A 12-year-old school girl wrote a devastating suicide wrote minutes before she took her own life. Semina Halliwell from Southport, Merseyside, asked doctors if she was “going to die” after taking a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs in June 2021.
During an inquest being held into her death, a string of heartbreaking messages she posted just minutes before she overdosed have been revealed for the first time.
In one post, Semina wrote: “There’s nothing worse than not wanting to be alive anymore but not wanting to end it either because you don’t want to hurt the few people around that you love. So you just wake up and exist everyday knowing how much it hurts.”
The Mirror reports a minute later, Semina posted: “At this point I have no feelings, I’m numb. I may smile and laugh everyday but I’m in so much pain, I just want to be happy again, it hurts so bad, it has ruined me as a person.”
Detective Sergeant Chris Maher said the Semina had posted these messages on her social media at around 20 minutes past midnight on June 9 2021. The inquest heard a photograph on Semina’s phone taken just over 30 minutes later that night showed empty blister packets all over her bed.
Semina was later discovered surrounded by empty packets of medication by one of her brothers, the inquest heard. The youngster was rushed to hospital, where doctors spent three nights trying to save her before she died of ‘multiple organ failure’ three days later on June 12.
Other videos and photographs taken from her phone on the night she took the fatal overdose showed her crying. The autistic schoolgirl was said to have been bullied, beaten, had naked photos of her passed around, and raped in the months before she died.
Speaking about her daughter’s rape allegation, distraught mum, Rachel Halliwell told the coroner: “She said that [the boy] took her into the woods and sat her on a tree stump. He pulled his trousers down… she said she kept saying ‘no’. “She said he tried to rip her underwear and leggings. She said she was scared and he was horrible.”
Asked how it affected her, Ms Halliwell added: “It destroyed her mentally and physically, she changed to a different person. She felt bad about herself… she felt used.” The court heard the alleged attack happened in January 2021, just five months before Semina died.
In the months before her death, Ms Halliwell also told the inquest she noticed bruises on her daughter’s neck, self harm scars from her ‘wrists to her elbows’ and said she had attempted to take her life in March in a separate overdosing incident. She said she later learned her daughter had been beaten by children from a number of schools of three separate occasions.
She also told how a naked photo of Semina had been sent around Stanley High School where she was a pupil. But she claimed when she spoke to the school about this incident, she received “no help or support” and was told she would need to report the incident to the police.
Ms Halliwell also slammed the police response when she reported her daughter’s rape allegation as “unprofessional” and described the attending officers as acting “blasé” about the matter. She told the inquest: “The way they spoke to her and the way they presented themselves to her, in my view, was unprofessional and not how you should speak to a 12-year-old child who has gone through a rape. I felt like they didn’t care, like it was an inconvenience to them.. almost like they couldn’t be bothered.”
Ms Halliwell also claimed detectives told Semina: “it would be her word against his” referring to the boy she claimed had raped her. The inquest continues.
*If you’re struggling and need to talk, the Samaritans operate a free helpline open 24/7 on 116 123. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or visit their site to find your local branch.
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