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

[ChatteringBirds]

How would they have bullied him? I was bullied online and never in actual school

Perhaps bullying was taking place in the bus (some think this is a possible reason he walked home at least once), in the school bathrooms, or outside on school grounds. Many kids are bullied in their schools or during breaks between classes.

If teachers see bullying happening in the classroom or hallway then they tell the kids to break it up. They intervene. Why didn't they for Andrew? Doesn't make sense.

I honestly think teachers often don't see it or don't realize what they're seeing. All it takes for a kid to start hating school is for a classmate there to keep saying something mean day after day.

Are you sure that's not just a movie trope? I've never witnessed anyone being bullied physically in school. Not shoved in lockers or punched or walked into.

I don't know how common physical bullying was at his school, but there were physical fights at my high school back in the day.
@submarine7 mentioned social exclusion, which is probably more likely and can feel like being bullied.

 

[Inspector Evans]

It was the start of a new school year, infact might've been the first full week of term going by the dates?

So Andrew could've certainly been of the mentality of can't be doing with a Friday, let's have a three day weekend. Perhaps there was a lesson on that Friday that triggered him a bit? Not sure if police looked at his actual timetable for that day and asked his teachers/form tutor if there was anything troubling him from one of the classes?

However from just skipping the day and staying locally to actually going down to London is a huge step and leaves so many question marks so just brings us to another dead end and all the other theories.

 

[beubeubeu]

If teachers see bullying happening in the classroom or hallway then they tell the kids to break it up. They intervene. Why didn't they for Andrew? Doesn't make sense.

If teachers indeed see the bullying. But if a school is strict and mostly well kept, with teachers "covering" all the available space by sight during breaks and before & after school + every act of physical violence ending up with some sort of real consequences: like parents being called, a bad note being left, possibly even a warning that if repeated could end up with that kid being expelled... then you wont see much of physical attacks going on. Bullying still may be happening but it wont be as blunt and obvious like it could be in understaffed school.
It would more likely take a form of being mean on every occasion and doing stuff that may be brushed off as accidental, like hitting with an arm while walking: can be total accident and no ill will included, can be totally malicious.

Also in general, rougher it is, rougher the attack has to be to seriously affect the victim. Lets say you have a bunch of kids who are always bumping into other people, full speed. They do that every day, to multiple people. It hurts. No consequences. It is unpleasant, it is problematic, but its rather unlikely to be traumatic. Vs. a scenario where there is no group, just one kid bumps full speed into another kid during the break. Week later he does it again, and again. The victim sees that doesnt seem accidental and that it doesnt happen to others. May try to complain about it... and then what? If others experienced just accidental hit on the arm, or maybe even themselves accidentally bumped into someone - will they even buy the claim that someone does that to someone else on purpose? Might not.

In short: more the school is kept "in order", more likely it is that when bullying happens its gonna be hard to notice and tell the difference between accidental encounters, silly jokes and normal disagreements vs. malicious, targeted actions.

 

[vagab0nd]

Perhaps bullying was taking place in the bus (some think this is a possible reason he walked home at least once), in the school bathrooms, or outside on school grounds. Many kids are bullied in their schools or during breaks between classes.



I honestly think teachers often don't see it or don't realize what they're seeing. All it takes for a kid to start hating school is for a classmate there to keep saying something mean day after day.



I don't know how common physical bullying was at his school, but there were physical fights at my high school back in the day.
@submarine7 mentioned social exclusion, which is probably more likely and can feel like being bullied.

My husband's classmate called someone a f--kwit on the bus and he was immediately expelled. The English don't take bullying lightly. This happened in 2007.

 

[tricia]

We do not allow AI generated posts that talk about the actual facts of a case. If you see a post using AI, please hit the report button.
Thank you.

 

[VelvetDiamante]

Then why would he meet up with someone catfishing or posing as a woman if he felt embarrassed?

Because he wasn't catfished.

The police found no evidence of grooming on his sister's laptop, the school computers and the local library account.
He also didn't seem interested in computers - if he was, his family would have known about it.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

My husband's classmate called someone a f--kwit on the bus and he was immediately expelled. The English don't take bullying lightly. This happened in 2007.

I believe the bus he took was not a school bus, though, but rather a public bus.

 

[wtiger]

sadly bullying is pretty rife in almost all english schools.....Andrew certainly could have been bullied

 

[vagab0nd]

I believe the bus he took was not a school bus, though, but rather a public bus.

Yes. Most English kids take public bus to school that also includes commuters or whoever else rides the public bus. It's like taking the T train in Boston or CTA in Chicago.

 

[vagab0nd]

sadly bullying is pretty rife in almost all english schools.....Andrew certainly could have been bullied

I agree, but this doesn't explain why he disappeared. Bullying is only the second ranked reason that children runaway. I don't think he was running away and I don't think bullying is the reason for his disappearance.

 

[vagab0nd]

sadly bullying is pretty rife in almost all english schools.....Andrew certainly could have been bullied

I agree, but this doesn't explain why he disappeared. Bullying is only the second ranked reason that children runaway. I don't think he was running away and I don't think bullying is the reason for his disappearance.

 

[beubeubeu]

It somehow didnt came back to me before, but wait...
Pre 2007 you didnt really need an email to stay in touch with someone online.
It was making things easier, but wasn't really necessary.
I just remembered that my first online contacts were going totally on this one chat platform. I'm almost sure they did NOT require and email to "register" a nick. You were just adding password, and kept logging in with that password but if you forgot it, it was gone. But there was no need to do it, and have like "JaneSmith" nick, you could just write down whatever name and keep coming in as ~JaneSmith or ~JaneSmith1.
It had no chat history, but you were able to leave messages with some code like #LEAVEMESSAGEFOR#~JohnSmith, and then they were delivered the moment someone entered the chat as "~JohnSmith".
And somehow, it wasnt really a thing for people to log in as other people, even if it was just that not-registered nick. It might be an issue on these big like dating or city, or age group chatrooms where were always hundreds of people BUT in the smaller ones, like "metal music fans" or "Rammstein fans" there were never more than few dozens of people, mostly regulars and everyone kinda knew who's who there.

I cant tell for sure now, but as Im thinking Im "pretty sure" that some forums worked like that either. They either didnt required an email to register, or they werent really like sending any verification message so you could put [email protected] there, and keep logging with it. And even that only if you felt a need to have your nick without "~", cause posting without a login was also possible.
Same thing as with chats - on the big forums and more popular topic it was just turning into big mess with people signing their troll posts with the ~originalposter nick, but on the more "niche" forums it stayed mostly in order as far as I remember.

So how exactly could LE confidently verify that Andrew wasnt using these ways of communication? The only thing they could possibly tell would be if someone was entering these chats or forums from computer A, B, C and so on, but not if it was or wasnt Andrew.
Unless nobody ever was using forums or chat websites on school, library, friends and sister's computer but how likely is that? That NOBODY ever did?
Maybe with sister's computer they could, cause since she had it for such a short period of time that she and her parents would still remember it pretty well if Andrew was asking to use it or not and how often BUT if there was even theoretical possibility that Andrew was using it in one of his friend's house... then you have parents + kids + kid's friends, so possibly like 6, 7, 8 or even 10 people using it sometimes - then who's gonna remember like a month later who used it and when?

Online communicators werent a thing yet I think but texts on prepaid phone with a code were worth like one day's lunch money.

 

[vagab0nd]

It somehow didnt came back to me before, but wait...
Pre 2007 you didnt really need an email to stay in touch with someone online.
It was making things easier, but wasn't really necessary.
I just remembered that my first online contacts were going totally on this one chat platform. I'm almost sure they did NOT require and email to "register" a nick. You were just adding password, and kept logging in with that password but if you forgot it, it was gone. But there was no need to do it, and have like "JaneSmith" nick, you could just write down whatever name and keep coming in as ~JaneSmith or ~JaneSmith1.
It had no chat history, but you were able to leave messages with some code like #LEAVEMESSAGEFOR#~JohnSmith, and then they were delivered the moment someone entered the chat as "~JohnSmith".
And somehow, it wasnt really a thing for people to log in as other people, even if it was just that not-registered nick. It might be an issue on these big like dating or city, or age group chatrooms where were always hundreds of people BUT in the smaller ones, like "metal music fans" or "Rammstein fans" there were never more than few dozens of people, mostly regulars and everyone kinda knew who's who there.

I cant tell for sure now, but as Im thinking Im "pretty sure" that some forums worked like that either. They either didnt required an email to register, or they werent really like sending any verification message so you could put [email protected] there, and keep logging with it. And even that only if you felt a need to have your nick without "~", cause posting without a login was also possible.
Same thing as with chats - on the big forums and more popular topic it was just turning into big mess with people signing their troll posts with the ~originalposter nick, but on the more "niche" forums it stayed mostly in order as far as I remember.

So how exactly could LE confidently verify that Andrew wasnt using these ways of communication? The only thing they could possibly tell would be if someone was entering these chats or forums from computer A, B, C and so on, but not if it was or wasnt Andrew.
Unless nobody ever was using forums or chat websites on school, library, friends and sister's computer but how likely is that? That NOBODY ever did?
Maybe with sister's computer they could, cause since she had it for such a short period of time that she and her parents would still remember it pretty well if Andrew was asking to use it or not and how often BUT if there was even theoretical possibility that Andrew was using it in one of his friend's house... then you have parents + kids + kid's friends, so possibly like 6, 7, 8 or even 10 people using it sometimes - then who's gonna remember like a month later who used it and when?

Online communicators werent a thing yet I think but texts on prepaid phone with a code were worth like one day's lunch money.

Do you mean ICQ and Lycos? Investigators didn't need a login; they used Hard Drive Forensics to find "ghost" fragments of chats hidden in the computer's temporary cache and unallocated space. They then matched the timing of those fragments to ISP connection logs, which proved exactly when a specific house was online or person from x location. Even without an account, these digital "fingerprints" left on the physical hardware made it very difficult to hide activity from a specialized search.

I don't believe for a second that Andrew had some secret online life that can't be traced. We are just stretching because we have no evidence to go off of.

Also, schools have systems to block websites. Even back in 2007 websites were blocked at schools. Maybe Andrew didn't care enough to get around the blocks.

 

[Ellymoo]

I used to use NMe chat. You could easily log in as someone else and there was no record of who you were; you didn't even have to register to use the chat. You just popped in as "someone". Andrew may have been online but it wasn't traced to him. Nobody could trace me to my NME account if I didn't want them to. Just because no trace of his name has been found online doesn't mean he wasn't online in the early days.

That aside, bullying is rife in most schools not just English ones. It's not necessarily violence. It's belittling, picking on someone, making them feel small ... It doesn't have to be a big deal to others to be a big deal to the individual. (I'm an English ex schoolgirl)

 

[Ellymoo]

I suspect this was for more than just calling someone that, to be fair. (Sorry this was supposed to be a quote about calling someone a f*ckwit)

 

[Ellymoo]

Yes. Most English kids take public bus to school that also includes commuters or whoever else rides the public bus. It's like taking the T train in Boston or CTA in Chicago.

This isn't true. Most of us take school buses. Some in cities go on public buses. Not that it's a big deal, but it's a point.

 

[Ellymoo]

My friend was murdered in lockdown and the police investigation found his killer had killed over 90+ people in the UK. This man is on trial next year for the murder of hundreds in different countries (not just the UK). I used to actively post comments on Reddit about my friend and what he was like and how I think the man deserves the death penalty despite it not being a thing in his home country. I would not shut up about it. I didn't talk for clout. I talked because my friend was never bullied and had no mental health issues and was happily married with children. I wanted people to know the truth. Strangers and trolls bullied me so I gave up talking about it. I can imagine Andrew's friends and classmates don't want to deal with backlash, so I don't really know. Maybe he was bullied. We don't know. It just seems odd given that my husband said he never witnessed physical abuse in his school and bullying was dealt with quite seriously. One kid was even expelled for some minor bullying.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend. I'm in the UK and haven't heard about this case; can you tell me more please?

I don't think a child will have been expelled for minor bullying alone. There will have been more to it. I never saw any bullying going on at my school but that didn't mean it didn't happen. It happened to me.
Sorry for all the posts. I'm new to this and can't figure out how to put all my comments in one post.

I think about Andrew a lot, and his poor family. Two women disappeared from my village: one was found in the river years later, and the other was found murdered by a crazy man. It is frightening how common it is for people to disappear, but children in particular makes me feel sick.

 

[Ellymoo]

If someone told me at 14 that they were going to harm my family I'd never believe them. There's just no way because murder hasn't occured in my hometown since the 1800s. I grew up in a town of 300 people where nobody owns a gun. It's one of the only towns in the US where there is no crime and there's only one police officer whose been doing the job since 1978. There's no way anyone would get away with it. I would assume that if anyone said that to Andrew he would tell his parents. He may have been secretive in some things, but definitely not that.

This is a bit of an odd post because I think most children at 14 would have found it very easy to believe their family would be harmed if they were threatened. It's an easy way to get to break a child. You don't know what he was secretive about.