Posted on 05/16/2024 5:32:40 AM PDT by Red Badger
A 10-year-old boy in Indiana killed himself after a two-year bullying campaign which his parents claim his school failed to stop, despite contacting school officials 20 times in a year.
Sammy Teusch, aged 10, of Greenfield, Indiana, died by suicide on Sunday, May 5, according to an interview his parents, Sam and Nichole Teusch, gave to 13 News WTHR. They claim Sammy, one of four siblings, took his own life after enduring constant bullying which had become increasingly physical and which Greenfield Intermediate School had done little to address.
Sammy’s parents claimed in the interview that the bullying started two years ago at elementary school with verbal taunts and then progressed to physical assaults. His parents presented several pictures of bruising as evidence of the alleged assaults. “They were making fun of him for his glasses in the beginning, then on to make fun of his teeth. It went on for a long time… He was beat up on the school bus, and the kids broke his glasses and everything,” his father said, according to the New York Post.
Sam Teusch claims that he had been in contact with his son’s school 20 times in the last year regarding the ongoing abuse, but that nothing effective had been done. “I called the school, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing about this? It keeps getting worse, and worse, and worse.'” The superintendent, Dr. Harold Olin, claimed, “no bullying report was ever submitted,” when 13 News reached out to the school about the allegations, but the father maintains, “they knew this was going on.”
The Teusch family is being strongly supported by their local community in their time of grief, according to an article by local publication The Daily Reporter. “The past two or three days we’ve probably had 1,000 people here and I probably knew 20 of them … There was a giant man that barely fit through that door who came in here and just had tears flowing down his face, and he gave me the biggest hug,” Sam Teusch told the paper.
Dozens of tributes have been left for Sammy at a tree in the family’s front yard, and hundreds attended the boy’s funeral at Brandywine Community Church in Greenfield, including the local Freedom Riders and Christian Motorcycle Club, who offered their support, according to a post by WTHR porter Chase Houle on Twitter.
Why do you suppose he might have been mentally instable enough to.commit suicide? Do you suppose being bullied for 8 hours a day might have something to do with it?
I really hate ot when people like you will first assume the child is born crazy, as opposed to he was made crazy by monstrous children and a school that saw it suitable to sacrifice him to maintain order.
Anybody who puts the blame on him are also.in the mindset that he should have been sacrificed.
I can guarantee you that almost all children in school today are veritable monsters.
Let in live with grandma or aunt Sally in Mississippi then. Or catch the bully and beat the He’ll out of him as an object lesson.
There are always options
The most successful approach for dealing with a bully is to make it clear to his parent(s) that they will be slaughtered with a machete in their place of employment if the bullying doesn't stop.
Ask me how I know this. :-O
I was a slight kid and didn’t measure up to a lot of the other more “manly” 1st Graders, but I was never bullied.
I think I got an early reputation when I knocked the front tooth out of a kid who kept stealing the candy bar out of my lunch box.
Parents need to prepare their children for everything they will come across. bullying is big. they need to know how to handle it and they need to know that their parents are in their corner. 20 trips to a school shows the kid that the parents are not up to the fight.
“Been to the school 20 times and did not take the child out of the place.”
Yes, this. Or call the cops.
If this was my kid, the school would have experienced a rush of unexplained ass-kickings instead of a suicide.
***********
Also, parents should go the last mile to let their kids know that they have bright futures, that the bullies are headed for trouble later in life, and that what the bullies think of them doesn’t matter. This kept a lot of bullied kids sane when I was their age.
Yup!
Many times the child is made a victim by a mother that babies the child.
Self esteem is not just how a person views themself. It’s the difference between how a person views themself and how reality treats them.
I’ve observed this first hand, along with the suicide when the child couldn’t deal with reality when the mother was not there to protect them.
That’s definitely what it takes. If you can physically hurt somebody, who is trying to bully you, do it.
Especially in the early grades. There seems to be some correlation to not being bullied and putting the hurt on somebody before puberty sets in.
Wrestling and boxing lessons
When my daughter was in HS many years ago, one of her girlfriends committed suicide by hanging herself in the garage.
Her home life was reportedly hell, basically being treated like a slave by her mother...................
Still, he looks like a sweet litte boy. SO sad
your tagline speaks volumes...about you.
Karate and Judo lessons..................
1/150,000,000 is not a crisis..
Exactly. What “things” did this lazy idiot do?
The worst bullying I got was in HS. It took me years to de program what those people did to me
I sincerely hope your grandchildren are one of those 150,000. Maybe it will help you develop empathy.
“Big glasses and buck teeth apparently“
I had big glasses and buck teeth in school. I was also one of the smaller kids ; late bloomer, etc..
Yes, I got bullied a lot, but we learned to deal with it. Not saying that it isn’t more intense nowadays tho.. But we learned to avoid a lot of stuff and people.
One day, around 9th grade, one of the usual bullies was on me about something.. I had had enough apparently and also realized that I was now several inches taller and in much better shape than he was. I lipped right back at him. His first impulse was to try to intimidate me.. “WHAT did you just say?!?..”
I stood up over him and repeated it, ready for what may have to be done.
He laughed it off and said “Hey!.. easy!.. I’m just kidding with you bro!..”
We were friendly after that. And with all of his cohorts too.
As an adult, in the workplace, there’s always bullying - if you don’t play the game with the right people. It really never ends in our human condition.
Knowing who you are with our Creator is most important.
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