9 MA Cyberbullies Indicted For Causing Suicide 709
Raul654 writes "Massachusetts teenager Phoebe Prince committed suicide on January 14. After her death, it was revealed that she had been the target of cyberbullying for months (and that her teachers were aware of it and did nothing). Today, nine of her classmates were indicted on charges including harassment, stalking, civil rights violations, and statutory rape. Prince's suicide echoes the earlier case of Megan Meier, who committed suicide after being cyberbullied by a classmate's mother."
Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:4, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with Facebook, Flicker, FourSquare, Twitter, or any other Web 2.0 website. This happened at school, during school hours, and with the school having knowledge that that something was going on. This is a first round of charges, there could be more including some of the adults who could have taken action. Dating a senior football player and being the "new girl" led to her being teased and hated... leading to violence, leading to a situation where she saw no way out. This should have been cut off with detentions and suspensions long before it got this far.
I'm pretty sure the lawyers in this case are going to pull all the Web 2.0 content created by the students involved. If they go down this path and find something that can be treated as a confession, then it's "News for nerds." or "Stuff that matters." Until we see that, it's more like the 6pm news here in the Boston area.
Cyberbullies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading the article, you can't really pigeonhole this as a cyberbullying incident -- it seems way more accurate to call this an instance of *comprehensive* asshole behavior. I mean, when I was a kid the bullies knew how to operate the phone, but nobody called that telebullying.
Don't get me wrong, this is distressing stuff, but reading between the lines it seems awfully simplistic to try and just pass this entire affair off as being a simple result of these kids using the internets in order to torment this girl into killing herself. Really, the most disturbing thing to me in the article is the lack of remorse these girls displayed after the fact. I understand that high school is messed up, but who the hell makes jerk comments on a memorial page? That seems pretty damn sociopathic even by the standards of high school.
Throw the book at them and the school. (Score:5, Insightful)
The daughter of a neighbor experienced a similar problem some time ago. Fortunately a vice-principal at the school did not ignore the reports from teachers and took disciplinary action against the people involved.
The harassment was vicious, nasty and designed to humiliate and hurt. I understand that the bullies were unrepentant - they felt they had a "right" to hurt someone who didn't kowtow to them.
I am thankful that these sorts of issues were pretty much unknown when I went to school. I think I'll home-school my kids....
Newsflash: (Score:2, Insightful)
The world has some assholes in it. They are mean to people for no good reason.
Altho for some reason we put up with them and work around them instead of throwing them down a deep dark hole and moving on.
Her teachers were aware of it and did nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This has been the teacher and administrator MO since I was in school in the 60s. Actually it's worse than that. The teacher/administrator just wants the problem to go away so they tend to persecute and isolate the *victim* rather than the perpetrator (Johny gets bullied by a group of 5 kids on the playground so we'll keep *Johny* inside while all the kids go out to play). This usually ostracizes the victim further by pointing him/her out as the weak odd kid.
In my experience, the most culpable individuals are spineless teachers followed by spineless administrators. Children can't really be blamed. They know no better. Adults do, or should.
Statutory rape? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when has statutory rape been part of cyber bullying?
It sounds like cyber bullying was the least of her problems.
Re:Cyberbullies? (Score:5, Insightful)
The two guys, 17 and 18, were charged with statutory rape.
Not to split hairs, but that's a pretty significant difference -- you go to any high school in America and you'll find people having sex with folks two years older than they are. Assuming the sex was otherwise consensual, it sucks that these guys are getting charged with such a serious crime in what amounts to a prosecutorial attempt to close the barn door after the cows are out.
Re:Cyberbullies? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's because it's easier to blame outside entities like technology, rather than take responsibility for your actions, or more importantly for your child's actions. If there's anyone that should be blamed (other than the kids who did the bullying), it's their parents for failing to instill any kind of morality or decency. The parents are, in internet terms, epic fail.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
It does highlight something that really worries me about this case. As a kid I copped a bit of bullying myself, at least till I got big enough to fight back, but I came to the conclusion that kids are, well, shitheads, and that most hopefully grow out of it.
Whats disturbing, is that the adults did nothing to protect this poor girl when it should have been immediately obvious she was being victimized. Sometimes when your being bullied, simply having an older kid or adult take your side can be immensely comforting.
When I was around 25 I used to catch a public bus to work, and every morning this scruffy young kid would be on the bus being teased and taunted till I decided to intervene, picked up one of his tormentors and physically launched him off the bus then let the kid sit next to me from that point on. I told the bullies that I would hunt down and beat senselessly any kid that bullied my new little mate, and within a couple of weeks the kid stopped being bullied. I gave the kid a bit of friendship and kind of explained how to work on his goofy demeanor, and within a year he was a reasonably popular kid himself.
All it takes is someone to care about these kids. To give a damn about them. Show some genuine concern for these kids, and they'll shine. They always do
Prosecute the school administrators, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cyberbullies? (Score:1, Insightful)
Good news everyone. We've not only lost the life of one young person, we now get to destroy the lives of two more!
Are you a professional douche?
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
What surprises me is that you weren't arrested for assault.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Political correctness run amok (Score:2, Insightful)
These girls were not joking. Boys beat the crap out of each other. Girls are a hell of a lot meaner.
My thoughts and prayers are with her family. (Score:2, Insightful)
...
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid, nothing disillusioned me about authority figures more than the misguided attempts of school administrators to interfere when I was being bullied. Keep in mind that I went to great lengths to avoid being bullied (sometimes by groups of kids) and sometimes this meant breaking school rules (like going through a hole in the fence around the school during lunch when I was being chased). The school administrators came out against me all too often. Once one principle even brought out boxing gloves and told us we had better fight it out with gloves on.
Looking back at it, I can see where the administrators were coming from but that doesn't make them any less wrong. I don't even really appreciate the attempts by some teachers to bribe one of the worst of the bullies with candy bars (so that he wouldn't bully me).
The further sad fact is that nobody can address bullying effectively when it happens, say, when the kid is walking home from school. So what are you gonna do? I did well because I had parents who were willing to discuss the matter with me and provide proper role models. But generally they didn't go to the teachers or administrators about the problems, which was a good thing given how bad of a mess the school officials generally made of things when they got involved.
The solution here is parenting. And while I find the lack of action by school officials disturbing, I wonder if they would have made things worse by getting involved. In reality they probably should have gotten in touch with the girl's parents proactively and discussed the situation.
Re:Now we will see (Score:3, Insightful)
Girls and boys are different. For boys, the best way to stop the bully is to actually fight him. If you win or even draw, the bully usually stops. if you lose, you are no worse off. With girls, they use much more complex and often meaner methods then boys do.
I bled every school day for 8 months from bullies. I was not allowed to fight by my parents. I was more afraid of my parents then the bullies. When I arrived home with a stick shoved in one cheek and out the other, I was now allowed to fight back. I could not start it. Funny thing is with boy bullies, beating the crap out of them usually stops them from ever bothering you again.
Re:Her teachers were aware of it and did nothing.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How many victims will be necessary before a bullie be punished for harming someone?
Re:Throw the book at them and the school. (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes the problem greater these days is that attacking someone through a website lacks the human feed back. it doesn't feel like a person you attacking it's a faceless computer. a recent study of road rage showed the reason people get so angry at other people on the road is because their anger is directed at a car not a person. when the people driving could see the other persons face, they were much more forgiving. we look at the other person's face for emotional reactions, when we can't see that we feel ok with saying stuff we'd NEVER say to another persons face.
the scary thing about it is this is the same reason psychopaths are able to violently murder people and feel nothing. the inability to empathize.
Re:This sends a terrible message to victims (Score:5, Insightful)
The authorities have made it plain by their actions that there's no way to get justice and stay alive. This is just going to make suicide look like a more attractive option to targets of bullying.
Suicide *or* Columbine-style retaliation.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bullying not entirely enigmatic (Score:4, Insightful)
Reads like some special kind of bullshit to me. 'we should put up with assholes because.....'
Look. life is an unfair bitch. everyone has problems. MOST of us dont take it out on other people.
Re:Now we will see (Score:5, Insightful)
That was me. I was also raised as a Quaker (which meant I was expected by my parents to respond nonviolently).
But years later, the father of the worst of the bullies was indicted for sexually abusing a minor. Looking back on things this many years later, there is a realization that although I had it rough, I am willing to bet that I had it easy compared to those who were bullying me.
Massachusetts statutory rape law (Score:2, Insightful)
In Massachusetts, anyone having sex with a 16-year-old is guilty of statutory rape. If two 15-year-olds have sex, both are guilty. The sentencing though can depend on the age difference (if it's greater than 10 years or if the victim was much younger, there is a 10 year minimum sentence, but in a case like this there might ordinarily be little or no jail time, though I'd worry these kids might get a heavier sentence somehow because of the suicide).
While in many cases, I feel like statutory rape laws are a bad idea when applied to other teenagers only a few years older (and obviously the MA law has a lot of potential for abuse), in this case I can't help but think that maybe this is exactly the sort of taking advantage of the young and emotionally vulnerable that the statutory rape law was meant to stop.
Re:Cyberbullies? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been scientifically shown that teenagers have poor impulse control. Their brains aren't yet fully developed.
There's a difference between sleeping with someone to hurt them, and doing something wrong on the spur of the moment.
In addition...maybe they didn't know she was under age. Can *you* tell the difference between a 15 year old and a 16 year old?
Re:Cyberbullies? (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually agree with you. Too bad you were modded down. But then I was modded down for another comment.
The idea that we prosecute 17 year olds for having sex with 15 year olds strikes me as a very perverse approach to our age of consent rules. This is nothing more than "let's make it look like we are doing something to make sure no teenage girl ever commits suicide again!"
It's like the sexting case in PA: Let's prosecute children and sentence them to some time in jail plus being designated as a sex offender for life in order to keep them safe! Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. It;s a good thing I am not from that county or I would give the DA's office an earfull.
Cyber != Physical (Score:2, Insightful)
On the contrary, it's *very* easy to escape: don't log in.
When I was 9 I had to face a bad case of bullying by a kid that was 11 and had judo classes. Luckily, I managed to fix that by breaking his nose. Once, when he grabbed me from the back in a judo grip, I realized that his face was right behind my head, so I hit his nose with the back of my head. He was so ashamed that he never admitted to anyone that I had done it, he claimed he tripped and fell.
Compared to that kind of physical abuse, cyber bullying is nothing, just ignore it. You cannot ignore being held from the back in a judo grip by someone who is two years older and way bigger than you are.
Re:Her teachers were aware of it and did nothing.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me say it again: Suicide Is Irrational. Without extreme methods, you simply can't drive a mentally healthy person to suicide.
I ask this honestly, not to flame or troll, but seriously. Were you bullied in school? Like, serious, concerted bullying efforts? Because let me tell you, that qualifies. It's a systematic alienation of a human being, and destruction of their self-image. It's the causing of a mentally healthy person to become unhealthy. When I was in school, I actually saw some of my friends wither and change due to bullying. They were absolutely not the same people they were at the end of the school year as at the start. In fact, one of my friends who ended up dead (not suicide, but a lifestyle next best thing to it) probably could have traced his problems back to bullying. Unfortunately, his biggest bully was his stepfather, making it not a directly analogous case.
Re:Cyberbullies? (Score:4, Insightful)
Having sex is a barbaric action?
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Her teachers were aware of it and did nothing.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cyberbullies? (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be leverage. From what I read, there seems to be a major lack of remorse/guilt by the group of students who are alleged to be behind this incident. They apparently were still disparaging her after her death. If the rape charges are true, then it's not something that the males can easily avoid. The prosecutor has discretion to charge the males and she has.
Re:it's more than just cyberbullying (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes you have to take risks to do what is right.
Depends (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Her teachers were aware of it and did nothing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Being physically and verbally assaulted daily for long periods of time tends to damage mental health, especially when the authority figures you're supposed to look up to and count on consistently look the other way. Ever heard of PTSD?
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
True, and that is probably the reason many people do not intervene these days. If you do the right thing and step in then you have to be careful you don't open yourself to some legal liability. It happens all the time in our school system and so all we are left with is apathetic teachers and officials who will not take the appropriate actions.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's interesting how I never would have batted an eye at a person calling another those names, but now that it caused the suicide of one, I am infuriated and want to kill those who said them. Thus why humans are not to be trusted when it comes to punishment.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
Times have changed. When I was in middle school, two girls decided to start a fist fight. The gym teacher grabbed one of them and restrained her and another large male teacher grabbed the other similarly. The fight ended. There was no standing around and talking in a comforting voice...
Nowadays they both would have been up on charges, and there'd be a hue and cry in the news. And not for the reason you think, either. There's one more little tidbit that would have been all the news talked about, even though it was irrelevant to the incident: both girls were black; both teachers were white.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
So go tell your teacher friend to go fuck herself, she is just as responsible as every other jerk who walks by someone in trouble and doesn't do crap. Job, no job, she is a bad bad person. Its a frigen CHILD beating hit by another child. Who the hell lets that happen?
Re:Cyber != Physical (Score:3, Insightful)
In a literal sense that is easy, but on the other hand it requires you to opt out of what tends to be a fairly normal part of socialising for kids these days and doings so would reinforce the ostracisation rather than alleviate it. I could just as easily suggest that you too had an "easy" escape, you could have simply never left home, however it's a solution which has it's own problems.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yours is a deeply disturbing point of view. Yes, we all need to acquire some resilience, and we need to learn to get back up when the world knocks us down. But you are suggesting that we should accept even profoundly antisocial behaviors from both children and adults - that it is better for the meek to learn to deal with abuse than for the strong to be held to basic social standards of courtesy and respect - and you are absolutely wrong.
As a community and a society, we have a right to define and expect acceptable ways of interacting with each other. That is what civilization is all about, and an essential aspect of it is holding people accountable for the consequences of their actions. The benefits are irrefutable. Things are never going to be perfect, but it is important that we keep trying.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand your Darwinian point, and there's certainly an element of truth to it. The question is, how much do you value human life? You could, for example, send all your kids off to war, and indeed you will have "survival of the fittest." But you will also lose a lot of perfectly good future husbands and office workers, not to mention a lot of senseless, random deaths.
Kids do need to learn how to stick up for themselves, but in this case you had a 15-year-old who didn't know how. That's a failure of education. Nobody took her aside to explain that there was a legitimate (i.e. non-suicidal) way out.
There is also an element of gang assault here that is criminal. And it's completely inappropriate that 17-18 year olds were involved in this kind of immaturity.
Re:This sends a terrible message to victims (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it makes the victims dead (usually). The difference is huge, from the perspective of the killer, which is why killing is quite attractive.
What the wider community thinks about a columbine type incident has little impact on the material rewards for the killer (and therefore on the probability of an incident). The killer knows that the bullies will be viewed as victims, but it doesn't matter as he gets something a lot better (revenge) straightaway.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure you've heard the quote along the lines that "All evil needs to win is for good men to do nothing."
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:4, Insightful)
basic social standards of courtesy and respect
Where I come from, those include defending those that aren't able to defend themselves.
Would it be legal to do this to an adult? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that a lot of activities which are described as "bullying" when done to high school kids, would be legally defined as "assault" if it were done to an adult. I understand the idea of granting minors some leniency in punishment, but I don't understand the downgrading the action simply because of the age of the victim. If those kids threw a full soda can at some 93 year old women, or pushed her down, or knocked her purse out of her hands - wouldn't that be assault, complete with arrest and pressing charges and all that?
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
If I say to you "let's see if we can get Bill to say bad and inaccurate things about someone", am I guilty of conspiracy to libel?
I think as soon as Bill agrees to do what you suggest, you have a textbook conspiracy [wikipedia.org] on your hands.
As sad as her death is, she's the one who chose to take that path
Then it follows that an arsonist is not guilty of murder because people had to jump from the top floor of a tall building. Right?
In real life, though, there are only so many paths to take. Even if she chose a wrong path, bullies are still responsible because they forced the choice onto the victim. See the concept of "felony murder". Also consider that children are not in control of their life; they can't quit school, they can't sue bullies, they can't leave town... and people who may do something simply ignored the problem. Your objections would be far more valid if an adult is involved.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:4, Insightful)
Harassment is a crime in some jurisdictions.
Sure, but what's that got to do with the price of egss?
Because that may be what was happening here. Not a case I am following, so don't rightly know. You said, in the post I replied to, that they were "arresting people for saying mean things" and that the "nanny state" was overstepping it's bounds. I am pointing out that there exist laws, to charge people with crimes, for behavior that you may just define as "being mean" or "saying mean things".
If you do not care for those laws, I suggest you take it up with various local, state, and federal authorities, to get the law changed, instead of making up new crimes on slashdot.
So is contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Equally irrelevant, but even more so when the "suspects" are themselves minors.
They will likely get charged as adults for the other crimes, that may well follow for this one as well.
Stalking.
Not an issue here.
Really, says who? I don't know all the facts of the case, but if the girl tried to get away from them, say blocking them on her pages or what not, and they found ways around them, that is stalking.
Hell, if the kids said to each other, online or otherwise, "lets try to get her to kill herself" then you can bump up to conspiracy to commit murder.
How so? If I say to you "let's see if we can get Bill to say bad and inaccurate things about someone", am I guilty of conspiracy to libel?
Conspiracy to commit libel is not a crime.
I know you, and half of slashdot and the internet at large, what this to be a vast conspiracy to criminalize free speech. Maybe the way the DA is going about this case will do so, I don't know. But there are plenty of ways to apply current law, laws that have been upheld by the SCOTUS.
If someone sent you 100 postal letters per day, or organized friends to stand outside your house yelling at you, this would get the attention of law enforcement.
Once again, that's not the issue here. This isn't a case of one person constantly sending her harassing messages - it's a case of many people exercising their free-speech rights. Some of their other actions are certainly illegal, and should be prosecuted, but let's not invent new "crimes" to charge them with.
I agree there should not be new crimes invented. That's why I was pointing out the laws that already exist, for crimes that have been tested already in other case, that could be applied to this case. As I said, conspiracy to commit murder is a crime, there are laws against it. Your straw-man of conspiracy to commit libel is just that, a made up "new crime" that you are using to justify other "new crimes" you think are being created here.
Re:Depends (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think that grownups in the workplace act any differently?
It's just called "office politics"
Re:Now we will see (Score:1, Insightful)
I may be nit picking, but there's no such thing as an ex-Marine.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, we had some bullying back in my day, but it never got further than name calling, etc...no one was heard to commit suicide over being teased or bullied...?
Re:No one made her do it (Score:3, Insightful)
No one made her do it, she chose to do it on her own accord.
The premise behind this thinking has been more or less held invalid since the invention of theaters that may or may not be on fire. Saying something with the intention of causing other people to react in ways that cause harm to themselves or others is generally unacceptable.
acknowledging that people are responsible for their actions.
People are responsible for their actions but inhuman assholes get off scot-free?
Re:bullying not entirely enigmatic (Score:3, Insightful)
People acting like assholes happens for actual reasons. Don't wave away the effort of figuring it out. That will just make you less able to cope.
I think one of the biggest things to realize about this situation is that there is a component of social mania/"hysteria" going on here. Everyone fed upon everyone else. "Oh, everyone is doing X, so, let's try doing X+1..." Or "I got away with doing X, so let's try X+1".
It's relatively easy for a social group to exploit emotional influences to whip themselves up into a group performing evil actions. This is similar to the group think that led to the holocaust by the Nazis, just on a very much smaller scale.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're exactly the reason so many bullies get away with this shit. The best way to treat a bully is with a dose of his own medicine. They won't "get it" that it's not ok to hurt someone smaller than them unless someone bigger still shows them how small they are in the scheme of things.
Had I been there I'd damn well have called the police - adults hitting children is not OK unless it's a case of self-defense.
He didn't hit the kid, he picked him up and tossed him. That usually won't hurt a child unless he trips or slips when he lands, and even if he had accidentally hurt the kid, kids heal fast. As long as the intention was an overwhelming display of power, and not an actual intention to cause harm, I'm a-ok with it. A safer response would have been to simply pick the kid up, hold him at eye level, and explain exactly what will happen the next time.
Bully's respond to overwhelming force, not bullshit "you be nice now" sissy crap. They are counting on that, because they know nobody will do anything to stop them. If someone does actually do something, the quit real quick, because being a bully isn't about taking risks.
Rather than being an adult and handling it right he simply beat up a child.
Part of being an adult is knowing when to talk and when to act. Bullies don't respond to talk, they never have, and they never will. A verbal reprimand without any physical force behind it is just letting them off the hook, and they damn well know it. For the most part, the GP did the right thing. A touch excessive, perhaps, and definitely put himself in a position where a sissy like you could have gotten him into serious trouble with the law, but it was better he do that than let that poor kid be victimized on his way to school every day, and potentially end up killing himself like the girl in TFA.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:5, Insightful)
You are viewing this in a much more practical way than a teenage girl or boy does.
If I read online that some girl is an "Irish whore", I'm going to jump thoughts of hot redheads with loose morals - a complement!
In reality, no one cares what someone says on the internet. But to a teen being bullied it is the difference between being beaten up in an alley
and being picked on in the high school quad in front of a jeering crowd.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:2, Insightful)
Parents have no legal duty to ensure that their kids don't kill other kids. They can't be charged, unless some major wrongdoing on their part can be shown (like incitement.) But kids themselves have legal duty to not kill others.
Sure, but since when do kids have the legal duty to make sure that others don't kill themselves?
I agree with the general point which you seem to be making - that people have to be held responsible for the direct results of their action. Where we differ is that you also seem to be indicating that people be held responsible for results which required the input of other individuals. That's where your initial analogy is flawed - people jumping from a burning building have no choice in the matter, and would likely have died if they remained in the building, whereas a suicide victim has plenty of other options, the majority of which would have resulted in her staying alive. In order for me to accept the idea that one person can be held responsible for the suicide of another, I'd have to reject the entire concept of free will. I'd have to treat human beings as nothing more than billiard-balls set in a predestined motion by the cue-stroke of the big bang. And if I accept such a premise, then it makes no sense to hold the perpetrators responsible either, since they have no more influence over their own actions than the girl who committed suicide had over hers.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:1, Insightful)
Newsflash: It's not about you. It's about how the girl felt about it. You might not care that your name is permanently recorded on the internet as being an Irish Slut, but apparently she did.
I don't mean this with any offense at all, really, but try thinking about other people's perspective.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to have to agree with the parent. We used to share our school bus with different high school. I went to James Ruse, basically a selective school, where kids sit an entrance test to get in - think nerdy kids, essentially the top of their state (I was the exception *grins*, I was just lucky). Then the other school on the bus was Gilroy, a local independent Catholic school.
So we'd get tools on the bus, year 7 Gilroy kids who did stupid things like trip other people over, steal their wallets, spit, annoy the driver, that sort of thing. There was one bunch who kept bugging my friends and I because hey, we went to Ruse. One day, one of the Prefects from Gilroy picked up one of their kids, dragged him by the shirt back to us, and said "Apologise." I said, seriously, it's ok, but the prefect didn't relent. The kid grinned like an idiot, till he realised the prefect was serious. To this day, I'm grateful to that guy, for actually being responsible, because all the stupidity toned down after that.
Moral of the story, kids will be kids, they do stupid things. And a bit of jostling around isn't going to kill them. Sometimes you just need to show them you're not going to bend over every time.
And a few years later, those idiotic year 7's decided to put their bags down the middle of the bus, so people would trip over them walking in to the bus. So I walked over, grabbed all the bags, and threw them about 15m out the front door. The bus driver certainly didn't try to stop me. They were being complete tools to him as well.
Like it or not, for small things, you just have to teach your kids to be less of a wimp. I mean, there is a line - and I think here, what happened was serious enough that somebody should have stepped in. But if some kid flicks a rubber-band at another kid, that's not a reason to call in a teacher - you walk over to the kid, and tell him to stop it, and if he doesn't or says make me, say you'll rain nine kinds of s*it down on him if he doesn't. Bullies look for soft targets, they're not going to risk having their nose bloodied just so they can flick rubberbands or stuff grass down somebody's shirt.
Cheers, Victor
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:1, Insightful)
There's a beautiful life lesson, right there.
"See, kid? What you're doing, hitting on this smaller kid, is *WRONG*. And I can prove that to you by hitting on *YOU*, who are smaller than me. You see the difference? Now do you see how right I am?"
It's no coincidence that bullies are often bullied at home. It just reinforces the lesson that bullying is ok as long as you're bigger and stronger.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL, but laying out a kid because he's hit another child is not appropriate. What your football coach did would be classed as assault / affray with intent here, and he'd be in jail, or at least out of a job. Standing between the fighting kids, preventing them from getting next to each other, maybe a physical restraint (wrap, elbow hold, nothing employing joint pressure or imparting physical pain). As I said, all bets are off if there's risk of serious injury or life involved, but that doesn't sound like the case.
Maybe it's different in the US.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a tricky balance. On one hand we shouldn't be encouraging kids to go Charles Bronson on people who threaten them, but we also need them to learn how to resolve conflicts and disagreements without the need to always appeal to an authority. To quote an example, if the neighbours in my apartment block play loud music late at night I can either go talk to them or just call the police. The latter is technically a valid option, but shouldn't be the first choice unless there's a good reason why talking to the neighbours would be dangerous or totally ineffective.
One would hope that adults would keep a close enough eye on the situation to know when they should step in and mediate. Kids need to learn to assert themselves, but no-one should face harassment of the extent to which she did. If they were adults they'd have long-ago been picked up by the police.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
The poor girl was PHYSICALLY beaten and raped; that didn't happen on FaceBook. What happened online was trivial, what happened at school was horrendous.
What I find most appalling about this whole mess was that the bullying took place at school and the school officials did nothing, yet none were charged or disciplined.
The principal shoulc be in jail with the kids. He let her down more than anybody. Hopefully this waste of tax dollars (the principal) will be economically castrated in a lawsuit by her parents.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Some other way" is so easy to say, and for males it unfortunately it usually means the victim tries to take others with him. You have to understand that the depressed mind only sees depressed options and that to them the positive ones seem unrealistic. This doesn't mean the person is irrational, and in medicine the term "depressive realism" is used to imply that the patient is actually better rooted in reality than their undiagnosed peers, it means the problem is very difficult.
In my opinion it is wrong to blame or fault the victims of suicide, because all of them have honestly tried to get well. Parents CANNOT educate their children about this because it's not the children who are at fault for becoming depressed. The only way right now to ensure your kid isn't bullied in school is home-schooling. Some say children need to learn social skills in school, but often the particular skills learned are focused on picking on someone weaker so that you don't become the one picked on.
Blame for this rests squarely on bullies from all walks of life, and you and me for not being brave enough to stop the bullies.
Actually, it rests less on me because I have on several occasions stood up for people who were being bullied. Earlier in my life I didn't recognize what bullying was because I was socially inept, and in my childhood I did some bullying too. Then I was bullied, and I was depressed and I was suicidal, but I pulled through by simply suffering until the next day could not possibly be worse than the day before. School is something I survived, not something I value nor cherish.
The only way this very serious problem is going to be fixed is if you yourself start fixing it, and start setting an example not tolerating intolerance. The correct response to bullies is alienation from the social group they're preying on until their malfunction can be sorted out, but time and time again schools opt to alienate the victim and let the bully continue destroying lives. The development of this case is right as it should be, pushing accountability for something you'd seemingly prefer to continue.
I don't share your opinion, in fact I think it's half-formed like a knee-jerk reaction, and I hope you will take the issue of suicide serious before one of your own loved ones falls victim to it. Then if not sooner you will understand that it just isn't as simple as you, as we all, would like it to be.
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:2, Insightful)
Or to quote one of my favorite Sci-Fi franchises:
"If you can't do something smart, do something right."
Re:Your rights OFFLINE! (Score:2, Insightful)
OR rather this is why we should make laws and then stick to them when a case comes up. Unforutnately, it's a lot easier to push a sob story over a jury than appeal to the actual laws.
There are "actual laws" against this type of behavior -- civil and criminal. The regular and relentless harassment by the classmates was an intentional infliction of emotional distress. The Facebook and Twitter postings about her referred to her in derisive terms that those knowledgeable of the situation could easily infer as being her; which is still defamation. Depending on the content of the Craigslist postings, there could be more that these students could potentially be held accountable for because of this harassment.
/. accept, or even attempt to justify, this type of behavior as "free speech" on the Internet. Our right to free speech does not supersede the human rights of others.
It offends me how frequently people on