is a trauma no parent should have to face,' Ms Carter told news.com.au.
'I'm still on antidepressants. I was pretty much drunk for a year and f***ed my business up
and our lives.
'I remember thinking, 'I want to do something to help others, in honour of Hamish', but I was a wreck, as well as the rest of the family.'
Now she is ready to 'fight and scream and yell' in honour of Hamish and for 'every other
darling child who has been bullied' and every devastated family whose lives are changed
'because some little assholes just couldn't help themselves'.
She blames the pattern of behaviour left unchecked from year 1 to year 7 resulting in
Hamish's declining mental health.
She'd willed high school to be better. But Hamish had already lost his glow; his warm smile
taken over by a heavy brood, a sadness behind his eyes.
On the day that 'changed things forever', Jodie and Steve Carter woke after a fun family night getting ready for Christmas 2022.
Ms Carter had let Hamish, a year 7 student at Menai High, stay home from school on the last day of term after 'a rough few weeks'.
Putting up the Christmas tree was usually a family affair. But this time Hamish was grumpy.
'He didn't want to come out of his room and help us. We had to drag him down,' Ms Carter
recalled.
'Eventually, he put up one decoration. I was trying to get some photos of him in front of the
tree with the girls. I took one of him on his own with a bit of a scowl on his face.
'Little did I realise that was the last photo I would ever take of him.'
Hamish and his two sisters had dinner with their parents, chatted about presents and teased
each other while they washed the dishes.
As Ms Carter wandered off to bed she could hear the familiar sounds of Hamish on his
PlayStation, laughing with friends.
'He gave me a reluctant hug goodnight, and that was the last time I saw him alive,' she said.
She woke to the back door wide open.
'I thought to myself 'I must go and tell Hamish off for leaving it open all night'.'
She presumed he had wandered outside at some point during the night but looking back,
she isn't even sure why that option crossed her mind.
'I went upstairs and Hamish's door was slightly open. It looked like he was in the bed, but
when I patted it, he wasn't there,' she said.
'I thought he must be in the bathroom. I checked the bathroom, he was not there.
'I had an awful feeling something bad had happened. I ran outside to Steve, 'Is Hamish out
Here? Have you seen him?,' she asked.
'No', he said.
'I checked the Find My iPhone app. I could see his phone was at the end of the street in the bush. I started freaking out, told Steve I was going to look for him and jumped in the car before he could even join me.
'I raced down the street slamming the car half into the kerb when I looked out ... I spotted his school jacket and his phone,' she said.
'I started screaming his name hysterically, calling out to him and running up and down around the area where his phone was ....
'I was trying to dial Triple 0 on my phone and my fingers just wouldn't work and I couldn't do it. I was crying so much I could hardly breathe.
'Somehow, all these people seemed to turn up from nowhere … By then Steve had turned up and the girls too. Everyone was calling his name and rushing around. Next thing the police. I was yelling at them to get dogs here, get a helicopter,' Ms Carter said.
'They told us the dog squad was on its way and we should go back to the house. By the time we got back there we could hear the dogs barking and there were two helicopters flying right over our house and into the bush out the back.
'The noise was deafening and the bush was crawling with cops searching and calling out for Hamish. And then the real beginning of our awful nightmare story began.'
Fighting back tears, Ms Carter said her son was ultimately killed by all his bullies and the damage their endless taunting had done to him.
Even though he had made new friends in year 7, he had lost all his confidence and was still
being bullied by some girls and others who just seemed to feed off his loss of confidence.
'He was so hurt by them and felt so bad, he was always being suspended and teachers
never seemed to want to hear his side of the story,' Ms Carter said.
'He felt useless and what was the point in trying to express his story when they didn't listen to him anyway. He was cornered and felt this was the only way out.
'As much as other kids may have seen him try to act cool or as if it didn't affect him, it did,' she said.
'He had a heart of gold, he was the most loving, beautiful, kind young child and we as his family saw this beautiful side of him. He was super clever and emotionally intelligent. He had real feelings.'
The sad days started for Hamish in year 1 at Tharawal Primary School.
'In primary it was one particular boy and then a number of others, as word got around that
he was a good target,' Ms Carter said.
'He was bullied for so damn long, and we were told by the school they would handle it. We were told he should be more resilient.'
The school suggested Hamish be assessed for autism. His parents obliged and the specialist found he was suffering trauma from extreme bullying.
'All of this was reported back to them and yet they still wanted to blame him. If he lashed out at other kids he was punished and suspended.'
Ms Carter believes the other kids were never reprimanded or punished.
'So why bother? We tried counselling, therapy, and various different things, and it still went
on,' she said.
Ms Carter said she feels guilty she couldn't do more for Hamish and wished she'd taken him out of school.
'We were listening to who we thought were the experts,' she said.
'I wish like hell I had just taken him out of the school initially when this all first started happening and he was escaping school and running home to be with me.
'This just makes me feel so sick and sad that I couldn't protect my little boy.'
The depths of Hamish's private hell really seeped to the surface when it was too late - on the day of his funeral.
Ms Carter's phone was bombarded with images from her son's phone, their digital worlds
merging thanks to iCloud.
The mourning mum was confronted with suicide memes and troubling images, some she
didn't understand.
'A beautiful 12-year-old boy who was so loved, so clever, so kind and generous, does not
just take his life for the hell of it,' Ms Carter said.
'He was so hurt by them and felt so bad, all of their evil taunting mixed with teachers not
believing him had damaged his self esteem and general sense of worth so much he thought
this was the only way out.
'He thought his life was not worth living and we would be better off without him. How the f**k could our beautiful boy be so mentally tormented and damaged by another? How can another young person do that to a fellow student?
'All those bullies have blood on their hands, as do the principals who let it happen, the
teachers and the parents of the bullies, all of them.
'This has to stop. How many children have to die like this before something changes. He was a 12-year-old boy, he had his whole life ahead of him.'
A NSW Department of Education spokesman issued a statement to news.com.au saying:
'We were deeply saddened by the tragic death of Hamish Carter in 2022. It greatly affected the school communities, and our thoughts remain with his family, friends and loved ones.
'NSW schools have a zero-tolerance approach to bullying and are committed to providing safe, respectful learning environments. Counselling and wellbeing support were made available to all affected students and staff.'