Metropolitan Police said it was returning a sim card and mobile phone, which it lost, to the family of a schoolgirl who took her own life after she was bullied.
Mia Janin, 14, died after being bullied by other students at the Jewish Free School in north-west London, in 2021. An inquest concluded she was being bullied by boys at the school. Her father said new laws were needed to tackle cyber-bullying. Mariano Janin had previously said his family was “devastated” the Met Police had lost significant evidence. The force, at the time, said the sim card and handset had been examined by specialists, before it was put in a property store at Barnet police station with the intention of them returning it to her family at a later date. But when her family requested the items to be returned last year, police were unable to find them. In a statement on Sunday, police said all evidence gathered during its investigation was passed to the coroner for the inquest and the force had since spoken to representatives of the family to arrange the return of the sim card from her main phone and a second handset.The force was unable to clarify when it found the items, when asked by the BBC. Earlier, Mr Janin told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that cyber-bullying should be made a specific crime to protect children. In the UK, there is no specific law on bullying or cyber-bullying and the courts rely on other legislation around harassment and malicious communications.
Speaking to the programme, Mr Janin said: “I think we need to do something against bullying. We need to revise the existing legislation about bullying, try to understand and try to act, do something.” He continued: “We need to transmit to our kids values, normal values, kindness, acceptance, understanding – then we need of course some kind of legal boundaries for social media.” Mia was found dead at her Harrow family home a day after returning to Jewish Free School (JFS) following the lifting of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. After her death, her parents began to piece together evidence that she was being bullied by a group of male students on social media, and in person. In a voice note sent to a friend the night before she died, Mia said: “Tomorrow’s going to be a rough day, I’m taking deep breaths in and out. I’m currently mentally preparing myself to get bullied tomorrow.” Earlier this week, the coroner for north London issued a report to JFS urging its leaders to take further action on bullying to prevent future deaths, particularly the targeting of female pupils by males. A spokesperson for the school said Ofsted found pupils at the school felt confident to report bullying concerns to staff.
