The mother of a young man who was relentlessly hounded and brutally harassed by bullies for months before taking his own life in 2015 has made a plea for more measures to tackle youth violence, ahead of Saturday’s anniversary of the discovery of his body.
“Vangelis left us the way he did, and 10 years later, I don’t know what we have achieved as a society. I don’t understand the violence,” Maria Giakoumaki said in a recent television interview. “Something is not right; we are definitely doing something wrong as a society,” she told Mega TV.
Vangelis Giakoumakis took his own life at the age of 20 while studying at the Dairy School of Ioannina, in northwestern Greece, where he had suffered months of sexual, physical and verbal abuse from a group of fellow students who, like him, hailed from Crete. He was reported missing from the school in February 2015 but his body was not found until 40 days later, on March 15. It was lying just 800 meters from the campus.
Eight of nine students at the school were convicted for their role in his death, while the school’s former director was also found guilty for allowing the bullying to take place.