Schoolboys continually bullied JFS girl ahead of her death, inquest told
Mia Janin, a year 10 pupil at the Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton, north-west London, was found dead at her family home in Harrow on March 12 2021.
Schoolboys allegedly used a group chat to make fun of a 14-year-old fellow pupil who is believed to have killed herself, an inquest has heard.
Mia Janin, a year 10 pupil at the Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton, north-west London, was found dead at her family home in Harrow on March 12 2021.
Her father, Mariano Janin, has said he believes she was cyber-bullied by other pupils at JFS.
Statements given by friends of Mia to the Metropolitan Police following her death were read out to the inquest at Barnet Coroner’s Court on Tuesday.
In the statements, her friends said that Mia was bullied by other pupils at the school, and that their friendship group was nicknamed the “suicide squad” by one of the bullies in the months leading up to her death.
They said that one of Mia’s TikToks was shared to a Snapchat group chat called ‘Panacha’ which was run by male pupils at JFS, where they made fun of her.
One child said the boys used the group chat to post messages mocking girls at the school and to share photos of the girls they had taken from social media and then superimposed on to the nude bodies of porn stars.
One child, who described the group as ‘intimidating’ and ‘disrespectful’ said: ‘I never saw the group chat but did know things would be shared on it because people would talk about what was being shared at school.’
The pupils claimed this chat was widely known about at the school and in another statement read out at the inquest, one of Mia’s friends said: ‘JFS probably did know about Mia’s bullying. Could they not see anything? How did they miss the bullying that was happening in front of them?’
Another added: ‘The school was in denial all the time. They didn’t know she was being bullied and didn’t hold those who bullied her accountable.’
One of the statements described how the group which was mostly boys, bullied her and other students ‘on buses and in class’, while another described how boys kicked footballs at her and her friends, whilst calling her names.
Most of the children who gave statements knew Mia was being bullied, but didn’t know how bad things were getting, with one saying: ‘She hid it really well.’
The inquest heard that the Snapchat group was deleted after Mia’s death at the request of Rabbi Cohen, then deputy head at JFS and school safeguarding lead.
The inquest heard that Mia posted a TikTok video on the evening of March 10, before she returned to school after the end of Covid restrictions on March 11. In the TikTok she criticised a clothing brand created by two of the pupils who were bullying her and it was shared on the group, which led to her receiving lots of negative comments. Mia also sent a voice note to a friend in which she said she was ‘mentally preparing herself to get bullied’ as a result of the video.
A number of the children said she seemed ‘normal’, the next day.“Mia said she was fine, but I don’t think that she was fine,” said a pupil, but one of her friends recalled a conversation they had had at lunch: ‘She said ‘if you died, would people care about you the next day?’ ‘I didn’t think it was a big deal, we laughed it off’ .
Mr Janin told the inquest that his daughter asked if she could move school after coming home on March 11.
The inquest heard that his wife Marisa, who died four months after her daughter, told Mia she could be homeschooled for the rest of the school year, and that they would look into moving her to a new school after.
Mia then went to bed. Hours later, she was dead. Area coroner Tony Murphy said that there was no evidence that any images or videos involving Mia had been shared in the group chat, except for the TikTok.
The inquest heard that JFS’s position is that the school was not aware of the existence of the group chat before Mia’s death.
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