Trinidad: Grieving mother blames school for son's suicide following bullying incident

Trinidad and Tobago: The mother of the 15-year-old, Jayden Lalchan, who committed suicide on October 3 after an alleged bullying incident at school, is slamming the school authorities for not handling the complaints properly.

She said that she is still looking for a call back from the school officials so that this tragic matter could be addressed.

Jayden’s parents, Fareeda and Rohan Lalchan, lamented the lack of action by officials at St Stephen’s College in Trinidad as the child made numerous reports to them about alleged bullying by his classmates. 

The mother explained that the child had a problem, so the bullies would laugh at him and tell him to go back to his country and would be calling his names. “He walk like they speak like a gay,” claimed the mother when asked what type of names would the bullies call Lalchan.

She also claimed that she herself went to the school to speak to the former teacher about it but they did not take any action so the things continued to take place from form one to form four and after all these years, the teenager lost hope and took his own life. 

Fareeda revealed the recent bullying incident which took place earlier that week and said that students were throwing words at her son and snatched his mask off his face. 

She said that this pushed Jayden to hit back at one of them following which the guy’s nose started to bleed. The mother claimed, “And after that, they started sending threats to him, which I wish we have record of.”

Fareeda noted that Jayden was so scared that he could not even leave the school compound and his teacher had to escort him home. 

“He feared that the bully and his friends would probably attack him once he left the school,” added the mother. 

She also highlighted that she visited the school after this incident, but the school authorities said that several students had to be interviewed first following which they would call her. 

The mother said that her son died and up to this, she never received a phone call from the school.