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I’d tried to reassure her that it would all blow over soon. Teenage girls always fall out I said and they would be friends again in no time but reading the comments on her Bebo page it was clear the problem was far more serious than I’d thought.

Suddenly it all made sense. Georgia had been behaving differently lately. Instead of rushing to the computer when she came in from school she had been disappearing straight to her room and she would ignore her mobile phone when it beeped.

I confronted her and she admitted the bullying had escalated. I was so angry – this wasn’t just girls being nasty these were serious threats and Georgia was terrified.

I called the police and they were sympathetic but we decided to let the school try to work things out before taking it further. Georgia’s guidance teacher arranged a meeting between her and the four girls she was having problems with so they could all try and talk things through. They promised the bullying would stop but it didn’t.

I closed down Georgia’s Bebo page but she was still being bombarded with nasty texts calling her names and wishing her dead. It’s one thing being picked on at school but the bullies were hounding Georgia in her own home where she was meant to feel safe and secure.

I felt so helpless. I offered to go to the school and confront the girls but Georgia begged me not to fearing it would only make things worse.

I watched as my once-confident little girl became sad and withdrawn hiding away in her bedroom and afraid to leave the house. Soon my husband Tony and I noticed Georgia was going to the toilet straight after every meal. After being told she was fat and ugly by the bullies I was terrified Georgia had developed bulimia and was making herself sick. She insisted she wasn’t but I was so worried I tried to stop her from going to the toilet straight after meals and asked her to leave the door open so I could hear she wasn’t vomiting.

By last summer Georgia had only one friend at school. When she asked if she could go on a school camping trip to an activity centre for four days last June I was worried. What if the bullies carried out their threats? However Georgia was desperate to go so I reasoned it was only fair to let her as she should be joining in with her peers. The school assured me they would keep a close eye on her.

Tony and I decided to makeover Georgia’s bedroom while she was away as a surprise to cheer her up. I knew she wanted a more grown-up room so we went out and bought new matching curtains and bedspread, furniture and a pretty little chandelier.

While we were emptying her room I found Georgia’s diaries. Respecting her privacy I stacked them in the corner out of the way but the night before Georgia was due home, as I stripped the sheets off her bed, a piece of paper fell on the floor. It was a page from Georgia’s diary. The writing in red felt-tip pen caught my eye. It read: “I feel like I mean nothing. There’s no point my being on this earth.” A poem followed, featured left.

I turned over the page and saw Georgia had drawn a single wilted flower and beside it had written: “I really can’t take any of this any more. No one is taking me seriously. People are laughing about me and I’ve no one to be with. I feel worthless.

“There’s a magazine I’m reading about a girl who tried hanging herself and it got me starting to think it would be a good idea if I did the same. I’ve nothing worth living for, what have I got to lose?”

Then beside that in pencil she’d written: “I tried to hang myself today. I was hanging for about a minute in the girls’ toilets but then I realised what I was doing. I feel so stupid.”

I stood there tears streaming down my cheeks. It was the most horrific thing I’d ever read. I felt as if my world had fallen apart. I wanted to scoop Georgia in my arms and shelter her from this cruel world but she was hundreds of miles away with the very people who’d made her feel this way.

Tony was equally upset. If our other children Riley, five, Tyler, eight, and Cassidy, two, hadn’t been in bed we would have driven straight to her. The hours dragged until 5pm the next day when the bus arrived back at the school.

Georgia was full of beans chatting about how she had been rock climbing and kayaking. We waited until we were home to sit her down to talk about what we had found. Georgia was silent. It was me who started crying first. “You don’t need to do that, we love you, they’re not important,” I sobbed. The floodgates opened. The three of us cried together and Georgia promised she didn’t feel suicidal any more. She said she had written it two weeks ago. She was feeling so down and hopeless she couldn’t see any other way out.

I was devastated. We were a close family and Georgia had always been open with me. I took it for granted she would tell me if things were really that bad but she hadn’t been able to. She said she hadn’t wanted to upset us.

She confessed that sometimes when I was out at the supermarket and she was home alone she would turn off all the lights and just scream and she told us that on the camping trip the bullies had threatened to drown her in the swimming pool.

The next week I reported it to the school and they arranged for Georgia to see a counsellor. The bullies were warned and some of them also got counselling.

A few weeks later the school broke up for the summer holidays. It was such a relief but I was already worrying about the new term and was a bag of nerves on Georgia’s first day back. Thankfully things seemed much better.

A few weeks later Georgia said the charity Beatbullying had visited the school and were looking for young people to become involved in a mentoring scheme to help give advice to children who were being bullied. Georgia was keen to volunteer. I didn’t want her being burdened with more worries but I let her do the training and saw her confidence grow.

In January Georgia was appointed as a cybermentor – someone online who helps other children affected by bullying. I can see it means a lot to her that she’s helping others.

Things are much better at school now. One of the girls even apologised to her. Georgia now has a Facebook page but I look at it every day to make sure there are no problems. After seeing how much damage cyber bullying can cause I’m not taking any chances.

Interview by Claire Walker. This article first appeared in the Daily Express on 21 May 2009.