'Just days after kissing another boy for a dare, 15-year-old Dominic Crouch jumped off a six-storey building. His suicide prompted his devastated parents to campaign against homophobic bullying. But, as Patrick Strudwick reports, there was further tragedy to follow...'
This is in the Mail On Sunday today - I'm really glad they've run it.
It's a powerful piece, and you couldn't think of a more harrowing example of where homophobic bullying can lead.
Dominic's father, Roger Crouch, began campaigning against school bullying, but took his own life at the end of last year.
The Mail has run a lot of sympathetic stories about the suicides of gay teenagers in the last few years - far, far more than any other British newspaper.
It's far from scientific, but typing "gay suicide" into their search engine brings up 459 mentions, there are 46 just for Tyler Clementi, the most notorious case.
Again, good for them.
I've written about the Mail's strange pro-gay/anti-gay duality a few times on here before, it may surprise many but they often run gay human interest stories such as this, and the showbiz pages are as gay-loving as anyone else's.
But you have to wonder how their editorial staff can square a story like this with their relentless attacks on gay equality elsewhere in their papers.
There are 1815 mentions of "gay marriage" in the Mail, for example, and I bet almost all of them are negative.
Most toxic of all is surely the Mail's homophobic attacks on attempts to tackle homophobia in schools.
Do they ever stop and wonder if there might be a link?
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