The diaries of a 16-year-old girl who died at a prestigious boarding school in Buckinghamshire will be studied by researchers at Cambridge University.

Caitlyn Scott-Lee, a 16-year-old pupil at Wycombe Abbey in High Wycombe was found dead on the school premises in April 2023, the day before she was due to have her first-ever detention.

Although an inquest into her death is ongoing, the teenager’s diaries are now being studied as part of a research project at the University of Cambridge to see how her autism may have manifested in “personal reflections and cries for help” before she took her own life.

Top autism expert Professor Simon Baron-Cohen told The Times: “At the end of the diary, she talks about being punished for certain things at school and being given a detention. She felt that this was, for her, the end of the world – that she was not being understood.”

The publication reports that on the last page of her diary, 16-year-old Caitlyn wrote: “I hope this is my last diary entry. I want to kill myself tomorrow.”

Her father Jonathan Scott-Lee is backing the university’s project, which has also invited other autistic children to send in their diary entries, and which, it is hoped, will help identify behavioural patterns that could save the lives of others with similar struggles.

Mr Scott-Lee, who has autism himself, previously paid tribute to his daughter, who he said, “saw the world uniquely”.

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