A teenage girl with red hair hanged herself after being subjected to repeated taunts including being called “Ginger”, “Freckle face” and “Pig nose”, an inquest was told yesterday.

Kelsey Jade Winter, 13, coloured her hair blonde and wore heavy foundation to mask her freckles because of severe bullying by fellow pupils at Teesdale Comprehensive School, Co Durham. She died on August 12 after hanging herself from the handle of her bedroom window.

It was not the first time that the teenager – described by her parents as hard-working and bubbly – had attempted to harm herself. Two months before her death, she told a school counsellor that she had put a belt around her neck and had decided to “end it all”.

According to an extract from Kelsey’s diary, read to the inquest at Bishop Auckland Magistrates’ Court by her mother, Carolann, the teenager said: “I put a belt around my neck and pulled it tight . . . my face went purple. I took it off. I went to school and told the counsellor and told them not to tell mum.”

Joan Edwards, the counsellor, told the inquest that she saw Kelsey ten times over eight weeks in the months before the teenager’s death but had not referred her to outside help. On one ocassion the schoolgirl had told her that she wanted to “end it all”, Mrs Edwards said.

“It seemed to me to be quite up and down,” she said, referring to Kelsey’s relationship with her fellow pupils. “Sometimes it was just Kelsey getting upset, sometimes it was the other girls.” Mrs Edwards added: “She did tell me about the marks. She told me she got very angry and she decided she wanted to end it all. But eventually she changed her mind. She was adamant she was not suicidal and she really wanted to sort herself out.”

The counsellor said that she did not refer the teenager to a specialist because Kelsey said that she was not suicidal.

“If Kelsey was telling me that she was suicidal, I would have suggested she get outside help,” Mrs Edwards said. “Perhaps I would have made a referral to another agency.”

The counsellor also said that Kelsey had told her of difficulties at home and of strained relationships with her half-brothers and sisters.

“It was obviously an important issue to Kelsey and she was not in control of the situation,” Mrs Edwards said. “Obviously she did not have a lot of say about what was happening but in my opinion she seemed to be dealing with issues in quite a mature way really.”

Asked by Andrew Tweddle, the Coroner, whether more attention should have been paid to Kelsey’s problems, Mrs Edwards said: “She said she was feeling a lot better and she appeared to be getting on with her friends a lot better. I had no concerns about her.

“Apart from the incident with the belt, which was quite a few weeks before that, Kelsey seemed to be getting sorted out.”

Mrs Winter told the inquest that her daughter got called names all the time. “She got called ‘Ginger’, ‘Freckle face’,” she said. “I got her hair dyed blonde so she didn’t look as ginger. She used to wear foundation very heavily to cover up the freckles. It wasn’t just the girls; it was the boys.

“She was bubbly but she thought she was ugly. She wasn’t ugly.”

Mrs Winter also told the inquest that her daughter had been deeply affected by the death of her uncle, Mark Maughan. The 29-year-old ambulance technician had been killed in a car crash on the way to work in January 2006.

“It was a big thing for her,” Mrs Winter said. “She couldn’t understand why everybody close to her died.”

Kelsey was discovered by Mark Winter, her stepfather, in her upstairs bedroom while the rest of the family prepared lunch.

Mr Winter tried to resuscitate her while her mother, who was pregrant with her fourth child, called an ambulance.

But Kelsey was prounced dead shortly after arriving at hospital.

Recording an open verdict, Mr Tweddle said that he could not be sure that Kelsey had deliberately taken her own life. “It was possible she may well have changed her mind and not gone through with it, like the earlier attempt,” he said. I think it would be very wrong of me to conclude that she did take her own life.”

Last year Beckie Daley, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, hanged herself at her home after being bullied viciously at two schools. In one incident, a large group of children had attacked her in the street but her school had taken no action despite being aware of her injuries.

The Coroner had said that “opportunities had been missed” by a number of agencies that could have done something to help her.

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