I read something absolutely heartbreaking this morning on Instagram. Last year, on October 23, a 17 year old Victorian boy named Mac took his own life. In July 2022, he had been targeted in a horrific and cruel online scam.
Mac had been speaking to a young woman online who sent him a naked photo of herself. She then asked him to send a naked photo of himself — which he did. Not long after, he received a phone call from a middle-aged Asian man who told him he had the photo. Unless Mac sent him $500 immediately, he threatened to send the image to all of Mac’s friends and family.
Mac sent the money, but the man continued to threaten him. Terrified, Mac told his dad what had happened. When the offender called back, Mac’s father, Wayne, pretended to be with the police. Then they went and officially reported the incident.
But the next day, Mac went to football training — and the photos had already reached some of his teammates and friends. Wayne said his son “never recovered from the embarrassment.” On top of all this, Mac’s mum — Wayne’s wife — had recently passed away.
The offender was jailed for only six months, which is an unspeakable injustice.
On the morning of 23 October 2023, Wayne knocked on Mac’s door at 7:00 am after noticing he hadn’t woken at his usual 6:30 am. He walked into the room and found that his son had hung himself.
I know I’ve said before that I don’t have children, so I can never fully relate to a parent who has lost a child. But I can feel the weight of this — I really can. Sometimes I feel frustrated with men for how they treat women, for how quick they can be to judge. But then I look at a young man like Mac, who felt humiliated and ashamed over something that ultimately doesn’t matter. And all I want is for the world to be kinder. For people to love each other, hold each other, and be gentle.
For him, the significance of that photo must have been magnified beyond measure. And we’ll never know what his teammates or friends said to him, or whether they were unkind. But none of that should matter. What matters is your family, your real friends, the love between you — that’s all that matters.
And this whole story is just unimaginably tragic.
Mac’s father, Wayne, has since set up a suicide-prevention program called S(MAC)K Talk, where he teaches parents and teens the warning signs of suicide. He does it for free, and I think it is such a beautiful way to honour his son — by trying to save other young people through education.
I don’t cry much, and I don’t know why that is, but reading Mac’s story brought a tear to my eye. And reading about what his father is now doing brought another. It must have been unimaginable for him to lose his son like that. You would always wonder if you could have done something differently. The heartbreak is made even heavier knowing he had just lost his wife — and now it is just him and his daughter, who I also read about in the Instagram post.
I made a $50 donation to S(MAC)K Talk. The link is here:
https://www.smacktalk.com.au/home
My brother had a friend — I’ll call him Richard for the purposes of this blog — and we got along really well. I would say he was my friend too. When my brother started up a business, he had an office in the city. Richard was his website designer and had a desk there, and I also had a desk in the office while I was studying and temping. We spent a lot of time in the same space and I got to know him well.
I had this friend — Sam — who was gay and incredibly bitchy. He was often derogatory and demeaning towards me, and whenever Sam spoke to me like that in front of Richard, Richard would step in and tell him not to talk to me that way. He defended me every time. He really was a true friend.
Richard went to Bali for a one-week holiday, and when he came back, he was very different. My brother told me he believed Richard had been raped while he was over there. Once, my brother mentioned something about Bali in front of a couple of people, and Richard shoved him up against a wall and said that if he ever brought it up again, he would kill him.
Not long after that, Richard disappeared. None of us knew where he’d gone. Then one day Sam called me and told me Richard’s body had been found in Waterfall Gully National Park. He had shot himself. Sam knew because he had connections in the police — he’s actually a police officer now.
I was devastated. My brother was too — Richard had been one of his closest friends. But Sam, who had always disliked Richard for sticking up for me, was almost laughing about it. I still remember feeling sick that someone could react that way to a man’s death.
I experienced humiliation once. It was May 2011, and I won’t go into the details — not because it’s traumatic now, but because I don’t want to be specific about the people or the place. Nevertheless, the humiliation I went through affected my life in a significant way.
When Wayne, the father of Mac, said his son never recovered from the embarrassment of those naked photos, I understood what he meant. My situation was very different to his, but it still altered everything in my life. I lost everything when I lost my dignity on that one particular day in May 2011.
Once I realised what had happened, I became a completely different person — and I really did. For four years it dominated my life, and although I eventually learned to push it into the background, I still think about it sometimes. When I do, I feel angry at myself for allowing it to affect me so deeply. It wasn’t nearly as bad as what happened to Mac, who was violated and extorted. But for me, it was the worst thing that had ever happened, and it shaped me in ways I didn’t expect.
I don’t know why some things affect us more than others. I am over it now, but sometimes I wonder: does being “over it” mean it all meant nothing?
As I said, it was nothing like what these poor kids go through when they’re bullied online, or what Mac suffered. It’s different. But stories like his make me wonder whether it’s the right thing to do to ban children from social media altogether. These platforms give people — especially young people — the power to be incredibly cruel. But is banning them censorship?
One thing I do know is this: you never know how humiliation is going to affect someone. Not ever.
I didn’t tell a lot of people about my humiliation, and when I did, some people laughed — as if it meant nothing. But it was everything to me. If I had told my parents, they would have been angry at me for embarrassing them, especially my dad. But as I’ve said, it changed my life, and not for the better.
It’s only now, looking back, that I can be grateful I eventually found a way to let it go.
Reading about these kids makes me really sad. I was 29 when I experienced my life-changing moment, and even then, it took all the maturity I had to move forward. I’m not comparing my situation to theirs — the only common thread is the humiliation. But to feel that level of shame, isolation, and aloneness as a child would be a terrible, terrible thing.
