06/04/2007
Inquest: Boy Killed Himself on Train Track After Gay Bullying
Jonathan Reynolds, a 15-year-old in South Wales, was killed by a train after he laid on the tracks to commit suicide in January 2006 because he had been bullied in school over his sexuality, an inquest heard last week. According to the Times Online, Reynolds had confided to a friend he was gay just weeks earlier.
The paper reports: "Moments before he died, Jonathan Reynolds sent harrowing text messages to his family telling that them they were not to blame for what was about to happen. A passer-by saw him holding the mobile as he lay down on the tracks in front of a train travelling at 85mph (136km/h) through Pencoed railway station near Bridgend, South Wales. In his last text message sent to his father, Mark, and his 14-year-old sister, Samantha, the teenager wrote: 'Tell everyone that this is for anybody who eva said anything bad about me, see I do have feelings too. Blame the people who were horrible and injust 2 me. This is because of them, I am human just like them. I hope they rot in hell 4 what they made me do. They know who they are.' He added: 'None of you blame urself mum, dad, Sam and the rest of my family. This is not because of you.' A postmortem examination showed that Jonathan, who achieved a grade A in his GCSE Welsh oral exam on the day he died, had a blood-alcohol level three and a half times the legal limit for driving."
A man walking his dog was witness to Reynolds' final moments: “He had a mobile in his hand. I called out and said, ‘Get off the track’. He looked at me and just put his head back down and I saw him walking across the track. I was walking across the bridge and he was walking across the track and he seemed to lie down and the train came.”
Boy, 15, lay down in front of train after gay taunts [times online]
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 8:41 AM EST by Andy in Gay Youth, News, Wales | Permalink
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This made me cry.
Posted by: Bill | Jun 4, 2007 8:58:27 AM
A touch dramatic.
Posted by: please | Jun 4, 2007 10:20:41 AM
This really moved me. I can't remember the last time I cried and this brought tears to my eyes.
Posted by: Matt | Jun 4, 2007 10:43:54 AM
Tragic.
I'm a bit uncomfortable at the extent to which he blames his (admittedly vile) persecutors for his actions, but I'll give it a pass because
-you're not in your right mind when committing suicide
-he's 15
-he chose an awesome way to go (ok, I'm going to hell now. but seriously? if you're going to go out? go out with as much drama as possible!)
Posted by: karashi | Jun 4, 2007 10:50:06 AM
wow, really sad stuff ... in some ways i feel really lucky for the way i grew up. i graduated highschool back in 1995, but was able to start a school group for gay and lesbian students, and received lots of support from the school when people would pick on me for being (VERY) gay ...
Posted by: luke | Jun 4, 2007 12:36:40 PM
Karashi...personally, I think if you're going out, there's no need to cause so much trouble for other people...I feel sorry for the drivers of these trains, who will never forget the helplessness & panic they feel when seeing someone standing in front of their train, let alone the image of them being hit at such a high speed. It must be such a horrible experience
Posted by: jakob | Jun 4, 2007 1:26:11 PM
He was probably an undiagnosed depressive, for which there are only very limited treatments currently (counciling basically) and which often unrecognized because we all "know" that teens are moody. It's important to track the mood of gay teens closely when they first come out and get them some gay friends to talk to, as the suicide rate is way to high as it is. That said, depressives rarely confide in others for fear of rejection, which makes thing even more difficult.
Posted by: anon (gmail.com) | Jun 4, 2007 1:33:04 PM
Obviously a terrible thing, but he was incredibly drunk at the time. I wonder how much his decision was affected by the amount of alcohol he had in his blood.
Posted by: Alec | Jun 4, 2007 2:05:37 PM
Poor baby - hopefully he found some peace.
Posted by: Giovanni | Jun 4, 2007 2:09:26 PM
i don't feel bad he has good grades. Look them in the eye like i do and say you little fuck didn't your parent treat you how to talk to your betters. You'll be luckky to be working for me and m car will cost mroe than you make a year, I am a physical specimen of perfection now your place. I show them im better dress up every day go to library during lunch, and live up to my words not kill myself.
MAke it short i pull out my phone (usually one they have been saving up and their parents can't get) and i say aisle 5 when they say what i say thats what you'll be saying in ten years or whip cellphone out and say in ten years you'll be pouring my coffee,pumping my gas,washinig my car,or packing my bags bitch
Posted by: sasha | Jun 4, 2007 2:14:35 PM
Damaging effects of the closet
.
I believe that it is especially important today to discuss the damaging effects that the closet has had and continues to have on gay people. Given the current political climate of a presidential election approaching it is time to put “the closet” in some sort of context. It is also time for all of the candidates to step up to the plate and say how they really feel in spite of what the fear the ramifications may be. Gay rights are a civil rights issue that the candidates need to take a stand on without double speaking to protect their political asses. We need to provide some context for which people can better understand what “the closet” is and what it does to those that are in it. “The closet” is the emotional hiding place that many gay people recoil into out of fear of perhaps losing the love of their families or the acceptance of their school-mates.
When children reach a certain age when they begin to understand social expectations and what society deems proper and improper is when “the closet” door goes shut on an important part of early childhood development, being their sexuality. Children learn earlier than perhaps people realize that their same sex attractions are not considered normal but in fact unhealthy and morally reprehensible to many. These processes for heterosexual children as they discover their sexuality are such delicious feelings that add a whole new dimension to their lives. Gay children are denied this. Gay children in an effort to be considered normal will learn to role play or act as if they share the same feelings of opposite sex attractions.
Going into the closet is a terrifying and lonely experience that causes gay children feelings of deep loneliness. Suicide among gay teens is epidemic. They feel that they are the only ones in the world with these “abhorrent feelings. All children want and need to feel accepted by their peers in order to develop a healthy sense of self. They are instead bombarded daily by representations and celebrations of heterosexuality in the media, advertisements, at school and basically everywhere they look, those are the only images presented.
One important point I would like to make is that other minority children living within a dominant culture at least have their families to go home to that don’t wish that they were of the majority culture. However gay children do go home to straight parents that do wish their children were straight, that is if they even knew the truth which is rare. These closeted children live in constant fear of having their true nature discovered and will therefore often practice through observation what they believe it looks like to appear heterosexual. They will begin editing their speech, their walk, the way they move their bodies all because of the fear of being discovered or “outed” so to speak. This editing process is not only demeaning, exhausting but also damaging to ones self-worth.
However, often when gay children graduate from school and go out on their own and perhaps go on to college they will generally find others just like themselves with the same sexual orientation. As any reasonable person can imagine what it must feel like to finally fit in and feel a sense of camaraderie for likely the first time in their lives. These feelings can be an overwhelmingly wonderful experience. So overpowering and overwhelming that it can also unfortunately be a double edged sword and be dangerous as well. These now young adults will often out of their desperate need to feel those wondrous feelings of total acceptance for who they are will often then simply acquiesce to the pre-established norms and behaviors of the gay culture in which they now find themselves a part of. We need to understand that these men and woman that make up gay culture bring with them their own emotional baggage of what the closet has done to them throughout their lives. These accumulated wounds from childhood will often manifest in a variety of ways. Many of these manifested behaviors are not necessarily healthy.
The pitfalls that gays need to be ever vigilant about are the fact that addictions of all varieties and suicides are at a much higher rate than their heterosexual counterparts. The damage of the closet then can lead these young men and woman to adopt these behaviors so as to feel a part of that culture as well. There emotional damage has already been done so they are much more easily influenced by the culture enough so that they will follow along with the unhealthy and damaging behaviors as a means of dulling the pain of life long feelings of social denunciation.
We as a society need to be more compassionate to these emotionally damaged souls and start accepting them for whom they are no matter what their sexual orientation may be. This will not happen over night but we have to start somewhere if we are to be a part of the process of the healing of generations of gay men and woman that have been stigmatized for only one reason, that being whom they are innately attracted too. Aaron Jason Silver www.aaronjasonsilver.com
Posted by: aaron jason silver | Jun 4, 2007 6:03:10 PM
Simply shocking story about an all-too well-known problem facing gay kids.
I absolutely agree with Aaron - thanks for the impassioned plea for tolerance - but feel so sad that a boy, who bears my family name, can feel so lonely and desperate that he ends it all. RIP dear boy.
Posted by: Sean R | Jun 4, 2007 8:15:44 PM
RIP Jonathon.
Posted by: Mike | Jun 4, 2007 11:04:36 PM
Reynolds was neither in the closet, nor in college, and he was very young when he came out, so his specific suicide seems to be more the result of some clinical depression. It is hard to diagnose from a distance, however, as he might have been on medications, or been binge drinking, smoking or doing other contributory behaviors. Suicide is almost always the result of clinical depression, though terminally ill patients who are rationally depressed may sometimes wish to end their lives early. There are cases of suicide in very young children, though these cases need a lot of scrutiny to rule out accident or murder. In terms of the closet, the irony is that str8 teens need health education classes in parenting that include the possibility that their own kids might be gay and what to do about it. This would go a long way towards ending the problems of the closet. Most str8 parents ignore the signs of a gay child and think they will someday "switch" to str8. This sort of denial is almost inevitable (it applies to drug use, poor grades, poor social skills, eating disorders and criminal activity all the time as well). The parents are thus often the first and "last" to know about their own gay kids.
Posted by: anon (gmail.com) | Jun 5, 2007 12:41:56 AM
Help get the word out about local and regional resources available to GLBT youth. Write a letter to your local newspaper about what resources are available, or write radio and tv stations asking them to do a story about GLBT Youth service providers. Or if you are good at organizing parties, do a fundraiser for a GLBT Youth group. Either way, it doesn't take much to make a tremendous difference in people's lives by educating others and empowering others with the knowledge that they are never alone.
Posted by: HELP OUT | Jun 5, 2007 5:21:44 AM
That is just horrible... I wonder how many poor kids have passed on because of society's ills... then again, I have to wonder how he got a hold of that much alcohol in the first place :(
Posted by: HB | Jun 7, 2007 3:50:59 AM
surprise... now he's another statistic.
Posted by: The Flash | Jun 10, 2007 7:15:54 PM
I find it shocking that most of the posts I read almost found it acceptable to place "blame" on how this kid chose to end his life. Drunk or not (which If you are going to lay in front of a train you are probably going to need some sort of sedation) he was choosing to end his life due to what he felt was "injustice" and "mistreatment" due to his sexual orientation. And to whomever said something about his "dramatic end" I am just sickened that someone would measure his level of "drama" in how he ended his life. This was a young man, desparate for peace and be left alone for who he was, who figured no way out of the intrapsychic hell in which he lived. His death does make the fight for equality for all persons all the more energized and important. Although I dont advocate his blaming those that had mistreated him as the cause for his death, if he hadnt said it, you know those that did mistreat him (considering they had an ounce of humanity or empathy)will think about the last time they saw him, mistreated him, or made trouble for him. That is the last thing they will remember, and to them, a small price to pay, and may their actions be judged by others as well.
Posted by: Shane | Jun 10, 2007 11:34:04 PM
The blame is on the society, but most importantly, the older generation for not doing enough for the youth. In America, the old pretty much live an elite life, spending it on travel and fashion and theatre, while the young people are dying, homeless, poor, and all stuck in the closet. It is the failures of our community to reach rural youth. Our youth aren't just born in the Village or West Hollywood, you know? For example, I am transgender, have no money, no resources, and not a clue what the hell is going to happen to me. I'm stuck in this pathetic little town in the Poconos, which I know it's not but still it has got to be the worst place to grow up something different.
You know what I think though? I think with all of the gay marriage and how far we're come and all that bullshit, I still think deep down inside all of us are no different than how we used to be in the 50's or the early 60's. We may have Tyra Banks now and Barbara Walters to do specials and 60 Minutes might not be afraid to say the word "gay" anymore, but for me, it has might as well be 1970. (The only Transgender books in my library are psychological 1960's hit-jobs that call people like me "homosexual transsexuals".)
Posted by: juliana | Jun 11, 2007 8:03:14 AM