A child psychiatrist, during an investigation, told the inquest that he could not sleep after watching the content watched by the fourteen-year-old girl before she took her own life.
Dr Navin Venugopal, The child psychiatrist, told the north corner’s court that the online content watched by Molly was very disturbing and distressing.
He said, “I had to see it over a short period, and it was very disturbing, distressing.”
Dr Navin Venugopal added that “There were periods where I was not able to sleep well for a few weeks, so bearing in mind that the child saw this over a period of months, I can only say that she was [affected], especially bearing in mind that she was a depressed 14-year-old. It would certainly affect her and make her feel more hopeless.”
Fourteen-year-old Molly killed herself in 2017 after viewing highly disturbing content online. To watch self-harming, suicidal and depressing content, she watched an extensive amount of content on Pinterest and Instagram.
Under examination from senior coroner Andrew Walker, the witness agreed it was essential to identify “children are not adults” and that adult matters should not be obtainable to children.
The child psychiatrist, Dr Venugopal, told the inquest that he did not see any positive impact of watching such horrible self-harming content online.
There was a pause in the hearing on Tuesday when the Russell family’s legal team flagged that a “rather unpleasant” Instagram account had appeared on the platform using a photo of Molly as its profile image. Instagram said the account had been removed immediately for “violating our policies”.
Guiding the potential effect on a person known to be anxious or depressed, Dr Venugopal, The child specialist, told the court, “If they are of that mindset and are seeing these sorts of things, it could have an impact.”
