QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: On April 20, last year, at 5pm a 17-year-old boy checked into a hotel in central Sydney. He was carrying his older brother's passport as ID. At 11pm, he walked to a nearby grocery store to buy food. It would be his last recorded outing. The next morning, shortly after 6am, the alarm was raised. The young man had jumped off the roof and was lying dead in the car park.
In Australia, on average, suicide happens five times a day - a statistic to most, but not to loved ones of those who die. Up in the hotel room, a handwritten note was found.
VOICEOVER: "Please do not assume you know why I did this. Even I'm not completely sure. It is simply the best thing to do. The mechanism telling me not to kill myself is broken."
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: The letter was left in the middle of the bed. I mean, he hadn't slept in the bed but it was just there in the middle of the bed. "Please take note" - that was my sense of it, just quietly there.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The note was a tragic attempt by the teenager to explain his actions and to console his family.
VOICEOVER: "Try to think of what I am doing as just finishing early. By far the hardest thing about this is the impact it will have on you. It fills me with grief when I think what I've done to you"
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: But did he have any real idea of the grief he would cause?
Tonight, family and friends reveal the terrible impact of this young man's secret decision to kill himself, as they break the deathly wall of silence surrounding suicides.
VOICEOVER: "Despite my problems, I enjoyed my life. I liked my house and family, going to school, learning, my friends and everything in between. I especially like who I am and the way I work - me and my future both. I wanted to do everything and learn everything. I wanted to influence our morals, our politics, our science and our societies."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What was he like, as a small kid?
TIM REEVES-SMITH, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He was very small and very thin.
BEN McCULLAGH-DENNIS, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: Like all kids - quite happy - I mean, not necessarily different, as such, just a very happy kid.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell Bolton was born to high-achieving, middle-class parents, who held great hopes for his future. His mother, Merridy O'Donnell, is a family therapist, his father, Derek Bolton, a computer software engineer. Their older son, Angus, has now completed a postgraduate degree. And Campbell, the younger son, inherited the family's strong intellectual curiosity.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I think a lot of children, sort of, surprise adults, from to time, with the things they come out with, but he would...and he was no exception to that. He'd come out with questions. You'd think, "Good heavens", you know - a child so young, asking something like that.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell grew up in a reserved, cerebral family.
ANGUS BOLTON: We didn't call them mum and dad. We called them Merridy and Derek. And a lot of people find that strange but it's not a distancing thing. It's just something we do. We find corniness abhorrent, that sort of thing, you know?
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Well, what about being affectionate to them?
ANGUS BOLTON: Well, we don't...see, it's funny. I've started to hug Derek more lately and I feel like he doesn't, kind of, know what to do, because we kind of don't do it. We don't hug, we don't kiss and that kind of thing, and we're a quite distant family. It doesn't mean we're cold. We're just...we're not clingy to each other.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: "We don't hug. We don't kiss. We're quite a distant family." Do you think that that's significant in any way?
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARTIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: There would be hundreds of families that you could apply that kind of description to, where the end point is not suicide of one of the members. I really can't find anything in the family that makes me sit up and think, "Ah. This is the issue that was leading down that pathway." I just can't see it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's family history displays none of the usual factors blamed for youth suicides. No history of violence or abuse. No psychiatric illness or instability. No divorce. No drug or alcohol abuse.
Professor Graham Martin, one of Australia's top suicide prevention specialists, spoke with Campbell's mother at length and studied the suicide note before being interviewed for this program. He believes the case shows similarities with other personal histories he's studied.
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARTIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: They think this through. They make the arrangements. They do the planning. They never let on to friends or family. And they're not strictly depressed or irrational or psychotic or anything else. They've made a life decision and they're going through with that life decision.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's willingness to make his own decisions was apparent early on. He was self-contained and independent.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Campbell was not a kid who we worried about. He went off to day care. He went off to school. I remember when I dropped him at school, "Merridy, don't worry. I'm fine." You know, this is what this five-year-old says to me. You know, I'm looking tearful and Campbell says, "I'm fine."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: From primary school right through to Year 12, Campbell Bolton attended a highly respected private school in Sydney. He soon made his mark. Quirky, loyal to his friends and a born mediator.
HANNAH BELNICK, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He wasn't your average jock at all, he was very different. And that's what drew people to him, because he was so interesting.
JAMES FLETCHER, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He was loyal in the sense that he stayed with some of his better friends for years, you know, on a decade, which is an impressive feat, considering all the change that you go through as a young child and as teenagers.
MAX RYAN, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: And he had a great sense of justice. Sometimes infuriating because sometimes what you saw as a sense of justice just wasn't...but, yeah, he was sort of one of those kids - always a mediator.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Academically, Campbell was outstanding. He excelled in English, history, maths and science. For four years running he was dux of his year but it was something he never bragged about.
DAVID WRIGHT, FORMER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: He was somebody who was very disarming, very, very quiet. He would just indicate by a flicker of an eye, just a little thing at the corner of his mouth, indicating that he'd understood. He was one of those delightful students that the joy of learning was the learning itself.
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: He was very, very gifted. When he turned his mind to something, he could master it, and he would take it beyond where other students would go.
MAX RYAN, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: Come speech night when he's basically falling over with prizes, he'd just - you know, it was - he was incredibly shy about it and quite embarrassed, but it was definitely effortless. And where you'd see him put effort would be when he'd get 100 per cent. Where you'd see he'd put a moderate amount of effort, it'd be a good 80-90 per cent. So it was just infuriating.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: In this short film made in Year 9 by fellow students, Jade Abbott and Hilary Larcos, Campbell's status within the school as an academic high-flyer was celebrated. He played the fictional role of an arrogant student, Chester Burnham, who thinks he's got it made.
HILARY LARCOS, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: Jade and I were thinking, "Well, who's gonna be the star of the film?" And we just thought Campbell, because he's kind of got that dorky look about him but he's still really kind of fun, and we knew that he'd get into it and do a good job.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What could he have achieved if he'd chosen to live?
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: Oh, anything he'd want. You know, he was just a very capable, extraordinarily capable person with an extremely good brain.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: But Campbell was a boy who used his intellect to deal with his emotions. Some suicides involve readily detectable mental illness but it can be harder to identify youngsters who are privately and intellectually attracted to the idea of suicide. Suicidal ideation, as it's known clinically, can be extremely dangerous and difficult to detect and counter.
VOICEOVER: "Above all else, I am curious about everything and slightly off kilter as well. This might help explain why about four years ago, with a mixture of cheerful curiosity and indifference, I considered the idea that the only reason we do not commit suicide on a regular basis is because we have evolved some chemical mechanism that tells us not to."
HANNAH BELNICK, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He was very clinical and analytical
and extremely rationalistic. That's the word that seems to come with Campbell. I remember once on camp, I said, "I believe in reincarnation," and he says, "I don't. That's a load of shit." He said, "After life is nothing. It's just nothingness."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's friends recall the way he would talk quite coolly about death and suicide when he was younger. Later on, he wrestled with other emotional pressures.
In Year 10 when he was 16, he went with his friends to his first rock festival - Homebake. Here he allowed his extrovert side to take over.
TIM REEVES-SMITH, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: The crowd just went absolutely psycho. And I remember seeing him in the mosh pit, actually bodysurfing other people and I was so shocked by this because usually Campbell's a pretty quiet person when he doesn't know other people, and him bodysurfing was just such a shock to me.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Later that evening Campbell surprised his friends with a revelation.
BEN McCULLAGH-DENNNIS, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He told me and a number of other people that he was gay, after that Homebake, and he made the comment, "I may be gay but I'm not a fag," or something along those lines, or, "I'm not a pixie", or one of those expressions for ditzy, kind of putting the fake voice on, trying to live up to this cultural idea of what it is to be gay. He was himself. He liked men. That was it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell had known he was gay for a very long time, but had kept it secret from almost everyone.
TIM REEVES-SMITH, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He actually told me he thought he was gay basically from day one that I met him in Year 2. He said he liked someone else in the year, I forget the name. And at the time I had no idea what gay meant because I was like five years old or something silly like that. But he seemed pretty confident in the fact that he knew what it was and what it meant.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Would it surprise you to know that Tim - - -
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Yes, knew since he was little.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Yes.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Yes. No, and, you know, Campbell managed to keep that quite private.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: To his close friends, Campbell seemed relaxed and comfortable with his sexual identity. But he never talked to his parents about it, and when his older brother Angus found out by chance that he was gay, it greatly distressed his younger brother.
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: He just broke down. He just completely started crying.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Why was he so distressed, do you think?
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: Because no-one in the family knew. Although people - although his friends knew...me, Merridy, Derek, we had no idea.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Do you think his sexuality was a major factor in what occurred?
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARTIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: I do. There's tremendous anxiety in that, tremendous pressure, tremendous ambivalence - "Should I tell? Should I not tell? What will be the implications? What will people say or think? Will they treat me differently? Will they love me any more?" - those kinds of things.
VOICEOVER: "I hurt from love too. Almost every day I see a boy, some fantastic-looking guy that makes my pulse quicken but also make me want to cry, and it makes me feel sad because they will never feel the same way about me, even if they were actually gay, and I cannot even tell them, not even hint about any of this to them. He will not so much as glance at me. There is nothing in the whole world that has caused me more hurt than this. Nothing."
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: I think the big issues for Campbell that came out in his adolescence was how do you form relationships, how do move on in the gay world? How do you? And these are questions that any adolescent are going to ask themselves - relationship stuff.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell longed for a meaningful sexual relationship, but his love-life consisted of night-time trips to the hard partying gay bars and clubs dotted along Sydney's Oxford Street. They were solitary and secretive outings with no friends invited.
JAMES FLETCHER, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: On numerous occasions we broached the subject sometimes as a bit of fun and other times, sort of seriously, you know, "Oh, how about we come out with you, Campbell, to a gay bar,", or something like that, you know, one of his gay-orientated social events, and he refused 100 per cent of the time, quite firmly.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: In public, any pain Campbell felt he kept carefully concealed beneath a madcap exterior. This film was made with friends in Year 11.
FILM CLIP: Come in on Monday at 3.21? Or Tuesday you come in at 3.22. On Wednesday you must wear brown and on Thursday you have lunch for one hour. Friday you have lunch for 59 minutes. I'd like Fridays very much, so you must also like Fridays. And when you leave on Fridays, you must leave with a banana in your right hand.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: He was happy to play the fool but while he presented a carefree face to the world his emotional anxiety was compounded by a physical issue.
CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He used to have very bad acne all over his face and we used to tease him about it, like, we teased everyone about their acne.
CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: No-one, particularly his closer friends, no-one would be that superficial to care in the slightest, but, naturally young people are concerned with image and some people say that the gay scene is also very image driven. So it would have been hard for him in that sense.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Outwardly, life continued as normal, but there was a fresh anxiety. In the Year 9 film he'd helped to make two years earlier, the prodigy Chester Burnham fails abysmally in an HSC exam. Now, in a horrible echo of this, Campbell's own academic results started plummeting for real.
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: During the preliminary course in Year 11 there started to be some signs that you sometimes see in very bright students who have been able to achieve with what appears to be relatively little effort, where the quality of their non-exam based work starts to fail.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: We said, "OK, let's see what happens." By the end of the year, his results were appalling, the worst report he had ever had, shocking results. I mean, for somebody else they weren't shocking but for Campbell they were shocking.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: His line that he was absolutely unshakable and was, "There's only a problem because you think it's a problem."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So how did he explain it?
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: He was taking a break.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: He was having a bit of fun, and he would work when necessary for the HSC.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell was anxious to show he was still in control. By December 2004, though, the extra pressures of Year 12 and the HSC were coming into play.
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARTIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: I suspect that it had a much bigger impact inside Campbell's mind than we will ever know. If he got to the exams and failed or didn't do as well as he thought he should or perhaps didn't do as well as the family thought he should, I think he would have suffered a major blow to his self-esteem and a deep sense of shame, beyond what, perhaps, an average student would have done in a similar circumstance.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Now, too, there was a fresh medical factor. Without telling his parents and without a doctor's referral, Campbell had been seeing a dermatologist for his acne. In December, the doctor prescribed him Isotretinoin, which is sold under the brand names Oratane or Roaccutane. It's a medication for severe cystic acne, regarded by many as a miracle drug, but believed by some to cause suicidal ideation, in very rare cases.
DR STEPHEN SHUMACK: Now, there has been some anecdotal reports, there has been some media reports, about an association with depression and suicide. Now, we can't dismiss those. Certainly they are possible but, on the balance of evidence, and there's very strong evidence, there is no direct association between Isotretinoin prescription and depression and/or suicide.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Oratane does carry prominent warnings of potential side effects. It cautions patients to stop taking the drug if they feel depressed, start to feel sad, lose interest in activities, have trouble concentrating, withdraw from friends or family, or start having suicidal thoughts. Campbell would end up experiencing every one of these.
VOICEOVER: "I have to concede that the Oratane may not have helped this."
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: My speculation is that Campbell was committed to trying to get himself back on track. And, possibly, the Oratane had started to stuff around with his concentration and he actually found it harder to get back on track than what he had anticipated. And I think that was a bit of a spiral that he then got on that was spiralling down as time went by.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The dermatologist who treated Campbell and prescribed the drug would not agree to be interviewed on this program. In a letter written following Campbell's suicide, he told Merridy O'Donnell he'd warned Campbell about the drug's potential side effects and was led to believe that he'd informed "you that he was on the medication". He added, "Given Campbell's age, it would have been a breach of confidence for me to contact anyone regarding his management without his consent."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Is that good enough, do you think?
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: No, obviously not. And given that this kid was still at school, he was still living at home...given the history of this drug and the problems with it, that are well-documented, I think to take a risk and not include the family in monitoring a young person's behaviour, is just not good enough.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: No-one will ever know whether Campbell's medication affected his mental state. What is certain is that at the beginning of Year 12, teachers at his school started to get seriously worried.
KERRIE MURPHY, SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: About four weeks into Term 1, 2005, I spoke to Campbell myself. I saw what I felt was a fragility there, and I felt that Campbell did need some support. And I suggested to him at that time that whilst there was support available in the school - that he might go to an educational psychologist locally and gain a little bit of additional support. I was particularly concerned that he needed to turn around his motivation to study.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Another teacher who sensed that something was wrong was Jeff Long. At the end of Term 1, the half-yearly exams were approaching. Word reached Mr Long that Campbell had broken down, crying at school. That same day he bumped into him.
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: He was, you know, clearly upset and shaken, and I asked him, you know, "Is there something going on that is upsetting you, that is bothering you?" And, essentially, he said, "Yes, there is." I asked him if he wanted to talk about it, and he declined. He said "No. There is something going on, but I don't want to talk about it."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: You were worried, weren't you, that he might do something quite drastic?
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: Yes. I was starting to see in him some of the classic signs of depression, which we're told all the time to watch out for in teenagers, and I put it to him directly that, you know, there were no circumstances that I could imagine that were worth doing anything silly over. And he said in response to that that he agreed and acknowledged that and said that he had no intention of harming himself.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Jeff Long, though, wasn't convinced, and went to see the school's director of welfare.
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: I said that as a result of the conversation I'd just had with Campbell, I was concerned that he may be in danger of self-harm. I came away feeling that it wasn't critical at this point, but that if things were the same after the exam period, then we would probably take further steps to, you know, bring this situation up, bring it to a head perhaps.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell did extremely badly in his exams - a clear indication that all was not right but the chance to confront him about his problems or refer him for professional help would never come.
VOICEOVER: "I am at a loss as to why I have run away, but was equally at a loss as to why I should have stayed. Please do not jump to any conclusions. I did not have a drug habit, nor will I develop one. Nor have I eloped with some girl or boy, nor was the HSC too much to handle. If anything, my recent return to academic failure was because I was running away. It is awfully hard to apply yourself to school when you believe that in a week or two you will have dropped out."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: On Tuesday 5 April last year, Campbell said goodbye to his father. He told him he was going to stay at a friend's house before leaving to go on a school camp the next day.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: Well, I didn't know that this wasn't the plan, so I just accepted that, and he got his bag together and he gave me a hug goodbye and he left. And he seemed quite cheerful.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The next day Campbell's parents found a note in his room, telling them that he had run away from home, reassuring them that he loved them, but warning them not to try and find him. He had left with his older brother's passport, and several hundred dollars of his brother's money.
When you heard about that, what was your first reaction?
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: I thought he was just having fun, you know, grabbing some money and going for it, you know? But I did wonder how he was going to come back to who he was, like, it was going to be tough to come back into the house and say, "I'm sorry," you know? And he did try and cut communication completely, because he didn't want to deal with that, you know?
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Only days earlier, Campbell had bought himself some more Oratane. By leaving home, he had withdrawn from his own family.
VOICEOVER: "Dear All, I want to make clear that I knew this would happen. I knew I would do it a week before I even ran away. All I did not know was how long I would last."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Over the next 16 days, Campbell moved from hostel to hostel, as his parents tried unsuccessfully to talk to him.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I sent him an SMS message, saying that I missed him, and it was making me sad and could he phone me on my work number. And he did that, so I got the message the next morning. And in his message he said, yes, it's making him sad too, but he didn't think it would help to meet at this time.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Angus managed to track down one address where Campbell stayed, but decided not to try and find him there.
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: I never did that, and I really regret that, that I never extended to him, and that I never gave him the chance to talk about it in a way that would have got him talking about it, you know?
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The police were told that Campbell was missing. Some friends were able to contact him, and were relieved that he seemed OK.
HANNAH BELNICK, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He was so happy. And he was talking about the future so much. And we were all really confident. We, sort of, left him thinking, "Oh, this is great. He's got a job. He's living out of home," you know, "This is really fantastic." But that was all a bit of a facade.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's parents decided that they should allow their son some space. But Merridy O'Donnell was trying to reach her son and, privately, she was in agony.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: One of the things I did on SMS was I sent him one saying - Oh, this is really hard to talk about, but I said something along the lines of - I said, "Goodbye, Campbell. I can't keep hoping that you will respond to my SMS's. I love you and take care." And I knew he would respond to that because it was very heartfelt, and he did, and he just SMS'ed
back, saying, "I'm so sorry." And I thought, "Well, at least he responded to it." And then I didn't hear from him after that.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Right up until the end, Campbell maintained the fiction that he was fine. He fooled everybody.
On April 21 last year, two police officers knocked on Merridy O'Donnell's door.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: I knew as soon as they walked in. I said, "You're not going to tell me he's dead, are you?"
BETTE O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S GRANDMOTHER: Tim, my son, came to the front door of my unit and he just looked at me and I said, "The worst has happened, hasn't it?" and he said yes.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: You also read Campbell's last note. What do you feel about that note?
BETTE O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S GRANDMOTHER: Well, I think it was completely immature and mature. It was - some parts were very mature and other parts were completely immature.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Immature in what sense?
BETTE O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S GRANDMOTHER: Well, he didn't have any idea of the grief or what he would cause or how it would affect us. It's like a ripple in a pool, throwing a stone into a pool, and the ripple effect - he wouldn't have had a clue.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: It is unlikely that Campbell dwelt on the profound impact his death would have on family and friends and the trauma it would cause to those who had to deal with the aftermath.
CONSTABLE BYRON WILLIAMS, NSW POLICE: It's quite a gruesome sight. I'd previously organised to have a couple of hours off work to attend my godfather's funeral. So, it's a day that I'll probably never forget for a long time because, one, I had a family funeral to go and the first job I did that day was a young male that suicided that had the whole of his life ahead of him.
JOHN ABERNETHY, NSW CORONER: I think, probably, suicide is, it's on its own in terms of the personal effect on others. It's distressing for everyone who deals with suicide cases. It's distressing for the family and friends, of course, obviously. It's also distressing for those who carry out the post-mortem work, for coronial staff, for coroners, for the police involved, for ambulance officers, a whole range of people who are there to attend to the issue of suicide.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Police Constable Heidi Warren was charged with the task of explaining to Campbell's parents what he'd written in his suicide note.
CONSTABLE HEIDI WARREN, NSW POLICE: My partner and I knew that the conversation we were going to go and have with these people was going to impact them for the rest of their lives. So, it wasn't something that you can do in autopilot. So, it was probably the biggest concern and the weight on my shoulders was how I was going to deliver this information and not make things worse for them.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Later, Campbell's parents visited the morgue, to formally identify his shattered body.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: It was really important for me that I actually touched him, because I hadn't seen him for two weeks. You know, absolutely...and I think it's very important for anybody who - where somebody dies, that you need to see them. It certainly was helpful for us.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: It was very important for you, particularly, because I had at least had that last hug with him before he left. And you strongly felt that you hadn't had that.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: I never said goodbye, I mean, apart from that SMS, which was not a goodbye, it was, you know, "Please contact me, Campbell."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: At Campbell's school, students and teachers were in shock. A memorial service was organised, led by David Wright, but the school's former principal was careful not to allow the secular service to turn into a vote of approval for what Campbell had done.
DAVID WRIGHT, FORMER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: I was filled with a sense of the tragedy at what had occurred when I knew the boy to be what he was. I was very aware that it was terribly important that this should not be an occasion where the school, as a whole, would see this as some kind of model or as some kind of - that it - that it wasn't something to emulate.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's closest friends played songs for him and addressed their fellow students.
DAVID WRIGHT, FORMER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: It wasn't a morbid occasion. To a degree, there was kind of celebration of the good things about Campbell, which was wonderful, but, but by the same token, it was really important to try to underscore those points of what is life for, anyway? Life is something given, it's not for us to use as we might desire. You know, the great tragedy of suicide is the belief that "My life is mine to do with as I wish."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: With extraordinary bravery, Derek Bolton came to the memorial, to speak to the students.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I said, "Look, yes, we were adolescents, too. We know what it's like, and this is what I want to tell you, to stand here and tell you that, hey, it does get better. We get over these things," just to hang on in there.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: They're a wonderful group of friends.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Oh, they are. And I remember picking him up after one speech night and they were all gathered around him and, you know, they were doing what boys do, and I thought, "These kids love Campbell, absolutely love him." To know that they've had to deal with that loss, it's just enormous for them.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: One year on from Campbell's suicide, his family still struggles to find an appropriate response to what he did.
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: I was very angry...at him. I think maybe that, I think sometimes that if he'd had his life taken from him - like, if a bus ran over him or something like that, if something had taken his life, then I would be sad. But, in a way, because it was his decision, it doesn't make me so sad about it. It took me ages to even shed a tear over it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: His parents have acquired a bolt-hole in the Blue Mountains, which affords them a measure of peace and quiet to reflect as they try to cope with the enormity of what occurred.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I found it easiest just to try not to think about it too much, to bury myself in my work, and to sort of just occasionally deliberately expose myself more to it, go and look at old pictures and things and have a good cry. Then I'm OK for awhile. And, over time, it gets easier. But it's very slow, very slow.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Merridy, tell me, how have you coped?
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Well, I certainly didn't go back to work. I didn't go back to work because I knew I'd be useless. And I gave myself a year. I actually work as a couple and family therapist, which is very ironic, when you think about it. I had to give myself a break. And I do a lot of exercise. And, see, what I didn't - and we all work differently - was that I didn't want to distract myself. I knew I had to sit and just feel terrible and just feel terrible and just feel terrible. And I knew I had to do that. And I think it's been valuable to just sit and feel terrible.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Struggling with Campbell's death has taken its toll on their relationship.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: We're strong but we're disconnected. Like, we're strong in the relationship but we're disconnected because we hurt so much.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I think there's quite a significant extent to which we found each other's company difficult because we, without helping it, we reminded each other of Campbell. And it was much easier to be in the company of others.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Well, you also, you don't like to see your partner suffering, and you think, "Well, my suffering's just going to, you know, bore them to tears." So, your suffering, although it's shared, it also has to be a bit private. You know, it's a balance between acknowledging the difficulty but also finding your own - your own track that's going to work for you. And everybody's very different.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: And, for me, it's doubly painful that I can find no way to console you.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: No, and I don't expect you to, and I don't look to you for consolation. It's something I have to do.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Merridy O'Donnell now attends this support group run by counsellors at the New South Wales Department of Forensic Medicine for people who've lost someone to suicide.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: I'm Merridy. Campbell died a year ago. He was 17.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: We lost our son, Nathan, on the 21 April last year. He was 24.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: I lost my daughter, Alexis, last year. She was 15.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: Yas suicided on the 21 October, 2002, when she was 17.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: We lost our daughter, Vicky, three and a half years ago. She was 17.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The group reflects the fact that suicide is a major invisible killer, snatching the lives of more than 300 young people a year, and exacting a terrible toll in grief and guilt from hundreds of families, friends and schools around the country.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: I don't know how to live - I don't know how to live with that guilt. I don't know what to do with my life any more.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: You'll never be the same person again. It's as simple as that. But you just learn to live with it somehow. Don't ask me how.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: I just don't want to let too many people too close any more. I just prefer to not have people too close to me. I only get hurt.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Well, for me, it's not guilt so much, because I think I was good parent, but it's more regret, regret that I didn't equip him to deal with what he had to deal with - whatever it was he was having to deal with that I was not able to equip him, psychologically, to deal with that, and I see that as a failure, full stop - absolutely full stop.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: If it wasn't for this group, I don't think I would have got through, because it is the only time I can sit here and talk like I am now. I can't talk to people at work like this. I can't talk to my friends. I can't talk to my other family like this. We can sit here and talk because it's like, "Hey, look, this is my new postcode."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Taking lessons away from suicide is painfully difficult. And for those closest to the deceased, it's an intensely personal struggle. For Merridy O'Donnell, there's a mixture of pain, regret and a steely determination to speak out.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, MOTHER: There's a deathly silence around suicide. You know, it happened and everybody's shocked and everyone says, "Oh, isn't it terrible!" and "You must" - how difficult it is, but then the conversation stops. And that's why we think it's so important to highlight what happens a year down the track, because what we feel is common to a whole lot of people.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Graham Martin believes that some young people, like Campbell, will do everything they can to ensure that nobody will block their actions.
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARATIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: I think what it means in preventative terms is that we have to start much earlier looking at connectiveness, resilience, and a whole range of other issues of self-esteem, you know, way back in primary school, and building up young people to the point where the word "suicide" never, ever crosses their minds.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: At the heart of suicide is loss and waste, the loss of a loved one and the waste of a life. Campbell Bolton's decision to kill himself wasn't just a waste of his own remarkable talents, it also laid waste an entire devoted circle of family and friends.
What could Campbell have achieved if he'd chosen to live?
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: Oh, he knew - he knew he could do so much.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Whatever he wanted to do, he could have done. He had that ability. He had that connection with people. He had the intelligence. He had the curiosity. And, as he said in his letter, you know, "I love my life." The tragedy is that he took the decision he did, given that he had these wonderful talents, and I think he would have been the sort of person who contributed enormously to a community.
CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He took an easy option, and that's a real shame, because he could have brought himself and the people around him so much happiness with that, with all the potential that he had. And that's missed, which is a real shame.
[End of transcript]
In Australia, on average, suicide happens five times a day - a statistic to most, but not to loved ones of those who die. Up in the hotel room, a handwritten note was found.
VOICEOVER: "Please do not assume you know why I did this. Even I'm not completely sure. It is simply the best thing to do. The mechanism telling me not to kill myself is broken."
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: The letter was left in the middle of the bed. I mean, he hadn't slept in the bed but it was just there in the middle of the bed. "Please take note" - that was my sense of it, just quietly there.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The note was a tragic attempt by the teenager to explain his actions and to console his family.
VOICEOVER: "Try to think of what I am doing as just finishing early. By far the hardest thing about this is the impact it will have on you. It fills me with grief when I think what I've done to you"
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: But did he have any real idea of the grief he would cause?
Tonight, family and friends reveal the terrible impact of this young man's secret decision to kill himself, as they break the deathly wall of silence surrounding suicides.
VOICEOVER: "Despite my problems, I enjoyed my life. I liked my house and family, going to school, learning, my friends and everything in between. I especially like who I am and the way I work - me and my future both. I wanted to do everything and learn everything. I wanted to influence our morals, our politics, our science and our societies."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What was he like, as a small kid?
TIM REEVES-SMITH, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He was very small and very thin.
BEN McCULLAGH-DENNIS, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: Like all kids - quite happy - I mean, not necessarily different, as such, just a very happy kid.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell Bolton was born to high-achieving, middle-class parents, who held great hopes for his future. His mother, Merridy O'Donnell, is a family therapist, his father, Derek Bolton, a computer software engineer. Their older son, Angus, has now completed a postgraduate degree. And Campbell, the younger son, inherited the family's strong intellectual curiosity.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I think a lot of children, sort of, surprise adults, from to time, with the things they come out with, but he would...and he was no exception to that. He'd come out with questions. You'd think, "Good heavens", you know - a child so young, asking something like that.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell grew up in a reserved, cerebral family.
ANGUS BOLTON: We didn't call them mum and dad. We called them Merridy and Derek. And a lot of people find that strange but it's not a distancing thing. It's just something we do. We find corniness abhorrent, that sort of thing, you know?
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Well, what about being affectionate to them?
ANGUS BOLTON: Well, we don't...see, it's funny. I've started to hug Derek more lately and I feel like he doesn't, kind of, know what to do, because we kind of don't do it. We don't hug, we don't kiss and that kind of thing, and we're a quite distant family. It doesn't mean we're cold. We're just...we're not clingy to each other.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: "We don't hug. We don't kiss. We're quite a distant family." Do you think that that's significant in any way?
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARTIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: There would be hundreds of families that you could apply that kind of description to, where the end point is not suicide of one of the members. I really can't find anything in the family that makes me sit up and think, "Ah. This is the issue that was leading down that pathway." I just can't see it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's family history displays none of the usual factors blamed for youth suicides. No history of violence or abuse. No psychiatric illness or instability. No divorce. No drug or alcohol abuse.
Professor Graham Martin, one of Australia's top suicide prevention specialists, spoke with Campbell's mother at length and studied the suicide note before being interviewed for this program. He believes the case shows similarities with other personal histories he's studied.
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARTIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: They think this through. They make the arrangements. They do the planning. They never let on to friends or family. And they're not strictly depressed or irrational or psychotic or anything else. They've made a life decision and they're going through with that life decision.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's willingness to make his own decisions was apparent early on. He was self-contained and independent.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Campbell was not a kid who we worried about. He went off to day care. He went off to school. I remember when I dropped him at school, "Merridy, don't worry. I'm fine." You know, this is what this five-year-old says to me. You know, I'm looking tearful and Campbell says, "I'm fine."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: From primary school right through to Year 12, Campbell Bolton attended a highly respected private school in Sydney. He soon made his mark. Quirky, loyal to his friends and a born mediator.
HANNAH BELNICK, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He wasn't your average jock at all, he was very different. And that's what drew people to him, because he was so interesting.
JAMES FLETCHER, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He was loyal in the sense that he stayed with some of his better friends for years, you know, on a decade, which is an impressive feat, considering all the change that you go through as a young child and as teenagers.
MAX RYAN, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: And he had a great sense of justice. Sometimes infuriating because sometimes what you saw as a sense of justice just wasn't...but, yeah, he was sort of one of those kids - always a mediator.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Academically, Campbell was outstanding. He excelled in English, history, maths and science. For four years running he was dux of his year but it was something he never bragged about.
DAVID WRIGHT, FORMER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: He was somebody who was very disarming, very, very quiet. He would just indicate by a flicker of an eye, just a little thing at the corner of his mouth, indicating that he'd understood. He was one of those delightful students that the joy of learning was the learning itself.
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: He was very, very gifted. When he turned his mind to something, he could master it, and he would take it beyond where other students would go.
MAX RYAN, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: Come speech night when he's basically falling over with prizes, he'd just - you know, it was - he was incredibly shy about it and quite embarrassed, but it was definitely effortless. And where you'd see him put effort would be when he'd get 100 per cent. Where you'd see he'd put a moderate amount of effort, it'd be a good 80-90 per cent. So it was just infuriating.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: In this short film made in Year 9 by fellow students, Jade Abbott and Hilary Larcos, Campbell's status within the school as an academic high-flyer was celebrated. He played the fictional role of an arrogant student, Chester Burnham, who thinks he's got it made.
HILARY LARCOS, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: Jade and I were thinking, "Well, who's gonna be the star of the film?" And we just thought Campbell, because he's kind of got that dorky look about him but he's still really kind of fun, and we knew that he'd get into it and do a good job.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: What could he have achieved if he'd chosen to live?
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: Oh, anything he'd want. You know, he was just a very capable, extraordinarily capable person with an extremely good brain.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: But Campbell was a boy who used his intellect to deal with his emotions. Some suicides involve readily detectable mental illness but it can be harder to identify youngsters who are privately and intellectually attracted to the idea of suicide. Suicidal ideation, as it's known clinically, can be extremely dangerous and difficult to detect and counter.
VOICEOVER: "Above all else, I am curious about everything and slightly off kilter as well. This might help explain why about four years ago, with a mixture of cheerful curiosity and indifference, I considered the idea that the only reason we do not commit suicide on a regular basis is because we have evolved some chemical mechanism that tells us not to."
HANNAH BELNICK, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He was very clinical and analytical
and extremely rationalistic. That's the word that seems to come with Campbell. I remember once on camp, I said, "I believe in reincarnation," and he says, "I don't. That's a load of shit." He said, "After life is nothing. It's just nothingness."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's friends recall the way he would talk quite coolly about death and suicide when he was younger. Later on, he wrestled with other emotional pressures.
In Year 10 when he was 16, he went with his friends to his first rock festival - Homebake. Here he allowed his extrovert side to take over.
TIM REEVES-SMITH, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: The crowd just went absolutely psycho. And I remember seeing him in the mosh pit, actually bodysurfing other people and I was so shocked by this because usually Campbell's a pretty quiet person when he doesn't know other people, and him bodysurfing was just such a shock to me.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Later that evening Campbell surprised his friends with a revelation.
BEN McCULLAGH-DENNNIS, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He told me and a number of other people that he was gay, after that Homebake, and he made the comment, "I may be gay but I'm not a fag," or something along those lines, or, "I'm not a pixie", or one of those expressions for ditzy, kind of putting the fake voice on, trying to live up to this cultural idea of what it is to be gay. He was himself. He liked men. That was it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell had known he was gay for a very long time, but had kept it secret from almost everyone.
TIM REEVES-SMITH, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He actually told me he thought he was gay basically from day one that I met him in Year 2. He said he liked someone else in the year, I forget the name. And at the time I had no idea what gay meant because I was like five years old or something silly like that. But he seemed pretty confident in the fact that he knew what it was and what it meant.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Would it surprise you to know that Tim - - -
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Yes, knew since he was little.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Yes.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Yes. No, and, you know, Campbell managed to keep that quite private.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: To his close friends, Campbell seemed relaxed and comfortable with his sexual identity. But he never talked to his parents about it, and when his older brother Angus found out by chance that he was gay, it greatly distressed his younger brother.
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: He just broke down. He just completely started crying.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Why was he so distressed, do you think?
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: Because no-one in the family knew. Although people - although his friends knew...me, Merridy, Derek, we had no idea.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Do you think his sexuality was a major factor in what occurred?
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARTIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: I do. There's tremendous anxiety in that, tremendous pressure, tremendous ambivalence - "Should I tell? Should I not tell? What will be the implications? What will people say or think? Will they treat me differently? Will they love me any more?" - those kinds of things.
VOICEOVER: "I hurt from love too. Almost every day I see a boy, some fantastic-looking guy that makes my pulse quicken but also make me want to cry, and it makes me feel sad because they will never feel the same way about me, even if they were actually gay, and I cannot even tell them, not even hint about any of this to them. He will not so much as glance at me. There is nothing in the whole world that has caused me more hurt than this. Nothing."
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: I think the big issues for Campbell that came out in his adolescence was how do you form relationships, how do move on in the gay world? How do you? And these are questions that any adolescent are going to ask themselves - relationship stuff.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell longed for a meaningful sexual relationship, but his love-life consisted of night-time trips to the hard partying gay bars and clubs dotted along Sydney's Oxford Street. They were solitary and secretive outings with no friends invited.
JAMES FLETCHER, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: On numerous occasions we broached the subject sometimes as a bit of fun and other times, sort of seriously, you know, "Oh, how about we come out with you, Campbell, to a gay bar,", or something like that, you know, one of his gay-orientated social events, and he refused 100 per cent of the time, quite firmly.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: In public, any pain Campbell felt he kept carefully concealed beneath a madcap exterior. This film was made with friends in Year 11.
FILM CLIP: Come in on Monday at 3.21? Or Tuesday you come in at 3.22. On Wednesday you must wear brown and on Thursday you have lunch for one hour. Friday you have lunch for 59 minutes. I'd like Fridays very much, so you must also like Fridays. And when you leave on Fridays, you must leave with a banana in your right hand.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: He was happy to play the fool but while he presented a carefree face to the world his emotional anxiety was compounded by a physical issue.
CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He used to have very bad acne all over his face and we used to tease him about it, like, we teased everyone about their acne.
CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: No-one, particularly his closer friends, no-one would be that superficial to care in the slightest, but, naturally young people are concerned with image and some people say that the gay scene is also very image driven. So it would have been hard for him in that sense.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Outwardly, life continued as normal, but there was a fresh anxiety. In the Year 9 film he'd helped to make two years earlier, the prodigy Chester Burnham fails abysmally in an HSC exam. Now, in a horrible echo of this, Campbell's own academic results started plummeting for real.
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: During the preliminary course in Year 11 there started to be some signs that you sometimes see in very bright students who have been able to achieve with what appears to be relatively little effort, where the quality of their non-exam based work starts to fail.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: We said, "OK, let's see what happens." By the end of the year, his results were appalling, the worst report he had ever had, shocking results. I mean, for somebody else they weren't shocking but for Campbell they were shocking.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: His line that he was absolutely unshakable and was, "There's only a problem because you think it's a problem."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: So how did he explain it?
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: He was taking a break.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: He was having a bit of fun, and he would work when necessary for the HSC.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell was anxious to show he was still in control. By December 2004, though, the extra pressures of Year 12 and the HSC were coming into play.
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARTIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: I suspect that it had a much bigger impact inside Campbell's mind than we will ever know. If he got to the exams and failed or didn't do as well as he thought he should or perhaps didn't do as well as the family thought he should, I think he would have suffered a major blow to his self-esteem and a deep sense of shame, beyond what, perhaps, an average student would have done in a similar circumstance.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Now, too, there was a fresh medical factor. Without telling his parents and without a doctor's referral, Campbell had been seeing a dermatologist for his acne. In December, the doctor prescribed him Isotretinoin, which is sold under the brand names Oratane or Roaccutane. It's a medication for severe cystic acne, regarded by many as a miracle drug, but believed by some to cause suicidal ideation, in very rare cases.
DR STEPHEN SHUMACK: Now, there has been some anecdotal reports, there has been some media reports, about an association with depression and suicide. Now, we can't dismiss those. Certainly they are possible but, on the balance of evidence, and there's very strong evidence, there is no direct association between Isotretinoin prescription and depression and/or suicide.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Oratane does carry prominent warnings of potential side effects. It cautions patients to stop taking the drug if they feel depressed, start to feel sad, lose interest in activities, have trouble concentrating, withdraw from friends or family, or start having suicidal thoughts. Campbell would end up experiencing every one of these.
VOICEOVER: "I have to concede that the Oratane may not have helped this."
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: My speculation is that Campbell was committed to trying to get himself back on track. And, possibly, the Oratane had started to stuff around with his concentration and he actually found it harder to get back on track than what he had anticipated. And I think that was a bit of a spiral that he then got on that was spiralling down as time went by.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The dermatologist who treated Campbell and prescribed the drug would not agree to be interviewed on this program. In a letter written following Campbell's suicide, he told Merridy O'Donnell he'd warned Campbell about the drug's potential side effects and was led to believe that he'd informed "you that he was on the medication". He added, "Given Campbell's age, it would have been a breach of confidence for me to contact anyone regarding his management without his consent."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Is that good enough, do you think?
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: No, obviously not. And given that this kid was still at school, he was still living at home...given the history of this drug and the problems with it, that are well-documented, I think to take a risk and not include the family in monitoring a young person's behaviour, is just not good enough.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: No-one will ever know whether Campbell's medication affected his mental state. What is certain is that at the beginning of Year 12, teachers at his school started to get seriously worried.
KERRIE MURPHY, SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: About four weeks into Term 1, 2005, I spoke to Campbell myself. I saw what I felt was a fragility there, and I felt that Campbell did need some support. And I suggested to him at that time that whilst there was support available in the school - that he might go to an educational psychologist locally and gain a little bit of additional support. I was particularly concerned that he needed to turn around his motivation to study.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Another teacher who sensed that something was wrong was Jeff Long. At the end of Term 1, the half-yearly exams were approaching. Word reached Mr Long that Campbell had broken down, crying at school. That same day he bumped into him.
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: He was, you know, clearly upset and shaken, and I asked him, you know, "Is there something going on that is upsetting you, that is bothering you?" And, essentially, he said, "Yes, there is." I asked him if he wanted to talk about it, and he declined. He said "No. There is something going on, but I don't want to talk about it."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: You were worried, weren't you, that he might do something quite drastic?
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: Yes. I was starting to see in him some of the classic signs of depression, which we're told all the time to watch out for in teenagers, and I put it to him directly that, you know, there were no circumstances that I could imagine that were worth doing anything silly over. And he said in response to that that he agreed and acknowledged that and said that he had no intention of harming himself.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Jeff Long, though, wasn't convinced, and went to see the school's director of welfare.
JEFF LONG, SCHOOL TEACHER: I said that as a result of the conversation I'd just had with Campbell, I was concerned that he may be in danger of self-harm. I came away feeling that it wasn't critical at this point, but that if things were the same after the exam period, then we would probably take further steps to, you know, bring this situation up, bring it to a head perhaps.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell did extremely badly in his exams - a clear indication that all was not right but the chance to confront him about his problems or refer him for professional help would never come.
VOICEOVER: "I am at a loss as to why I have run away, but was equally at a loss as to why I should have stayed. Please do not jump to any conclusions. I did not have a drug habit, nor will I develop one. Nor have I eloped with some girl or boy, nor was the HSC too much to handle. If anything, my recent return to academic failure was because I was running away. It is awfully hard to apply yourself to school when you believe that in a week or two you will have dropped out."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: On Tuesday 5 April last year, Campbell said goodbye to his father. He told him he was going to stay at a friend's house before leaving to go on a school camp the next day.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: Well, I didn't know that this wasn't the plan, so I just accepted that, and he got his bag together and he gave me a hug goodbye and he left. And he seemed quite cheerful.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The next day Campbell's parents found a note in his room, telling them that he had run away from home, reassuring them that he loved them, but warning them not to try and find him. He had left with his older brother's passport, and several hundred dollars of his brother's money.
When you heard about that, what was your first reaction?
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: I thought he was just having fun, you know, grabbing some money and going for it, you know? But I did wonder how he was going to come back to who he was, like, it was going to be tough to come back into the house and say, "I'm sorry," you know? And he did try and cut communication completely, because he didn't want to deal with that, you know?
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Only days earlier, Campbell had bought himself some more Oratane. By leaving home, he had withdrawn from his own family.
VOICEOVER: "Dear All, I want to make clear that I knew this would happen. I knew I would do it a week before I even ran away. All I did not know was how long I would last."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Over the next 16 days, Campbell moved from hostel to hostel, as his parents tried unsuccessfully to talk to him.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I sent him an SMS message, saying that I missed him, and it was making me sad and could he phone me on my work number. And he did that, so I got the message the next morning. And in his message he said, yes, it's making him sad too, but he didn't think it would help to meet at this time.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Angus managed to track down one address where Campbell stayed, but decided not to try and find him there.
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: I never did that, and I really regret that, that I never extended to him, and that I never gave him the chance to talk about it in a way that would have got him talking about it, you know?
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The police were told that Campbell was missing. Some friends were able to contact him, and were relieved that he seemed OK.
HANNAH BELNICK, CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He was so happy. And he was talking about the future so much. And we were all really confident. We, sort of, left him thinking, "Oh, this is great. He's got a job. He's living out of home," you know, "This is really fantastic." But that was all a bit of a facade.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's parents decided that they should allow their son some space. But Merridy O'Donnell was trying to reach her son and, privately, she was in agony.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: One of the things I did on SMS was I sent him one saying - Oh, this is really hard to talk about, but I said something along the lines of - I said, "Goodbye, Campbell. I can't keep hoping that you will respond to my SMS's. I love you and take care." And I knew he would respond to that because it was very heartfelt, and he did, and he just SMS'ed
back, saying, "I'm so sorry." And I thought, "Well, at least he responded to it." And then I didn't hear from him after that.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Right up until the end, Campbell maintained the fiction that he was fine. He fooled everybody.
On April 21 last year, two police officers knocked on Merridy O'Donnell's door.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: I knew as soon as they walked in. I said, "You're not going to tell me he's dead, are you?"
BETTE O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S GRANDMOTHER: Tim, my son, came to the front door of my unit and he just looked at me and I said, "The worst has happened, hasn't it?" and he said yes.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: You also read Campbell's last note. What do you feel about that note?
BETTE O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S GRANDMOTHER: Well, I think it was completely immature and mature. It was - some parts were very mature and other parts were completely immature.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Immature in what sense?
BETTE O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S GRANDMOTHER: Well, he didn't have any idea of the grief or what he would cause or how it would affect us. It's like a ripple in a pool, throwing a stone into a pool, and the ripple effect - he wouldn't have had a clue.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: It is unlikely that Campbell dwelt on the profound impact his death would have on family and friends and the trauma it would cause to those who had to deal with the aftermath.
CONSTABLE BYRON WILLIAMS, NSW POLICE: It's quite a gruesome sight. I'd previously organised to have a couple of hours off work to attend my godfather's funeral. So, it's a day that I'll probably never forget for a long time because, one, I had a family funeral to go and the first job I did that day was a young male that suicided that had the whole of his life ahead of him.
JOHN ABERNETHY, NSW CORONER: I think, probably, suicide is, it's on its own in terms of the personal effect on others. It's distressing for everyone who deals with suicide cases. It's distressing for the family and friends, of course, obviously. It's also distressing for those who carry out the post-mortem work, for coronial staff, for coroners, for the police involved, for ambulance officers, a whole range of people who are there to attend to the issue of suicide.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Police Constable Heidi Warren was charged with the task of explaining to Campbell's parents what he'd written in his suicide note.
CONSTABLE HEIDI WARREN, NSW POLICE: My partner and I knew that the conversation we were going to go and have with these people was going to impact them for the rest of their lives. So, it wasn't something that you can do in autopilot. So, it was probably the biggest concern and the weight on my shoulders was how I was going to deliver this information and not make things worse for them.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Later, Campbell's parents visited the morgue, to formally identify his shattered body.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: It was really important for me that I actually touched him, because I hadn't seen him for two weeks. You know, absolutely...and I think it's very important for anybody who - where somebody dies, that you need to see them. It certainly was helpful for us.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: It was very important for you, particularly, because I had at least had that last hug with him before he left. And you strongly felt that you hadn't had that.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: I never said goodbye, I mean, apart from that SMS, which was not a goodbye, it was, you know, "Please contact me, Campbell."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: At Campbell's school, students and teachers were in shock. A memorial service was organised, led by David Wright, but the school's former principal was careful not to allow the secular service to turn into a vote of approval for what Campbell had done.
DAVID WRIGHT, FORMER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: I was filled with a sense of the tragedy at what had occurred when I knew the boy to be what he was. I was very aware that it was terribly important that this should not be an occasion where the school, as a whole, would see this as some kind of model or as some kind of - that it - that it wasn't something to emulate.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Campbell's closest friends played songs for him and addressed their fellow students.
DAVID WRIGHT, FORMER SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: It wasn't a morbid occasion. To a degree, there was kind of celebration of the good things about Campbell, which was wonderful, but, but by the same token, it was really important to try to underscore those points of what is life for, anyway? Life is something given, it's not for us to use as we might desire. You know, the great tragedy of suicide is the belief that "My life is mine to do with as I wish."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: With extraordinary bravery, Derek Bolton came to the memorial, to speak to the students.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I said, "Look, yes, we were adolescents, too. We know what it's like, and this is what I want to tell you, to stand here and tell you that, hey, it does get better. We get over these things," just to hang on in there.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: They're a wonderful group of friends.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Oh, they are. And I remember picking him up after one speech night and they were all gathered around him and, you know, they were doing what boys do, and I thought, "These kids love Campbell, absolutely love him." To know that they've had to deal with that loss, it's just enormous for them.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: One year on from Campbell's suicide, his family still struggles to find an appropriate response to what he did.
ANGUS BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S BROTHER: I was very angry...at him. I think maybe that, I think sometimes that if he'd had his life taken from him - like, if a bus ran over him or something like that, if something had taken his life, then I would be sad. But, in a way, because it was his decision, it doesn't make me so sad about it. It took me ages to even shed a tear over it.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: His parents have acquired a bolt-hole in the Blue Mountains, which affords them a measure of peace and quiet to reflect as they try to cope with the enormity of what occurred.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I found it easiest just to try not to think about it too much, to bury myself in my work, and to sort of just occasionally deliberately expose myself more to it, go and look at old pictures and things and have a good cry. Then I'm OK for awhile. And, over time, it gets easier. But it's very slow, very slow.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Merridy, tell me, how have you coped?
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Well, I certainly didn't go back to work. I didn't go back to work because I knew I'd be useless. And I gave myself a year. I actually work as a couple and family therapist, which is very ironic, when you think about it. I had to give myself a break. And I do a lot of exercise. And, see, what I didn't - and we all work differently - was that I didn't want to distract myself. I knew I had to sit and just feel terrible and just feel terrible and just feel terrible. And I knew I had to do that. And I think it's been valuable to just sit and feel terrible.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Struggling with Campbell's death has taken its toll on their relationship.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: We're strong but we're disconnected. Like, we're strong in the relationship but we're disconnected because we hurt so much.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: I think there's quite a significant extent to which we found each other's company difficult because we, without helping it, we reminded each other of Campbell. And it was much easier to be in the company of others.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Well, you also, you don't like to see your partner suffering, and you think, "Well, my suffering's just going to, you know, bore them to tears." So, your suffering, although it's shared, it also has to be a bit private. You know, it's a balance between acknowledging the difficulty but also finding your own - your own track that's going to work for you. And everybody's very different.
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: And, for me, it's doubly painful that I can find no way to console you.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: No, and I don't expect you to, and I don't look to you for consolation. It's something I have to do.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Merridy O'Donnell now attends this support group run by counsellors at the New South Wales Department of Forensic Medicine for people who've lost someone to suicide.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: I'm Merridy. Campbell died a year ago. He was 17.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: We lost our son, Nathan, on the 21 April last year. He was 24.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: I lost my daughter, Alexis, last year. She was 15.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: Yas suicided on the 21 October, 2002, when she was 17.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: We lost our daughter, Vicky, three and a half years ago. She was 17.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The group reflects the fact that suicide is a major invisible killer, snatching the lives of more than 300 young people a year, and exacting a terrible toll in grief and guilt from hundreds of families, friends and schools around the country.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: I don't know how to live - I don't know how to live with that guilt. I don't know what to do with my life any more.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: You'll never be the same person again. It's as simple as that. But you just learn to live with it somehow. Don't ask me how.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: I just don't want to let too many people too close any more. I just prefer to not have people too close to me. I only get hurt.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Well, for me, it's not guilt so much, because I think I was good parent, but it's more regret, regret that I didn't equip him to deal with what he had to deal with - whatever it was he was having to deal with that I was not able to equip him, psychologically, to deal with that, and I see that as a failure, full stop - absolutely full stop.
GROUP PARTICIPANT: If it wasn't for this group, I don't think I would have got through, because it is the only time I can sit here and talk like I am now. I can't talk to people at work like this. I can't talk to my friends. I can't talk to my other family like this. We can sit here and talk because it's like, "Hey, look, this is my new postcode."
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Taking lessons away from suicide is painfully difficult. And for those closest to the deceased, it's an intensely personal struggle. For Merridy O'Donnell, there's a mixture of pain, regret and a steely determination to speak out.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, MOTHER: There's a deathly silence around suicide. You know, it happened and everybody's shocked and everyone says, "Oh, isn't it terrible!" and "You must" - how difficult it is, but then the conversation stops. And that's why we think it's so important to highlight what happens a year down the track, because what we feel is common to a whole lot of people.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: Graham Martin believes that some young people, like Campbell, will do everything they can to ensure that nobody will block their actions.
PROFESSOR GRAHAM MARATIN, SUICIDE PREVENTION EXPERT: I think what it means in preventative terms is that we have to start much earlier looking at connectiveness, resilience, and a whole range of other issues of self-esteem, you know, way back in primary school, and building up young people to the point where the word "suicide" never, ever crosses their minds.
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: At the heart of suicide is loss and waste, the loss of a loved one and the waste of a life. Campbell Bolton's decision to kill himself wasn't just a waste of his own remarkable talents, it also laid waste an entire devoted circle of family and friends.
What could Campbell have achieved if he'd chosen to live?
DEREK BOLTON, CAMPBELL'S FATHER: Oh, he knew - he knew he could do so much.
MERRIDY O'DONNELL, CAMPBELL'S MOTHER: Whatever he wanted to do, he could have done. He had that ability. He had that connection with people. He had the intelligence. He had the curiosity. And, as he said in his letter, you know, "I love my life." The tragedy is that he took the decision he did, given that he had these wonderful talents, and I think he would have been the sort of person who contributed enormously to a community.
CAMPBELL'S FRIEND: He took an easy option, and that's a real shame, because he could have brought himself and the people around him so much happiness with that, with all the potential that he had. And that's missed, which is a real shame.
[End of transcript]