Teenage Girls Charged with Felony for Bullying Suicide Victim

[warhorse78]

Dude that is complete bull -. It comes down to the kid. I had the kind of parents that made all of my friends and cousins jealous. You know those perfect idealized parents that all the kids wished they had instead of their own? Yeah. THOSE were my parents. THAT is the family I come from. It's the individual.

I say you're the one BS, because if your parents raised you to respect them and to go to them for help, you wouldn't be here saying all of this garbage.

 

[Ultimatehero]

Dude, your dad sounds like the guy who if you didn't know how to swim shoved you into the deep end and said tough luck learn how to swim junior. To me? That's horrible parenting. If it was my kid I wouldn't tell him to suck it up, I'd do everything I could to protect him by offering comfort. Which mine did and kept me off the edge which I was teetering on. Your dads method would have seriously pushed me OVER that edge.

Do I respect them? Duh. But I was a kid. If I wanted to watch rated R films, I'd find a way. If I wanted to go to a site that parents are told to put blocks on - I'd bypass those. If I wanted to go to the cool train tracks in our neighborhood with my friends that no parents liked - we were gonna do that. And we were considered the "kids next door" - not the rebellious type, just a regular kid. The Steven King suburbia style of growing up. To me it sounds like you only watched rated R movies when they told you you could. One example of something they tried to control was Napster and etc, but I was a 90s kid in the rise of hacking lol. That all falls down on me. The kinds of things that SHOULD be monitored when a kid is that young.

Also when a boy reaches high school, can't fight back because tormentors travel in packs, and have to hide to not be gained up on? There are very few if any that would talk about this. "What happened in school today?" "Got shoved into a locker and made fun of by a group of kids." Nope, chances are more likely that the kid will say they had a good day. This is all about the shame accompanied with it which is probably due to kids naturally blaming themselves when things go wrong making them feel insecure which no guy would ever want to admit to.

 

[knowsbleed]

Parents need to get to know their kids... there is no be all end all guide to parenting, treating them like individuals will let them know that they aren't just their child but that they are important enough to them that to get to know. I don't know the situation with that girl who killed herself and her parents... but I really hope that they tried to talk to their daughter instead of just going through the motions of being a textbook parent. I guess that point is moot now since she is gone.

Now on the topic of suicide... if someone is determined to do it, there is almost no chance that you will be able to stop them. Determination is a very strong driving force and if that person is only focused on the negative, then that is all they will see.

 

[Godzilla2000]

It's about time someone started doing something about bullying. It should be a crime to harass people to the point of considering suicide even.

 

[terry78]

I'm sure children have committed suicide due to being bullied throughout history, but it just seems a little more common since we can hear about it via media all the time now. Plus back then it probably took a lot more than just simple verbal abuse to be persuaded to kill yourself though.

 

[Schlosser85]

Discuss without insulting each other's parents.

 

[Lantern Venom]

And now bullies are 24/7.

That's the core of the issue with modern bullying. It's no longer contained to an area like the school grounds or interaction with small group of people. Bullies use social media to maximize the target's suffering by making sure the shame follows them.

There are going to be more charges like this, and new laws in the future. It's clear that the internet isn't just silly cat pics and music videos, it can be life-and-death for those who are vulnerable.

 

[Senator Pleasury]

When you push someone to kill themselves, you might not have directly murdered them but you are still culpable to the act.

Exactly. And if you let them know they can get away with it because they're so tiny, then they might even start to find it a whole load of fun.

 

[Thundercrack85]

It's about time someone started doing something about bullying. It should be a crime to harass people to the point of considering suicide even.

While that's a well-intentioned thought, it's rather tricky legally (and ethically).

It would be hard to quantify how much just bullying contributed to suicide. And then you would have to assign blame.

 

[Ultimatehero]

In this case, I'd definitely have charged the girls with murder. Some cases it is cut and dry whereas some of them are not. Here it's two girls with the motives, the means, an agenda, and are pleased with getting their intended results.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

If this is what it takes for bullies to question their actions then I'm all for it.

The fact that someone can be tormented to the point of suicide and people still think it's fine to give the tormentors free reign is kind of sickning...

Rites of passage be damned.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Saw this posted on Facebook and had to say something about how stupid and out of touch it is. The kicker is it was posted by one of the most popular kids in my high school, I'm sure he has a lot of experience with being bullied and coping with possible mental illness

 

[Figs]

This is truly sad but there has always been bullying...I just don't see why more of these kids are committing suicide. I don't know if it's the parents' fault as well or social media's fault (on top of the bullies). But, there has to be another factor in play for all these kids killing themselves over bullying. Just look at A Christmas Story...some of these kids in Ralphie's position would kill themselves today for having a bully torment them. Now kids can bully over the internet as well. I can't help to think that some of this lies at the feet of the parents of the kids that kill themselves for feeling unloved and worthless. Truly sad.

Also, I know the parents of the bullies that do these acts are truly awful parents regardless of anything.

I agree that the parents are terrible but I think bullying has become a lot worse than it used to be. We've become too desensitized. A girl in her early teens saying she doesn't give a **** that she drove another girl to kill herself is ****ed up. The fact that she has no sympathy is disturbing.

For those who don't agree with me and might argue that bullying isn't worse with this younger generation, go watch the movie Bully. Some of the **** these kids say to other kids like threatening to punch one to death is beyond anything I ever heard or experienced growing up.

Not sure if they deserve jail time at that age, but they do need counseling.

I also heavily disagree with that bleeding heart ******** that a lot of bullies are doing this to lash out because they are being abused. Yeah, when you take a very large group of people or in this case bullies, you're bound to get some that have a bad home life. I guarantee most of them though, are bullying for the same old reasons, to look cool in front of their friends or just to **** on someone for being different and not "cool".

 

[Immortalfire]

Saw this posted on Facebook and had to say something about how stupid and out of touch it is. The kicker is it was posted by one of the most popular kids in my high school, I'm sure he has a lot of experience with being bullied and coping with possible mental illness

Why is it a puffin?

 

[Warhammer]

I won't speak on the issue specifically, but I'll say one thing. I will establish communication with my children. That way, I will teach them to either stand up for themselves and/or tell me when they are getting bullied. Then I'll set it straight. I'll find that damn kid and scold him or her myself then find their parents and light into their ass. The problem is that this stuff escalates without intervention from anyone.

 

[Quasimod0]

Why is it a puffin?

Because when a Puffin speaks, people listen.

 

[Hal_Jordan]

I won't speak on the issue specifically, but I'll say one thing. I will establish communication with my children. That way, I will teach them to either stand up for themselves and/or tell me when they are getting bullied. Then I'll set it straight. I'll find that damn kid and scold him or her myself then find their parents and light into their ass. The problem is that this stuff escalates without intervention from anyone.

Chances are the parents won't care, will even blame you and your kid for it, and now the bully has more ammunition to ridicule your kid.

 

[terry78]

Bullying is worse nowadays, but some kds are just very very thin skinned, where anycomment will set them off.

 

[Quasimod0]

Parents need to teach their kids to treat others with respect.

 

[terry78]

Adults don't even do it.

 

[jjgravitas]

I was bullied as a child in the days before computers and networking and I know how it can break your spirit. I hope these criminals are given the harshest punishment possible and I could care less about their age.

 

[Destructus86]

Parents need to get to know their kids... there is no be all end all guide to parenting, treating them like individuals will let them know that they aren't just their child but that they are important enough to them that to get to know. I don't know the situation with that girl who killed herself and her parents... but I really hope that they tried to talk to their daughter instead of just going through the motions of being a textbook parent. I guess that point is moot now since she is gone.

Now on the topic of suicide... if someone is determined to do it, there is almost no chance that you will be able to stop them. Determination is a very strong driving force and if that person is only focused on the negative, then that is all they will see.

That's exactly right. The relationship between parent and child is really important but at least here in America that relationship has shrunk considerably between overworked parents and reliance on technology.

Sometimes I think we should just go back to eating dinner at the table as a family. Dang...I haven't done that since I was a kid!

 

[Senator Pleasury]

Bullying is worse nowadays, but some kds are just very very thin skinned, where anycomment will set them off.

That doesn't justify it.

 

[TheBat812]

There's also the more subconscious effect of social media of being able to insult somebody without experiencing the pain of hurting somebody and empathizing with them, and realizing you're hurting somebody else. That's how kids learn when they're younger - they're mean, and they realize that's bad most of the time unless they're a sadistic type person. But with so much more access to interacting through social media rather than face-to-face, it's not surprising that more kids are being bullies and more kids don't have the experience to be able to overcome this kind of thing. Parents also being more absent in their kids lives because of technology compounds this.

 

[Piper Maru]

The world is a cruel place.