I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
(CNN) -- At age 13, Hope Witsell struggled in middle school. Not because her class work at Shields Middle School in Ruskin, Florida, was challenging, but because Hope was being bullied.
Her friend, Kyla Stich, told CNN that fellow students would "walk up to her and call her 'slut,' '*****,' and they would sometimes, they would call her 'skank' and just be really cruel to her."
Another friend, Lexi Leber, said, "We had to make like a wall, we had people surrounding her, and she had to be in the middle because people would come by and try to hit her and push her into a locker or something.
"She was afraid to walk alone, she was afraid someone would do something to her, like verbally attack her, so she would always have someone with her," Leber added.
This all started in the spring of 2009 during the last week of school.
Friends and family say Hope had "sexted" a picture of her breasts to her boyfriend. Another girl from school, they say, got her hands on the photo and sent it to students at six different schools in the area.
Before Hope could do anything to stop it, that photo had gone viral.
The school alerted Hope's parents. Her mother, Donna Witsell, told CNN how she learned about the photo.
"The assistant principal had a meeting with my husband and I and pretty much told us that he did not see the image but that he had heard that it was Hope and when he confronted Hope, Hope did not deny it. She wasn't proud of it but she didn't lie," Hope's mother said.
Mrs. Witsell says she had warned her daughter about the dark side of technology, about "some of the pretty sexual images of young girls and guys."
She added, "Hope was very aware of that, of inappropriate dress and most definitely posing."
Still, because of that photo, Hope had become a target for 11-, 12-, and 13-year-old bullies.
But she didn't share her pain with her parents.
Even when bullies wrote horrible things about Hope on a MySpace page called the "Shields Middle School Burn Book" and started a "Hope Hater Page," the young girl kept silent.
Summer provided a bit of a break, but when the new school year began, the taunting was even worse.
On Saturday, September 12, 2009, Hope Witsell helped her father mow the lawn. They cooked a special seafood dinner together as a family. Then Hope disappeared to her room upstairs. Her parents stayed downstairs and watched TV.
Donna Witsell will never forget the moment she went to say goodnight to her daughter.
"I went upstairs to go in her room and kiss her goodnight. That was when I found her. I screamed for my husband. And started doing CPR."
It was too late. Hope was already dead. She had used her favorite scarves to hang herself from her canopy bed.
After Hope died, her mother learned her daughter had been summoned to meet with a school social worker. A spokesperson for the school says the social worker was concerned Hope might have been trying to hurt herself, so she had Hope sign what's called a "no harm" contract in which Hope agreed to talk to an adult if she wanted to harm herself.
Hope's mother says she was never told about the contract, which she found crumpled up in the garbage in her daughter's bedroom after she died.
School officials told CNN they believed the social worker had tried calling Hope's mother to alert her but weren't sure if she had left a message.
"The school dropped the ball," Donna Witsell said.
"The school did not call. We have the digital telephone; we have the cell phones that indicate when there was an incoming call and what number was calling in. We have a house phone, I have a cell phone, my husband has a cell phone. We have emergency contact numbers at the school which was my sister-in-law and her husband. There was no indication that the school called any of those numbers," Hope's mother said.
Days after Hope died, her older sister, Samantha Beattie, discovered the bullying was still going on. Even in death, Hope could not escape it.
"I knew she had MySpace and Facebook. There were people putting comments on there: 'Did Hope really kill herself?' 'I can't believe that ***** did that.' Just obscene things that I would never expect from a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old," said Samantha.
In the year or so that has passed since Hope Witsell took her own life, her mother has started a group called Hope's Warriors. She hopes it will help combat bullying and save other moms from feeling the horrendous pain that she feels.
Donna Witsell has a message for parents: "It happened to my daughter, it can happen to yours too. No one is untouchable. No one is untouchable."
How a cell phone picture led to girl's suicide - CNN.com
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
Bullying is wrong, but this also starts going into the wussification of America folder I'm afraid. That may sound insensitive, and I dont mean it to, but its true. I truly hate to hear of any of these things happening.
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
Bullying is never acceptable.
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
You hear more and more cause it the hot topic of the moment. The guy that turned on the web cam wasn't a bully. He would have done it if the guy was nailing a chic. That's just being an *******. Unfortunately the guy was doing a dude and jumped off a bridge. Also parents need to do a better job of actually talking to their kids about things and how they feel. Also watch what they do.
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
Quote:
Originally Posted by
1inStripes
Bullying is wrong, but this also starts going into the wussification of America folder I'm afraid. That may sound insensitive, and I dont mean it to, but its true. I truly hate to hear of any of these things happening.
Wussification? You torment someone long enough, they're going to break, that doesn't mean their a "wuss". For all we know, these kids have probably been dealing with this for years, but it's being a wuss because they felt like they couldn't take it anymore? No one should have to put up with that, people cope with things differently than others, but it starts with parents teaching their kids to not be a douche - no one is born being one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MikeJones
You hear more and more cause it the hot topic of the moment. The guy that turned on the web cam wasn't a bully. He would have done it if the guy was nailing a chic. That's just being an *******. Unfortunately the guy was doing a dude and jumped off a bridge. Also parents need to do a better job of actually talking to their kids about things and how they feel. Also watch what they do.
No he wouldn't have, he specifically said it was a big deal because it was two guys. He tweeted something like "My roomate asked me if he could have the room, but then I walked in and he was kissing some dude", then he started broadcasting it on webcam, I highly doubt he would have done it if it were a girl. I wish there was some kind of manslaughter or at least something more serious that he could be charged with. Parents should do that, that guy was in college though, but others had talked to their kids and sought treatment for them like with the Phoebe girl. Like I said, the other parents should teach their kid to not act like some douche and not bully kids.
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
Bull**** he tweeted his roomate was making out with a dude and said yay or something wasnt nothing hateful. The dude just had the bad luck to be an ******* to the wrong guy and now he is national news.
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
Quote:
Originally Posted by
R13
Wussification? You torment someone long enough, they're going to break, that doesn't mean their a "wuss". For all we know, these kids have probably been dealing with this for years, but it's being a wuss because they felt like they couldn't take it anymore? No one should have to put up with that, people cope with things differently than others, but it starts with parents teaching their kids to not be a douche - no one is born being one.
You are missing the point. The wussification is about not going up to someone and doing something about it, or being able to mold yourself to rise above others. Everyone gets picked on, no matter who you are at some point in your life by someone. Kids are being so coddled now a days that they don't know how to handle adversity and sometimes implode because of it at younger ages. Its very sad, and as I said bullying is wrong, but we are building a society that wants everything handed to you, and not being able to stand up for yourself, and "if I don't get my way, I will kill someone or myself because life isn't perfect". Its just an observation I have made.
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
I think another part of this problem is the fact that either teachers are indifferent to how students behave among each other or feel they have their hands tied and cannot discipline someone who is bullying another student. I agree with R13 that the solution to this starts with the parents at home, but the teachers have to either want to help or be allowed to.
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
Quote:
Originally Posted by
1inStripes
You are missing the point. The wussification is about not going up to someone and doing something about it, or being able to mold yourself to rise above others. Everyone gets picked on, no matter who you are at some point in your life by someone. Kids are being so coddled now a days that they don't know how to handle adversity and sometimes implode because of it at younger ages. Its very sad, and as I said bullying is wrong, but we are building a society that wants everything handed to you, and not being able to stand up for yourself, and "if I don't get my way, I will kill someone or myself because life isn't perfect". Its just an observation I have made.
Several problems with that. First one is that its usually not just one person, its a group of kids, you expect the kid to go standup to an entire group of others? Second one is that it doesn't work like it does in the movies, that whole standing up to them will make it go away, it makes it worse more times than not...and turns it into a physical issue, which makes it worse on the kid. The third thing is the zero-tolerance policies that ensure the kid getting picked on would get punished for no reason if they stood up to the bullies, which could cause a lot of problems academically and all because of these bullies. I haven't believed that 'coddling and want everything given to them' thing either, are the same parents who were supposed to have been raised differently suddenly started coddling their kids and going against how they were raised? Doubtful. I think its the same nostalgic view that's repeated by the older generation, but doesn't exist really IMO. I don't think at all its a 'if I don't get my way' issue, I see it as a view of 'I'm going to have to put up with this everyday of my life', anyone(esp. a younger person/kid) can get very pessimistic about their lives when they experience rejection/ridicule that early on in life. Who can blame them when that's all you've known, maybe even at home too, that life isn't going to get any better than this and 'I have to put up with these people all of my life'. Half of these are about some kid being called gay, there was one because the girl was from Ireland and picked on because of that, then the one girl who was tricked by a PARENT online to make her think this boy dumped her...we're talking 12/13 year olds, even a 10 year old hanged himself and the boy who jumped off the bridge was just 18.
Re: I hear more and more of these bullying cases on the news..
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MikeJones
Bull**** he tweeted his roomate was making out with a dude and said yay or something wasnt nothing hateful. The dude just had the bad luck to be an ******* to the wrong guy and now he is national news.
Who said he said something hateful? I said he specifically mentioned about him being with a guy, he had no problem with it and did nothing when he thought he was with a girl. The guy didn't jump because the guy said something hateful to him, he did it because the ******* broadcast what he was doing to a live audience on the internet and posted for people to go watched it. That's embarrassing for anyone, to have what you do in private put on the internet infront of his classmates, possibly family who didn't know about his life and complete strangers. That could ruin anyones life, just the sheer fact its your personal actions on the internet forever. The guy did it completely because he was with another guy and he put it on the internet like he was some freak show.
