A teenager who came to Britain from Poland was found hanged in her school toilets after being tormented by racist bullies.
Dagmara Przybysz, who was 16, and described as a ‘beautiful, happy and popular pupil’ with an ‘extremely bright’ future ahead of her, moved to the UK nine years ago.
But she was discovered dead in a cubicle in the maths department at Pool Academy, Redruth in Cornwall, last May.
An inquest into her death heard how she had confided to friends and family that she had been singled out because of her nationality by a gang of bullies.
A coroner heard the bullies had called her a ‘stupid Pole’ and told her she ‘did not belong here’.
The alarm was raised when Dagmara failed to turn up to a lesson on 17th May last year and despite the police and paramedics being called, she couldn’t be saved.
A post mortem determined that the schoolgirl died as a result of hanging and no drugs or alcohol were in her system at the time of death.
Dagmara’s mum, Ewelina Przybysz, told the coronor how her daughter often confided with her about the problems she was having at school.
Ewelina made reference to a post her daughter wrote on the controversial website Ask.fm, which has been previously linked with suicides of young people.
She said:
She wrote on Ask.fm in answer to a question about what problems she had at school. Dagamra wrote ‘racism’.
She commented she did not like it when someone was nasty behind her back.
She often talked about problems and she was often hurt when people said unpleasant things.
Mrs Przybysz said there was one particular gang of girls that were causing her daughter problems.
She added:
These girls came up to Dagmara and accused her of saying unpleasant things and then called Dagmara names.
I did not know what they said on this occasion but it was just a few days before Dagmara passed away. She was barged into in the school corridor.
That may have been ones being nasty to her. I do not know who these girls were. I do not know if these were racist in nature she told me she would have comments such as ‘stupid Pole’.
Comments were made towards another Polish child and Dagmara would always try to stand up to them.
A school friend, who can not be named for legal reasons, also told the inquest Dagmara had been targetted by racist bullies.
She said:
I used to sit next to her in class. She told me when year 10 girls said she ‘did not belong here’ in reference to the fact she was from another country.
I told her to report this and I only know about this from what she told me.
Her father Jedrzej Przybysz said that on the morning of her death he got a phone call from his daughter where she was crying and very upset.
Her dad said:
She was upset and crying and did not want to tell me the reason.
Later on she said she had problems at school that she said I would not understand.
I told her to go to school and on return we would have a serious conversation about this problem.
Mr Przybysz said his daughter had made many friends at primary school since coming to the UK in February 2009 but had not settled at secondary school and asked to move.
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