Spring was breathing life into the woodlands as 17-year-old Carina Stephenson said goodbye to her mother and brother, eating breakfast in their country cottage near Doncaster. In her rucksack there were two letters, a tape measure and a noose. It was May 2005, and for the past few weeks she had spent days cycling the surrounding countryside before selecting the cluster of conifers beyond the ash-blond meadow by her home.

The next morning, as Carina’s mother began her quest to find her missing daughter, the teenager’s body was hidden within a mile of her home. “You can’t rest, you can’t sit down, you can’t string a sentence together.” Liz, Carina’s mother, is a doll of a woman; her body starts to shake as her eyes shade pink and brim with tears. Liz’s mother is in the kitchen, a softly spoken matriarch, and she is crying too.

When Carina was finally discovered 31/2 days later, a policewoman bearing her mobile brought the news to a distraught family, 15 of them crowded into the kitchen to find out that Carina had hanged herself.

The police described Carina’s hanging as a “professional, precision” job. Unbeknown to her parents until police investigators delved into the family computer, she had been staying up through the night surfing the suicide sites, and had kept her desire concealed. “They tell them to hide it, on the websites: don’t leave your room untidy, keep smiling, make sure your hair is always washed,” says her mother. “Ultimately it was the internet that killed Carina. If she hadn’t been advised like that, she wouldn’t have been able to maintain the facade. There’d have been a chink in the armour, and we’d have known.”

Suicide newsgroups – and there are hundreds of such sites and associated chat rooms – are among the few places in the western world where the desire to die isn’t stigmatised. The now notorious alt.suicide.holiday (Ash) internet newsgroup was formed by a group of depressives wanting to discuss the link between suicide and public holidays – there are now over 10m web pages devoted to the discussion of the subject.

Another frightening link between suicide and the net emerged in March this year, when the father of two Kevin Whitrick committed a cyber-suicide live via a webcam on an internet chat site. Some witnesses were heard to egg him on; some thought it was a hoax. Others called the police, but by then it was too late.

Last summer, a friend of my family took his own life. He was in his mid-twenties, with a first from a top university, and had spoken of suicide attempts at length over the internet beforehand. After a few troubled years, he appeared to have left his problems behind to forge a new life and career. His death, at a time when everything appeared to be falling into place, came as a shock to everyone around him.

His case, and that of Carina’s, illustrate a disturbing trend. Over the past three years, at least 26 people in the UK have died in similar circumstances – only five had reached the age of 30, half were teenagers, and three just 13 years old. In line with wider British suicide statistics, the majority (two-thirds) were male; almost all were suffering from short-term depression.

The total number of deaths linked to the internet through suicide sites is likely to be much, much higher, as many are misdiagnosed as accidents or misadventure. Others would make sure their computer histories were erased, or use external facilities that cannot be easily detected.

The voices on these sites are morose and unrelenting. “Is anyone there, I feel so alone, I don’t think I can go on much further,” cries a soul in the dark. “I am tired of being plagued by nightmares of the past horrors in my life. I am tired of waking up wet from the sweat, my bedsheets and sleepwear dank, stinking of perspiration, and I am disillusioned with the dream-illusions of positive possibilities. I want to find the void, the place where I shall sleep eternal. I can then rest.” “Hi there, I’m looking for a pact partner… in the UK.” Such communities are home to a society bound by the belief that they have little to live for. The word “suicide” is rarely used; instead the softer expression “catch the bus” (or CTB) fills its place.

And this is an international fellowship. It was over the internet nearly 21/2 years ago that the 14-year-old French schoolgirl Clémence, distressed after splitting up with her boyfriend, met Noémie (their surnames were never released by the police out of sensitivity to their families) to formulate their plan to jump off a cliff in Sangatte, Calais. In 2003, Brandon Vedas, a student in Phoenix, Arizona, was coerced by his internet pals to OD live on webcam. His mother found his body the next morning, and the footage the following week.

Simon Kelly, 18, was awaiting his A-level results when, in July 2001, he died in the company of friends whose faces he’d never seen. As his parents flew back from holiday, the #alt.suicide.bus.stop (ASBS) chat-room members Sophie g, the Jynx, aldead, jenwolf and her husband, the lynx, whom she met in a suicide chat room, were party to their son’s sending off. “They knew he was on his school holidays; they knew he was alone,” says his father, Paul. It was in the Wadebridge town house in which we are now sitting that Simon spent his final hours. Pictures of his handsome, smiling face beam from every wall and mantelpiece: Simon with brother Nick, Simon with girlfriend, Simon with parents, Simon as a baby. “In theory, the world was open to Simon. He was bright, popular, sociable and an all-rounder,” says his father. Except nobody from his offline world realised that, in the past four months, Simon had grown severely depressed. He communicated with his chat-room acquaintances online throughout his overdose; they were fully aware that he was dying and offered words of support during his final hours. He discussed his feelings with jenwolf beforehand – she had even persuaded him to give her his brother’s phone number in case anything happened, and yet, shortly before he died, she wished him a “happy bus ride” and said: “hope it works”.

“All it would have taken was one call and then none of this might have happened,” his father sighs. “Part of the grieving process is working out what went on, but with suicide you can’t do that. We’ve had to accept there are some things we’ll never know.” I ask his father if he experienced guilt feelings over Simon’s death. Five years on, he still does. “I grieve every day of my life. You feel as a parent that at the biggest crisis of your lad’s life you weren’t there, you failed them. When it’s a crash, you can blame the car, but who do you blame for this? It will always be present; it’s something you have to live with. It doesn’t get any easier. You get better at dealing with it but the heartache never goes away.”

Close to 6,000 people take their lives every year in the UK, and one person every two hours in England. Paul now heads the campaign run by the youth-suicide-prevention charity Papyrus to ban the suicide websites, calling for their criminalisation by presenting petitions to Downing Street and the criminal justice minister Baroness Scotland. He would like the Suicide Act of 1961 to be redrafted to include internet coercion. Last December a successful early-day motion called on the attorney-general to investigate whether those providing information on how to commit suicide could be prosecuted. Den Dover, MEP for the North West of England, is poised to take up the case in the European parliament.

The Sunday Times spoke to the current moderator of ASBS – a 41-year-old former New Yorker and nurse who finances ASBS through her own money and voluntary donations. Wishing to be identified as Therese, she says: “My phone number’s all over the planet. I get calls at all hours of the day and night, and that’s the way I want it. The people who arrive at the bus stop have been failed by the mental-health system; they’ve been failed by life itself. This is their last chance.”

Her own depression began at the age of six. Her voice starts to waver as she recalls checking into a clinic in 1991. “Going in and being suicidal was the most counterproductive move I could have made. I was even more isolated. There were people saying, ‘But you’ve got every reason to live!’ When I did try to broach difficult subjects, I was met with indifference, which made me worse. I know many mental-health workers and they’re all burnt out. It’s not just the US: the situation in the UK surprises me. Ninety per cent of those I deal with agree that unless you have been or are suicidal, you can’t truly relate to the mindset, which is why groups like ours and Alcoholics Anonymous resonate.”

Her mental state declined further in 2000 after her boyfriend of six years suffered a heart attack at 30, two weeks after proposing. “He just went to sleep one night and never woke up,” Therese confides. “I thought, ‘There was your one shot and now it’s gone.’ ” Despite attempts to start anew, she sank further into depression.

“I was getting older, my intellect wasn’t what it once was, and I was unable to function on a number of levels. I had nothing left.

“Suicide isn’t something you talk about in the outside world. When you want to die you think you’re crazy, out there, whacked, nuts.”

Therese continued to work full time while planning her death: “The bullets were in the gun,” she says. The walls of her basement were covered in plastic, she had worked out the physics and trajectories of the operation and even built a small device to maintain balance against the recoil from the shot. “I was about 45 days away.”

It was only when she sought information online that she stumbled across the suicide newsgroup Ash. “There was just this ‘Oh my God, I’m not alone’ moment. It was amazing to find these people – from Britain, Australia, India – expressing exactly the same thoughts as me. I received a huge amount of support and, once I got past the idea of suicidality being abnormal, I could see and work on the factors behind it.”

Of the 1,400 people who have been registered on her website, the British comprise just under a third of all members, the highest presence after North America, and followed by Scandinavia.

“We believe you have to examine every viable option to make yourself better,” says Therese, who regularly keeps the suicidal company throughout the night to make sure they do not kill themselves. “Only after you’ve done all you can to rectify your problems should you have the right to take your life.” However, she reiterates that ASBS is strictly non-interventionist. “There’s a hell of a lot of grieving that takes place when a suicide is completed. We have a tradition of wishing the dead the peace they were looking for. That’s all you can do.”

What Therese does isn’t illegal; it isn’t compulsory to report an attempted suicide, as the act in itself isn’t a crime. But under British law, aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring a person to suicide is punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment, though a direct link must be proven. In December 2006 the Law Commission recommended that though it considered the existing Suicide Act of 1961 extensive enough to cover internet crime, the language used was outdated and should be redrafted. They also recommended that the legal guidelines for assisting and encouraging such crimes be extended to give courts in England and Wales jurisdiction over a case if an overseas offender knew or believed that their website might be accessed in the UK.

In late 2005, Australia banned the counselling of suicide by telephone, fax and internet, and many other countries are considering following suit. In Japan, which reported 91 web-related suicides in 2005, guidelines on tackling such cases were issued in October of that year.

But to date, existing legislation has resulted in just two British prosecutions. One was that of Louis Gillies, 36, a bright philosophy graduate, for co-ordinating a pact to jump off an Eastbourne cliff with his chat-room acquaintance Michael Gooden, a 35-year-old south London postal worker. After meeting at a restaurant for supper, they were preparing to jump when a friend called Gillies and dissuaded him from taking the fatal leap. Gillies passed the phone to Gooden, who spoke to the friend before jumping to his death. Police arrested Gillies after reading his two messages explaining the events to Ash.

Gillies’s close friend Kevin Laitak told me: “Louis was a lovely guy, a really handsome guy; bright and witty, he got on well with women. People loved him. He was going through a difficult patch and had lost touch with friends. Because of the nature of his depression, he isolated himself and lost perspective.”

Louis Gillies hanged himself on April 22, 2003, the day he was due to stand trial.

The second case involved a 14-year-old Mancunian boy, known only as “John” for legal reasons, who invented a spy racket, assuming a series of characters to lure another teenager to stab him fatally. “John” survived the attack

to receive a three-year supervision order for incitement to murder and perverting the course of justice and was banned from using the internet without adult supervision. The “right-to-die” Californian Roger Graham was deported from Cambodia after setting up two websites advertising Kampot as the ideal place to die, and a British woman, depressed after a short relationship ended, travelled there to take her life.

The most sinister visitors to the sites are the “trolls” – gatecrashers who manipulate discussions for their own ends and entertainment. Gerald Krein, an unemployed 26-year-old from Klamath Falls, Oregon, enlisted 31 participants to his Valentine’s Day suicide party in 2005. Authorities, who found a computer history stemming back five years showing him encouraging others to die, were alerted after a Canadian woman who had been considering joining the pact contacted the police when she learnt Krein’s party guests included a woman who had revealed a plan not only to kill herself but also her two children. Krein was arrested on February 9 and found guilty of one charge of attempting to commit murder and four charges of attempting to commit manslaughter. He was sentenced to 20 years in a psychiatric hospital after a doctor described him as suffering from a “myriad of mental-health disorders”.

Perhaps the highest-profile trolls are the Church of Euthanasia (CofE), the 250-strong cult whose primary doctrine is: Save the Planet, Kill Yourself. With extensive files on their website detailing ways to kill yourself, they recently released a house single entitled I Like to Watch, expressing sexual arousal at seeing the 9/11 attacks. Members are banned from procreating and encouraged to commit suicide. They believe that the world is overpopulated and suicide is a sensible approach to curbing the Earth’s impending environmental disaster. Cardinal of the CofE is Karin Spaink, who states that the organisation is merely “a theatrical, Dadaistic, politically outrageous joke”.

“It is easy to blame Ash. Much easier than blaming the suicidee, or yourself,” says Spaink, a Dutch writer, feminist and campaigner whose pro-choice stance comes second only to her advocacy of freedom of information.

Spaink was cited in the deaths of the Birmingham student Arwel Davies, the teenager Sarah Cherry, and Chris Aston and Maria Williams (two lost souls united only by their desire to die, who executed Britain’s first internet suicide pact in a south London car park two days after meeting on her site). In 2001 she counselled a British man, known only as “Little Chris”, through the days leading up to his fatal overdose. One message reads: “Of course we’ll help you in all possible ways, of course, dear Chris. I will try to help you go, honestly.”

When asked about her involvement in Little Chris’s death, she told me: “He and I were close. Nothing he tried helped him. Somehow, he was born broken… He was lonely and had tried to commit suicide at least 10 times before… Once, when he tried anew, he phoned me, in the middle of the night: he desperately wanted to die but didn’t want to die alone, and we talked. He survived that attempt and finally managed to kill himself two months later. His mother thanked me… She knew that nobody could have prevented his suicide.”

Spaink, 49, contracted multiple sclerosis over 20 years ago and recently underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy after being diagnosed with breast cancer. She encountered the online suicide community while researching ways to take her own life, and has written essays and a book on suicide. She now hosts “methods files” and is famed within the community for prescribing quickfire ways to commit suicide. Citing the cruelty of botched attempts – for the sufferers and their families – as a primary motivation, she recalls, “a woman who tried the train method. She lost both her legs in the attempt and most certainly traumatised the train driver”. Another thought that “throwing herself off a five-storey building would do the trick. She ended up with a broken back and paralysed legs. Her mother is a diabetic; she then thought she could kill herself using her mother’s insulin. She ended up being in a coma for a week”.

Research confirms that accessibility to the means fuels the prevalence of suicide. Britain’s suicide count dropped from 5,500 per year in 1963 to 3,500 in 1975, the period when our most previously preferred suicide mechanism – coal gas – was phased out from domestic ovens. After Oxford University’s Centre for Suicide Research urged that no more than 32 paracetamol should be sold in any one transaction, associated overdoses fell by around one-third. Today, modi operandi are openly discussed on suicide websites and a spread of new techniques is emerging.

Niamh Louise McBennett, of Dungannon, County Tyrone, soon got to know the effective routes to suicide. “Always talking, always creating, always on the go,” Niamh Louise was a popular but troubled teenager. For her mother, Catherine, the countdown to her daughter’s demise took a matter of weeks. She stopped wearing make-up and styling her hair, but Mrs McBennett reasoned: “She’s a goth, she’s 15. I’ll let her get on with it.” A talented singer, actress and artist, Niamh Louise’s art work changed direction too. The fairies she painted had morphed into dark angels, she began reading poems about death, and she and her friends habitually trawled the school computers for suicide sites during lunch breaks. Her mobile phone contained a folder full of morbid messages. According to her peers, she had become “obsessed”. The November 2005 morning when she exited this world was “the foggiest and coldest day” her mother can remember. “She wasn’t in the kitchen, so I started calling for her.” Hearing no answer, Catherine ran to her room. Her school bag was packed, her bed was made and a poem about death lay on her pillow. Catherine checked the driveway and called friends’ houses. Then her husband screamed and she opened the back door and hanging in the garden was Niamh Louise: “pristine, calm, serene”.

“She was my soul mate, my friend. The minute I put my head down at night and the minute I wake I think of Niamh Louise.” When Catherine asked why her daughter chose to hang, her friends said it wasn’t a cry for help. But her mother disagrees: “She didn’t want to die, she just couldn’t handle the pain she was in, and the only people advising her were her friends and the internet.” Catherine McBennett, a Catholic, is painfully conscious of the lack of information surrounding suicide and now dedicates her life to working with the government in raising awareness. “People are in denial here. The myth is that if you talk about it then it’s perpetuated, so people block it out.”

Bristol University’s Professor David Gunnell, an adviser to the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, says: “It becomes a difficult repertoire of options between talking openly and making it such a norm that it’s dangerous.” Dr Tadashi Takeshima of the National Institute of Mental Health in Japan, where mass online pacts regularly claim global headlines, studied a number of forums at length, but deferred from making a recommendation, stating: “It’s very difficult to conclude that any one site is harmful.” Meanwhile, Karin Spaink suggests: “There is a group for whom thinking about suicide is escapism of sorts, a way to not deal with the problems at hand. Through the sites, suicide loses its darkly romantic aspect (‘eternal sleep’) and becomes vividly real: bloody, painful and complicated to realise.” Many on the sites are discouraged from taking their lives, others work through their feelings online, some gain the recognition and support they so desperately need to enable them to continue in the outside world, while still more are granted a stay of execution.

Those for whom the decision has been decades in the making are offered the dignity and freedom to undertake an act traditionally condemned. A bedridden “Asher” offers to knit each person in the group a prayer shawl because “My soul thanks each of you for what you have brought to me. Comfort in a time when my emotional pain was interminable.”

Writing can be a clarifying, cathartic tool, and there is no doubt that these sites are a sanctuary for words and feelings not comfortably expressed in the outer world. In the psychiatric sector it is widely considered that therapy can only begin once a patient’s suicidality has been accepted, and perhaps that is where the internet is succeeding. “The internet provides another source of cognitive behavioural therapy for the depressed and suicidal, and the new generation of computer-literate,” says Gunnell. “An environment where people talk and are open is beneficial; where they’re encouraging each other to take their lives is not ideal.” Gunnell’s message is clear: suicidal people shouldn’t be counselling others. “It’s an issue that has high priority on the agendas for international suicide prevention.”

“Suicide is a coping mechanism for immense amounts of pain. Speaking online can help to externalise this,” says the Samaritans spokeswoman Sarah Nelson. The Samaritans – who receive 400,000 calls annually from people on the verge of suicide, and whose new text-message service has received a massive response among teens – have secured deals with Wanadoo, AOL, Google and Yahoo! to list their website before the suicide sites, having identified over 30 phrases used by people looking to take their lives. They don’t believe formal legislation is the solution, but in redressing the balance through positive online counselling and information.

The Tokyo branch of the suicide-prevention organisation Befrienders Worldwide has volunteers monitoring Japanese chat rooms and interacting with users.

Given that suicide comes second only to accidental death in the UK as the key killer of 15- to 24-year-olds, should moderated sites for the lower age groups be introduced for those unable to share their feelings at the dinner table? And should those behind the adult sites be held accountable for providing information to the under-21s?

Many parents have increasing concerns about the dangers facing their children on the streets. But have they overlooked the dangers lurking in their homes? Parental filters can be implemented to limit access, but, as Nelson says, “If you tell a teenager that anything’s taboo they will be attracted to it.” The reality is, many of the computer-savvy disable these with ease – as Carina Stephenson did.

The Home Office minister Gerry Sutcliffe said: “I understand concerns about these websites and the influence they may have over vulnerable young people. I believe the law is clear on this. Assisting or attempting to assist suicide is an offence, whether it is carried out on or offline. The Law Commission recently examined the issue of suicide websites and made recommendations which the government is considering, but they concluded our existing law is capable of dealing with this problem.”

When questioned about what action Google – which hosts the most highly populated, prominent and least moderated suicide news groups – might be considering to help minimise the negative impact of these sites, a spokesperson told The Sunday Times: “It is for government to determine what is legal and illegal. These are cases for the police and law-enforcement agencies to pick up on.”

Perhaps, in years to come, the psychiatric profession will work with the online community to make safer spaces for the suicidal to talk in.

But for Carina Stephenson, Niamh Louise McBennett, Simon Kelly and the 1,500 or so young people expected to take their lives this year, it will be too late.

Death on webcam

Kevin Whitrick, 42, hanged himself live on the net via his webcam, after being goaded in an “insult” chat room. This is the online dialogue that preceded his death

Shyguy-17-1 (Whitrick): “I’ve had it, you think I am full of shit, not this time.”

“F***ing do it, get on with it, get it round your neck. For F***’s sake he can’t even do this properly.”

“Oh my God, this is serious. Someone should call the police.”

“His face is turning purple. This guy is dead.”

“His face is turning red.”

“OMG [Oh my God].”

“Is this real?”

Chat-room suicide

Simon Kelly, 18 was a severely depressed student. After taking a fatal overdose, he shared his final hours with chat-room acquaintances. His online name was @SJK

(00:22) (sophie_g): hi SJK. how are you?

(00:22) (@SJK): feeling pretty good actually

(00:22) (@SJK): in and hour and a half all the pain will go away

(01:13) (@sophie_g): still feeling good SJ?

(01:14)(@SJK): yup

(01:14) (@SJK): i feel fine and dandy

(01:14) (@jenwolf): smooth even?

(01:14) (@sophie_g): why don’t you go do something exciting for your last hour?

(01:14) (@SJK): its the middle of the night here

(01:15) (gpO): go to the beach

(01:15) (@jenwolf): He’s only got 45 minutes left

(01:15) (gpO): hear the waves crash against the shore

(01:15) (@SJK): did that on Sunday

(01:15) (gpO): go out see the stars

(02:01) (@SJK): see you the other side

(02:02) (@aldead): fare well on your journey

(02:02) (@jenwolf): happy bus ride

(02:02) (@jenwolf): hope it works

) ) ) ) )

(04:30) (@jenwolf): Don’t call the hotline on him

(04:30) (puttedelaputtine): i cant think he’s hangin dead

(04:31) (thejynx): if he is, then calling them in on him would do no good

(04:31) (@Satans_pink_Freeq): very not cool he gets thrown in some facility for 9 months and comes out feeling worse

(04:32) (puttedelaputtine): i dont want them to nag the f*** outta me laters with Qs

(04:33) (©jenwolf): We’ll know for sure tomorrow, just relax

(04:33) (puttedelaputtine): i cant wait

(04:33) (thejynx): sometimes all you can do for the best of friends is watch them die

(04:33) (©jenwolf): Why would you be guilty it’s not your choice it’s his

(04:35) (©jenwolf): Well I can’t have a f***ing

interventionist in here right now goddamit

(08:16) (@jerrybob): well folks, SJ is either a troll having some fun with you, or he is really dead, in which case we dont need his computer sittin gthered on this channel. If he is alive, let him ask someone to get back in

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