21 May 2023 , 12:32
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A beloved teenage girl tragically died in ‘an act of self-harm gone wrong’ after she watched “chilling” TikTok videos.
Maia Walsh was described as a “beautiful” and “intelligent” young girl but died under heartbreaking circumstances just short of her 14th birthday.
Maia’s dad Liam, 48, from Basildon, Essex, said he believes she died in an act of self-harm that went wrong, but had been “influenced” by videos she was watching on social media giant TikTok.
Speaking to The Mirror he paid tribute to his daughter, and vowed to get to the bottom of what had led to her self-harming and dying at her mum's home in Hertford, around midnight between October 6 and 7 last year.
An inquest into Maia's death was opened in October last year at St Albans Coroner's Court, but a date has not yet been set for the hearing nor have the involved parties been contacted.
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Maia died just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday (gofundme)Liam described Maia as “an avid chess player”, adding: “She was intelligent, engaging, an intellect, she was also very sweet and very kind and very protective over her friends, and extremely funny.
“She was laughing and joking all the time, she loved her online gaming and was a very very smart girl.
“She embraced her education, and was an A-grade student in all her subjects … she was beautiful, just beautiful.”
Liam called his cherished daughter “raucous” and said she could walk into a room and “get everyone singing, dancing, playing” and could “make a play out of two knitting needles”.
But then, Liam’s life was turned upside down when in the early hours of the October morning he received a call from Maia’s mum “screaming” that Maia had died.
Maia and Liam had enjoyed a holiday to Phuket, in Thailand, earlier in the year (gofundme)What followed was months of torment and anguish as Liam would eventually come to believe that Maia had died in an act of self-harm gone wrong.
The parents were unable to access Maia’s phone, laptop, and tablet, so had no idea what she had been consuming on social media in the lead up to her tragic death.
Police had the devices for five months and made no progress before Maia’s mum eventually got into one, and they were able to access passwords to the others.
What Liam found on there, he said, began to piece together what he believed had happened to his daughter.
They found a picture from about a month before she died where she had purposely bruised her neck in a simulative hanging act of self-harm.
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Alongside that, when going through Maia’s TikTok, Liam found two “chilling" videos that both heavily discussed and portrayed suicide and self-harm.
Maia tragically died in October last year (gofundme)One of the videos, seen by the Mirror, has a haunting show tune like music playing in the background as someone narrates an imagined meeting between two people discussing self-harm.
The other was an animated simulative act of suicide and Maia had saved these just four days before her death.
Liam told The Mirror: “I can only depict them to be really chilling to watch.
“It’s really disturbing to try to guess and understand their merits, because it’s not art, it’s not funny, it’s not informative, but it’s some kind of grooming of some sort … it’s like ‘harm yourself, isn’t a great idea to harm yourself'."
Because of the site’s policies, a user’s watch history is deleted after 90 days, so Liam is left in the dark as to what other media his daughter was consuming on the platform.
Liam described some of the videos Maia had saved on TikTok as 'chilling' (gofundme)This has left Liam pleading with the tech giant to help him find closure and give him the data on what Maia had been watching, in the days and weeks before her death.
The heartbroken dad added: “There’s a stone unturned … something she watched in her watch history would’ve shed light on what happened to my daughter.”
But Maia’s influence from TikTok didn’t end there, the name of one of her accounts explicitly referenced suicide and Liam recalled a conversation they had had a few months prior, as the trial raged on over Archie Battersbee, a schoolboy who suffered catastrophic brain injuries in a 'prank gone wrong'.
His mother believes he had been influenced by social media videos.
After he picked her up one day in September last year, she told him about a “knockout trend” on TikTok that she had been keeping across and he strongly advised her against it, and warned her of the dangers of using social media at time.
But he trusted his daughter implicitly and she assured him she would be safe - Liam recalled how she had asked for permission before downloading TikTok in the first place as a sign of how sensible she had been.
Maia was described as ' laughing and joking all the time' by her heartbroken dad (gofundme)He also believed Maia never intended to take her own life, as on her phone they found she had been compiling a list of gifts that she had hoped for for her upcoming birthday on the day of her death.
Liam said: “It was her birthday coming up and the last time we were together she asked for money instead of a gift, and I said yeah of course but I’ll get you a gift I’m not not getting you a gift.
“From her Google history it said that she’d on the day of her death been on her Amazon account shopping for bits and pieces that she wanted for her birthday.”
During his ongoing struggle to understand what happened to Maia before she died, Liam came into contact with Ian Russel, the father of Molly Russell who died under tragic, and hauntingly similar, circumstances.
At an inquest into Molly's death, the judge drew a direct link between it and her social media use and representatives from Facebook owner Meta, and Pinterest were present.
The Mirror understands that at Maia's own upcoming inquest, if asked, TikTok would comply with requests to share her watch history, and other data, inside the legal processes.
Liam described the impact some corners of social media were having on youngsters as akin to “grooming”, he added: “Not of a sexual nature, what’s happening is like algorithm grooming.”
He continued: “Maia had a wonderful life and I had a wonderful daughter, and she has a 10-year-old sister now and it’s a horrible dark shadow.
“I couldn’t leave my bed [after she died], I couldn’t. I would wake up crying my eyes out, and go to sleep crying too. I didn’t know what had happened.
“Those are the words I used when she died, I said ‘what has happened Maia? What happened? And I’m still asking that question.”
Hertfordshire Police said: "On Friday 7 October, at around 12.50am, police were called to an address in Hertford following the sudden death of a teenage girl.
"Her death was deemed non-suspicious and a file was prepared for the coroner."
A spokesperson for TikTok said: "Our deepest sympathies are with the family experiencing this tragic loss. The safety of our community is our priority and we do not allow content that promotes or glorifies suicide or self-harm on our platform.
"We will continue to prioritise protecting and supporting our community, working with expert partners and providing safety resources to those who need them."
Click here to visit Liam's fundraiser.
The Samaritans is available 24/7 if you need to talk. You can contact them for free by calling 116 123, email [email protected] or head to the website to find your nearest branch. You matter.