'Funny, kind Semina lit up room': 12-year-old's tragic overdose death

When 12-year-old Semina Halliwell was lying successful hospital, she asked the advisor if she was going to die. Semina told him she had wanted "go to slumber for a mates of days".

She was placed successful an induced coma but died soon after, connected 12 June 2021.

Three days earlier, she had posted connected societal media: "I whitethorn laughter and grin each time but I'm successful truthful overmuch pain." The aforesaid day, she went to her chamber and swallowed her mother's medicine medication.

An inquest, which concluded connected Thursday, heard grounds astir Semina's authorities of caput successful the months starring up to her death.

"She went from being a agleam and bubbly girl, to being depressed and withdrawn," Semina's mother, Rachel Halliwell, told the court. She spoke portion clutching a representation of her kid and her daughter's favourite denim jacket.

On Thursday, coroner Johanna Thompson recorded a abbreviated communicative conclusion.

She said Semina had "a analyzable societal history" and was "exceptionally vulnerable".

"Her decease arose arsenic a effect of taking an overdose of her mother's medicine medicine whilst successful a authorities of distress and her intent astatine that clip is unknown," she said.

Rachel says Semina was a quirky kid who loved watching TV, taking ballet and pat dancing lessons. She'd had the aforesaid 2 champion friends since she was 4 years old, she told the BBC.

"She spent each of her puerility singing and dancing connected her phone," Rachel says. "She would unreal to beryllium connected a amusement wherever she was the host."

But wrong months, she says a concatenation of events began that culminated successful Semina's tragic death.

During the summertime of 2020, astatine the tallness of the Covid lockdown, an older lad began messaging her connected Snapchat. Rachel believes helium was grooming Semina.

Semina past started secondary schoolhouse that September. After, the alteration successful her were "very quick", Rachel says.

"We'd gone from watching Barbie cartoons to becoming precise withdrawn and moody," she says.

Semina began self-harming and was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

"Because her autism was sensory she struggled with apparel - the consciousness of them, the labels - she would spell retired successful bare feet successful the pouring rainfall and ne'er consciousness the cold," her mum says.

Semina besides began wearing tights and gloves to fell self-harming scars, and was making herself sick aft eating.

The time earlier Mother's Day, successful March 2021, Semina told her mum she had been sexually assaulted by an older lad successful the woods a fewer months earlier. She said the older lad had been messaging her connected Snapchat.

"She said she felt horrible, she hated herself, she felt dirty," Rachel says.

When Semina told her mother, Rachel encouraged her to archer Merseyside Police. But the household importune officers didn't enactment Semina appropriately.

They accidental the 12-year-old was told it would beryllium a analyzable case, that it could instrumentality 18 months to travel to court, and that it could boil down to her connection against the boy's.

They near it to Semina to determine whether she wanted to prosecute a prosecution.

The household has since made 13 complaints to Merseyside Police astir its handling of the allegation of rape made by Semina, arsenic good arsenic the maltreatment they received, some online and from the section community.

The inquest concluded that nary of the authorities who dealt with Semina could person prevented her death.

The coroner concluded from the grounds that Semina was "highly vulnerable" but she did not hold with submissions from the household that Merseyside Police, Semina's school, wellness trusts and Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council had breached their operational duties.

"The grounds has not revealed to maine immoderate denotation that a existent and contiguous hazard to Semina's beingness was known to immoderate of the authorities agencies astatine immoderate applicable constituent successful clip which would person made her decease preventable," she said astatine the extremity of the inquest.

Merseyside Police reiterated the coroner's uncovering that determination was nary proposition of immoderate systemic breach connected the portion of the unit and nary grounds authorities could person prevented Semina's death.

A constabulary spokesperson told the BBC: "We would similar to explicit our thoughts and condolences to Semina's mum and family."

After her household reported the incident, a run of bullying against Semina began - including connected Snapchat - the inquest heard.

She had sent a bare photograph of herself to the boy, which was circulated astatine schoolhouse and online.

So excessively were videos of Semina being "jumped" and attacked from down by groups of girls connected aggregate occasions.

"She went downhill, she couldn't cope," Rachel says. "The bullying was horrendous. 'The biggest slag successful Year 7' - that's however she was referred to online."

"This lawsuit shows clear, systematic failures from Snapchat to proactively mean its services," said Andy Burrows, main enforcement of the Molly Rose Foundation, a foundation acceptable up aft the decease of Molly Russell.

"Just ideate the corrosive effect that that indispensable person had connected her good being and her intelligence health, to cognize that those videos were being shared, to cognize that you cognize each clip that she was getting a ping connected her telephone that whitethorn good person been further abuse, further messages."

A spokesperson for Snapchat described the lawsuit arsenic tragic, saying "our hearts spell retired to Semina's family". The steadfast works "in aggregate ways to effort to forestall and instrumentality enactment connected this benignant of behaviour," they added.

Before her death, Semina's societal media posts and WhatsApp messages became progressively concerning. In posts work retired successful court, she said she had "no feeling" and felt "ruined arsenic a person". "I americium successful specified pain. I conscionable privation to beryllium full again," Semina wrote.

The nighttime she took the overdose, constabulary were visiting Semina's house. When she said she "had had enough", her parent assumed she meant she was fed up with the constabulary being determination and of the wider situation.

She poured a solid of foodstuff and went upstairs to her bedroom, wherever she swallowed immoderate of tablets from her mother's medicine medication.

The bequest of that time weighs heavy connected her loved ones.

Semina and her champion person Lincoln O'Neill were "inseparable" from the property of four.

"She was amazing, she was funny, benignant – she had a grin that could airy up the full room," helium says, sitting successful her memorial plot astatine the section Catholic superior schoolhouse they some attended.

He excessively noticed a large alteration successful Semina erstwhile they moved up to secondary school.

"We started noticing her self-harming and it was scary to see." He says she had confided successful him astir the alleged intersexual assault.

"You could spot it took an effect connected her. She started hanging retired with caller groups of people." He feels present that she started "going down the incorrect route".

In the aftermath of Semina's death, Lincoln has dropped retired of school.

"It was conscionable excessively overmuch due to the fact that each azygous time determination were changeless reminders that she's gone," helium says.

Rachel told the BBC that since Semina's decease she has astir apt reported much than 100 incidents to police, including radical threatening her different children, and kicking the doorway of their household location and shouting threats.

She says wrong an hr of her daughter's death, trolls were posting cruel and taunting messages astir her online.

"It was endless," Rachel says. "They [the trolls] would enactment up pictures of a dormant idiosyncratic successful a coffin and adhd the sanction Semina." Rachel says idiosyncratic adjacent offered a £10,000 reward online to anyone who would trash her daughter's grave.

"Somebody came to the sedate to sojourn her, and erstwhile they got there, it was conscionable covered successful canine faeces, each implicit the grave," she says.

Today, Semina has a caller achromatic headstone engraved with a representation of her wearing her favourite denim jacket. The inscription reads: "Semina Mary Halliwell. Forever 12."

Rachel told the BBC she wanted accountability for her daughter's death.

"Sometimes I don't deliberation I've processed that she's gone," Rachel says. "She didn't request to die."