'Bullies tried to hang my son': Mother of boy driven to suicide after years of torment pleads for law change

Jacqueline Peebles, 42, is still coming to terms with her grief after her 18-year-old son Arthur Stephenson committed suicide last November in the family home in Burnham Road, Morden.

Arthur Stephenson

Now she is campaigning for ‘Arthur’s Law’: a law that would mean bullies – or their parents – are prosecuted if they commit serious abuse.

Arthur was five years old when he was subjected to a horrific ordeal while he playing with his 10-year-old sister Jayme near to their old home in Slade Green Park, Erith.

His mother said three teenage boys attempted to hang Arthur from a makeshift noose they had hung from a tree but were prevented from doing so by his sister.

Instead they beat him and smeared him with dog mess before being chased away by Ms Peebles, who had been alerted to what was happening by one of Jayme’s friends.

The teenagers were spoken to police, but no further action was taken against them. Ms Peebles said her son never recovered from the appalling event, which transformed the bubbly, happy child into a quiet and withdrawn one, making him a target for bullies later in life.

The impact was made clear after Arthur’s death, she said, when she found disturbing drawings he had done as a child, showing figures hanging from ropes.

She said: “Those three boys were the ones who broke him, and then the other bullies picked away at him.

“He didn’t even tell me about the rest of the bullying when he got older. It had been going on for years and years, and he never told me.

“He was a proper sensitive little pure soul, that one. He was such a pure soul, and that’s what upsets me so much. That’s what the bullies took away from him.

“The bullies should be made accountable for their actions. If not the bullies then their parents, it’s how the parents bring them up.

Jacqueline Peebles said she will not give up. Photo: SWNS

“I just don’t want other children and other parents to go through what we have been through.”

Arthur was a former pupil of Blenheim High School in Epsom, and attended South Thames College Merton where he managed to secure a place at university and was preparing to have some of his short stories published before his death.

An online petition set up to support Arthur's Law has so far received over 2,700 signatures, but Ms Peebles says she has plenty more to do.

She said: “I have got to keep campaigning. I’ve got to do as much as I can. It’s really hard, I’m doing it while it’s still raw. But I have to stay strong.

“Arthur never opened his mouth and said what was happening to him, so now I need to speak out. He should never have had to go through that. I have to do this for him.”

To sign the petition, click here.

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