Trigger Warning

The cubbyhole in which Andrine (17) has hidden herself is so small she must sit on her knees. From her mobile she posts several entries on her secret Instagram account. Hundreds of Norwegian girls on this hidden network can read her messages about her wish to die.

NRK has investigated the dark network on Instagram. Andrine is just one of the girls connected to it. At least fifteen Norwegian girls in this closed group have, within a few years, taken their own life. For a long period, Andrine has been one of the most active users on this site – even into her last hours.

In her room there is also a handwritten note. “Bye and thanks for everything,” she writes, ending with a heart.

The staff finds out where Andrine is hiding and tries to get her to talk. Finally she agrees to unlock the door.

Everything now looks as if it will sort itself out, but on the way down from the second floor, the staff suddenly hears a sharp thump from the room where Andrine is.

Then everything is quiet.

The staff runs upstairs again, but gets no response. The emergency centre is being contacted, while the staff tries to break in with a crowbar.

Just a few minutes later an ambulance is on site, and the girl is being brought out.

After four days in a respirator in hospital, she dies.

The cardboard box with Andrine’s things has been standing in the hallway for nearly two years. Her mother Heidi got it from the police just a few weeks after her daughter’s suicide.

After that, it has remained there, untouched but never forgotten. Almost every day she looks at it, but is too afraid to open it.

That’s because the mobile from that evening when Andrine died, is in the box.

Heidi is afraid there are things on it she actually does not have the strength to see.

After nearly two years she at last picks up the courage.

On the mobile there are two Instagram accounts: the normal one she followed herself, but also a completely unknown profile, “Sebrapiken.”

Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther

She logs in and feels how nausea is building up.

There she finds a dark and frightening world, full of girls like Andrine.

They’re from all over the country and did not usually know each other outside the network.

They suffered from eating disorders or self-harm.

Half of them were below the age of twenty when they died.

Within the network, NRK has seen concrete examples on how methods for self-harm or attempts of suicide have spread from one member of the group to another. The worse an entry from a girl is, the more attention and care they receive from others.

At only five years old, Andrine is bouncing around in her sister’s gym-suit and two years later she turns up, proud and a bit nervous, to her first training session. Throughout her childhood and youth at school, gymnastics is something she really loves, also as an instructor to the younger children.

At school she fulfils her duties and does well in most subjects. She has a winning way and lots of friends. She is a ray of sunshine with so much humour and high spirits that she is missed whenever she is away for just one day.

Andrine paints and draws and likes to potter around the house and her room. She has her own style, a bit playful and a bit boyish. When she puts on make-up, it is always soft and discreet. Andrine knows what she is doing.

Soon, she begins to cover herself up, as her arms, under her clothes, were covered with scars and wounds.

Andrine’s first meeting with self-harm was at school. She’s together with a friend when some older girls show their scars. She had never seen anything like it before and in her diary Andrine writes that this is “extremely stupid!”

At the same time there is something from this happening that sticks.

At fourteen, Andrine starts to cut herself. It happens after what she herself describes as a “heavy summer holiday.” Hidden from everybody, this self-harming takes place more and more often, while the cuts get deeper and more serious.

She herself describes self-harm as an “adrenalin kick.” A form of mastering that lets her handle evil and destructive thoughts: “It feels like being locked into a room where self-harm is the only emergency exit,” Andrine explains to a psychologist.

In August 2015, Andrine is admitted to hospital after a suicide attempt. The risk of suicide is not overwhelming, according to the doctors, but at the same time they warn of the danger of a repeat and the fact that the girl can “take her own life as an accident.”

After the suicide attempt, Andrine explains that she’s suffered of anxiety for many years. She never feels good enough and is convinced that nobody likes her. She also has great problems with controlling her feelings, especially when life goes against her.

Things that most people see as trivial can release endless sadness and crises. Self-harm and suicidal thoughts “can be seen in this context,” the report from the hospital says.

There is also another reason why she hurts herself. Andrine reveals this several months later.

In order to ignore “The Voice,” Andrine has to suffer pain, she explains, either by cutting herself or swallowing dangerous objects.

Andrine is now being treated at the hospital, first in conversation therapy and later by medication. After a while she is seen as being well enough to be discharged, but Andrine does not want to go home.

The relationship with the family is very difficult, she feels. Andrine is now so sick that she requires more frequent follow ups than her mother can give her. Contact with her father was broken when she was ten years old, and Andrine feels she’s only a burden that nobody cares about.

She’s kept in hospital. And while her contact with the real world is shrinking, her life on Instagram takes increasingly more time and space.

She calls herself “Sebrapiken.” Probably from a book with the same name about a girl who also injures herself.

Just like Andrine, many of the girls on the hidden network seem to be completely normal girls from all over the country. Often very young, some as young as fourteen years old. They often don’t know each other in real life, only online.

The girls use their own “tribe language” with codes for diagnoses, what type of self-harm they’re into, how many times they have been admitted to a hospital or tried to take their own life.

In this, Andrine at last finds a place where she doesn’t feel alone. Here she gets support and understanding from others who suffer the same and who understand her situation.

But most of all, she has found a fellowship where sick girls are exchanging negative thoughts and experiences. In a world without adults, they share tips and advice on self-harm and suicide.

Andrine quickly becomes a person that most people know of in this secret environment.

During the next months, Andrine is more or less continuously admitted to several different institutions.

In several places it seems like things are going well, at least in the beginning. The girl seems positive and happy, she follows her treatment and often shows signs of improvement.

Then come the downturns, abruptly and worse. Self-harming gets more frequent and takes new forms. Andrine starts to swallow harmful objects and the cuts find new spots on her body.

In February 2016, Andrine’s condition has deteriorated so seriously that she’s transferred to child protection, and in May she moves into a private institution called “Jentespranget.”

Here she remains during the last months of her young life.

Jentespranget is situated at Stord, between Haugesund and Bergen. It is a department for seriously-ill girls. Some of whom are often under around- the-clock supervision.

Andrine gets her own room with two staff members looking after just her.

She’s given a new treatment plan and sees a psychologist regularly. Gradually, she begins to think of her future and attends school when she is capable. To keep her thoughts away from evil, the days are filled with activities. Andrine is to be taught to take responsibility for her own life and has to wash her clothes and keep the house in order.

She starts working out, and as a part of her treatment Andrine begins horse therapy.

But during the summer she suddenly falls into extended, heavy depressive periods. Her thoughts on self-harm and suicide increase, especially in the evenings, according to staff.

Andrine has access to both her phone and the internet, also at night. In two months she posts over 1,500 entries. She posts private messages several times a day and much of those are images of self-harm and thoughts on taking her own life.

During her stay Andrine attends several meetings on how damaging this environment can be for her, but she takes no notice.

The staff has no right to take the mobile away from her, but when they suggest banning it for a period, Andrine uses self-harm as blackmail to keep it.

As Andrine is voluntarily admitted to the institution, the staff has only limited authority to use force against her.

As Sebrapiken, Andrine is “safe.” Many users also mark their profiles like this. In this group “safe” means to follow an unwritten rule that nothing from within the network is to be shown or told to outsiders. There’s a rule of silence, and it’s simple: “You snitch, you die!” If you don’t keep quiet, you can be blocked or closed down by others. Some say this rule is valid even when there’s a question of life-or-death for the girls.

But Andrine does not want to follow this rule when somebody is trying to take their own life. Once she called an institution in northern Norway to tell their staff that one of the girls living there was about to commit suicide.

In August 2016, Andrine experiences online that a close friend from within the Instagram network kills herself. She takes this very hard and is clearly affected by her death. The two following months she is admitted six times after overdoses and other suicide attempts. During this period she has to get nearly 200 stitches.

And so, she is sent to hospital in Bergen. She has suffered severe internal injuries after swallowing dangerous objects and must be operated upon. After surgery, a new suicide attempt happens at the hospital, and Andrine is only a whisker from death.

Now Jentespranget asks for help. To the child protection agency in Tromsø they write: “We must, to the best of our ability, keep this girl alive,” but this is difficult with the framework they now have. For a period they employ extra staff to cover Andrine.

In the morning on the day Andrine dies, the staff perceives her as being very “heavy.” Already before breakfast there’s a text from Andrine saying she’s not feeling good. She feels completely “rock bottom.”

The staff is united in keeping a certain distance. Experience shows that the closer they are to her in these situations, the greater the risk of her hurting herself.

Andrine starts the day in the stables, and after having fed the horses she seems better. At dinner she jokes and plays around with the employees, and in the evening they all go to the cinema.

In the middle of the film the staff gets a call from one of the other girls in the house. She says that Andrine has plans to take her own life later that evening and that she has posted this on Instagram.

Since Andrine seems stable and at ease, their joint decision is to bring it up when they get back home.

On the way from the cinema Andrine posts this image.

Back at the house Andrine runs upstairs to her room before anybody gets to talk to her. They can hear her cries and suggests a trip to the doctor, but Andrine refuses. She doesn’t want anybody to stop what she has planned.

A while later a text message arrives in which Andrine says thank you for everything. The search for her starts, but on the same evening Andrine’s life is over.

“Poor child of mine! Just to think how hurt she must have been and I did not manage to help!” says Andrine’s mother Heidi and puts her daughter’s mobile phone away.

The day after Andrine’s eighteenth birthday, Heidi finds an envelope in the letter box at home. It is a thank you letter from the director at Oslo University Hospital.

In the letter it says that Andrine’s organs, after she’d been disconnected from the respirator, have given new life.

Four adults and two children have been given a new life. I hope this can be a comfort for you and Andrine’s sister to think about. I wish you as good a future as possible and feel with you in your sorrow.

This story is based on Andrine’s profile and own notes, journals from the child and youth psychiatrists involved, the child care agency and other public documents connected to her treatment, plus interviews with Andrine’s mother and conversations with those closely involved with the fourteen other girls who have died. Their families have accepted the use of pictures and names of these girls.

Neither Jentespranget nor the child and youth psychiatrist treating Andrine are willing to be interviewed in regards to this matter.

The Children, Youth and Family Agency in Region North and its Area Director Mr Pål Christian Bergstrøm, writes to NRK:

“This is an extremely serious case. For us it is the worst thing that can happen – a child dies when under care of child protection. We feel empathy for the mother and other survivors. The employees working with Andrine are also experiencing great sorrow. It is very difficult to be informed that Andrine felt we did not do enough to help her. This case was, however, extremely involved and complex.

Legislation set for the purpose of securing children’s rights can in situations where the children are as ill as Andrine, limit the child care agencies’ ability to provide the assistance that children need. This case also highlights the demand aid organisations face when this form of social media is used.”