A Virginia documentary maker and actor has received high praise from Áras an Uachtaráin for his latest project about a 12-yr-old traveller boy who lost his life to suicide. Alan Bradley's emotive documentary called "Patrick: A Young Traveller Lost" is being shown on RTÉ tonight following the nine o'clock news.
President Michael D. Higgins was among a small group of people who were shown a preview of the powerful programme in Dublin at the weekend. He has since issued a statement in which he said it would be "valuable" if the documentary was "watched by all" and shown in every school in Ireland.
In the programme various contributors told Alan Bradley that Patrick was a happy boy, who loved life and wanted to be a YouTube or TV star. After his tragic death at the tender age of 12, Patrick's parents went through his phone to garner the many videos he had made, and discovered that he had been subjected to cruel and prolonged cyber bullying. Alan Bradley told Northern Sound showing as much video of Patrick in his documentary was one way to realise the boy's dream. Alan said there is a very strong message for everyone in his film.
"The film is specific to travellers but cyber-bullying is universal," Alan told Northern Sound, "Just having a kinder, more tolerant and more accepting society of different people and not try to to make everybody the way we think they should be but allow them to be themselves and accepting that into society and I think a lot of travellers feel that has not been the approach to date but rather an approach to try to assimilate them into society has been taken as settled people rather than make space for them to be themselves and celebrate their culture as part of society."
