The mother of murdered teen Brianna Ghey says she now classes the mum of her daughter’s killer “a friend”. Esther Ghey revealed how she has formed an unlikely bond with Emma Jenkinson, the mother of Scarlett Jenkinson, who along with Eddie Ratcliffe murdered 16-year-old transgender schoolgirl Brianna in February 2023. Ms Ghey told how the pair had grown close in the aftermath of the tragedy and mutual horrors of discovering what children are viewing online via their smartphones.

She said: “I really appreciate Emma. I would call her a friend now. She’s just a normal mother and she had no idea what her child was accessing – this is the danger with smartphones. I suppose it’s helped me in a way: you can make up stories in your own head about the way people are. It was important for me to meet her, to understand that she was a normal person. It’s helped me to see that we are both navigating something extremely difficult – and she’s lost a child too.”

In an interview with the BBC’s Laure Kuenssberg programme, Mrs Ghey also expressed her frustration at the Labour Government’s Online Safety Bill, which may be “watered down” to appease US President Donald Trump.

She said: “While we are questioning whether it’s strong enough or whether it should be watered down, young people are at harm, and young people are losing their lives.

“Young people shouldn’t be struggling with mental health because of what they are accessing online, and we really do need to take a hard stance on this.”

Brianna, 16, was murdered by classmate Scarlett and her friend Eddie, who were both 15 at the time of the murder, after the pair lured Brianna to a park in Cheshire where she was stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife on February 11 2023.

The pair had a fascination with violence, torture and murder, and after viewing horrific online content had planned the killing for weeks using a messaging app.

The pair were convicted in December 2023 at Manchester Crown Court and were sentenced the following February to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 22 years for Jenkinson and 20 years for Ratcliffe before being eligible for parole. The court concluded that the offence was primarily motivated by sadistic tendencies and that hate against transgender people was a secondary motivation of Ratcliffe. The murder was planned.

Mrs Ghey says she now supports a “blanket ban” on smartphones in schools across the country and demanded government backing to empower head teachers.

She added: “We need to support teachers in a blanket ban across England.

“If a school has banned phones in one area and in the same area another school hasn’t – it becomes an issue with parents.

“It needs to be done across the board to make it easier.”

Ms Ghey has previously met Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his predecessor Rishi Sunak to discuss the issue and has criticised the Online Safety Act, saying it does not go far enough.

She has campaigned for an age limit on smartphone use, stricter controls on access to social media apps, tougher action on knife crime and for mindfulness to be taught in schools.

On her campaigning work on online safety and trolling, Ms Ghey said she supports a ban on social media for under 16s.

“It is an absolute cesspit,” she said in March at the screening of ITV film Brianna: A Mother’s Story, which explores the murder of her daughter.

“Even if, say, if I do an interview, and I’ll try not to look at comments, but I can never help myself, and I’ll look at the comments, and you’ll see people saying about my child, trying to tell me what gender my child was, and also really, really horrific comments too.

“And it’s mentioned in the documentary as well, that when you report things, the support isn’t there.

“I’ve reported so many comments, and I always get the response that they haven’t done anything wrong, that it’s not something that they can take down, and our children have access to those comments.

“No matter how much love and compassion you pump into your child when you’re bringing them up, and how much empathy you can teach them as well, they will then go online and they’ll see the way that other people are speaking about other people, and they might think that that’s right.

“And that’s without even going into the amount of harm that’s online, like the dangerous challenges where young people are losing their lives due to these sick challenges that people are uploading, misogyny, hate, misinformation, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Roxy Longworth, who spoke to the BBC alongside Ms Ghey, was coerced into sending nude pictures to a boy at school when she was just 13, and subsequently experienced serious mental health problems.

Ms Longworth, 21, said she wanted to bridge the growing "generation gap" around social media.

She said: “A lot of young people I've spoken to have said that they're scared to tell their parents about anything they see online, because they're worried their phones will be taken away as punishment.

A government spokesperson said: “The Online Safety Act is about protecting children online from harmful content like self-harm and eating disorders as well as making sure what is illegal offline is illegal online.

“These laws are not part of the negotiation and our priority is getting them in place quickly and effectively, while exploring what more can be done to build a safer online world.”