Tilly Rosewarne: Teen bullying task force to champion reforms in wake of tragic suicide

Police, mental health workers and bullying survivors will form a “groundbreaking” task force in honour of teen suicide victim Tilly Rosewarne. Watch the touching video tribute here.

A special task force to crack down on bullying in schools is being created in the wake of Bathurst teen Matilda “Tilly” Rosewarne’s heartbreaking suicide as Education Minister Sarah Mitchell vowed to save other teens from falling through cracks.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal that Ms Mitchell is putting together an advisory committee which is expected to include representatives of police, mental health services, and young bullying survivors.

The task force will hand down recommendations on how to prevent cyber-bullying after 15-year-old Tilly was relentlessly bullied and had fake nude images of her doctored and shared on social media.

Ms Mitchell, a mum of two daughters herself, has promised to “champion” the anti-bullying cause in NSW after she met with Tilly’s devastated mother Emma Mason on Friday.

“I really want to champion this for her. There is so much our kids are navigating now that happens behind closed doors on phone that we don’t know about,” she said.

15-year-old Tilly Rosewarne’s life ended far too early, after the teenager was relentlessly bullied.

Abuse came via fake nudes, distributed on Snapchat, and in person through social exclusion.

“It’s important that you have a senior Minister, such as myself, championing this … My girls are only eight and four and this terrifies me.”

Ms Mitchell said in the next few weeks she will create a wide-ranging roundtable to brainstorm ideas on bullying prevention and work towards the creation of the advisory committee.

“If we all come together, we can see some groundbreaking reform in NSW. We will representatives form the other school sectors, have eSafety, police, social media platforms and some students as well.”

Education and Early Learning Minister Sarah Mitchell says she will “champion” the anti-bullying cause. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Ms Mason met with Ms Mitchell on Friday for a smaller roundtable meeting where they were joined by Mental Health Minister Bronnie Taylor and representatives from Police Minister Paul Toole and Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello’s departments.

Ms Mitchell said she will mobilise school resources to improve awareness about the powers of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant after Tilly’s case was never referred by police or her school to the watchdog.

Ms Mason said she was “heartened” to see that Ms Mitchell was completely supportive of her suggestions for reform.

“I wrote a paper for her before I went to the meeting which looked at what to do and what I thought needed to happen. I was very surprised she said “Yep, yep yep” to all of it,” she said.

“It’s about consequences because these are very public harms. But they are dealt with privately either through the eSafety Commissioner or through the Children’s Court. Children don’t see any consequences.”

Tilly was a vibrant, kind teenager who loved to dance and paint, before years of bullying led her to developing depression and anxiety.

Ms Mason wanted information about the eSafety Commissioner to be included in every single email signature for teachers and called for school-based consequences for bullies.

“I want specific policies and procedures in every NSW school with real consequences,” she said.

“Consequences could be not being able to represent the school, play sport, or attend school-based events, anything that is not just your day-to-day classes. Not being able to stay in the playground. Not just making them pick up papers (off the ground).”

Ms Mason also wanted teachers to have a bullying tool kit to help them deal with cases like Tilly’s.

“For Tilly it was about saying nothing happened. You can send the Snapchat image, nothing happened. You can chase me around the school and say you’ll kill me, and nothing happened. There are no repercussions.”