Teen who took her life at top British school ‘hyper-fixated’ on her first-ever detention, says dad

A teen with autism took her own life a day before she was set to serve her first detention at a top boarding school in Britain, according to her father, a senior executive at HSBC who is now trying to raise public awareness about what led his daughter down a dark path.

Caitlyn Scott-Lee was found dead in a wooded area near a playing field at Wycombe Abbey School in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on April 21. She was only 16.

She has studied in various schools in Singapore when her father, Mr Jonathan Scott-Lee, was working and teaching here from 2016 to 2020.

Mr Scott-Lee, who now works at HSBC’s Toronto office, told The Sunday Times in London that Caitlyn wrote a final note in her diary expressing her despair at having to serve a two-hour “headmistress’ detention” at her school.

She wrote in her diary that she ran away from a school trip to Eton College in March as a “cry out for help”.

“I hope this is my last diary entry,” she wrote on April 20. “I want to kill myself tomorrow.”

Caitlyn, who was set to take her General Certificate of Secondary Education or GCSE soon, was reprimanded in March after vodka and a tattoo kit were found in her locker before the school holidays.

Mr Scott-Lee, 41, who has two younger daughters, said his daughter was “mortified to receive a detention”.

“To some of us, it is a badge of honour, sitting in a room for two hours to work,” he said.

“But Caitlyn seemed hyper-fixated on the concept of a detention,” he added. “And it seems she was determined to do anything she could to avoid it.”

Caitlyn was reportedly so upset that she ran away from the choral event at Eton on March 21, and even asked her housemistress that she be suspended – a heavier penalty – instead of being put on two hours of detention.

Being ‘neurodiverse’

Mr Scott-Lee told The Sunday Times that those with autism like his daughter “tend to think of the world in binary terms”.

“It can be difficult (for them) to differentiate between two extremes,” he said.

Mr Scott-Lee said he hopes his daughter’s death will spark a national conversation in Britain about “neurodiversity”.

Such a conversation – and he is asking Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to take it on – can allow high-performing schools like Wycombe Abbey, which charges £44,000 (S$74,000) a year in tuition, to better take care of its neurodiverse students.

 

Mr Scott-Lee wrote about neurodiversity in his 2022 essay for HSBC, and described one of his duties at HSBC as that of a “neurodiversity ambassador”.

He said in the essay that he himself had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Wycombe Abbey, established in 1896, regularly ranks among the top girls’ schools in Britain. It has about 650 students aged 11 to 18.

Mr Scott-Lee said he did not believe, as others had alleged following his daughter’s death, that Wycombe Abbey was a “hothouse”, one that piled pressure on and pushed Caitlyn to the edge.

This was “simplistic”, he said.

Autism is a gift

In a tribute to their daughter on Friday, Mr Scott-Lee and his wife Tara, an accounts officer for mental health charity Mind, said Caitlyn was “gifted with autism” and “had a particular passion for the theatre, arts, music and the environment”.

Mr Scott-Lee’s profile on LinkedIn said he worked for Standard Chartered in Singapore as head of data, technology, operations and outsourcing compliance, from 2016 to 2020.

Simultaneously, he was an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore from 2018 to 2020.

Caitlyn spent time in various schools in Singapore, Mr and Mrs Scott-Lee said in an article they wrote about Wycombe Abbey two years ago, but that she “has always had an affinity for the UK, and she had it in her mind to really want to go to a boarding school”.

After 2020, Mr Scott-Lee landed a job with HSBC and relocated his family to Hong Kong.

Wycombe Abbey has said safeguarding its students is its “highest priority”.

In an e-mail to parents of students in Caitlyn’s cohort, headmistress Jo Duncan said: “They are a close year group and, as you will understand, they are very shocked and upset.

“It is an extremely difficult time for everyone and we will do our utmost to provide the additional pastoral care the girls will need.”