Assume you are a teenager contemplating suicide. If you knew the 9 kids at school who were meanest to you would get criminally prosecuted if you killed yourself, would you be more likely to kill yourself or less? I don't know enough about the psychology of suicide to answer my own question, but my intuitive sense is that self-murderers — or some self-murderers — intend to deal a severe blow to the people they leave behind. And knowing your enemies will be prosecuted might spur you on.
Anyway, here's the article about the Phoebe Prince, who hanged herself, prompting the authorities to arrest 9 of her classmates. See if you can figure out how the shock and sorrow of the young girl's death got processed into criminal charges against 9 teenagers and whether this reaction is helpful or just.
[T]wo boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face a different mix of felony charges that include statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury...Private citizens can commit civil rights violations?
... harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly.A felony charge of disturbing a school assembly?
Three younger girls have been charged in juvenile court, Elizabeth D. Scheibel, the Northwestern district attorney, said...
... Ms. Scheibel said that Ms. Prince’s suicide came after nearly three months of severe taunting and physical threats by a cluster of fellow students.I'm still trying to understand what the crimes were. Everything anyone did in relation to a suicide looks awful in retrospect, but the dead person's act of self-murder should not transform non-crimes into crimes. Prosecuting people who were horribly mean should not be a community's way to deal with the grief and outrage felt after a suicide. To what extent are the adults in the community scapegoating the kids to avoid their own feelings of guilt? If there are no crimes to use against the school officials, maybe that's a reason not to unload the weight of the law against the kids.
“The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school,” Ms. Scheibel said. The conduct of those charged, she said, “far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels.”
It was particularly alarming, the district attorney said, that some teachers, administrators and other staff members at the school were aware of the harassment but did not stop it. “The actions or inactions of some adults at the school were troublesome,” Ms. Scheibel said, but did not violate any laws.
Ms. Prince’s family had recently moved to the United States from a small town in Ireland, and she entered South Hadley last fall. The taunting started when she had a brief relationship with a popular senior boy; some students reportedly called her an “Irish slut,” knocked books out of her hands and sent her threatening text messages, day after day....
On Jan. 14, the investigation found, students abused her in the school library, the lunchroom and the hallways and threw a canned drink at her as she walked home....
Some of the students plotted against Ms. Prince on the Internet, using social networking sites, but the main abuse was at school, the prosecutor said."Plotted" to do what?
“The actions of these students were primarily conducted on school grounds during school hours and while school was in session,” Ms. Scheibel said.So, teenagers willingly having sex with each other, and prosecutors do nothing about it. But if someone commits suicide — an inflamed heart breaks — then the sex partners of the dead person are rounded up and prosecuted for statutory rape. Is that fair?
Ms. Scheibel declined to provide details about the charges of statutory rape against two boys, but experts said those charges could mean that the boys had sex with Ms. Prince when she was under age.
Legal experts said they were not aware of other cases in which students faced serious criminal charges for harassing a fellow student, but added that the circumstances in this case appeared to be extreme and that juvenile charges were usually kept private.
And "appeared to be extreme"? Were the "legal experts" told more details than appear in this article? Because knocking books out of someone's hands and throwing a canned drink don't sound extreme. And then there's the story of a teen love affair that ended and left some heated feelings. It can't be that.
I'd say we need to be careful how much power we give to those who contemplate suicide. Do we think it will work out better if such a person thinks her enemies will be prosecuted? It's especially bad if nothing is done about bullying until there's a suicide. There is the suicidal person feeling alone, beleaguered, and helpless. She's considering ending it all, and the prospect of escaping all pain and consequence is vividly enhanced by the hope that her antagonists will suffer the ravages of criminal prosecution.
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241 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 241 of 241This does not seem a difficult subject at all to me. Behavior which would be criminal among adults (which includes practically everything school bullies do) should simply not be tolerated in schools. The principals and administrators in my public junior high school did not take the bullying I received seriously, so we took one of the worst bullies to court and got a restraining order (which resulted in the physical part of the bullying ceasing). I skipped the last 2 months of 8th grade, came in to take my finals, and my Dad, a lawyer, basically dared the administration to make something of it.
My kids' schools are very very intolerant of bullying, but they're run by smart people backed up by feisty upper-middle-class parents -- it's a high-quality exurb. In other districts in my state the administrators are time-serving incompetent hacks who dreaad ever having to judge that one kid is in the right and another in the wrong in any interaction between them. The only solution for bullied kids in those places is to have their parents threaten lawsuits to the school district and the bullies' parents. This generally works! But if kids have gormless parents or no gumption themselves, they are screwed.
The school administrators in this case ought to be criminally liable for allowing criminal harassment to occur (if it would have been criminal among adults it is definitely still criminal among children except for a few very specific exclusions such as same-age sex partners not being guilty of statutory rape).
They are charged with crimes people saw them commit - and have admitted.
If they are real crimes, why weren’t they charged at the time they committed them?
Again I don't know if charging the 9 asshats criminally is the way to go but the flipside is that these asshats need to learn there are consequences for actions which if sorely lacking among the youts of today (which explains much of their Lord of the Flies behavior)
I definately agree with that. I just think their should have been consequences before the suicide. I guess we'll see when more details come out if the criminal charges are sustainable.
Exordium, you seem to have serious issues. Read the post. Now tell us what felony laws were broken. And since you wrote your comment pretty much the same way as those kids, ether your are satire, or a completely self unaware asshat.
Good thing a famous film director wasn't involved in this or Jeromy would have gone insane in defending the bullies. Much the way he defended poor Roman Polanksi and vilified the 14 year old girl who set him up by making him drug and sodomize her in a previous post.
Althouse --
"And suicide is murder."
Webster's Unabridged:
mur·der -n.
1. Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. ....
No it isn't.
"It is a hostile, violent act, and we should send a strong message to that effect. Don't sugar-coat it. Tell the truth. Killing is wrong."
Again, no it isn't. Responding in the absolute to your stating in the absolute.
Ann Althouse:
"I think with the life already departed, the excesses of government power are as important as anything happening now."
So it was long ago in another country, and besides the wench is dead?
Moira Breen:
"I can't help but wonder if these people secretly admire and favor the bullies."
It sounds like battered-wife syndrome; "they only tease me because I don't love them enough. If only I tried harder then we'd all be best friends, I just know it."
To address what I think is Althouse's original point: The reason for the scattershot, odd-sounding charges is that there is (as yet) no "anti-bullying" law on the books. The prosecutors are having to make their charges fit the available law.
I don't know enough about the psychology of suicide to answer my own question, but my intuitive sense is that self-murderers — or some self-murderers — intend to deal a severe blow to the people they leave behind. And knowing your enemies will be prosecuted might spur you on.
You know what really bothers me about Althousian logic ("I don't know the first thing about psychology, but what the hell, I'll make a misinformed conclusion based on it anyway")?
It would be fine if she was just some random computer programmer living in Indianapolis who was laboring under the misapprehension that she was a legal scholar and the reincarnation of Sigmund Freud to boot--hell, that is what the internet tubes are for, to let random loonies rant. But no, Ann Althouse is a tenured professor at a fairly prestigious law school.
So let's follow her twisted logic. We shouldn't prosecute rapists, because women might see it as an opportunity to get back at men then hate.
God, Ann, you are a twit.
I am rather bothered by the leap to judgment of the alleged bullies based on nothing more than a few anecdotes.
Reading the article, what bothered me most, though, wasn't the kids, but the adults including the parents. What were they thinking?
Another finger needs to be pointed at the liberal philosophy that every child be educated on an equal basis as everyone else. Schools can't kick out many of the worse behaved students.
(I'll even wager that Massachusetts law prohibited the principal of that school from taking any meaningful action whatsoever.)
One more thing: teachers can be bullies too. Ever try getting rid of one them? With tenure, teacher's union rules, teachers and administrators covering each others asses, it's almost impossible. School systems are designed to have no accountability for those running them and increasingly for the worse behaved students whether behaviorally or academically.
Well, of course, Phoebe is the culprit here, hanging herself to get revenge on those poor kids.....
At least, that's kind of how it's coming across here, Ann. If you let these kids get away with this, they only become emboldened to do more, and to others. And very soon, they are gooning for the SEIU, things like that.
Her daddy should have beaten some high school ass, that's what should have happened. There are things worth going to jail for....your kids are one of them.
Give the little shits 6 months. They will come back more than ready to be nice all-american wholesome students.
I am smelling that oldie but goodie argument that these defendants are not guilty as charged, but probably deserve some punishment anyway. Remember the rallying cry, "No crime, no punishment". That is the basis of liberty in Anglo-American Jurisprudence.
JoeShipman, above, described my oldest son's middle and high schools and our situation here much better than I did in my previous comment. Here's what he wrote:
My kids' schools are very very intolerant of bullying, but they're run by smart people backed up by feisty upper-middle-class parents -- it's a high-quality exurb.
The only difference in my situation is that we're in a high-quality suburb. And the parents are not only feisty, but well-connected. Almost all the kids are concerned with anything on their record that could possibly keep them out of the college that will enable them to continue living in the style mom and dad accustomed them to. So they have strong, internalized reasons to behave.
At the middle school, at least, punishments, such as detentions, suspensions, and, yes, even expulsions, were applied more liberally than I thought possible. What we've got where I live is upper-middle-class standards firmly enforced to create a nicey-nice atmosphere, at least superficially.
Most of these kids are headed for the corporate world, so it makes sense to accustom them to it early.
But places such as South Hadley are more scruffy and economically diverse, with entrenched New England townies--and everything that goes with that concept--and the usually wealthier and/or better-educated outsiders, attracted to the Berkshires and western Massachusetts for any number of upper-middle-class reasons.
Much has been made of the moral and psychological dimensions here, but I suspect the social situation is one ripe for this sort of conflict. New England really is the hardest place in the country for outsiders to fathom. I've been here 30 years, and I will go to my grave still feeling like an outsider.
Take a psychologically fragile, young European girl, and plunk her into a strange, complex, small-town situation like South Hadley, and you have a recipe for the disaster that happened.
That is no excuse for anyone. My hope is enough asses will get kicked, so that places like South Hadley will be forced to try to provide for their kids what I thank God every day that I'm fortunate to have for my own.
the justice system has as a goal to deter anti-social behavior, behavior in particular that harms others.
persistent bullying that includes physical violence that is condoned by public authorities is exactly such behavior. (assault and battery seems to be an obvious charge) Both the perpetrators and those that let it happen deserve punishment. Their lives deserve to be ruined as was the life of their victim. These events should not have occurred and should have been stopped. The perps are entitled to fair trials, without prejudgements and I hope they get them. I have to suspect though that those who are as concerned for their well being as many commenters here have some history of bullying themselves.
The Massachusetts Civil Rights Act.
"The AGO enforces the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act ("MCRA," M.G.L. c. 12, s. 11H-11J), which protects the rights of all residents and visitors to Massachusetts against threats and interference with their civil rights.
The MCRA protects the right to use public parks, attend schools, live peacefully, and enjoy other basic rights free from bias-motivated threats, intimidation, coercion and violence. "
So, Mass. has a civil right to attend school free from "bias-motivated threats, intimidation, coercion and violence".
Calling her an "Irish slut" counts as ethnic bias.
There you go; that's what they (the ones charged with that, at least) did, under the Mass. General Laws.
Harassment and stalking are also mentioned, and unsurprising charges (in fact, really, more bastards in schools ought to be charged with such things, until they figure out that they're not living a live-action Lord of the Flies and that shit isn't acceptable even if you're 15).
I do, personally, favor arresting people who behave like that, even when nobody hangs themselves over it.
(I don't favor it being linked to "hate crimes" laws like it is in Mass., or requiring "ethnic or other bias"; hounding someone incessantly in a place they're required by law to be with you should be illegal regardless of motive.)
Also... "Because knocking books out of someone's hands and throwing a canned drink don't sound extreme."
Really? Can I throw an unopened can (or bottle) of soda at your head as hard as I can, and then have you tell me it's "not extreme"?
That can cause brain damage or death, Ann. It's felony assault, legitimately.
Or how about knocking your books out of your hand, without warning, every day for a few months? (Which may well be assault under Mass. law, as well).
Sounds plenty extreme to me, and I hope they try them as adults.
Bagoh20 - "...Which would you prefer for your daughter: just been stabbed or just been bullied? Which do you think you could do something about?
..."
I think a daughter getting stabbed by a high school classmate would be preferable to her being bullied into suicide by hanging.
What can you do about it? Plenty.
What can society do about it? PLenty, inside or outside the law.
Remember too that many of the worst cases of bullying have resulted in severe injury or death inside or outside the schools. (The Columbine shootings were a response to years of Eric Harris being unrelentingly being bullied. His suicide note said he had been planning it for years and he had a list of bullies he targeted specifically as well as "all the rest who stood by")
They give rise to gangs. Safety from bullying and assault by the stronger or existing gangs is the number #1 reason members give as to why they join criminal gangs.
=======================
School bullies become workplace bullies. They are the ones most likely to become abusive husbands, abusive single moms.
======================
Robin - "Give the little shits 6 months. They will come back more than ready to be nice all-american wholesome students."
An argument can be made that societal norms have been breached so badly that society will take actions outside the law to ensure that retribution is laid down on these little shits, their parents, the school.
The case of the Missouri Mom and her daughter is illustrative. They cyber-stalked and drove a 13 year old to suicide. The law did not address this. So the people immediately laid down a shunning. No one was permitted to patronize the woman's business or advertise through her, forcing it to close. People forced her next employer to let her go. Lawsuits wiped out her life savings.
The daughter was forced out of every organization she belonged to at school and turned away from any part-time job she sought.
Threats were directed at them to move. Their house was spray-painted with signs to move. They moved out of Missouri.
A teacher who did nothing was publically accused of being a murderer. She left to teach in another state.
In the case of the people in S Hadley that were involved, likely they will find "The Law" is just one of the paths people will seek for laying retribution down. It won't be "all over" in 6 months...with 9 new model citizens and their enablers ready to forget "the unfortunate tragedy" and "move on".
Their names will be forever out there as perps. When they are 40 they will still fear the day their son comes home and says that schoolkids say that their Mom was part of a gang that murdered a girl 22 years ago. Waving a printout with all the details....
Government schools and compulsory attendance laws jointly create madhouses that do not educate. "Public schooling" is a fraud. They are government schools.
And the "blame the victim" subtext in Althouse's description of the case is disgusting. This blog post is yet another reason to despise lowercase 'c' conservatism.
Cedarford wrote:
"Remember too that many of the worst cases of bullying have resulted in severe injury or death inside or outside the schools. (The Columbine shootings were a response to years of Eric Harris being unrelentingly being bullied. His suicide note said he had been planning it for years and he had a list of bullies he targeted specifically as well as "all the rest who stood by")"
Citation, please.
I have read every bit of writing by both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold that has been made public. Such a suicide note was not among them.
In fact, not only was Harris not bullied, both he and Klebold were actually vicious bullies themselves. They bragged about bullying freshman and "faggots" in their journals. Harris even threatened one hapless student with death on his website.
The one thing that pops up again and again in Harris' journal isn't anger over being bullied. It's anger over being ignored by people who were beneath him.
Cederford: "I think a daughter getting stabbed by a high school classmate would be preferable to her being bullied into suicide by hanging.
What can you do about it? Plenty."
My question was in reply to the idea that being murdered by stabbing was equal to bullying. The bullied daughter still has a choice to kill herself OR NOT. If you you think she would be better off with a knife in her chest, I think you should get her opinion first. And there is little you can do to prevent someone from stabbing her, but you have plenty of ways of keeping her from being bullied into suicide. For most kids I have known, it would be impossible to bully them to suicide, but I don't know any impervious to knives. The comparison is foolish and emotion driven.
@ Oligonicella Under your dictionary argument, it would make no sense to say "Abortion is murder." Do you understand why some people say "Abortion is murder," or do you think people who say that are just dummies who forgot to look in the dictionary?
Obviously, for criminal law purposes, one must have statutes to prosecute anyone, which is part of what I am trying to say about the 9 kids who were arrested.
Ann,
I think the problem is that abortion is still one person taking another "person"'s life without their consent. Suicide does not have another person deciding if you live or die. There are much worse things than bullying that people refuse to let kill them. As I asked earlier, what if the bullying was mild but a irrational person still let it lead them to suicide. The IRS produces this type of "murder" all the time. I still don't understand your "suicide is murder" statement.
As someone who formerly was diagnosed with only months to live, I can tell you suicide is sometimes quite rational to avoid pain and suffering. This case may have involved great pain and suffering and may even have seemed rational to her, but that is why children need adults; a child's experience is too limited to make some judgments. Her adults let her down and tragically.
ZPS wrote:
"People who commit suicide are more often than not so far gone and detached from reality, they have no concept or thought about what is going to happen to the people they're leaving behind."
That's not true. While the "true" reason for a suicide is always murky and usually unknowable, the immediate trigger is often a wrong that must be avenged. People who commit suicide usually make this clear, either in their suicide notes or the staging of their deaths.
The Japanese call these something like "doorstep suicides", but they are not confined to Japan by any means. They are known around the world.
There was a really memorable case a few years back when a local politician committed suicide in the lobby of the Miami Herald to get revenge on the columnist and newspaper that he believed had ruined him. Most cases don't get as much press as that one did, but it's not at all uncommon for suicides to lay the blame for their acts on the doorsteps of those who have wronged them. (You just don't hear about this regularly because the press has made a conscious decision not to cover suicides, especially teen suicides, due to the very real fear of inspiring copycats.)
The last thing that the parents of a lot of suicidal teens hear from their children is some variation of, "I'll show you!" And in those cases, the immediate trigger for the act is anger over something the parents have done and the obvious motivation is revenge. (This sort of behavior is very common among those suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder, by the way.)
You see the same thing in a lot of suicide notes, where the person who has committed suicide puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of others and then asks them if they are satisfied by or happy about the results.
Revenge suicides exist and their existence is well documented and verifiable. Althouse's fear may be based on her intuition, but it's a legitimate fear. Giving troubled people a way to strike from beyond the grave at those who have abused them (whether this abuse is real or merely perceived) is dangerous.
There have been a lot of comments in this thread that can be reformulated as something like, "How dare you suggest that this girl's motives for suicide were anything but pure?"
Honoring people who have committed suicide by putting their motives above question like that is misguided and dangerous, as it makes suicide a far more attractive option.
kynefski said, "(1) We should be very wary about prosecuting bullying. That just seems like government interference with growing up."
Don't interfere now, wring your hands a lot and mop up the blood later.
I give you an excerpt from Dan Savage's column on the Columbine shooting, cleverly titled "Clique...Clique...Bang!"
Excerpt: "The motivations of the two killers," People continued, "were hard to fathom." Actually I had no problem fathoming Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's motives. While I didn't suffer the extreme abuse some of my friends did, I was fucked with enough to spend four years fantasizing about blowing up my high school and everyone in it. I can only imagine the scenarios that must have rolled through Marty's head on a daily basis. Watching SWAT teams inch their way toward Columbine High, I wasn't shocked that something like this could happen in a high school. I was shocked that it hadn't happened in any of mine.
"I give you an excerpt from Dan Savage's column on the Columbine shooting, cleverly titled 'Clique...Clique...Bang!'"
All of which is nothing more than speculation based on a suicide note that Savage admits is a hoax. (And it is. The note that he cites is one of several hoax notes and warnings sent to police in the aftermath of the Columbine murders.)
Read their journals.
Read what local authorities and the FBI wrote about their investigations.
Read what psychiatrists concluded about Harris and Klebold after studying their journals and the investigations into the murders.
Savage's speculation is pure unadulterated bullshit.
Bullying is universal and has a corollary in foreign policy. Bullies left unconfronted do a lot of damage and never improve without being being faced down. Weakness for them is like a mouse to a cat, they can't resist it and it makes them crazy. They pounce on it every opportunity and play with it till it dies. I would teach my child to stand up to it early and often.
I have worked with the adult version of these bullies. There are spouses in prison who were less abusive than some of my former bosses.
I regret to say that I have contemplated suicide because of their actions - both to my personal psyche as well as to my career. Career is now destroyed, but I am putting myself back together.
In my darkest days - if I thought those that tormented me (and my family) would be prosecuted for my suicide - it might have pushed me across the brink. This would be under the muffled "altered thinking" of "If I am going to die, is there something good might come of it" - which is a common desire amongst those that consider suicide.
I am certainly not commenting on whether the prosecutor is right or wrong ... just that with the definitely altered thinking of someone on the edge ... what Ann suggests is not that far fetched.
As a really sad side note ... the classmates now get to bask in the loud controversy of "should they be charged" instead of the quiet reproach of "should I have done this". It is a terrible diversion from what needs to be examined.
Ann Althouse --
Oligonicella Under your dictionary argument, it would make no sense to say "Abortion is murder."
Now that the definition of abortion has been changed, that is legally true.
Do you understand why some people say "Abortion is murder," or do you think people who say that are just dummies who forgot to look in the dictionary?
Of course I understand it. Like you, they are making erroneous statements based on emotion. "I think abortion should be murder" would be accurate.
Obviously, for criminal law purposes, one must have statutes to prosecute anyone, which is part of what I am trying to say about the 9 kids who were arrested.
Which part of "And suicide is murder. ... Killing is wrong." was that?
Suicide is not murder - period. There is no other.
Killing is not wrong if done in self defense or in defense of others.
A law professor is incorrect in making those statements as if they were fact.
"Jeremy is so hostile to me that he's forgetting about being a liberal."
Forgetting? He's a leftist, not a liberal. (And some day, people of good will and lovers of liberty are gonna reclaim that word!)
Thanks, SarahW, for a little balance.
Most seem to have made a judgment already, based on a single news report.
In my experience, while prosecutors have broad discretion, they rather seek charges for rude but legal behavior. Does someone have any actual evidence this is the case, or is conjecture enough to reach a conclusion?
Youngblood said, All of which is nothing more than speculation based on a suicide note that Savage admits is a hoax
You obviously missed the entire article except that paragraph about the alleged note.
He uses Columbine to reveal his own feelings about the hell he and a lot of kids are put through while those responsible turn a blind eye, JUST LIKE YOU. And as for the psychiatrists and others, it's all too easy to find reasons to condemn them afterwards, but nobody gave a damn before that. And do you seriously think the kids and school officials would admit to their own cruel and callous treatment?
I'm guessing you've done a lot of bullying and merciless ridiculing.
Savage's speculation is pure unadulterated bullshit.
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.
"He uses Columbine to reveal his own feelings about the hell he and a lot of kids are put through while those responsible turn a blind eye, JUST LIKE YOU."
Oh, please. Get over the drama queen bullshit.
Read the Columbine Report. Read the thousand pages of documents related to the case, most of which were written by Dylan and Klebold themselves.
Harris and Klebold were far from ostracized. They were not in fact bullied, they were bullies.
Seriously. Before Columbine, Harris and Klebold threatened a geeky acquaintance, Brooks Brown, with murder.
And Harris was a psychopath with a Messianic-level superiority complex, which had nothing to do with anything that was going on at any of his schools.
If you read his fucking journal, you will see his rape fantasies and the kinds of things he wanted to do to "weak freshmen".
"And as for the psychiatrists and others, it's all too easy to find reasons to condemn them afterwards, but nobody gave a damn before that. And do you seriously think the kids and school officials would admit to their own cruel and callous treatment?"
There's no evidence that they were treated callously by anybody. None. Zilch. Zip. Nada.
Seriously, Harris and Klebold had a large network of friends, because they weren't actually ostracized, and even when asked specifically about the bullying and poor treatment Harris and Klebold received, no evidence or allegations surfaced.
"I'm guessing you've done a lot of bullying and merciless ridiculing."
You're guessing wrong.
If you can't see how the bullshit narrative "teasing kids turns them into psychopaths" hurts the kids who end up getting teased, you're a fuckwit.
The immediate aftermath of Columbine, when the media was still pushing the "Trenchcoat Mafia" shit, was the worst time to be a weird kid in a school.
Because then not only were the weird kids teased, they were teased and feared because of the bullshit that people like Savage were pushing.
Because kids were being fucking suspended for wearing band t-shirts and black clothes to school.
Because kids who were being fucking teased were getting sent to shrinks because of dipshits pushed the narrative that teasing turns kids into psychopaths or sociopaths.
Bullying and teasing do not turn kids into the psychopaths. Period. It is, as I said, pure unadulterated bullshit.
i mean its rude how people get on her and bad stuff to say you probably have not been bullied in your life so you do not know what it fels like i mean it hurts bad i have to put up with it every day i get talked about and many other people do!
Yea it might have been wrong for her to kill herself but those kids do need to be in jail and have som type of consiquence because its point less what is the reason to pick on other students??
If you have never experienced bullying then shut the hell up becasue you do not know how it feels it HURTS bad.
sorry for the loss of this girl hope they rot in jail!!
Referring to suicide as self-murder almost justifies the bullying as a natural part of growing up.
Clearly, mental health is not one area many people know much about. Suicide is the ultimate form of escape for most who consider it/ attempt it. People who commit suicide often find life so intolerable that ending it seems the only solution. Now, there may be exceptions to that, but in general, when a person considers suicide it's because they see their life as hopeless; they can see no green grass in the future. Clearly there is a lack of empathy to the despair and depth of the sadness people who attempt suicide feel.
The only thing I do agree with is that the adults who watched or were aware of the bullying should have tried to do something and in a way are even more responsible. This girl apparently felt she had no means to escape the bullying other than death because clearly the adults in her life weren't helping her find a way out.
To all you people who don't think the bullying is that big of a deal: wait until it's your kid, then come back and tell me you feel the same way.
And to the person who wrote "Which would you prefer for your daughter: just been stabbed or just been bullied? Which do you think you could do something about?" Geez... I see now why we don't prosecute sex crimes more vigorously. If you don't die, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get on with it cause you're not dead (even though you might wish that you were - oh wait, that's self-murder you criminal). For a country that likes to think we are so "moral" and "Christian," we sure have no morals.
I’m sure Althouse must have heard Kayla Narey’s reaction following Phoebe’s death: “Accomplished.” This clearly shows intent and is only ONE of the damning reactions from ONE of Althouse’s “shouldn’t be prosecuted” poor little teenage tormentors and their hideous parents. Had these bullys shown extreme remorse perhaps her argument would make sense but they wanted Phoebe dead and willfully piled on enough to push her over the cliff.
Ann Althouse defending the “poor bullys” while casting equal blame on Phoebe is inexcusable and reflects the Neanderthal reaction to blame the victim.
Althouse obviously has no idea what’s going on in a troubled teen world, only her pompous “adult” reality. She should be ashamed of herself.
Are you kidding me??? I can't believe you would actually turn the cheek to the kids who harrassed her and made her life so MISERABLE that she would take it!!! Do you even know what it is like to be harrassed??? To think you don't matter???? To regret being born???? MAYBE if someone had of done something she would still be alive...maybe by making these kids take some heat for their actions more kids would realize..."hey, people matter and there are consequences to our actions" For shame on anyone who tries to condone their actions and make this poor girl a head case!!!! Try living the life of an abused person for a day, then talk!!!!!
This all makes perfect sense to me.
1) Willing or not, underaged is underaged. Simple as that, especially in a lot of states. Same thing almost happened to my friend just for it being "suspected".
2) Suicide is not about vengance. It's what happens when your means of coping run out. Which happens a lot faster if you're being constantly harrassed, especially if the harrassment gets directed to how you cope.
3) Harrassment is a major offense. Not just for teenagers, but plenty of adults take people to court over it. Because face it, it's just annoying.
4) On that note, she could have made a case out of this at any point.. If she wanted to. Leaving me to believe she obviously didn't. Yes, most children-- or anyone for that matter-- in a situation like that do tend to wish badly against any opposing party. That doesn't mean they'll set out to do so, even with the proper means to go about it. My best guess is she expected that no loss would come through her dying, like most suicidal persons.
5) I agree, the teachers principles, etc made a stupid move not to say or do anything about it. But they of course can't be charged. How would you react if you say witnessed someone being held at gun point and were thrown in jail for not jumping in front of them? A bit rash of an example, I know, but falls under the same table of things.
6) Also, by all means let the government interfere with growing up. They always have, whether you've noticed it or not, and probably should in these cases. The parents of the kids charged obviously did anything but parent.
7) Yes, any kid at any point can, and probably will slip up and do some mean, and stupid things. These kids crossed the boundaries of racism, prejudice, and general abuse.
Yeah, throwing some rude children into jail may seem rather harsh, but it's juvi for the jest of them. I know that in Canada, that's only 3 to 6 months. More than just a mild annoyance than anything, and by the sounds of it, they could use the correctional stuff. By a landslide.
While I think the kids should have faced punishment, it should not have been that severe. Sure, do some jail time but a felony, really? And statutory rape? I know so many people who could have been convicted of that in high school but they weren't. The law definitely came down way too hard on these kids and not hard enough on the adults. If teachers and parents knew about this, those fuckers should be facing felony charges. I was bullied in high school, and suicidal for a little while as well, and I remember being so pissed off because there were adult (administrators at that) witnesses that did absolutely nothing when a 6 foot tall 250 lb male was pushing a 4'10 115 lb girl into lockers on a daily basis. I had black lock-shaped bruises up and down my spine for months. That could have done serious damage - I showed this to counselors and administrators and nothing was done until I showed my parents and they allowed me to quit school. As soon as I was out of there my life and state of mind was improved greatly. I would have never wanted a felony upon this kid for anything stupid I did, but press charges on the adults who are standing by doing absolutely nothing to punish the kid before things get out of control.
This is a case which will forever shape the way ANY school system- including but not limited to private schools as well as public schools.
This past summer in my criminal justice program- I took a class in Juvenile Delinquency and this was a major topic. A teacher's responsibility other than teaching a curriculum is ensuring that each and every student's right to a safe learning environment is met.
On a more personal note. When I was in eighth grade I was bullied nonstop for the entire year- face to face that is (I don't even want to think about what would have gone down if MySpace and Facebook were around then). I remember getting labeled slut cause I was somewhat attractive, gay/lesbian when I'd turn down the guys who were bullying me and other awful names. I would report it to the principle- nothing happened. It got worse- threatening notes were shoved in the locker along with pornographic pictures (which the admin's answer- duct tape the vents). My classes got switched around which put me behind gpa wise and my bullies would actively seek me out. I got beaten up on occasion- my Dad taught me self defense- and of course when I used it one day I got yelled at while the perp walked away with a grin.
My Dad was heavily involved in my life. He was a substitute teacher in the middle school and felt that he couldn't teach while fending for me. He told the principle basically to kiss it good bye. I wonder why Phoebe didn't involve her parents- I certainly communicated with mine (and still do on a daily basis- and I'm almost 23 now)
Thankfully I overcame this ordeal- the summer between my eighth grade year and freshman year I got involved in hobbies, made some new friends. High school wasn't too easy- I still had a few issues now and then. Now I'm in college about to finish my associate's in criminal justice and then go on to serve in the Navy.
The kids that bullied me in school are presently living on welfare, some are in jail, some never progressed educationally, and one is dead.
RIP Phoebe.
Well someone took their life, that is horrible. Here are some more things to ponder.
1. School knew and did nothing, are not our children supposed to be safe at school? Who's liable for letting it go that far?
2. Sex as teenagers can't be consensual, because they are too young. Where are the parents in teaching them proper educate?
3. Bullying? Yes happens during growing up, but TOO MUCH is like that cop that pulls you over on the side of the road for craps and giggles. When does it stop?
4. If someone treats you horrible everyday for a long time, how long until you kill them or you kill yourself? It's not about revenge but about freedom from the abuse, just like in battered wife syndrome, are you going to argue that the wife who kills her husband just to kill him, or so that she could be free from his bullying, abuse.
5. Yes the kids should be punished, but criminally that is highly debatable here. Should the school be punished yes, how, I don't know for sure, but if I found out my child was being treated like this everyday, day in and day out and teachers knew and did nothing, I'd go after the teachers for child endangerment, and maybe try to use that knew bullying law.
6. Our children are precious, each one, we must find a way to put them all on the straight and narrow, which also falls onto the parents as well. Department Of Family Services not only protect kids when parents don't, but when schools don't as well.
I could go on but I will stop here.
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