A man who was badly bullied at school has set up a charity to help young people going through the same experience.

Liam Hackett created Ditch the Label to provide a platform for people to share their experiences and get support. The aim is also to help people build up their confidence by focusing on creative and other projects.

Mr Hackett, 22, from Brighton, first experienced bullying in primary school, with taunts and physical violence.

As he progressed to secondary school, things got worse and he continued to suffer physical, mental, verbal and online victimisation, sometimes homophobic.

In the space of one year, he was physically attacked twice and on one occasion feared for his life. The continuing severity of abuse led to depression and suicidal thoughts and Mr Hackett had to get counselling.

Mr Hackett, who grew up in Liverpool, struggled to find support from teachers and local authorities and felt isolated and with nowhere to turn.

He eventually found support on the internet and was able to start communicating with others.

After leaving secondary school and starting college, Mr Hackett found himself in a more accepting environment and discovered he wasn’t the only person who had suffered bullying in their time at school.

Inspired

He said: “I was determined to use my experiences to tackle this issue and the website was the way to do it.

“I deliberately didn’t use the word bullying in the title and I don’t like the idea of people thinking of themselves as victims.

“The site aims to help people to become empowered and inspired.”

The charity now incorporates a support network with 34,000 members, outreach programmes in schools and colleges and the largest anti-bullying survey in the UK.

Its latest drive is an anti-bullying t-shirt campaign which is being run through the crowd-funding website IndieGoGo.

The aim is to raise £3,500 to create a line of T-shirt designs to sell online and boost the charity’s funds.

For more details about the campaign and the charity’s work, visit ditchthelabel.org.