Jonathan Destin, who died on August 20, 2022 at the age of 27, had multiplied the interventions to break the ordeal of harassed children who do not dare to speak. Thus, he went to the set of the local Hauts-de-France TV channel Wéo in 2018 to look back on his journey. “It started in CM2 at the age of 10, with little bullying, little insults. In 6th, it went stronger and stronger. Blows in the back, a slap in the head as soon as I went to the hairdresser (…) fights during recess. They were all against me. It got louder and it went as far as racketeering“Despite having changed schools, the harassment continues.”I went to private thinking it would be better than public, but it wasn’t. Not at all, because that’s where the racketeering started.”
Locking himself in his silence, not getting the help he could have expected from school management, Jonathan Destin sinks and will perform this crazy gesture: “The day I set myself on fire, I immediately regretted my gesture, when I felt the pain and when I felt that I could die. I thought of my family.“He remembers the pain he inflicted on himself:”It hurt a lot, the pain was getting stronger.” It was then that he thought of living, of surviving.
After this tragedy which he survived after three months of artificial coma and twenty interventions, Jonathan Destin mobilized to raise awareness on school bullying. He wrote a book, doomed to kill me (XO editions), which was adapted into fiction for TF1, The day I burned my heart. Its objective: to speak, nothing but to speak. Because that’s what he couldn’t do and that could have saved him. Harassment is punishable by law, school staff are better trained, the subject is regularly discussed and listening platforms are now in place.
In 2018, at the time of the broadcast of the TF1 TV movie inspired by his experience, he had shared his dreams with the Parisian : “JI dream of working, of passing my driving licence, of having my independence. I was very attracted to cooking and baking. With my health problems, it’s complicated. It remains a hobby. I would like to become a computer scientist! I will soon start an upgrade because I stopped school in the middle of the 3rd professional without having the certificate. (…) I have the will. I’m getting better and better.“The young man lived ten years to rebuild himself after the worst, and leaves an imprint of the desire to surpass himself and help others.