Dark Deaths Engulf Wales

The Welsh countryside is being visited by dampness, darkness, and death. The spirit and happiness of youthful hope is being snuffed out.

When I wrote my book Suicide Clusters for Faber and Faber (Boston and London) in 1987, few people accepted the reality that suicides clustered. By the time The Copycat Effect came out in 2004, it was taken for granted that suicide clusters existed and do happen.

This week the media began to report on a highly active cluster happening in Wales, in and around Bridgend, a former coal mining community of 40,000, and today the site of a well-known prison.

The death toll went to seven with the latest suicide occurring this Wednesday, when Natasha Randall died by hanging.

In addition to Randall, six men between the ages of 17 and 27 have also been found dead in the area. Authorities have ruled three of the cases to be suicides; the others are under investigation, but suicide is suspected. [See the update at the end, regarding a possible new count of 13 deaths by suicide.]

Let me be clear. From reading about how they all have died, I would say that all seven are suicidal deaths.

Read for yourself, how these associates and friends killed themselves:

Dale Crole, 18, hanged himself at the Coney Beach funfair at Porthcawl, near Bridgend, January 2007;

David Dilling, 19, a former classmate of Dale from Pyle, near Bridgend, hanged himself, February 2007;

Thomas Davies, 20, who had been at school with both Dale and David, found hanged from a tree in David’s home village two days before his funeral, February 2007;

Zachery Barnes, 17, of Wildmill, Bridgend, a friend of Thomas’s family, hanged with washing line, August 2007;

Liam Clarke, 20, a friend of Dale, found hanged in a park in Bridgend, December 2007;

Gareth Morgan, 27, who knew Liam, found hanged in his bedroom, January 2008; and

Natasha Randall, 17, of Blaengarw, Bridgend, a close friend of Liam, hanged herself in her bedroom, January 2008.

The common method hanging unites these deaths in the cluster.

Near Bridgend, from my research, clustering has happened before. In 2003, the Bridgend Samaritans group wanted to put signs at a south Wales beauty spot to persuade suicidal people to call them. Southerndown Cliffs near Ogmore in the Vale of Glamorgan had become a notorious suicide spot, with nine deaths since December 2000. That translates into a cluster of nine jumping deaths between December of 2000 and May 2003 ~ nine deaths in 18 months.

In 2006, the media quoted Philip Walters, the coroner, as saying he was "desperately concerned" about the number of young men dying by suicide in his area (Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Merthyr Tydfil). Over an 11-month period in 2006, he said he dealt with nearly one case of suicide per week for men under 30. (If he actually said that, the new 2007-2008 cluster in Bridgend should be no surprise to him.)

In the midst of the 2006 events, a widely reported story was of a Swansea Institute computer student Geraint Banks-Wilkinson, 20, from Nantymoel, who died by hanging on January 13, 2006. His death seemed directly related to his worries about an overdraft at his bank, the Bridgend branch of HSBC. Mr. Banks-Wilkinson's father, Geoff, a prison officer, said of the bank: "The way they treated him was appalling."

Bridgend appears to be one of those communities that has a historical predisposition to clustering and contagion, where suicide is seen as an option for "coping" among vulnerable and hopeless youth.

Now the deaths in Bridgend are front-page news stories worldwide and people are looking to blame someone or something.
"People are saying it might be some sort of cult, but we don't know," said Luke Wills, 25. "There is something amiss, but we don't know what."

Even speculation about a "pact" has been floated about.

"It's nothing like that. What people are saying is not true," said Alicia Johns, a friend of 17-year-old Natasha Randall, who was found dead last week.

"People get down and they do it," she added, saying the young people acted on their own and were not influenced by others. "It's all from the same group, I knew these people."

But this suicide cluster is probably merely being pushed along by the copycat effect, in which the model for suicide among impulsive, action-driven, forlorn youth has now been placed in front of them in an area that has turned grim in a downward economy reinforced in the nearly perpetual damp mists that shroud Bridgend in the long winter months. The darkness of despair can run deep. One need not blame cults, pacts, video games, the internet, or even the media. The gloom is like the fog surrounding one at night in Bridgend, and for many, the modeling of past suicides shout out from those Welsh nights.

Remember, if you live in Wales, don't forget to keep talking to each other and help each other through these dark times.

~ UK Samaritans: 08457 90 90 90 and www.samaritans.org ~

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Update: Senior detectives investigating a spate of young suicides in south Wales over the past year are to re-examine the files of 13 deaths in the area - including four cases that are officially closed. South Wales police issued a statement saying: "We will be reviewing a number of cases of sudden deaths in the Bridgend area as part of the investigation process. At this stage, we can't confirm the number or further detail."

According to other sources, among the cases are five involving people aged between 21 and 27, three 20-year-olds, two 19-year-olds, an 18-year-old and two 17-year-olds. All are apparently unexplained and were within the space of a few miles.




Bridgend, Wales, in calmer days.