Emo Blamed For Teenager's Suicide
5/8/2008 By Cam Lindsay

The suicide of a 13-year-old girl in Kent, England yesterday (May 7) is currently using emo as the scapegoat for the teenager's actions. Hannah Bond, an obsessive fan of the subgenre and particularly My Chemical Romance, hanged herself in her bedroom leaving behind a suicide note.

According to the Telegraph, the young girl frequented online chat rooms under the name of "Living Disaster," often discussing death and the glamour of being hanged, as well as “the black parade” - a place where emo followers believe they go after they die (and also the name of My Chemical Romance's latest album). In addition, Hannah used the image of an "emo girl" with slit, bloody wrists on her Bebo page. Her father Ray admitted that the teenager had a history of self-harm, scratching her wrists, which she explained was the result of an "emo initiation ceremony."

Both Hannah's mother Heather and the coroner Roger Sykes laid the blame on the youth-driven emo subculture. In a statement, Mrs. Bond said: "She called emo a fashion and I thought it was normal. I didn’t know about the cuts. She used to wear Emo bracelets so her wrists were concealed. There are [emo] websites that show pink teddies hanging themselves. She called emo a fashion and I thought it was normal. Hannah was a normal girl. She had loads of friends. She could be a bit moody but I thought it was just because she was a teenager."

In his investigation, Sykes admitted "the emo overtones concerning death and associating it with glamour I find very disturbing. A girl of 13 years old has taken her own life for no reason that by anyone could be found to be justifiable. It is a terrible and tragic explanation to what happened. It is not glamorous, just simply a tragic loss of such a young life.”"

This doesn't bode well for emo's rep, as just recently it was under fire in Mexico, which unofficially declared bloody war on kids wearing black eyeliner, studded belts and angular cut, black-dyed mops.
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