The 13-year-old committed suicide in May. A white march in tribute to Lindsay was held this Sunday in Liévin, in Pas-de-Calais, calling for better listening to victims of harassment and sanctioning the perpetrators. About 200 people marched to the cemetery where the teenager is buried. They observed a minute of silence and released balloons, for Lindsay and all the children and adolescents who were harassed.
Present at the march, the academic director of the National Education Services of Pas-de-Calais, Jean-Roger Ribaud, did not speak. “Today, there really needs to be a law and real sanctions, that can change things,” stressed Lindsay’s mother, Betty Gervois, while estimating that the file is “advancing” with the Minister of Justice. Education, Gabriel Attal.
“There is a new breath coming from politics”
She said she receives messages every day from other harassed children or adolescents, via the address of the “Les wings de Lindsay” association. “There is a new breath coming from politics but which has not yet come from establishments, which we deplore, not all of them yet applying the PHARe program” (for the prevention of harassment and cyberharassment), said the president. of the association of Sufferers of the school, Michel Bucamp.
After Lindsay’s death, the government promised additional means to combat harassment. At the end of September, he presented a plan which notably provides for empathy courses from 2024, reinforced training for law enforcement and magistrates, the confiscation of phones for perpetrators of serious cyberharassment and the possibility of excluding student harassers on social networks.
In Lindsay’s case, four minors were indicted for “school harassment leading to suicide.” An adult was indicted for “death threats”. An administrative investigation was also opened by the Ministry of National Education. The family, who said they had received “no support” during Lindsay’s harassment, filed a complaint against the establishment, the rectorate, the police but also Facebook. The rectorate filed a complaint for insults and threats against the staff of the Lindsay college.