18-05-2025
Mother who fears her son died taking part in an online challenge battles for changes to the government's Data Bill
A mother fighting for changes to the government's Data Bill said she won't stop until she gets answers as to why her son killed himself.
Ellen Roome has been campaigning to change the law since her 14-year-old son Jools Sweeney took his own life three years ago.
Ms Roome, 48, has been campaigning for an amendment to the law that would force social media companies such as Snapchat and Meta to give bereaved parents access to their child's data in the event of their death.
Jools was found dead in his bedroom after taking his own life but a coroner was unable to confirm if he was in a suicidal mood before his death.
Ms Roome from Cheltenham, said Jools did a 'lot of online challenges' and fears he fell victim to a 'dangerous' one such as Blackout which linked to the deaths of dozens of young people.
MPs passed The Data (Use and Access) Bill last week, but the change proposed by Ms Roome was not voted on.
The proposed bill would allow bereaved parents to request their child's user data from up to 12 months before their death.
Ms Roome met with ministers on Thursday to discuss the amendment - and she is hopeful the law will go further in allowing parents access to data from their children's phones.
She said: '[They] Ministers made it perfectly clear that they had listened to me and that they would take on board what I said.
'I met the Ministers who confirmed the Data Bill process that once a child dies that they can automatically preserve a request of data from Ofcom and then Ofcom will request to preserve data for a child that has died, which is really positive news for children going forward.
'90 days and the data goes off the phone - I know of another mum whose phone is sitting on a queue waiting to be looked at. That's not good enough - it needs to be preserved within days so that social media companies can't delete it and that data is there in case it is needed.
'I did raise that we need some training with regards to the police and the coroner assistant to make that they know how it is actually done. All the police forces get different training which I think it is crazy in England. They should have centralised training that they all get trained the same way.
'How do you make sure the coroner's know how to request it is my next battle but hopefully that will happen.'
In Jools' case - police did not access his phone until months after his death a when data had been deleted.
Ms Roome has since been campaigning to get access to Jools' social media data.
She said: 'I kind of hoped, naively, that I thought the coroner might say that they could re-do his inquest, but I can't do that without a legal battle of High Court.
'I'm hoping a nice barrister might come forward and offer to do some pro bono work for me.
'Not getting answers of how my son died seems wrong.'
Some social media companies told her that they cannot release the data because of issues around privacy and others have said they would only do so if a court order was given.
She said: 'I have raised some money which I used - twenty thousand pounds for forensics - but I need the data service from the social media companies because when we did forensics there was massive gaps in the data that we could get from the phone.
'I need the social media companies to release that data to me and that's frustrating that social media companies have information on my child that I can't access and whilst there is a possibility it might get the answers as to why Jools ended his own life I need to try that.
'It is the only piece that we haven't looked at.'
