AN EAST Yorkshire teenager has revealed how she fought back against cyber-bullying. Kira Lisseter, 18, decided to take on the anonymous bully who made abusive remarks against her online.
After taking the issue up with friends, her teacher and eventually the police, Kira finally turned to her local MP, Andrew Percy, for help to remove the offensive web-page. Mr Percy immediately wrote to the Prime Minister in the hope he could help Kira, of Goole, take action against the website.
Kira, who attends Selby College, said: "There are websites where people can leave comments without leaving their names. Little Gossip was one of those sites and some nasty comments had been left on there about me – telling me to go and hurt myself.
"At first I was a bit taken aback by it. The thought that someone I knew would spend time on something like this. I kept it to myself at first but then I decided I wanted to get it sorted."
Kira spoke to her friends, who advised her to speak to her head of year. Although the college was supportive, she was advised to contact the police. But even they were not able to help as the person who had left the message was untraceable.
It was then that her Ranger leader, Rachel Cone, advised her to talk to Mr Percy.
Kira said: "Andrew wrote to David Cameron, who then passed the issue on to the relevant minister, who said he would do whatever he could to help. It ended up with the page being removed but the website is still up, which means other people can still be bullied in the same way I was. I am more bothered about that."
Kira eventually found out who had left the cruel remarks and has since received an apology. But her experience has still left a scar, which has prompted her to want to do more to stop cyber-bulling.
"There is a lot of websites out there like this," she said. "There is trolling on Twitter, for example, so more needs to be done to help moderate these websites. I would like the Government to do more on this, so that there are no anonymous websites."
Mr Percy had responses from both the Department for Education and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport when he highlighted Kira's case. He subsequently pursued Little Gossip and their internet service provider.
The Conservative MP used Kira's story last week during a debate in Parliament to call on the people who host websites to be "far more responsible".
He told MPs: "A constituent of mine, Kira Lisseter, came to me after comments were posted on US website, littlegossip.com. We wrote to the minister, who was very helpful and did all that he could.
"We also tried to raise the matter with the internet service provider and the hosts, but response came there none. We can do a lot through education and Government action, but we also need the people who host the websites to be far more responsible."
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