The heartbroken dad of a 14-year-old girl who took her own life after being bullied at school suffered a double tragedy when his wife also died months later.
Mariano Janin’s daughter Mia was last seen alive at about 10pm on March 11, 2021, when she said goodnight to her parents in their family home in Barnet, north-west London. She was found dead the following morning.
The day before she died, she sent a WhatsApp voice note to a friend saying she was “taking deep breaths” and “mentally preparing to get bullied” at school. An inquest into the teenager’s death this week ruled she took her own life after she “experienced bullying behaviour from some male students” at the Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton.
Now, her devastated dad – who is originally from Argentina – said his wife Marisa, who discovered Mia dead, was diagnosed with untreatable acute myeloid leukaemia three months after Mia’s death and tragically passed away weeks later. He told The Telegraph: “She was in good health and she was a fighter, but she just couldn’t take what happened to Mia.”
He added: “She was a remarkable woman, very strong and very intelligent. In every couple, there is one more strong and one less strong. I was less strong than Marisa, but Mia’s death killed her. Afterwards, she never went upstairs again. She’d sleep on the sofa and I’d sit with her until she was asleep and then go up to bed.”
Following this tragedy Mariano wrote to his wife on Facebook: “My beloved Marisa. Thank you for all of our years together. I feel really blessed and honoured to have been your husband. I hope you are finally with Mia once again, able to find some closure and are manage to rest in peace. We will meet again. I will forever love you. Mariano.”
The heartbroken man said his late daughter and wife are now buried side by side in a cemetery in Israel as he explained: “I didn’t want Mia to be in an English Jewish cemetery with all the bullies.” The school mia attended is considered a pillar of the Jewish community in north London.
Talking about his daughter, he said: “Mia was discovering the world by herself. She was very curious, always finding the bright side of life, very optimistic. And beautiful.” After the inquest into Mia’s death, Mariano added: “I will try to carry on. I will try to help some people who are trying to change the law in order to protect our kids. I think we need to do a lot of things… I think we need to put some limits on kids’ access to the internet and how we can recollect the data if something like this happens again. We have a big challenge ahead.”
His daughter was part of a Snapchat group including 60 boys in which she was ridiculed. On the night before her death, Mia had asked her parents if she could be home-schooled for the rest of the year, having only been back at the state school for just one day since the lockdown restrictions were lifted. Although her parents had agreed to move her, Mariano later said he did not realise how bad it had become for his only child.
