British campaigners have uncovered 29 “internet suicides” in Britain since 2001, including two new cases reported this weekend.
Search engines cannot block these websites unless they are made illegalLONDON: British campaigners have uncovered 29 “internet suicides” in Britain since 2001, including two new cases reported this weekend, Telegraph.co.uk repoetred on Sunday.
They are blamed for prompting youngsters to take their own lives. One, a US satanist who boasts of writing a guide to the subject, says: “What’s the problem with ending your life via suicide?” Another is a “pro-choice” Dutch whose web site includes accounts of dozens of suicide methods.
The findings follow the cluster of suicides among young people in Bridgend, Among the most notorious suicide web sites, which The newspaper has decided not to name to avoid encouraging their use, are two discussion forums, or “chatrooms”, in which users offer advice on how to end one’s life.
In some cases, people with suicidal feelings have been encouraged to take their own lives rather than to seek professional advice. In a posting on one of the sites last week, a desperate user wanting to know how to hang himself was directed, by another correspondent, to a web site containing drawings of knots and nooses.
Internet service providers and search engines like Google and Yahoo say they cannot block these web sites and forums unless they are made illegal. Paul Kelly, co-founder of Papyrus, whose 18-year-old son Simon killed himself after visiting a suicide web site, said: “There is a growing number of parents out there who can say the internet has played a role in the deaths of their children. The internet offers factual advice which is accessible within seconds. This is particularly dangerous with young people, who often work on impulse.
Papyrus is calling for the 1961 Suicide Act, which outlaws the promotion of suicide, to be updated to ban its promotion on web sites, in line countries Japan and Australia. No one has been successfully prosecuted in UK for inciting someone online to take their own life.
UK said it would be difficult to frame a law to ban suicide sites without criminalising counselling services or works of fiction.
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