Mum's High Court bid to reopen son's inquest

A leading figure in the campaign to ban social media for children in the UK will petition the High Court later to reopen the inquest into her son's death.

Ellen Roome's 14-year-old son Jools Sweeney died in 2022. An inquest previously returned a narrative verdict ruling out suicide but Roome believes her son died in an online challenge that went wrong.

The Cheltenham mother says quashing the verdict and reopening the inquest would allow previously unavailable evidence from Jools's social media to be seen.

Thanks to the Online Safety Act 2023, Ofcom can now request information from social media firms, including material a child viewed or uploaded, which was unavailable when Jools died.

If there is another inquest, Roome said she would also use the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 to request Jools's social media content via the coroner.

"I cannot live the rest of my life without trying to look for answers as to why my son's not here," she said.

"Hopefully it shows that actually going forward, social media companies must step up and protect children online."

Roome believes that a fresh inquest would serve as a useful precedent for other parents who believe social media contributed to their child's death.

She will be accompanied at the High Court by parents including Mariano Janin, from London, whose daughter Mia took her own life, he believes, because of cyber-bullying in 2021.

Janin told the BBC he would also consider applying to reopen the inquest into Mia's death if Roome was successful.

"What Ellen is doing, it's very important," he said. "It would [make it] a little bit more easy to get the information.

"Most of the parents that lose children, they don't fight because you lost all the motivation."

He added: "Our main goal one day is for the [social media] companies to be 100% responsible and accountable.

"Why? Because they are the only ones who have the technology and the funds to change this business model in order to protect young people."

Roome was a key figure in pushing the government to announce its recent social media ban for under-16s in the UK.

She has campaigned for legislation, called Jools' Law, that would allow parents to access the social media accounts of their children if they die.

In January, she began a lawsuit against the social media platform TikTok, which claims a group of children including her son died while attempting a "blackout challenge".

No subsequent hearings have taken place.

A TikTok spokesperson said at the time: "We strictly prohibit content that promotes or encourages dangerous behaviour."

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