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Filed Under: Suicide - Undetermined

Published: Aug 13, 2012 @ 5:56 PM

ONLY after Olivia Penpraze's death did her parents discover what was really happening online.



On Tuesday, the 19-year-old from Rowville, who was left brain dead after a suicide attempt, drew her last breath before her parents Warren and Kellie Penpraze turned off her life support.



Her grieving father logged on to her laptop to send out the sad message to her friends the best way he knew how - Facebook.



That's when he stumbled across his daughter's online suicide diary. For two years, the petite teen had been chronicling her depression on blogging site Tumblr.



More than 900 pages of posts and photographs revealed her daily heart-wrenching emotional descent. In video posts she talked about being bullied and the desire to not hate herself any more.



In February, she wrote how nice it was to not think about killing herself on her 19th birthday.



Hundreds of photos show the things that made her happy such as kittens, flowers and going to the school formal. Other images were much darker.



Despite disturbing posts, Olivia still offered a shoulder to cry on for online followers who also suffered depression. In one video she announced the date she would attempt suicide, May 1, but she couldn't wait that long.



The site shocked her father, but what hurt most were not Olivia's words, it was the people who posted comments urging her to die.



He said: "I can't understand how someone could sit there and egg someone on to kill themselves. They are pretty damn gutless people."



Even after Mr Penpraze posted on Olivia's blog explaining what had happened, there were sick replies.



"They said if she was dead why weren't you spending time with your family. They didn't believe she was dead," Mr Penpraze said.



"She does have friends ... who wanted to know what happened but all the hatred-type ones come from people who ... post as anonymous."



The comments became so bad Mr Penpraze disabled the blog and is urging the online community to warn friends and family when they know something is wrong.



"We are finding out now there are kids on her Facebook who actually know her on the Tumblr account. Why are they not getting in touch?" he said.



"If she says she is going to do something on this date they could have told us. Even if it was a false alarm, we could have done something."



Since her death, hundreds of tributes have been posted.



The devastated family, including brother Alex, 16, will farewell Olivia on Wednesday in Malvern.