UK UK - Andrew Gosden, 14, Doncaster, South Yorks, 14 Sep 2007 #2

[warp3dwing]

What in the ChatGPT is going on here?

 

[matchaoatmilk]

Im not even going for "his school should have done things differently" in the context of that day and Andrew cause apparently whole system wasnt well thought through and that one person responsible for calling would probably get in trouble for making persistent calls about each absent student if that wasnt clearly stated as expected of them.

Its just that it got made into such a big deal like ruined attendance, not even a note left for parents, not caring that they will be horrified when school will call them... like it certainly means A LOT while in reality it could be not ruined at all + no reason to consider that parents actually will be notified + plan to came back or call home before they will notice.

And im super frustrated with myself. Ive probably first heard about Andrew 15+ years ago and each time something reminded me of him i was considering possible suicide cause no returning ticket or a ride back by car... but not once that he could be heading somewhere else and London was just where he switched train for a bus & no return ticket cause no plan of going back same way.
Not that its super probable or anything but... possible, mondain, simple explanation. People probably do that thousands on thousands times more often than buying one way ticked cause going somewhere with a plan to commit suicide.

I feel like a lot of people are over intellectualizing Andrew by projecting their own panic onto him. Like they are imagining what they would feel if they skipped school once and then reverse engineering a motive. That is not how real life works and it definitely is not how fourteen year olds think. I am a millennial and when Andrew went missing my life was already objectively bad. My dad had died suddenly the year before. No warning. No slow goodbye. Just gone. I was also getting bullied hard at school and most of my friends drifted away because people do not know how to exist around grief. It was lonely and destabilizing. And I am saying this clearly. Even in that state suicide never crossed my mind. Pain does not automatically flip a switch that makes someone want to die and it is wild how often people assume that in this case.

I also grew up in a tiny town. Like three hundred people tiny. If I did not show up to school the office would have called my parents almost immediately. Not because of attendance awards or discipline but because absence meant something was wrong. That is where the culture gap shows up. England sounds extremely strict about school attendance on paper. Fines. Letters. Legal threats. But that strictness is about compliance not care. Parents can get fined hundreds of pounds just for taking their kid out of school for a week. Yet when a kid actually does not show up unexpectedly the system back then was not built to treat that as urgent. It is rigid and weirdly passive at the same time.
There is also this idea floating around that Andrew would have believed missing one day permanently ruined his future. That does not really track. Authorized absences existed. Parents could excuse things retroactively. One missed day was not a life ending event. And more importantly real life does not work the way people think it does when they turn school into mythology. I graduated high school with a two point five GPA and still ended up at Yale and Juilliard. That is not a flex. It is proof that paths are nonlinear and that kids do not actually experience their lives as a single fragile thread that snaps if they mess up once.

When you look at the theories one by one none of them really lock into place. Suicide does not match his behavior or the logistics. Running away collapses when you look at money documents and the total absence of any later trace. Accidental death does not work in a city like London where bodies are found and identified. Grooming or third party involvement explains more but even that only works if evidence exists somewhere and never surfaced publicly. Every theory breaks. That is why this case never settles into something neat.

What feels hardest for people to accept is that this was not a dramatic symbolic act about attendance or grades or pressure. It was a quiet kid moving through a system that runs on assumptions. That good students are fine. That absence can be explained later. That tomorrow always exists. The failure here is not one rule or one person. It is that the system was never designed to notice someone like Andrew in real time.

 

[vagab0nd]

Which assumptions do you think would need to be supported by behavior? Suicide isn't predictable, because there often are no real signs, even in retrospect, baffling as that is to their loved-ones. So IMO it has to remain a possibility that's considered, even if not high on the list.

I get that suicide can’t be totally ruled out and that it often comes without clear signs, but in Andrew’s case the behaviors we actually see don’t really line up with what you’d expect from someone heading toward that kind of finality. He wasn’t isolating himself, he didn’t give away possessions, he didn’t leave notes, and he acted in practical ways—taking his wallet, keys, PSP, and withdrawing money—like someone moving into the world rather than leaving it behind. Emotion and expression matter too, and from everything we know Andrew didn’t show the kind of narrowing of focus or despair that typically precedes suicide, even if it’s subtle or internal. Teens often express distress in ways that can be quiet or misunderstood, but there’s usually some signal in choice, tone, or routine, and Andrew’s choices that day suggest openness and curiosity rather than withdrawal or finality. That doesn’t make suicide impossible, but it makes it less plausible than theories that account for his behavior, decisions, and the environment he was moving through.

 

[ekardh]

I get that suicide can’t be totally ruled out and that it often comes without clear signs, but in Andrew’s case the behaviors we actually see don’t really line up with what you’d expect from someone heading toward that kind of finality. He wasn’t isolating himself, he didn’t give away possessions, he didn’t leave notes, and he acted in practical ways—taking his wallet, keys, PSP, and withdrawing money—like someone moving into the world rather than leaving it behind. Emotion and expression matter too, and from everything we know Andrew didn’t show the kind of narrowing of focus or despair that typically precedes suicide, even if it’s subtle or internal. Teens often express distress in ways that can be quiet or misunderstood, but there’s usually some signal in choice, tone, or routine, and Andrew’s choices that day suggest openness and curiosity rather than withdrawal or finality. That doesn’t make suicide impossible, but it makes it less plausible than theories that account for his behavior, decisions, and the environment he was moving through.

Thank you, ChatGPT.