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“I saw my son fighting for his last breath,” says Anna Nikolin-Caisley. “He went in agony.”
Anna believes her youngest child, Vlad, 17, was “encouraged” to swallow poison by users of an online “pro-suicide” group which is still active in the UK, despite numerous calls to ban it.
Vlad’s family have decided to reveal the harrowing details of his death, in Hampshire in May 2024, as a warning to others.
The government said platforms must remove illegal suicide and self-harm content when new rules come into effect this year as part of the Online Safety Act.
But the Samaritans charity says it does not believe the new law goes far enough.
After a happy childhood, Vlad had begun to withdraw in his early teens and was later diagnosed with autism, depression and anxiety. At the time of his death he was being treated by mental health professionals and had also developed a painful neurological condition.
His family say they had seen his mental health improve as he had started seeing friends and travelling. But Vlad’s older sisters, Masha and Mia, say even though he was much better, he was still vulnerable when he took his own life.
“It was a very secretive community,” says Mia. “There is almost definite grooming taking place.”
The BBC has spent years investigating the online forum that Vlad was a member of. It now has more than 50,000 members globally and Vlad’s family want it taken down or blocked.
The police investigation into Vlad’s death, to establish if any criminal offences have been committed, is ongoing.
The website is based in South America and hosted by a server in the United States. With different laws in different countries, online harm is notoriously difficult to police.
A government spokesperson said, “Suicide devastates families. Intentionally encouraging suicide or the serious self-harm of another person is illegal.
“Once the Online Safety Act is fully implemented, platforms will have to remove this illegal suicide and self-harm content as well as stop children from seeing harmful suicide related material – even when it falls below the criminal threshold.
“Companies should not wait for laws to come into force – they must take effective action to protect all users now.”
Julie Bentley, CEO of Samaritans, says the charity’s calls for smaller sites to be treated as severely as larger platforms have been “completely ignored”.
“Legal-but-harmful content needs to be strictly regulated for both adults and children,” she says, urging both the government and Ofcom to act “before it’s too late”.
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