United Kingdom: Teacher commits suicide after bullying by newspaper | WPN World People News

After having been publicly bullied in a newspaper column in the United Kingdom’s second-largest paper, the Daily Mail, a transgender teacher took her own life when the attacks became too much to cope with.

Lucy Meadows, a teacher who was raised male, but recently underwent a transition to live as female, had been doing her job of teaching her pupils, when columnist Richard Littlejohn of the notoriously inflammatory, right-wing Daily Mail attacked her in a piece mockingly titled "He's not only in the wrong body... he's in the wrong job." This began a wave of harassment that drove Lucy from teaching and ultimately to suicide.

Lucy’s death sent a wave of shock and anger across the UK, with tens of thousands of people demanding that Daily Mail remove Richard Littlejohn from his job. The Daily Mail is part a of global media conglomerate. People around the world standing up to hold the paper accountable sends a clear message that the media has to bear responsibility for bullying and hate.

A petition to ask the the Daily Mail to sack Richard Littlejohn, issue an apology, and institute an editorial review policy to ensure that incidents like this never happen again has gathered more than 177,000 signatures so far.

"People of different sexual orientation face a horrifying level of discrimination and violence around the world. Education International the education community at large take a stand for the rights of its gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) members," EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen said. "If we want to make the world safe for all members of our community, we need to act together to ensure that major institutions like the Daily Mail aren’t contributing to a climate of hate."

Source: Education International