String of Youthful Suicides Baffles Quiet Welsh County

Area Has Had 17 Self-Inflicted Deaths in Past 13 Months

CEFN CRIBWR, Wales, Feb. 20 -- Jenna Parry, a bubbly 16-year-old, hanged herself Tuesday from a tree in the center of this village. Last week, 15-year-old Nathaniel Pritchard hanged himself in a village just down the road, and his 20-year-old cousin did the same shortly after hearing the news.

In all, 17 young people have committed suicide in the past 13 months -- five of them since last month -- in Bridgend County in the rolling green hills of South Wales. Police have found nothing linking the deaths except that some of the youths knew each other and some were related.

The suicides have left people wondering what has caused such despair in this quiet Welsh community.

"It's shaken everyone up," said Mark Sterio, 53, pouring pints for his regulars beside the fire in the Farmers Arms pub as a cold drizzle fell on the sheep fields outside. "It saddens people here to think that someone of that age could feel that bad," he said of Parry. "There are a lot of youngsters around here. It could be anybody's child."

Bridgend County is a collection of rural villages around the central market town of Bridgend, which has a population of 40,000 and lies about 20 miles west of Cardiff, the Welsh capital. Once famous for its coal mines, the area was a major producer of munitions during World War II and then a manufacturing hub for televisions and furniture in the postwar years.

But those jobs have moved to China and Eastern Europe, and now the government is the largest employer, although some enterprises offering high-skilled jobs have moved in, including plants producing engines for Ford and cameras for Sony.

In the town of Bridgend, signs posted along a pedestrian walkway advertised jobs: $16 an hour for a forklift operator, $30,000 a year for an experienced bookkeeper. One day after Parry's body was found by a man walking his border collie, young people hung around the bus station, smoking cigarettes not far from a 600-year-old stone bridge.

Ray Pearce, the county's economic development director, said that about 21.3 percent of the eligible workforce is collecting some kind of government assistance, a figure that is far higher than Britain's 14.2 percent national average. But overall, he said, economic times used to be worse and the local picture is improving.

"We're hardly ever the best or the worst. We're pretty average," Pearce said.

Paul Stockton of the Wales chapter of the Samaritans suicide prevention group said that despite speculation by some commentators, joblessness and economics are probably not to blame for the deaths.

"It doesn't matter if you're from Bridgend or London or Glasgow, the pressures on young people, particularly young men, are much higher than they were a generation ago," he said.

Stockton said it was possible that the suicides were partly caused by "social contagion," pointing out that in small communities, including prisons, news of a suicide can sometimes lead to another.