The mother of a 17-year-old boy who died by suicide after being ‘encouraged’ to drink poison by members of an online forum has called for stricter policing of self-harm content.
Anna Nikolin-Caisley’s son Vlad died in May of last year after ingesting a poison which he learned about from a ‘pro-suicide’ group.
There have been numerous calls to ban the group whose membership totals over 50,000 users globally, although it still remains active in the UK.
In the case of Vlad, it was this online forum which saw him able to create a ‘suicide kit’ which included various poisons, pills and other items in the bedroom of his family’s Hampshire home.
The tragic incident occurred in the early hours of the morning on May 7 last year when Mrs Nikolin-Caisley was awoken suddenly by her son’s screams for a doctor.
Having consumed the poison, Vlad’s father Graham Caisley said that his son staggered upstairs before collapsing on his bedroom floor.
Vlad then suffered multiple seizures, with his parents describing the incident as ‘violent’ and ‘sudden’.
The Government claim that the new Online Safety Act, which is due to come into effect this year, will result in the wholesale removal of illegal suicide and self-harm content, but the Samaritans charity have criticised its implementation by arguing it does not go far enough.
Vlad Nikolin-Caisley (pictured) died by suicide last May after ingesting poison
Vlad (right) pictured with his older sisters who have also called for stricter policing around self-harm websites
‘I can’t even start imagining the terror he went through’, a heartbroken Mrs Nikolin-Caisley told the BBC.
Dramatic police bodycam footage also managed to capture the chaos as emergency services arrived on the scene.
Mr Caisley had been performing CPR under the instruction of an ambulance operator on speaker phone.
In the footage, Hampshire Police can be seen arriving on the scene and making their way upstairs to Vlad’s bedroom, where the teenager was found with no pulse.
Vlad, who his parents said had enjoyed a happy childhood, was undergoing treatment by mental health professionals at the time of his death after being diagnosed with autism, depression and anxiety. He also suffered from a painful neurological condition.
However, the 17-year-old’s family were still shocked to learn that Vlad had been sharing his ‘dark moments’ in the online forum which Mrs Nikolin-Caisley described as a ‘pro-suicide cult’.
DS Chris Barrow of Hampshire Police who investigated Vlad’s suicide said that without the website, Vlad would not have been aware of the poison he used to take his own life.
Vlad’s older sister Masha has since exchanged messages with the sites moderators and found it to be an ‘echo chamber’ which could ‘push people over the edge’.
‘There is almost definite grooming taking place’, she added.
According to the BBC, Vlad had ordered poison from a Ukrainian seller named Leonid Zakutenko, but did not ingest that poison.
Instead, the fatal chemical he used was ordered from Poland and had been mis-labelled in an apparent attempt to deceive customs.
The 17-year-old’s knowledge of these chemicals is almost certain to have come from other members of the self-harm forum, with Mrs Nikolin-Caisley remaining in a state of disbelief as to how it is allowed to continue to operate.
Based in South America but hosted by a US server, the website is subject to different laws in different jurisdictions making its policing extremely difficult.
Dramatic bodycam footage shows the chaotic moments in which emergency services arrived at Vlad’s Hampshire home
An image of Vlad’s bedroom where he collapsed and began having seizures after he ingested the poison
‘You have private chats and are led down the path of death. Anyone can come across it. A child can come across it. There’s no checks.
‘The people who sold the poison, the people who encouraged it, how is that legal?’ she questioned.
‘They’re alive, our son is dead’, Mr Caisley added.
The police investigation into Vlad’s death, to establish if any criminal offences have been committed, remains ongoing.
Figures provided by the Office of National Statistics highlight the UK’s rising rates of suicide. A 10 per cent increase in England and Wales over the past six years has been recorded, although poisoning remains a rarely used method.
Speaking to the impending implementation of the Online Safety Act, a Government spokesperson stated: ‘Suicide devastates families. Intentionally encouraging suicide or the serious self-harm of another person is illegal.
‘Once the Online Safety Act is fully implemented, platforms will have to remove this illegal suicide and self-harm content as well as stop children from seeing harmful suicide related material – even when it falls below the criminal threshold.
‘Companies should not wait for laws to come into force – they must take effective action to protect all users now’.
However, Samaritans CEO Julia Bentley has criticised authorities for failing to crack down on smaller sites such as the one used by Vlad.
‘Legal-but-harmful content needs to be strictly regulated for both adults and children’, she said, before urging the Government and Ofcom to act ‘before its too late’.
Ofcom told the BBC that from July sites would have ‘duties to protect children from harmful self-harm and suicide content, even where it’s not illegal’.
‘As these duties come into force, we’ll be able to use the full extent of our enforcement powers against any services that fail to comply with their duties,’ it added.
