OPINION: After watching Adolescence, I realised it was telling my daughter’s story
Acclaimed Netflix drama captures a toxic culture many young girls face. For one father who lost his teenager daughter to bullying, it hit painfully close to home
I was away when the series Adolescence first aired. I saw conversations about it online, but it was only when I watched it I realised how closely it relates to my life — more importantly, the life of my daughter Mia.
Its creator, actor Stephen Graham, knows nothing about Mia. Why would he? There are many stories about schoolyard bullying he could choose from — and Adolescence is different. It is solely about the perpetrator — a 13-year-old boy who kills a girl of the same age — and then shows us how misogyny, peer pressure, and toxic masculinity have turned him into someone capable of something so dark.
Making a series about the perpetrator was a choice — and a bold one. But I couldn’t help but feel the weight of that decision because, in our story, Mia was the victim. She didn’t get a voice. She didn’t get a second chance. She didn’t get to be the centre of anyone’s narrative.
My daughter, Mia, was 14. Beautiful, bright, and creative. She loved music, and she loved to dance. She was a cheerleader, full of energy and rhythm. She had a lightness about her but also a deep soul. She grew up listening to the music my wife Marissa and I played at home — opera, jazz and bossa nova — the sounds of our South American roots. She loved it all.
And yet, beneath that joy, she was suffering. Suffering in a way we didn’t see — because the bullying she endured happened out of view. It happened in group chats and in quiet, casual cruelty. And by the time we understood what was happening, it was too late.
Mia took her own life.
The coroner said neither her family nor teachers were aware of the bullying before her death. That line still haunts me. Because others did know.
Her friends came forward. They gave statements to the police. They told them Mia had been bullied by other pupils at JFS. That her friendship group had been cruelly nicknamed the “suicide squad” — a joke, apparently, to some.
Beneath her joy, my daughter was suffering. Suffering in a way we didn’t see — because the bullying she endured happened out of view
A Snapchat group chat, run by boys at the school, mocked her. That same group was used to share nude photos of female classmates – and rate their “attractiveness”. That is the world Mia was navigating. That is the world where she was targeted, judged, and torn down.
And while all this was happening, we were unaware. Mia carried it all alone. How hideous is it that it is only with the popularity of Graham’s Adolescence that people now know about the toxic online culture that affected Mia? The ‘red pill / blue pill’ language that has been hijacked from the film The Matrix by misogynistic online groups targeting young men to convince them that women are manipulative, and inferior and feminism has ruined society.
The school — JFS — said it introduced systemic changes after Mia’s death. That’s what institutions always say, isn’t it? They create new policies. They add lines to handbooks. But are they capable of change? Do they really know what’s happening online, behind closed screens?
Because from where I stand, I’m not convinced.
I never received a phone call. No one from the school reached out after Mia died. Not a single person explained what had happened. Not one sat down with me, face-to-face, to tell the truth. There was just silence.
And that silence speaks volumes.
Four months after Mia’s death, my wife Marisa died too. She collapsed suddenly — an aneurysm. But when doctors tried to treat her, they found something worse: acute myeloid leukaemia. There was nothing they could do.
But I know the truth. The stress, the trauma, the exhaustion of fighting for answers about what happened to our daughter — that’s what took Marisa’s life. Grief killed her.
And so I was left alone. With questions. With silence. With two funerals.
For four years, I’ve been searching for truth. The inquest into Mia’s death was delayed, deferred, and complicated. And when it finally concluded, I was left with more questions than answers. Still, no one took accountability. Still, the silence remained.
And I have to speak about something else — something people don’t always want to hear. It’s about community. I’m not condemning all of UK Jewry. But there are pockets of people — especially in North-West London — who decide where your children should fit and who they should socialise with. People who judge you by your postcode. That was our experience from the beginning. We felt excluded.
We found more acceptance in the Chabad congregation. There, it didn’t matter where we came from. We were simply Jews. But the broader Jewish community we were supposed to belong to? Many retreated. Many stayed silent. And the school — which is government-funded — never stepped forward.
Our communal organisations simply don’t know how to deal with the digital landscape with the toxic culture that so many boys are drowning in. And that ignorance costs lives.
That’s what struck me so forcefully when I watched Adolescence.
It doesn’t flinch. It shows how a boy — still a child — becomes so desensitised to women, to consequences, and to empathy that he ends a life and barely understands what he’s done. It’s hard to watch. It should be. Because it’s also the story of what’s happening quietly, all around us: young boys judging, mocking, sexualising, and dehumanising girls. Every day. Every scroll. Every group chat. Every time we’re told it’s “just banter”.
That was Mia’s world. And the TV drama made me feel, for the first time, that someone else understood that world too.
There are scenes in Adolescence that mirrored our reality. The complicity of those who stay silent. The helplessness of parents. The cruelty passed between teenagers like currency.
And yet, Adolescence gave Mia’s story a voice — even if it wasn’t hers. It opened up a global conversation I’ve been trying to have for four years.
It’s too late for sympathy, and I don’t want it. I want action
I’m not doing this alone. I’ve been working with lawyers and with Bereaved Families for Online Safety – a coalition of parents in the UK who have tragically lost their children due to online harms.
Together with founder Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, who took her life in 2017 after she saw harmful online content, we visit Parliament regularly and campaign for legislative change and amendments to the Online Safety Act to keep the tragedy of our children in the minds of those with the power to protect others.
And yet, the hope of ever seeing those who hurt Mia brought to justice stays painfully out of reach. There has been no accountability. No admissions. No consequences for those who played a part in breaking her spirit.
It’s too late for sympathy, and I don’t want it. I want action.
I want schools to understand what’s really happening to their students — especially girls. I want accountability, not excuses. I want council-run schools that know how to protect, educate, and evolve — not institutions hiding behind tradition and faith while failing to see what’s in front of them.
I want boys to be taught respect, not just rules.
I want teachers to ask questions, not just assume everything is fine.
I want parents to realise that instead of trying to be friends with their children, they should ‘parent’ and know about what they’re doing online, who they’re listening to, and what kind of people they’re becoming.
I don’t want another father, another parent, to sit in my seat. Because silence cost me everything. And I will not sit in it any longer.
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