Students taking on cyber-bullies

The Cornish students went to London for their training

Students at Cornwall College have been trained as senior "cyber-mentors" to help young computer users defend themselves from cyber-bullying.

A group of older students has received training in London from Beatbullying.

The charity said the scheme would create an "online virtual community" specifically to tackle the problem.

The Cornwall College senior cyber-mentors, who are the first in the county, are hoping to link up with local schools to tackle cyber-bullying.

Under the scheme senior cyber-mentors, who all come from colleges or universities, support the work of younger cyber-mentors who have been trained in their schools.

Vicious messages

The senior cyber-mentors are available to respond to messages or chat on social networking sites.

Trained counsellors from Beatbullying are also on hand to deal with more difficult or sensitive problems.

Fifteen-year-old Caitlin, from north Cornwall, was bullied online.

Vicious messages were posted about her on a social networking site.

She said: "There were people writing on there that I thought I could trust and that were my friends and it turned out they'd been writing these things about me.

"I didn't know for weeks, it was really horrible."

Seventeen-year-old Chris Peck is one of the newly-trained senior cyber-mentors.

He said: "They can come to us and talk to us, we can then give them advice as to how to resolve the situation.

"On social networking sites you can get people blocked or completely removed and we can help them with this."