A 40-year-old Missouri woman allegedly settled an argument she had with a teen and her mother by resorting to Craigslist. Elizabeth A. Thrasher is accused of posting a photo of the girl, 17, her email address and cell phone number in the “Casual Encounters” section of the Web site. Craigslist sure is more effective than bathroom graffiti — the teen became inundated with text messages and porn photos on her phone.
Thrasher has been charged with cyberbullying, the Associated Press reported. It’s the first felony cyberbullying charge in Missouri since the state passed a law after the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier. She hanged herself in 2006 after she was the victim of a hoax on MySpace.
The teen is the daughter of Thrasher’s ex-husband’s girlfriend. Authorities said it wasn’t clear what started the argument.
North Carolina is now one of a handful of states that specifically prohibits the bullying of students based on their real or perceived sexual orientation.
By a margin of one vote, N.C. lawmakers approved on Tuesday a bill that would require teachers, students, administrators and school volunteers to report any incidents of bullying. Details about reporting procedures and punishments are up to the individual districts.
The legislation was extremely contentious, the Charlotte Observer reported. Opponents said that the bill should not have named specific categories of victims — such as those targeted based on race, gender, handicap or sexual orientation. But others said those kids were the most likely targets of harassment. They accused opponents of trying to kill the bill because it contained protections for gay kids.
One Charlotte high school student told the Observer that he is having to make up classwork that he missed when he skipped school to avoid bullies. Mark Jones, 18, said that classmates started harassing him after he came out as gay in the seventh grade.
Sirdeaner L. Walker says she called her son’s school repeatedly to get teachers to stop the bullies. But she says, school officials, didn’t do enough. On Monday, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover hung himself with an extension cord in his home. He had been a sixth grader at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, Mass.
“I just want to help some other child. I know there are other kids being picked on,” Walker told WCVB TV News. She said that her son had had a hard time making friends since transferring to New Leadership this year. Classmates allegedly called him gay, mocked his clothes and threatened to hurt him. School officials declined comment.
About 30 percent of kids are either a bully or the victim of bullying, according to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center. Unfortunately, many of the incidents only come to the attention of adults after a tragedy. Read more about teen suicides and bullying here.
William and Janis Mohat are accusing a Ohio high school for not doing enough to stop the constant harassment that their son endured from other students. Eric Mohat, 17, shot himself on March 27, 2007. His parents recently filed a federal lawsuit against Mentor High School, located in the Cleveland area.
Eric wrote about the torment on his MySpace page. He said that he had had been pushed and elbowed in the hallways and was constantly called names like “fag” and “queer.” The lawsuit claims that on the day that Eric killed himself, a student said in front of other kids, “Why don’t you go home and shoot yourself? Nobody would miss you.” At least one administrator saw Eric crying in the hallway, but made no effort to help, according to the court filing.
The school system declined comment on the lawsuit, but said in a statement that it “takes all claims of bullying and harassment seriously and continues to train staff and students using a robust anti-bullying program.”
A lawyer for the Mohat family told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that bullying was a factor in the suicides of two other teens at Eric’s school. William Mohat said that the family would drop the lawsuit if the school system required reports of bullying to be written up and parents quickly notified in writing and tougher punishment for bullies. Read about other teen suicides caused by bullying here.
Jessie Logan ended the relationship with her boyfriend, but the X-rated photo that she sent him in happier times couldn’t be stopped. After their break-up, the naughty picture of the Cincinnati teen went viral, passed to hundreds of other students. Harassment soon followed.
“They’d call her slut, whore, a skank,” said Lauren Taylor, one of Jessie’s friends, in an interview with WLWT TV News. “They’d say that she was just trying to be a porn star.”
In July, Jessie hanged herself in her bedroom. Her mother is now going public with Jessie’s suicide in an attempt to warn other teens about the dangers of sexting – and bullying. “She was being attacked and tortured,” Cynthia Logan said on NBC’s Today Show.
Jessie’s mom and friends say that she changed from a vivacious, fun teenager into a depressed introvert who skipped school. No matter what she did, it seemed as if technology would not let her escape embarassment. “When she would leave school, she would get on her MySpace or her Facebook, and then kids would be messaging her on that or texting her phone, people she didn’t even know,” Lauren said. Jessie’s cell phone was found not too far from her body, on the bedroom floor.
Photo from NBC Today Show Web site
Denise Finkel of New York says that four former high school classmates created a Facebook group that was designed to publicly ridicule her. She’s now suing them, their parents and social networking site Facebook for $3 million in damages.
“She had a very difficult time in high school,” her lawyer, Mark Altschul, told Newsday. “They were making sure that she was an unwanted soul there.” Denise is now a student at the University of Albany. She and the ex-classmates she sued — Michael Dauber, Jeffrey Schwartz, Leah Herz and Melinda Danowitz — graduated last year from Oceanside High School in Oceanside, NY.
According to the lawsuit filed in the New York Supreme Court, the Facebook group that the teens allegedly created tried to spread rumors that Denise participated in bestiality and had AIDS.
Bari Lewis, the mother of Melinda Danowitz, called the lawsuit frivolous and denies that her daughter ever wrote anything defamatory about anybody. A Facebook spokesman said the lawsuit had no merit.
Brittany Mayes, 18, could face up to a year in the county jail. She’s one of five Florida teens charged with beating up another girl and videotaping it last March. The tape became a notorious YouTube sensation and helped prompt the video-sharing site to crack down on kid-fight videos.
What may have prompted the vicious assault? On that day, the victim and one of the suspects, Mercades Nichols, 17, had argued over a borrowed hairbrush and razor, the Orlando Sentinel cited from court documents. The victim also told police that Mercades had sent her threatening text messaages.
Brittany pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one count of battery in the Polk County court. Her cohorts, Kayla Hassall and April Cooper, have pleas scheduled for Feb. 4. Mercades and Brittini Hardcastle have chosen to fight the charges in a trial, set for March 30. Another teen girl allegedly participated in the attack, and two boys served as lookouts. The newspaper did not report their fates.
Jeff Lasater doesn’t want any other child to go through the bullying and teasing that spurred his 14-year-old son, Jeremy, to shoot himself in October.
Lasater and other parents at Vasquez High School in the Los Angeles area are setting up a toll-free number so that students can report harassment. The initiative is part of a new nonprofit group called Project 51, which wants to serve as a watchdog over the Acton, Calif., school system’s response to reports of bullying. The name of the group is a tribute to Jeremiah’s jersey number on the junior varsity football team.
“Bullying is a cancer that needs to be cut out,” Lasater told the Los Angeles Times. “The time has come. We just can’t keep waiting for the next tragedy to happen.”
School officials say that they will work with Project 51. But they also contended that they already have programs to train teachers how to spot bullying and discipline students. Still, none of the administrators at Vasquez High said that they knew of Jeremy’s torment. Although students and teachers now say that the bullying stretched back to middle school, Jeremy had not told his reported the harassment to his parents or school officials.
Jeremy, a freshman, had been teased because of his large size and passive behavior. Jeff Lasater says that he has since learned that on the last day of Jeremy’s life, several classmates threw chili at him during lunch and pulled down his pants. Afterwards, Jeremy went into a bathroom and shot himself in the head.
Of course, most kids don’t want to be labeled a snitch. But http://www.schooltipline.com lets students do the right thing without fear.
The website being used by more than 50 schools across the country. Brigham Young University student Justin Bergener was inspired a few years ago to start the site after a teenage girl told his mother that she was being harassed at school but was afraid to tell any teachers or administrators.
“There really is this culture and code of silence that’s particularly prevalent in middle schools and high schools,” Bergener, 28, told the Salt Lake Tribune. He says that most reports on the web site, which schools sign up in order to participate, are about bullying and harassment. Students submit the reports anonymously, and school officials get a copy.
Most schools are participating for free under a pilot program. Other schools pay $2 a student per year for premium service that allows students to text message the reports.
Bullying is a serious problem that can lead to fights and psychological problems for victims. A Los Angeles-area teenager who was the target of relentless teasing shot and killed himself at his school recently.
Rosanna Ungerman, a principal at a Utah school, said that she’s received 20 reports through the tip line this school year. Several fights were averted as a result. Just one report has been erroneous, which officials were able to figure out from questioning the student online.
A 14-year-old with a learning disability killed himself in the men’s room of his Los Angeles area high school Monday after another round of bullying and teasing, including two fellow students throwing food at him.
Jeremiah Lasater shot himself with a family handgun, Acton, Calif., police said. “He didn’t try to hurt others. He was tired of hurting, himself,” Michael Daly, one of Jeremiah’s former teachers, told the Los Angeles Times.
Officials at Vasquez High School told the newspaper they had seen no evidence of bullying, but some parents and students said it was routinely directed against the 6-foot-5, 220-pound teen. “Everyone picked on him a lot because he was kind of nerdy,” said Caleb Neale. Like other students this week, Caleb was wearing a 51, Jeremiah’s number on the school’s junior varsity football team.
