Cyber-bullying a Child to Death

I read a disturbing story yesterday at abcnews.com concerning a young girl who killed herself after being cyber-bullied.

(abcnews.com)

Frankly, the comments following the story shocked me even more.

Many of those commenting were incensed that ABC had grammatical errors in the story, as if that were the most important part of the piece. More than a few said bullying had been around forever and that children were being pampered too much, which leads them to commit suicide because they can’t cope.

As I read, I kept thinking – none of these people knows what that poor kid went through. None of them. But I do.

When I was fourteen, I went to an all-girl school. It was highly expensive and my parents, working-class people, thought it would give me an advantage over the public schools in our area.

From the beginning, I didn’t fit in. During the first two weeks of school when the other girls were wearing cashmere sweaters and wool skirts instead of the designated uniform, I had on denim skirts and cotton blouses. They looked at me like I was a vile specimen under a microscope. More than a few whispered loudly to each other, in my presence, about how dorky I was dressed and then laughed about it. I wanted to die. But because my parents paid so much for the school, I was determined to stick it out.

My classmates treated me like a pariah, which gave me stomachaches every morning on the way to school. But for the most part, they did leave me alone. That changed my second year there. The school sponsored a formal dance I had no intention of attending. I didn’t know any guys to ask and I didn’t want to be on the school grounds any longer than I had to. My classmates knew I was one of the few not attending because they had a guest list. Without my knowledge, they signed me up for the clean-up committee after the dance. They were too rich to do the work – they wanted me, the poor girl, to do it. They thought it was a supremely funny joke. If I had known about it, I would have refused, but no one told me. The clean-up was supposed to take place on the Saturday morning after the dance. On Monday morning when I arrived at school, the principal called me into her office. There, she yelled at me (and two other girls who had also been signed up without their knowledge) for not showing up on Saturday to clean up the gym. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. I didn’t sign up for anything. And I certainly wasn’t going to clean up the gym when I hadn’t even been to the dance. She said I was lying. She told me to go to class and to feel lucky she wasn’t suspending me.

That day, in class after class, each teacher began the hour by lecturing me in front of my classmates for being so irresponsible and for not showing up for the clean-up committee. I was so humiliated by their treatment of me, but I was also getting angry. By the time my third to last class rolled around and the teacher told me to stand up and explain myself, I did better than that. I told her to go to hell. I told the entire class to go to hell. I walked out and took a bus back to my house.

When I got home early, my mother asked what happened. I was crying and trying to explain when the phone rang. It was the principal. I took the phone from my mother and I told that women we wanted our money back. I didn’t want to go to that school. I would never return – to give us the tuition back, thousands of dollars. I knew I was screaming, but I didn’t care any longer. I had had enough.

My mother calmed me down and spoke to the principal. Because I asked for our money back, the principal backed down. Suddenly, my not showing up for something I hadn’t signed up for wasn’t a problem anymore. Suddenly, she believed me. Because of the money. Only because of the money.

That day I changed. Up until that time, I was a good kid. Not perfect, but I had a kind heart. After that, I didn’t take shit from anyone.

When I returned to school the next day (and yes, I did graduate from it), I was ready to fight. If anyone looked at me strangely or too long I asked them what in the hell their problem was. No one bothered me after that. They knew they’d pushed me to a point where they couldn’t predict what I’d do – to them. I meant business.

I was one of the lucky ones. I fought back. I wasn’t about to kill myself. I was going to make damn certain no one ever treated me badly again.

To this day, I blame the teachers and principal for what happened to me. They knew what was going on, but didn’t care. I was from a poor family so I was inconsequential. I didn’t have the money, position, or connections that my classmates had. In their eyes, I was a loser who would never amount to anything no matter how hard I tried or how much my family paid them to educate me.

Years later, when I was the editor of an award-winning newspaper, I received a letter from the school, congratulating me on my professional success and asking for donations because it was facing hard economic times. All of the old hurts came flooding back. Hurts I thought I’d gotten over but hadn’t. I glued a penny to the letter and wrote: ‘This is the value I received from your school.’ and then I mailed the letter back to them. They haven’t bothered me since.

What I went through was horrible for me. Now, with the internet to further torture someone who doesn’t fit in, it must be excruciating. And something needs to be done.

We should all be ashamed of ourselves – parents, teachers, children – for allowing this to happen.

We need to stop this – we need to fix this. How?

I’d love to hear your ideas for a solution and your personal stories of being bullied.

Related posts:

1. The Sudden and Sad Death of Brittany Murphy
2. Another Child Goes Missing. . .or Worse
3. The Return of a Child No One Seems to Want
4. Dance Moms
5. Love Sex Death and Everything but the Kitchen Sink