After son’s suicide, mom seeks answers from school

MANILA, Philippines—Three weeks after her son died in what the police ruled as a suicide, Trixie Madamba still has pained questions about what exactly drove “a gentle, beautiful boy” like Liam to the edge.

She awaits answers, she said, from officials of The British School Manila (BSM), where the 18-year-old Liam was just months away from graduation until a “private meeting” with an angry professor on Feb. 5 caused an abrupt change in his behavior. The meeting, she said, concerned some “plagiarized” lines in an essay that Liam had submitted in class.

A day after that meeting, as per witnesses’ accounts, the young man jumped to his death from the sixth floor of a car park building in Makati City. He died from severe injuries hours later in the hospital.

Madamba, a resident of Barangay San Antonio in Makati and also a school teacher, later poured out her grief in a letter e-mailed to fellow parents of BSM students, where she stressed that Liam was “very secure in himself and felt no need to have to conform to peer pressure, to go out and party. He doted on his siblings. He reveled in simple joys, like the occasional haircut, Nutella, Reese’s peanut butter cups, Cheezy chips. He never asked for much.”

The letter recounted that a day before Liam’s death, he left the house in the morning in good spirits—but it all changed as he returned home from school. He left the house that same night—and news of his suicide reached his family the next morning.

Speaking to the Inquirer on Tuesday, Madamba said she later learned that Liam, who was considered an “A student” in the Taguig-City based BSM, was reprimanded by a professor through e-mail for copying a few lines from a web site and putting them in his essay without citing the source.

Madamba did not deny this, saying her son—who was supposed to finish an international baccalaureate diploma course this year—did it because he was rushing to meet the deadline.

“The e-mail had a strong tone noting that my son and another classmate committed the said academic infraction and that he will be asked to write an essay for two hours once they come back to school the week after that,” Madamba explained.

When she called up Liam’s classmate who also got the e-mail, the latter said the professor was “very angry and disappointed” with the two students.

“[The professor] made them admit in a private meeting that they had committed plagiarism and threatened to tell all the teachers about it so they can check their past works for more plagiarized parts,” the mother said.

Madamba said neither she nor her husband was informed of their son’s violation, which should have been standard procedure in such cases. The school, she added, also failed to explain to them what really transpired during Liam’s meeting with the professor.

“I just want the truth about what happened that day because something during that meeting made him do what he did.”

She has so far gathered from sources that Liam was also ordered to write letters of apology to the head of school, to his other teachers and even to his classmates, and that he was also “threatened with suspension.”

Yet according to the BSM handbook, she said, students committing a “first offense” are to be penalized with just a 15-minute detention and that the concerned parents would be duly informed about it.

“They (BSM officials) informed us that they are going to put together an independent panel to investigate what happened. But until now they have not even identified the persons who will compose the said team,” she said. “All I ask is why that encounter had left him with feelings of hopelessness and humiliation. He brought home with him a disgraceful impression of himself that had such finality, that all he had built and hoped for were dashed to pieces.”

Madamba said she come out in the media also to belie earlier reports that Liam was suffering from mental illness or that he was driven to suicide by a family problem. “None of these are true. Liam grew up in a simple, loving home surrounded by books… In school, he had an easygoing way about him; he always had an easy smile.”

“I would like to put together the pieces to bring some semblance of peace and closure.”

Sought for comment, BSM management replied with an e-mail saying the school was not issuing any statement on the matter “pending the independent review which is now underway.”