What is Emo?

Here is a story that sadly illustrates what goes on in the emo culture.  This is happening far to often.  This is one of the latest examples.

J-P parents’ plea
By Suzanne Heneghan
Brave parents Mandy and Colin Le Bachelet want to warn other Emo followers after the death of their teenage son Jean-Pierre.
The heartbroken parents of Emo teenager Jean-Pierre Le Bachelet, who took his own life last month, are today urging others not to copy his actions.
In a frank and exclusive interview with the Guernsey Press, Mandy and Colin Le Bachelet are sharing the story of their son’s short life in full for the first time to help reach other young people in the island who may be having similar dark thoughts.
They are urging not only other troubled teenagers who share his Emo beliefs but all teenagers not to see a copycat solution as the only way out.
'We know J-P’s story has touched so many young people. It is wonderful that so many care, but it also worries us in some ways. We could not bear for any others to think that they should do the same, as has happened following similar deaths in the UK.’
The 14-year-old former Grammar School pupil, known as J-P to his family and friends, apparently committed suicide at Rousse Tower earlier this month.
http://www.thisisguernsey.com/2008/07/28/j-p-parents-plea/

Girl Found Hanged in Bedroom Had Become Obsessed With ‘emo’ Culture:

Andrew Norfolk

A girl aged 12 who was found hanged in her bedroom had become obsessed with a teenage sub-culture known as “emo”, an inquest was told yesterday.

Rachel Jarvis, a fan of the band My Chemical Romance, died in January, a few days after making a new year’s resolution not to kill herself. She joins a growing list of children whose death has been linked to their involvement with the music and fashion of the angst-ridden cult, whose followers regularly talk of self-harming and suicide.

This month a 13-year-old boy, Sam Leeson, was found hanged in his bedroom in Gloucester. He had been bullied for his alternative dress and love of emo music. In May a coroner in Maidstone, Kent, ruled that the suicide of Hannah Bond, 13, another fan of My Chemical Romance, had “disturbing” emo overtones. She had earlier cut her wrists and discussed the “glamour” of hanging with other emo fans on the internet.

Emo is short for emotional hardcore. Its adherents – in Britain usually middle-class teenagers of both sexes – wear skinny black jeans, heavy, dark make-up and often dye their hair black.

Rachel, from Hull, was known to her family as a happy and friendly girl who performed well at school. Her form teacher described her as “wonderful . . . extremely mature for her age, very confident and bold”.

After her death it emerged that in the months before she was found hanged from her bedroom ceiling she had often visited an American emo website – her online name was Emos-rule – where young people spoke about depression, self-harm and killing themselves.

She had also kept a secret diary in which she recorded earlier suicide attempts. A statement from one of her close friends, a boy who cannot be named for legal reasons, was read to the hearing at Hull Coroner’s Court. He said that the pair had bonded over their shared passion for emo music and that Rachel had confided in him that she was going to cut herself.

Rachel’s mother, Maggie Jarvis, a former housing adviser, said that she had been about to give her two younger sons a bath and put them to bed and went to speak to her daughter about her playing loud music. “I went upstairs to ask her to turn it down otherwise they wouldn’t get to sleep. That’s when I found her,” she said.

Police investigating Rachel’s death found long-sleeved tops with blood stains at the wrists. They also found a diary with dark poetry and entries about eight earlier suicide attempts.

The coroner, Geoffrey Saul, recorded a narrative verdict in which he noted that “the suspension was at her own hand but the question of intent remains unclear”. He went on: “The evidence shows that she had talked to friends of hers about self harm but it doesn’t seem that they were strong statements of immediate intention.”

This month fans gathered outside the Daily Mail’s offices in London to protest at reports suggesting that emo music encouraged suicide.

Please note that I omitted the site that this young lady was frequenting, as I have no desire to give them  publicity of any kind. 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4167767.ece

Here is another example:

Before:

 After:

Hannah Bond, 13, hanged herself from a bunk bed in her bedroom with a tie believing her death would impress fellow followers of the emo movement, it was said.

The teenager, who left a suicide note and used the nickname “Living Disaster”, committed suicide after flippantly telling her parents, “I want to kill myself,” when she returned late from a friend’s house.  Roger Sykes, the coroner who recorded a verdict of suicide, found aspects of the youth movement, which began in America, “very disturbing.”

He said: “A girl of 13 years old has taken her own life for no reason that by anyone could be found to be justifiable.”

“It is a terrible and tragic explanation to what happened. It is not glamorous, just simply a tragic loss of such a young life.”

Maidstone Coroners’ Court heard that Hannah, of East Peckham, Kent, had lived a double life, outwardly a bright fun-loving family-orientated schoolgirl, but inwardly a devotee of “emo” which stands for emotional.

She had secretly chatted to emo followers online all over the world, talking about death and the glamorisation of hanging …

She had even scratched her wrists in a form of self-harm often seen as a form of initiation into the popular fashion and lifestyle fad followed by young people who dress in black like their older “Goth” crowd.

n a tribute book dedicated to Hannah at her school, one of her friends wrote, “I hope you enjoy the black parade,” and it emerged another emo girl at Hannah’s school, Mascalls Secondary School in Paddock Wood, Kent, had tried to kill herself a year ago.

Her mother Heather, a housewife, told the court how she originally thought emo was a harmless youth movement.

She said: “She called emo a fashion and I thought it was normal. I didn’t know about the cuts. She used to wear Emo bracelets so her wrists were concealed.

Vanessa Everett, her headteacher, told the inquest that none of her teachers felt she had any issues.

“She was a popular and bright girl who had achieved merits day in and day out right up until the day of her death,” she said.

She said they had been aware of superficial self-harm among younger students who had joined the emo clan, but said it was difficult to determine those intent on harming themselves and those using it as “a fashion statement.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1935735/Popular-schoolgirl-dies-in-'emo-sucide-cult'.html

As you can see.  Many people thought that this lifestyle was nothing more than a fad.  They missed, or explained away the warning signs, and this young person paid the price.  Notice that even the school personnel have noticed the association between self-harm and emo.  Also note the use of wristbands and bracelets to cover cuts.  Parents and teachers should play close attention to these.  This is a very common practice!  

Twelve-year-old girl kills herself

by Alina Gheorghiu

published in issue 4181 page 6 at 2008-05-15

A 12-year-old girl chose to end her life by jumping from the 10th floor of the building where she lived. The girl was in the 6th class. Her teachers were shocked by what she had done, as, according to them, she had a very good performance at school. The adolescent however was from a broken family and had been recently left by her boyfriend. The girl left a note asking her mother to forgive her, while not clarifying the reasons of her gesture. Several newspapers claim the girl was a follower of the Emo movement, a trendy current among adolescents.

The girl’s friends say they had never thought she would actually commit suicide, although she would always threaten to do it whenever she was disappointed. According to Antena 3 TV, the adolescent had just separated from her third boyfriend. The boy however claims she had taken her life because of her family problems. ‘She was fighting with her mother frequently, her mother would even beat her when she was not behaving’ he said, according to the quoted source. The media claims that it was because of the separation from the boyfriend the girl had joined the Emo movement that some journalists consider antisocial. The Bucharest Police started and investigation and are now waiting for the coroner’s report.


http://www.nineoclock.ro/index.php?page=detalii&categorie=homenews&id=20080515-8888

Here is yet another example of suicide that seems to be linked to emo.  These kids immerse themselves in a culture that discusses and glorifies self injury and death.  Is it any wonder that these tragic events continue to happen?

Ben Cubby and Larissa Dubecki

April 24, 2007

A DAY before they went missing, someone posted a final, mysterious message on the website of 16-year-old friends Jodie Gater and Stephanie Gestier. Brief and chilling, it read: "RIP Jodie & Steph".

It was posted on April 14, either by one of the girls or someone who had access to the private website for "bitchy", the all-girl band to which the two teenagers belonged. On the site Jodie and Stephanie talked about their fascination with the brooding "emo" subculture. With roots in the goth movement, emo is short for "emotional" and is known for its angst-ridden music and moody introspection.

The Melbourne girls vanished the next day after telling their parents they were going shopping. Now police are investigating the final message, discovered after Jodie and Stephanie were found hanged from the same tree in a national park in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne, on Sunday.

But the girls' MySpace website records with tragic hindsight a spiral of depressive thoughts and seemingly suicidal poetry. In the months leading to the tragedy the teenagers had posted increasingly dismal messages on their site.

From last December to February Jodie posted three odes to suicide, the second one titled Suicide in the Night.

It reads: "It's over for me, I can't take it! I hear it over and over again, it feels like it always rains."

The girls' MySpace site was flooded yesterday with messages from their grieving friends. And Stephanie's mother, Judi, apparently logged on to the site in the early hours of yesterday.

"You had only just turned 16," her message read. "You were always such a quiet girl who spent time listening to music and surfing the internet. There is nothing that couldn't have been sorted out. You were my only child and can never be replaced. Bye bye, my little girl."

The mother's message said her husband had picked up Stephanie from the airport after she had been to visit her grandmother, before she went off with her friend.

"I heard later that she had been involved in a fight on a train with some other girls and had taken off with her friend, who said she was going to kill herself," she wrote.

An adolescent psychologist, Michael Carr-Gregg, warned that the girls' friends and peer group were at risk of harming themselves. "Their friends, their entire year level and kids at those schools in the area who are maybe struggling with personal issues; yes, they're at risk.

"These girls' deaths can act as a catalyst," Dr Carr-Gregg said.

At the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, a professor of adolescent health, George Patton, said the internet intensified the risk of "suicide contagion", a phenomenon first recognised upon the 1774 publication of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which featured a young man who killed himself over unrequited love. A spate of copycat suicides across Europe led to its banning in Germany, Italy and Denmark.

Comment:  Isn’t it interesting that this has happened before?  Unfortunately, there are far too many people in denial that this is really happening, even though there is an ever increasing number of deaths.

The often-repeated phenomenon was also seen in Japan in 1986 with the suicide of the pop star Yukiko Okada.

"It's a huge issue in Japan," Professor Patton said. "We haven't seen so much of it yet in Australia.

"The internet is a powerful new medium where marginalised young people at the risk of suicide who might not otherwise meet are able to come into contact. It's providing content such as graphic self-harm sites which are potentially very dangerous to a lot of these young people. I think we have a real problem."

Internet suicides remain rare, but the trend has increased dramatically since the first known case in Japan in 2000. Hundreds more have been reported in Asia, Europe, Australia and the US.

When the South Australian teenager Carly Ryan died in February her MySpace site was flooded with messages from friends - many of them members of the same goth and emo subcultures as the two Melbourne girls who were found dead on Sunday.

Following Britain's first internet suicide pact in 2005, in which two strangers met online and died side by side, the British Government restricted access to chatrooms deemed risky.

The growing band of people who have posted suicide notes online - an act known colloquially as a MySpace suicide - has led to the US organisation Lifeline creating its own MySpace page.

Bands such as AFI and Dashboard Confessional have been associated with emo. The movement is often mocked by outsiders for the melodramatic introspection of its members.

Self-harm, a risk factor for suicide, has become common among adolescents, particularly girls in emo and goth cliques. Between one in 10 and one in 20 girls aged about 14 or 15 engaged in self-harm, Professor Patton said.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/tragic-last-words-of-myspace-suicide-girls/2007/04/23/1177180569460.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Unfortunately, too many people are flatly denying that any of this occurs.  Even though there are many witnesses, many observations from professionals, from kids, and from parents.  Kids have died, but the denial continues. 

Even as more and more children die, the denial continues.   The fact is that the US media does not report on suicides in this way.  I have heard from many friends and colleagues throughout the county about emo kids that have committed suicide, but there is no way to ethically document that here.  We believe the numbers to be in at least the hundreds, if not thousands.  Emo is the "silent epidemic" of the 21st century!