Jonathan Destin: the cause of his death remains unknown

JONATHAN DESTINY. Symbol of the fight against school bullying, Jonathan Destin died. It was the mother of the man who had tried to commit suicide by setting himself on fire in 2011, in the North, who announced his death on Facebook, Wednesday August 23, 2022.

[Mis à jour le 23 août 2022 à 19h58] He was a figure in the fight against school bullying and was only 27 years old. Unfortunately, Jonathan Destin is deceased, announced his mother Marie-Pierre in a message posted on Facebook this Tuesday, August 23. In 2011, the young man had tried to end his life by immolation. Two years later, he told his story in a book entitled “Condemned to kill me” (XO Editions), then in 2018, thanks to a TV movie broadcast on TF1 and entitled “The day I burned my heart”. These two works retraced his six years of harassment and racketeering, until this gesture of despair, which had left him 72% burned and had led to an artificial coma for two and a half months and then to three years of hospitalization.

Jonathan Destin’s cause of death is still unknown. His death dates back to Saturday August 20 according to CNews. “To all those who knew Jonathan, through his story, his book, his film, in schools, who one day met him, spoke to you, who have been following us for so many years, I unfortunately have sad news. to announce, Jonathan died on Saturday at my house in his sleep”, was content to write his mother on the social network, “heart torn”. Dominique Legrand, mayor of Marquette-lez-Lille (North), where Jonathan Destin was from, assured that the young man “suffered a lot from his burns and the many operations he had undergone”. The voice of the North indicates that an autopsy must be carried out and that the police have opened an investigation into the disappearance.

Since his suicide attempt, Jonathan Destin aspired to “a normal life” but lived with heavy consequences. “Even today, I have to undergo treatment for my burns, because I lived two whole years in the hospital”, he indicated to LCI in particular. “But I’m in a period of reconstruction, I’m moving forward, every step I take is one more step,” he said.

Jonathan Destin’s death announced on Facebook

What is the story of Jonathan Destin?

Jonathan Destin was born on December 9, 1994 in Lille and followed all of his schooling in the North. In an interview with 20 Minutes in 2018, when the TV movie “The day I burned my heart” was released, he returned to his ordeal, inflicted by his stalkers from the year of CM2. His surname, his weight, his dyslexia… The reasons for bullying quickly became recurrent. “I probably became their victim because I was too shy and didn’t respond when they insulted me. They saw that I was easy prey.”

Before continuing: “Some teachers pretended not to realize what I was going through, because they were afraid of bullying students. Others didn’t know anything, because I didn’t dare to talk about it, for fear of reprisals. And several times, when I tried to defend myself against the blows, I even received hours of glue.”

In Le Parisien, Jonathan Destin also explained that he was “ashamed” of what he was experiencing at school. Especially compared to his father: “someone strong and he would not have let it go”.

Why did Jonathan Destin decide to kill himself?

This harassment will intensify in the middle of college. “During my 4th grade, I lost a lot of weight, 15 kg in two months, when I started to be extorted. I only ate in the morning. It was a call for help. My parents asked to my sisters what they knew and they thought that I wanted to please a girlfriend. My mother questioned the school nurse who replied that it was not anorexia”, still detailed Jonathan Destin in the hurry.

Until that day of February 7, 2011, during which, at 16, he was extorted with a weapon, without knowing that it was fake. Summoned to pay 100 euros to his attackers, Jonathan Destin will prefer the next day to spray himself with methylated spirit to set himself on fire. Taken by a saving reflex, he will save himself by throwing himself into the Deûle in extremis. He explained this deadly journey to Brut in 2018.

Claiming to regret his gesture of despair, Jonathan Destin has since raised awareness about harassment. “You must not stay locked in your corner, to fight harassment, you have to talk about it”, hammered the young man. “I want to get moving and make things happen in terms of harassment, and for me too. Continuing to talk about it helps me psychologically. I am often contacted by people who have experienced the same thing, teachers, parents. They ask me for advice”, he confided, for example, to LCI. Last spring, he was still crisscrossing the high schools of the North to release this word, as at the Louis-Armand high school in Jeumont last May.

As for his executioners, Jonathan Destin has never filed a complaint against them. “I never dared, but I know I can still do it. I’m still afraid of them, of crossing them, but if that happens, I’ll call the police right away. I hope that they regret”, confided the young man to France 3. And to conclude: “But for my part, I think that one day, I will forget, it is already much better.” Anyway, for all these years, his stalkers “didn’t come to apologize.”

In 2013, Jonathan Destin wrote a book retracing his particularly painful history. Two years earlier, in 2011, the then 16-year-old boy set himself on fire. Burned to 72%, he will have two and a half months of artificial coma and will be hospitalized, thereafter, for three years. Using his pen, Jonathan Destin looks back on the significant passages of his life that pushed him to commit the irreparable. Harassed at school, he recounts in particular an extremely painful episode. Beaten up inside the school grounds, he complains to his main teacher who will tell him: “They are having fun with you.” The teenager does not have the same memory: “But they really hit me. They didn’t seem to be laughing.”