White March in Memory of 10-Year-Old Victim of School Harassment

Thibault was 10 years old, he ended his life on April 29. While his mother denounces the harassment of which he was the victim at school, a white march brought together a hundred people this Saturday, June 3 in Montbrison, in the Loire, to pay tribute to him.

A white march was organized this Saturday, June 3 in Montbrison, in the Loire, in memory of a 10-year-old boy who killed himself at the family home, in a context of harassment at school according to his parents.

A hundred people gathered, in white or green outfits, with balloons of the same colors.

Educated in CM2 at the primary school of Saint-Bonnet-le-Château (Loire), Thibault committed suicide by hanging on April 29. The Saint-Etienne public prosecutor’s office told AFP on Friday that it had opened an investigation into “search for the causes of death”, adding that “the track of school harassment has been dug, for the moment without conclusive evidence”.

The mother of the victim, Marion Père, who filed a complaint against X with the gendarmerie, told AFP that her son, according to her, victim of harassment at school, “did not support this suffering” . “Shortly before his suicide, Thibault had described his ordeal during a hearing conducted by the PMI (Maternal and Child Protection) service”, specifies the mother’s lawyer, Daria Verallo-Borivant.

The rectorate of Lyon, for its part, told AFP that “measures to bring serenity to the relationship difficulties that have arisen between certain students”, had been put in place at the beginning of 2022, following a report of a another child from school.

“Rather than protecting him, he was punished, isolated in the canteen, put in the back in the classroom and, in addition to being humiliated by his comrades, he was also humiliated by the supervising adults who did nothing” , further accuses Thibault’s mother, a nursing assistant at the Saint-Etienne University Hospital, adding that she had alerted the school management in vain.

“We are counting on your presence in benevolence, compassion and empathy”, write the organizers of the white march, while their petition asking “for justice to be done” to Thibault and the children who are victims of school harassment had received nearly 6,000 signatures on Saturday morning.

With AFP