Bullied 9-year-old Quaden Bayles DID NOT kill himself, viral reports claiming so are fake news
After support came pouring in for Quaden Bayles, the 9-year-old Australian boy who was relentlessly bullied for achondroplasia, the most common type of dwarfism, rumors started swirling suggesting he had committed suicide. These claims, which went viral in no time, are false.
Many articles that spread across numerous social media platforms claimed to be from reputed sources and reported that Quaden had killed himself and featured graphic, but unrelated images of other people who had taken their lives,
One such headline read, "BuIIied KlD REC0RDED HlS SUlClDE — QUADEN.BAYLES’ Died by Suicide after Bullying Worsens at School — BBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE.”
However, fact-checking website Snopes reported that Quaden has not committed suicide and that these posts linked to neither the real BBC News website nor a genuine BBC News report.
They were hoaxes trying to profit off the nine-year-old's sudden popularity and sent those unfortunate enough to have clicked them to landing pages on disreputable and untrustworthy websites.
The news may have seemed plausible to those who have been following Quaden, who hit headlines late last month after his mom Yarraka Bayles uploaded a video of him crying and begging for a rope to kill himself after another day where he was bullied at school.
"Give me a rope, I want to kill myself," he can be heard saying in the heartwrenching video. "I just want to stab myself in the heart... I want some-one to kill me."
These reports claiming the young boy has killed himself are not even the first hoaxes to take root from the story. A few days after he rose to international fame, posts circulating on Twitter and other social media claimed his Instagram page and modeling career were proof that he was 18 and had "scammed everybody."
"Just so you know he scammed everybody … he’s 18, has plenty of money and yeah everyone fell for it," the post read, pointing to one particular post on Instagram to support the theory.
The post in question showed Quaden in a Gucci sweatshirt and standing with a woman at what looked like an 18th birthday party. But that was quickly debunked, with Snopes quite sarcastically writing, "It might come as a surprise to some, but standing next to a number does not automatically change your age to that number. In that same vein, wearing a shirt reading “Gucci” or standing next to an adult woman are not activities exclusively reserved for 18-year-olds."
Quaden's story had caught the attention of American comedian Brad Williams, who set up a GoFundMe page called 'Let's send a wonderful kid to Disneyland!' which he said hoped would show the boy "there is good in the world."
The page eventually raised more than $463,000, though the money was ultimately rejected by the nine-year-old's family, who said they would rather see the money be given to a charity to combat bullying and suicide.