Bullies drove me to attempt suicide

THE razor blade cut into Paula Thorburn's arm, scoring open the flesh and releasing a steady stream of warm, sticky blood.

It didn't hurt much - not compared to the pain she had felt day in and day out, tormented and teased by teenage bullies who had left her fearing high school and wishing she was dead.

She nearly achieved that too, she nods, recalling how she lifted a bottle of painkillers prescribed to help her cope with the thumping migraine headaches that plagued her... and methodically swallowed more than a dozen pills before lying down to die.

That she didn't end it there and then was luck - a few more of the paracetamol and codeine-based tablets and Paula, now a softly spoken college student with hopes of one day becoming a writer, might well be dead.

"I don't really know what was going through my head," she admits, now 17 and remembering the cloudy haze that fogged her thoughts as the drugs took hold and an overwhelming desire to sleep enveloped her body.

"I suppose I thought if I did it, killed myself, then I wouldn't be in this pain any more - no-one would be able to hurt me again."

Today her teenage anguish, the self-harming and several frightening attempts to kill herself have all been replaced with a burning anger. Furious over the way her education was shattered by vicious tormentors, she has embarked on a bold attempt to sue Edinburgh City Council for failing to protect her.

Her legal action - she is now waiting for legal aid chiefs to consider her application for funding - would be her second journey to the Scottish courts. When she was still just 14 years old she became only the second person in Scottish legal history to be issued with an interdict to protect her from another 14-year-old girl at her school, Tynecastle High. Today Paula reflects with sadness on a miserable time spent dodging the bullies who teased her for her red hair, and, cruelly, for her disability. At just six years old she underwent surgery to remove cataracts from her eyes, leaving her partially blind and wearing thick glasses.

"I was having such a bad time, I was in my room and I had these tablets, Migraleve, to take for the cluster headaches that I got," she says. "I took probably 15 of them and started to feel dizzy and sick.

"I didn't think about how what I was doing would upset my mum, I just wanted it all to end. I got so sleepy I lay on my bed and didn't think about waking up."

Luckily she did, but would repeat the episode twice more.

"I was so self-conscious," she recalls. "I had this carrot-coloured, gingery hair, glasses, and people started to pick on me. I was about 12 years old.

"Until then I liked school, then after it started, I didn't want to go back. The worst bit was when someone shoved me in the back when I was walking downstairs. I fell down 20 steps." She claims she landed in front of a teacher who just looked at her and told her to get up and go to her class.

There were many other incidents - both at Tynecastle and later at Currie High, where Paula went to escape her tormentors, only to be bullied there too.

On one occasion, desperate to get away from her antagonists, she fled out of the school building and into the path of an oncoming bus, narrowly escaping being knocked down.

While Paula has now left the bullies behind and is working to catch up on her education at college, shocking figures just released from the ChildLine charity have revealed there are hundreds of girls in the same state today that Paula was.

They are so despairing of their lives that they are seriously considering killing themselves. According to the counselling service, four out of every five calls UK-wide involved discussions with girls about their suicidal feelings, with around 1100 Scots children calling to discuss mental health issues such as depression.

ChildLine counsellors have now called on Government ministers to tackle the shortages of specialist therapists to help troubled children through bullying, mental issues, family troubles, exam stress and eating disorders.

"When young people talk about suicide they are obviously in deep despair," says assistant director of ChildLine Joelle Leader. "They are at crisis point with no one else to turn to, which is why they call us.

"The number of children who rang to talk about mental health issues last year in the UK could have filled 250 classrooms, so it's a big problem."

"We are able to give immediate advice to these young people, who are going through a terrifying experience, but it is clear that those who call us with serious problems may need more intensive therapeutic support over a sustained period.

"At the moment, there are simply not enough therapeutic services for children with these problems, and we are urging the Government to give this issue urgent attention."

News that there are still major flaws in the way troubled children are offered support deeply concerns Paula, of Baird Drive, Saughtonhall. "I wouldn't want anyone to go through that," she says. "I tried to tell my headteacher at Tynecastle, but I was told to go to a guidance teacher who, as far as I could see, didn't do anything to stop it.

"My advice to anyone going through this today is to stand up to the bullies and don't let them win - but that's not easy."

For Jacqueline Wallace, 40, Paula's mum, watching her younger daughter crumble at the hands of bullies was a nightmare - and it has fired her determination to hold the city council to account. "If we get legal aid we will go to court - as long as Paula feels she can cope with it," she says.

"The bottom line is that they should not get away with having let things get as far as they did with Paula, no-one should. We firmly believe they were in the wrong, that they didn't help her when she wanted help. We went through a lot of channels, there were lots of chances for them to do the right thing. Instead, they spent more time putting pressure on me for keeping her at home from school - I once had a social worker at the house telling me it was all my fault and that I didn't care enough about Paula's future.

"I said 'get the hell out of my house' but they kept threatening me and said they'd take Paula away from me - things which were said in front of Paula. My daughter ended up seeing a psychiatrist - and I blame the council for that."

She removed Paula from high school for almost 18 months, determined not to send her back into an environment in which she could be bullied again. Eventually education officials agreed to fund a place at an independent school - Dunedin School in Gilmerton Road - where Paula completed her secondary education.

The interdict in 2004, explains Jacqueline, was the only route she could think to take to try to stop the Tynecastle High bullying, even though it wasn't totally effective.

"We heard about a girl up north who had become the first in Scotland to do this because she was being bullied," Jacqueline explains. "It was a big step, but what else could we do? We felt that no-one was listening to us and that Paula needed protection because we were really scared for what might happen next.

"The bullying wasn't just in school and it wasn't just one person. There were about 20 kids in all, boys and girls. They'd watch me leaving the house, knock on the door and try to get Paula to come out so there'd be a fight.

"The worst thing is that as a parent, you are an adult and you know you're dealing with kids, but it was more than just one - there was a group of them."

For Paula, the nightmare of her schooldays is in the past. She sometimes sees some of her tormentors, now either pregnant, single mums or on drugs, she says. "I was scared of them for a long time," she adds, remembering what should have been the best days of her life but were actually the worst. "Now, I'm just angry."

For the council, Andrew Burns, executive member for children and families, says: "It is not appropriate to comment on individual cases. However, we take all incidents of bullying extremely seriously in all of our establishments. The Children and Families Department has recently issued revised guidelines - Positively Challenging Bullying Racism and Discrimination, which we hope will promote a culture where raising concerns is encouraged, and in which everyone accepts their responsibility to positively challenge bullying and other forms of discrimination and harassment.

"We have a wide range of initiatives in place to prevent bullying, including buddying systems, peer mentoring, playground supervision and befriending schemes.

"Proactive and preventative work also includes curricular activities such as circle time and personal and social development in primary, secondary and special schools.

"During 2006, the Children and Families Department also participated in two parent information night events, where our anti-bullying initiatives were showcased."