Mother of murdered teenager calls watering down of Online Safety Bill ‘shocking’
‘Young people are at harm and young people are losing their lives,’ said Esther Ghey, mum to Brianna, who died in 2023.
The mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey said she is “frustrated” by the Government’s Online Safety Bill, which may be “watered down” to appease US President Donald Trump.
Esther Ghey spoke to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme about the bill and the death of her 16-year-old daughter, whose murder led to UK-wide protests and vigils.
“While we are… questioning whether it’s strong enough or whether it should be watered down, young people are at harm, and young people are losing their lives,” she told the BBC.
“Young people shouldn’t be struggling with mental health because of what they are accessing online, and we really do need to take a hard stance on this.”
Brianna, 16, was murdered by classmate Scarlett Jenkinson and her friend Eddie Ratcliffe.
Jenkinson and Ratcliffe, who were both 15 at the time of the murder, lured Brianna to a park in Cheshire where she was stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife on February 11 2023.
Ms Ghey has previously met Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his predecessor Rishi Sunak to discuss the issue and has criticised the Online Safety Act, saying it does not go far enough.
She has campaigned for an age limit on smartphone use, stricter controls on access to social media apps, tougher action on knife crime and for mindfulness to be taught in schools.
On her campaigning work on online safety and trolling, Ms Ghey said she supports a ban on social media for under 16s.
“It is an absolute cesspit,” she said in March at the screening of ITV film Brianna: A Mother’s Story, which explores the murder of her daughter.
“Even if, say, if I do an interview, and I’ll try not to look at comments, but I can never help myself, and I’ll look at the comments, and you’ll see people saying about my child, trying to tell me what gender my child was, and also really, really horrific comments too.
“And it’s mentioned in the documentary as well, that when you report things, the support isn’t there.
“I’ve reported so many comments, and I always get the response that they haven’t done anything wrong, that it’s not something that they can take down, and our children have access to those comments.
“No matter how much love and compassion you pump into your child when you’re bringing them up, and how much empathy you can teach them as well, they will then go online and they’ll see the way that other people are speaking about other people, and they might think that that’s right.
“And that’s without even going into the amount of harm that’s online, like the dangerous challenges where young people are losing their lives due to these sick challenges that people are uploading, misogyny, hate, misinformation, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.”
A government spokesperson said: “The Online Safety Act is about protecting children online from harmful content like self-harm and eating disorders as well as making sure what is illegal offline is illegal online.
“These laws are not part of the negotiation and our priority is getting them in place quickly and effectively, while exploring what more can be done to build a safer online world.”
