THE parents of a transgender teen, in hospital after cyber bullies urged her to kill herself, say she was failed by her school and the police.

Seventeen-year-old Vicky was born male and as a boy called Simon, had a trouble-free education at Gable Hall School in Corringham.

But that, she claimed, changed when she started the sixth form as Vicky.

She had doors slammed in her face, shouts of “tranny”and “queer” in the corridor, and was ignored.

Then she got a message on a social networking site urging her to commit suicide.

The police were called in – but parents, Derek and Jan, slammed both Stanford and Corringham Sixth Form Centre, based at the school, and the police for what they perceive to be a lack of action.

Derek said: “We were called into a meeting with the school and the attitude was ‘your child is only 16, we don’t think that is old enough to be making these decisions’.

“This wasn’t something we were doing for fun, it had a huge impact on our family.

“Vicky just wanted to go in and get her grades. She dressed androgenously, it’s not like she turned up in a ballerina dress.

“Friends she had before when she was Simon now had to deal with her as Vicky and most of them couldn’t.

“People she had been quite close to turned on her.

“In one of her classes there was a concerted effort to segregate her from everyone else.

“They would sit away from her, talk over her in class and shout her down.”

Derek and Jan gave the sixth form the names of the perpetrators, but say no action was taken. They were equally unhappy with the police’s efforts to help.

The officer dealing with the case was unable to trace who sent the messages and was equally unhappy when police and the school couldn’t agree on a speaker going in to talk to pupils about the issue – because it “would upset them too much”.

The police said they had done all they could and closed the case.

Distraught, Vicky took a butcher’s knife to her arms and was rushed to A&E.

Derek added: “It felt like everyone just wanted Vicky to go away quietly. We’ve had no calls to ask how she is.

“The school and the police failed Vicky, it seemed like they just ignored what was happening to her.” Vicky is currently in a psychiatric ward, recovering from a mental breakdown.

Gable Hall head John King said: “This is a very sensitive case involving the well-being of a student.

“As such it is inappropriate to comment on any specific issue.

“However, I would say representatives of the sixth form and the local authority met with the parents of Vicky in October 2009 during which the school and the local authority expressed their profound concerns at Vicky’s intention to embark on a pathway condoned by her parents at such a young age, and importantly on the impact on her physical and mental well-being.”

Essex Police spokesman Laura Anderson said: “The officer appointed to the case fully investigated the crime with co-operation from the sixth form management. Unfortunately, due to the website host being based abroad, our lines of inquiry drew a blank to identify the user who was responsible for the words.

“Our investigating officer and the sixth form director decided that pupils would be more receptive to a school representative speaking to them about the consequences of hate crime, but unfortunately no information was brought forward to identify the suspect.

“We take all hate crime extremely seriously and have investigated this particular case fully.

“We have also offered the victim contacts in local support groups should she wish to seek support around hate crime.”

* The names of the family have been changed to protect them.