These posts are thoughts of mine from my journal and other blog that I think everyone needs to consider. Teen suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among teens and adolescents in the US - it deserves more serious attention than a few high-profile articles on MSN. We need to talk about it and do more to prevent it.
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A few days ago I read an article about the late Phoebe Prince, the young Irish girl who committed suicide this past January after an alleged influx of bullying from her high school peers. The article was plastered all over the MSN Home Page - by author Emily Bazelon, who has been compiling information about cyber bullying.
I doubt there are many who haven’t heard this young girl’s story, but this woman’s take on it seemed odd to me. She approached the subject as if parents, teachers and prosecutors were out of line to accuse the “South Hadley Six” (as they’ve been termed by the media) of committing a crime, even though Prince’s suicide was, well, suicide, and not homicide or manslaughter. She raised these questions: “Should we send teenagers to prison for being nasty to one another? Is it really fair to lay the burden of Phoebe’s suicide on these kids?”
Well, I don’t really know the answer to that question. But I was once a mumbling, upset, bullied teenager, so I can offer my little bit of experience to the situation.
I read the article, and have been interested in this girl’s experience since I first heard about it over six months ago. Do I believe that all six of the young kids who are being charged with harming Phoebe deserve to be charged as such? No. I do not believe that. I do not believe that all six of these young people directly contributed to her death. She was known to be a cutter, and she made no big campaign to hide it. In fact, she even wrote an essay about cutting in a class (the excerpt I read was rather eloquent and empathetic, in fact.)
However, I do believe that these kids should have known better. The woman who wrote this article described interviews with police and other students at the school, all of which seemed to agree that Phoebe was involved with the conflicts directly, and that she may have instigated some of the offenses. She was known to have made friends with a boy named Sean, one of the kids being charged, whose girlfriend became jealous and started in on her. It is my understanding that this boy was not actually dating the girl who became jealous .. but anyone who has been in high school knows what I mean when I say “he was her property, even though they weren’t dating.”
It happened again with another boy - which I can only assume is why people at the school say “she was attracting boys away from relationships.” Why is this author treating Phoebe as if she was so guilty of doing something wrong? What’s missing in this situation?
Well, I hate to say it, folks, but I don’t think we’re looking at the situation correctly. I don’t mean to accuse the author of portraying her like this on purpose, but it seems as though the aim was to pin Phoebe as a malicious “boyfriend stealer.” Again, I went to high school. I had a “boyfriend stealer” attack my own relationship. But that didn't mean I threw things at her, slammed her into lockers, and got all of my close friends to call her a slut and a whore all over the community. It's disgusting.
I was accused as "boyfriend stealer" when I was a senior in high school, by someone who was in 8th grade. I admit, I had a crush on a boy a year younger than I was. He lived about a mile from me, and often gave me a ride home. We never dated, never kissed, never even exchanged “longing teenage hugs” for longer than 5 seconds. But as soon as he started dating an 8th grade girl who barely knew me, I was immediately painted as the “banana nosed bitch” on her social network, for the whole world to see. It was embarrassing and I hated it. But I didn’t go home and slice up my arms for it.
While I was the victim of high school bullying (like 100% of all other people who went to high school), the real reason I’m drawn to Phoebe’s story is I was on the other side of one such case. I dated a boy my junior year who was emotionally odd. He bounced from girlfriend to girlfriend, and often moaned about how the girl he really wanted was never the one he got. I listened to him complain about girl after girl after girl, until he finally asked me out. I thought he was romantic and sweet with how he obsessed over every girl he liked, and took him up on the offer. We would break up and get back together, like every other person he had dated, and I even dealt with other girls who thought he was a sweetheart (read: the first “boyfriend stealer” comment).
The last time he broke up with me, I remember telling him that I didn’t want to see him any more. I didn’t want to deal with his instability, his constant flirting with other girls, and the drama they came with. I forgot who I was dealing with. Every day for the next seven months, if I wasn’t getting emails to “please come back to me,” I was getting posts on his online journal about his unsuccessful suicide attempts. I wasn’t telling him off or bullying him, but he was torturing me by blaming me. He told my cousin that I had given him a stroke, and that the only thing that kept him alive from his hanging was “his feet dragging on the ground.” My hair fell out, I got depressed, and rarely left my house. I became terrified of running into him, and his close friends who ate up every word he said about me. I tried not to humor him with responses to his emails, and they only got worse - he started to drink and smoke, and would repeatedly tell stories of how he had almost died of alcohol poisoning the night before.
Do I believe these kids killed Phoebe Prince? I don’t know. I do know that if I had egged this guy on any more than just leaving him alone, he may very well have been successful at committing suicide, and I couldn't take the guilt of that possibility. Or, he may have been playing it up. I don’t know that either. But I do know that I wasn’t willing to take the chance. If someone you know is openly emotionally unstable, is a cutter, or takes anti-depressants, they don’t need any more encouragement to commit suicide than what they already feel every day - they need your help! I don’t think that bullying was the only ingredient in this tragic death, but I absolutely believe these kids should have known better.
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I can’t help but comment further on the case of Phoebe Prince and her death; as more news comes out about it by Emily Bazelon, I did more research and am absolutely appalled at what I’m finding.
It’s no big secret what happened to Phoebe, and my last post outlines my concerns that many people recently bring up - she was mentally ill, and was on anti-depressants, already at risk of suicide without the aid of bullying peers. What I didn’t know was that the students who bullied her most fervently, who are now on trial for her death, were CELEBRATORY about it after news spread, and are unapologetic about the cruel way they treated her prior to the incident. They went to a school dance just days after her passing, many of which seen celebrating and laughing while gesturing "noose-like" hand motions over curved necks.
Disgusting.
Many parents are commenting on these articles, asking “why wasn’t something done? why didn't the principal/superintendent/teachers DO something?” I have an unfortunate answer to that. They may have bullied her, too.
Did I find this somewhere? No. But the more I read about the kids who were tormenting her, the greater the picture. One girl in particular was an honor student and a star school athlete - in many cases, these students are “pets" of teachers, and in high school many of us confide in our educators. I know I did. And those teachers are, then, no longer the impartial advocate for students that they should be. They take sides just like the students do.
I recall another incident of my own childhood, during the year I was bullied nearly to death. I was suicidal and angry, left out by the fickle “friends” I thought I could trust - like many young teens. I was tired of being laughed at openly in class, tired of being accused of “stealing another girl’s wardrobe” when I came to class wearing a shirt that belonged to my sister - which looked similar to a shirt said girl had worn two weeks prior. I got tired of finding notes written about me, and was shocked when two girls came up to me and said that some people they knew were planning to prank me -- I never did thank them properly for trying to prepare me for that.
The worst incident of bullying that I can think of was not one many of my friends recall during my Junior year of high school - while that really sucked, let me tell you, the one that happened in 8th grade was far more detrimental to my self esteem. I will never forget being randomly approached by a girl in my social studies class; she was very popular, very pretty, and was new to the school - she owned it, as any new 8th grade pretty girl does in a small town. She commented on my grade on a large test we had taken that week (I honestly never saw my test, and never knew my real grade.) She said I had done well, but that I had cheated on the test, and did not deserve the grade.
I looked at her straight in the eye. “Really? I cheated? That’s news to me, I thought I studied my butt off for days… where did you hear that?”
She didn’t tell me where she got the notion from, but she did say she told our teacher about it. She then complained that our teacher couldn’t prove it, so there was no point in punishing me about it unless I confessed. She was asking me to confess for cheating on a test - something I had never done, and never have done in my life! I may have been the ugly duckling, I may have been awkward, I may have not been popular or great with boys - but I was a straight A student since I was in 3rd grade - and I testify to all of you that I did not get there by cheating!
I approached my teacher about it after everyone had left the class, and told her I had heard the rumor, and did not cheat on the test. I even offered to take it again to prove that I had studied, and not cheated. She denied, and didn’t even look me in the eye. It was no secret that I was being bullied all year - and here this woman was, participating in it.
When I got my report card for the end of the year, all A’s and one B - it was no surprise. The class where my grade dropped was my social studies class - and the teacher had believed the mean girls over my good grade. She gave me a zero for our biggest test.
Now, tell me, would I have gotten a B with a zero on a huge test if I hadn’t done well otherwise? No. Yet, she somehow my other grades were a fluke, or due to my good writing skills on papers and homework. The other evidence meant nothing. Of COURSE I had cheated - why would the good looking, sweet, well-known Christian girls in class lie about that?
During that year I quit band after being 1st chair flute for three years because of the bullying, I stopped playing my guitar for a year because of the bullying, and I chopped off half of my hair because of the bullying. I was insecure and upset, and it was obvious by the way my attitude and wardrobe changed. Our new math teacher that year, Mrs. Price, God bless her, took me aside one day because she could tell something was wrong. I broke down and told her about all of the bullying, everything that was going on, even the other teacher's actions. She listened - but it meant little ... she was being picked on by the students as well, because she smelled like cigarettes. I have to be honest - I never noticed it. But everyone knew about the nasty things said about her, and I watched her cry that day, too.
The truth of the matter is, I knew my teachers could tell that there was a problem, and nobody did a thing. But I got lucky - the bullying lead me to write in a journal to let out my frustration. I made it out alive.
Phoebe Prince didn't.
Parents tell you to report when you’re picked on - but what no one tells you is that it’s socially forbidden amongst other students. If you “nark” on someone for treating you badly, you are labeled a “nark,” and will never recover. I kept my mouth shut when the bullying continued into high school until my Junior year, because I knew no one would do anything anyway. This poor girl was most likely in a similar situation, where she felt she wasn’t safe anywhere - because when she did report it, nothing happened! She may have been safe in her classroom, but she was attacked on the internet, on Craig’s list (that was new, I didn’t know that was possible), received anonymous text messages that made fun of her, and was most notably attacked on her walk home the day she died. She didn't feel safe anywhere because she WASN'T safe anywhere.
The teachers, principal, and administrators of her school are just as guilty as those students for not paying more attention to those being bullied. Is it “normal” for people to be bullied at that age? Absolutely. Is it okay for it to continue because it’s a “rite of passage”? Absolutely NOT.
What do you think we should do about bullying in our school systems? What do you think we should do about bullying online? Should we ban our kids from using social networks until they're old enough to handle the nasty things said on them?
Is anywhere safe for our kids anymore?
