Bringing out the worst in people

Sophie Foxley is a very brave 9 year old girl from Shropshire. She has been battling leukaemia since 2006 and has been charting her journey through treatment and the road to recovery via her blog Sophie's Diary. The blog became very well known around the world and tens of thousands of vistors each day were logging on to read Sophie's latest news. Fantastic!! The family have been able to raise much awareness and also money for the various causes they support. My own sister Clare's 'Quilts For Leukaemia' group made a beautiful quilt for Sophie.

Sadly, Sophie also attracted a vicious little 9 year old stalker who began posting death threats and evil messages in the comments sections of her diary blog. Such a senseless cause of emotional distress to Sophie and her family. The story was reported in the press over the weekend (eg. this story) and I am glad it has been resolved and police traced the nasty little culprit. I wish they could name and shame her. Of course they can't though. I am afraid I am not much in to forgiving and forgetting and have a real respect for people who are!

Fighting cancer (whatever age your are) and fighting to just 'live' and keep your world together is one of the toughest challenges for anyone to go through. It quite literally tests every single emotion you have. It breaks you down to smithereens and tries to destroy all that you have and all that you believe in....but of course we don't LET it!!! You keep your eye on that light at the end of tunnel and eventually you break back out in to the real world again and make it back to the arms of your friends and family! And life has never been better! So to imagine what horrors this nasty little bully inflicted on poor Sophie's family, I am left speechless. It's very sad indeed that someone so young could be so evil. I hope her family are working hard on correcting this child's serious humanity issues and are prising that little pitchfork from her hand! ;-)

As my friends from Miltchat will recall, we had something similar-ish a year ago on the Miltchat forum (a forum where most members have had or have leukaemia or other blood cancers). A girl joined and told us she had non-hodgkins lymphoma so we welcomed her in to the fold and offered her endless support and friendship. Long story short, she latched on to my good friend Davo who was fighting a ferocious battle with leukaemia himself and bombarded him with messages about how miserable she was - what was the point of living? everyone hates her, she is so scared of her illness etc. Davo was being so brave about his own illness. He had just lost the use of his legs and things were very bleak in his world, but he fought like a soldier with a very brave heart...he was getting quite worried about this girl Allison's messages and didnt know how to handle her. She would post on the forum that her fiance had left her when she was in a coma and her family disowned her. Then she came on the forum pretending to be her own sister to tell us all she had slipped in to another coma. I smelt a rat and eventually caught her out because she had a Myspace page too - she didn't know I would find that and I started contacted her friends. None of her friends there knew she had cancer, let alone a serious illness! The reason? Because she didn't. She had a history of lying. Anyway - long story short, we exposed her, she apologised and has never been seen again on our forums thanks goodness!

We were all patting each other on the back afterwards (that we had found her out) but I remember how terribly upset Davo had been. He had been so ill and emotionally weak at the time and this girl preyed on that. She had hounded him with messages about her fake terminal illness, while he was battling his own. I verbally kicked this girl's ass like you wouldn't believe for Davo and for Looch (another friend Allison had also taken advantage of with her lies) but it didn't help Davo feel any better. All this girl cared about was the fact that I found out who her friends were and contacted them all telling them what she had done. She couldn't care less about all the sick people she had hurt.

I guess the point I am making from all of this is how bullies can totally destroy the soul, given the chance. Just because they get caught and slapped on the wrist by the police or a parent, it doesn't undo the pain they have caused. The solution? I don't know. Be good parents to your children and install them with a decent set of morals! Perhaps that would help. I hope so.

Soph xx