The mother of a 17-year-old boy who was found hanged claims he had been receiving threatening racist messages on Facebook before his death. Gardai and the coroner have requested information from Facebook about the circumstances surrounding the boy's death. The boy's mother said he had been taunted because he was of mixed race and wore a hearing aid. She believes threatening messages were deleted from his Facebook account after he died. The coroner's inquest was adjourned until March to investigate further.

1. Irish Daily Mail, Wednesday, September 18, 2013
By Gareth Naughton
and Jennifer Bray
A 17-year-old boy found
hanged in an abandoned
warehouse may have
received threatening racist
messages on Facebook
before his death, his mother
told his inquest yesterday.
D a r r en Hughes - Gibson’s
mother said he was being
taunted because he was of mixed
race and had a hearing aid.
Both gardaí and the Dublin coroner have now requested information from Facebook about the circumstances surrounding the
youngster’s death.
Addressing Dublin Coroner’s
Court, heartbroken Elaine Hughes
said that she had heard ‘plenty of
rumours’ following his death.
‘I was told that there were threatening messages on his Facebook
that were deleted when he passed
away,’ she said. Ms Hughes added
there may be messages on another
Facebook account which her son
had deactivated. ‘I will wait six
months, nine months, six years to
find out. I need to know what
drove him to this,’ she said.
Gardaí said they have requested
‘He had been
very down’
information from the social media
giant about one of the boy’s online
profiles, while Coroner Dr Brian
Farrell said that he would make
separate inquiries to Facebook
regarding Darren’s accounts.
The teenager’s mother made the
claim that he was cyberbullied
while speaking from the body of
the court yesterday.
Darren, who had gone missing,
was found by his friend hanged at
Stephenstown Industrial Estate in
Balbriggan, Co. Dublin, on August
23 last year.
The court heard that gardaí were
searching for Darren after he was
reported missing by his mother,
when he did not return to his home
at New Haven Bay in Balbriggan
the previous night.
Ms Hughes said that her son was
a ‘happy young man’ who was in
‘good spirits’ on the day he disappeared.
She became worried when he did
not return home by 10pm and his
phone was powered off.
Ms Hughes reported him missing
the following morning.
Garda Derek Dalton said that
Page
Boy found
hanged in
warehouse
‘target of
web racism’
Mother claims ‘Facebook’
taunts were later deleted
the body was found by one of Darren’s friends who was searching for
him after seeing on Facebook that
he was missing. He told gardaí
that Darren had been in the same
building – the abandoned warehouse – a few days prior to his
death and had been ‘very down’.
The boy went to the building to
make sure that Darren had ‘not
done anything to himself there’,
Garda Dalton said, and when he
discovered the body, he attempted
CPR and alerted the emergency
services.
When gardaí investigated
Darren’s mobile phone, they found
a text message sent to his mother
which Dr Farrell described as a
‘farewell note’ written in ‘loving
terms’.
Garda Dalton said that gardaí
had requested information relating to one of Darren’s Facebook
accounts from the social network-
Cyber slurs: Teenager Darren Hughes-Gibson was found hanged
ing site but that it may take six to
nine months to get a response.
Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail
last night, Darren’s grandmother,
Breda Hughes, said, when asked if
she thought social media websites
should do more to prevent cyberbullying: ‘Yes, they really do have
to do something about it.’
However she did not want to
comment further on her grandson’s inquest.
Dr Farrell adjourned the inquest
for further mention in March.
The most recent figures released
by Facebook show that the Government asked the website for
information about 40 users in the
first six months of this year.
In Facebook’s first ever transparency report, published today, the
social network has said it produced ‘some’ data in response to
71 per cent of the requests.
jennifer.bray@dailymail.ie
Saoirse’s first sex scene
was a ‘lovely’ experience
By Julian Brouwer
SAOIRSE Ronan has talked candidly about filming her first sex
scene.
The actress says she was not at
all apprehensive about shooting
the raunchy scene with co-star
Tom Holland in her new movie
How I Live Now.
‘I actually wasn’t nervous,’ said
the 19-year-old, who plays a character called Daisy, a young American who is sent to stay with cousins in Britain at a time of
impending war.
‘It was always written in the
script, and there needed to be a
sex scene in this film. They needed
to consummate their love, I think,
in order for us to really feel the
heartbreak when they’re separated because obviously, it
becomes a lot more intense
after.’
Hours of planning and preparation went into filming the sex
scene and Saoirse talked about it
in detail beforehand with the
film’s director, Kevin Macdonald.
Close-ups: Saoirse Ronan
Due to the long build-up to
shooting the scene, any anxiety
the Carlow actress might have
had was gone.
‘Because it was my first explicit
scene on film, I did want to talk to
Kevin a lot about it and choreograph quite a bit of it, like the
lead-up to it and stuff,’ she said.
‘We did, and he was really good
about it. The way they shot it was
so lovely, and a lot of it was done
in pieces. It was very close-up
and intimate and beautiful lighting. It worked out well.’
But it wasn’t only Saoirse who
had no experience of sex scenes
– afterwards cinematographer
Franz Lustig hugged her and
admitted it was his first time
shooting a sex scene.
Though she has got her first love
scene out of the way, Ms Ronan
doesn’t approve of some films
which have graphic scenes.
She said: ‘Things can be oversexualised and it’s unnecessary. I
watch some scenes in films and I
think, “I don’t think it’s adding
anything to the story.”’
Saoirse enjoyed playing a character who was anti-social, bitchy
and unlikeable to begin with –
before she found love.
‘I wanted to play someone who
wasn’t the warmest, wasn’t the
most understandable person.
More than anything I think it was
the fact that she was just so bitchy
to everyone,’ she said.
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