Dolly Everett’s parents reveal what led to their daughter’s death in heartbreaking interview
Once the face of Akubra with her beautiful, beaming smile, Amy 'Dolly' Everett's tragic death shocked the nation.
Now, in a heartbreaking new interview with A Current Affair, her devastated parents Tick and Kate have revealed the extent of their daughter's suffering that led her to tragically take her own life.
They say the 14-year-old, who lived on a remote cattle station in the Northern Territory, was a “happy-go-lucky, carefree crazy-haired little girl”, who was close to her sister Meg.
But Tick and Kate wanted better opportunities for their daughters so they sent them to boarding school for their high school years.
“Living as remote as we were, we thought that was the best option for an education,” said Kate.
“We basically did a pros and cons with them about their interests,” added Tick. “It had to be affordable, the travel had to be doable.”
But right from the start, Dolly found it difficult to fit in at school.
“She told me that boys were calling her a slut, she was 12,” said Kate. “I don’t know whether 12-year olds even know what that means, they shouldn’t.
“I used to tell her: ‘It will get better, you’ll fit in. Everybody’s trying to fit in and they’re just working out their pecking order. Try not to be mean’.”
Kate called the school and asked them what they were doing about the issue.
“It was basically just swept under the cover,” she claims.
She said she was told it was a “bit of rough and tumble” in the playground and “not a massive issue”.
“I said: ‘Well I feel like it’s causing my daughter grief, so I feel like it is an issue’,” Kate said.
“She [Dolly] just said: ‘I feel like I’m not fitting in and I’m used to fitting in’.”
Eventually, Dolly had enough and stood up to one of the male students who would always pick on her.
“It just got too much and she turned around and decked him and then the school suspended her so they were like ‘we don't tolerate this behaviour’ but we were like ‘but what's made this child, a 12-year-old girl go I need to defend myself against these kids,’” both parents said.
“Dolly probably shouldn’t have retaliated the way she did, but for Dolly then to become the person in the wrong and the other kid to be the victim ... it doesn’t make sense,” said Tick.
Kate and Tick said the bullying seemed to stop after that as Dolly was getting picked for sports teams and doing well with her studies.
“But maybe it wasn’t going as well, maybe she just put on a brave face and didn’t want to tell us anymore about it ... ‘cause she’d got in trouble the first time, so I think she thought she’d go with it,” said Tick.
When Dolly entered her second year, it was clear things was not OK.
Tick and Kate received a call from the school saying Dolly was in trouble as a boy had convinced her to take photographs of herself and send them to him.
“As a parent, you don’t know how to deal with that,” Kate said.
“She just went from the most enjoyable little girl to someone that did end up in trouble at school - there’s so much that I found out now, as opposed to then, and it probably would’ve made the outcome so much different.
“She started to withdraw slowly by the first term, and in her Year 9. In that last year, I just think, ‘Oh god, she’s just changing’. And as a parent, I guess you say, ‘This is part of adolescence. Is this who she is?’.
“I think there was a whole bunch of stuff going on that we literally did not know about.”
Dolly was suspended again in Year 9 for drinking, which she admitted to her parents she had done.
“I kept onto the school. I said, ‘This is not my daughter. Something is going on, there is a ring of people’,” Kate said. “I said, ‘There are other kids involved’. They told me Dolly was a liar. And I said, ‘All kids make mistakes and I believe her. This time I believe her’.”
And then shortly after, Kate and Tick received a devastating email from their daughter.
“How long do I have to stay? Can I please leave sooner?” Dolly asked her mum.
“I started to panic because they were ganging up on me and I didn’t want to fight so I walked away,” the email read. “And one of them started screaming at me calling me a dirty slut, b***h and screaming about how I should kill myself and to go cut some more.”
Her parents were determined to pull her out of school but Dolly was adamant that she was going back to the school when she came home.
“She was going to prove that she could do it and that she was tough enough to be Dolly again, I think,” said Tick. “She had me convinced that she was right.”
“Dolly had so much to live for: 'I wish she could see herself through my eyes and not through the eyes of the people who made her feel like that,” her mum said.
If you or someone you know needs help, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800, or visit kidshelpline.com.au