Bullying helped drive KFC teenager to suicide

Published on Thursday 8 December 2005 01:52

A TEENAGER killed herself after a lengthy depressive illness which was "significantly influenced" by the bullying she suffered while working at Kentucky Fried Chicken, an inquest ruled yesterday.

Hannah Kirkham, 18, from Baguley, Greater Manchester, was stabbed in the arm with corn sticks, verbally abused and threatened with death while she worked at the Northenden branch of the fast-food outlet.

Her colleagues and team leader called her a "fat, spotty bitch" and one of the bullies said, "You dirty ugly slag, who would want to rape you?", the jury inquest at Oldham Magistrates Court was told.

After the teenager was signed off sick, she suffered hallucinations in which she thought she was being attacked, and she harmed herself.

When she told her employers about the abuse, they told her to try to sort it out herself and, if that failed, to put the grievances in writing.

On 17 December, 2003, Ms Kirkham's mother, Marie, found her collapsed on her bedroom floor. She died on Boxing Day.

The grievance letter which she had posted to her district manager on 5 December was "mislaid" and was not opened until February.

Yesterday, the inquest jury ruled that Ms Kirkham had died from a cardiac arrest brought on by the "ingestion" of her medication.

They ruled that she was found by her mother on the morning of 17 December and was lying next to empty blister packs of her medication.

The jury said: "Hannah intended to take her own life after a sustained period of clinically diagnosed, severe depressive illness, which was significantly influenced by bullying and harassment in the workplace."