Teacher’s shocking question after West Australian student’s suicide

The girlfriend of a 17-year-old boy who took his own life has revealed the shocking question she was asked by a teacher.

A heartbroken 17-year-old girl sat away from her friends in a West Australian classroom.

Her world had just been turned upside down by the sudden and devastating death of her boyfriend — a student at the same school who had taken his own life.

While other students busied themselves on computers, Franki sat alone at a desk in the middle of the room.

“I had essentially given up on everything at that point,” she says.

The grief-stricken pupil from Warnbro Community High School was approached by a teacher.

She says what happened next made her fly into a rage.

“The teacher originally came over to check on me and was talking about how much of a loss it was,” Franki said.

“But then she asked if he’d left a note and then she asked what was in it. I flew into a rage and almost flipped the table at her before leaving the class.”

The shocking questions still haunt Franki after the suicide death of 17-year-old Cohen Fink on June 4, 2019.

Six years on, she is telling parts of her story for the first time.

Cohen Fink as a young boy. He took his own life as a Year 12 student in 2019.

Cohen Fink lost his fight with mental illness in June of 2019 but there were warning signs, his family says.

She says that in the immediate aftermath of the teacher’s confronting questions, she hid under a stairwell at the school.

Her best friend was pulled from class to find her.

Cohen’s mother, Pamella Fink, addressed the conversation with the school head on.

“I told them that a teacher asking Franki what Cohen wrote in his suicide letter was highly inappropriate and I remember thinking it was unbelievable that I had to even say that,” she said.

The handling of Cohen’s death, according to the family, was extremely poor. They filed a writ to sue the Department of Education three years ago after what they say was a failure to recognise and act on red flags Cohen was displaying at school.

As previously reported by news.com.au, Cohen scribbled notes on the pages of several exam papers in the days before his death.

“In one of those exams he rewrote questions, wrote questions back to front and as if in a mirror, drew pictures, wrote the phonetic alphabet, quoted dark song lyrics and YouTubers,” Mrs Fink said.

“When he was due to go back to school after the exam weekend, he ended his life. Within a few days the school informed us of the alarming things he did in his exams and dropped off copies to our house.

“We were so shocked no one had thought to alert us to him basically deliberately failing his exams and the things he wrote in his exams.”

The full picture, however, did not emerge until the Finks applied for access to school correspondence through Freedom of Information requests.

In email correspondence between staff members at Cohen’s school, seen by news.com.au, one staff member wrote: “ … after marking Cohen’s exam on Thursday night, I spoke to (blank) first thing Friday morning and showed her his exam.

“His responses weren’t concerning in the details of what he had written, but it was a change in his behaviour to write as he did. None of his answers were related to the question – they were all random words, such as foods, the alphabet, the question and instructions rewritten, song lyrics.”

Mrs Fink says the family is still waiting for “acknowledgment, accountability and an apology”.

“To be honest, we are so tired. We have never been afforded the opportunity to just be able to grieve Cohen,” she said this week.

“We haven’t really been able to do that because of the way we have been treated by the school and the Department of Education as a whole. We stay strong for Cohen because in all this his voice has been forgotten and we will always make sure he is heard to hopefully also protect kids like Cohen.”

She believes the school handled her boy’s death “extremely poorly”.

“They didn’t handle it at all and that’s the problem. They never took our disclosures of Cohen’s mental health illness seriously.

The Fink family has spent six years fighting for Cohen and for other children with mental illness.

Cohen Fink and his Year 12 exam.

“They assured us they did but it’s clear from the information we garnered from the FOI (after Cohen’s death) that Cohen was forgotten about.

“The FOI we obtained 15 months after Cohen died was when we first learnt that all of Cohen’s teachers had serious mental health concerns for him and no one told us.”

She worries that other families will go through the same pain that they still go through.

“We have parents still contacting us six years later with their frustrations and genuine fear of how schools are not supporting their children’s mental health conditions and it makes me so angry because it’s clear nothing has changed,” she said.

“We have always been treated as a problem and we don’t want another grieving family to be treated the same way. It is still inconceivable to us the way we’re treated. All we ever wanted was for someone to be honest with us and we should never have had to fight so hard for answers.”

News.com.au has approached the Department of Education for comment. A Department spokesperson said: “The loss of a young person in any circumstances is tragic. The Department of Education’s highest priority is the wellbeing of students.

“As the matter is currently before the court it is not appropriate to comment further.”

As for Franki, she is stronger now, but still has hard days.

“I still struggle with the belief that had I been at school the week before his passing (I was sick), that he may (still be alive),” she said.

“My biggest message to anyone going through what I went through is that it’s okay to feel. A lot of us worry about how our emotions will affect other people so we stop ourselves from feeling. Please don’t do that.”

Originally published as Teacher’s shocking question after West Australian student’s suicide