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.
It’s possible the family would have lost their home without both parents working, couldn’t afford to move....but if they could do everything over, those poor parents would have found a way.
1000 people reaching out, 100s of motorcycles: if the goodness in the community would come forward before tragedy.
You’d think by high school the kids would have matured enough to see how juvenile bullying is. I guess some kids are mentally/emotionally arrest, or just so insecure they have to beat someone else down to make themselves look bigger.
If I was this kids brother, I would learn how to fight and then when the time was right I would make sure the bullys never bullied again.
I play the odds. 1/150,000,000 is only 2x the chance of winning the lottery.
otoh i realize most people are stupid, really stupid, and after reading your posts, the odds are very much in your favor.
Call me stupid, if you wish. Being decency is evidence of intelligence, I’m a decent person and you’re not.
The kid is dead and you’re still bullying him when he’s in the grave.
The parents were apparently both quadriplegic and were learning disabled, rendering them unable to remove the child from the school.
“...beat someone else down to make themselves look bigger...
Well, that’s it exactly. I am pretty sure that women are mostly in this category. Heaven preserve me from insecure women. They are the worst!
The behavior carries over into the work place but, no confident and mature woman ever did that kind of stuff to me.
Do men do that stuff to each other?
Very stupid man.
Leftist?
No child is trapped. You remove him.
Stupid thinking.
How could they send him out every day to a poisonous environment? That takes stubborn to a whole new level.
High School as a freshman found me having to deal with a Senior attempting to bully me. I wasn’t exactly small or slight, being average height and weight.
Eventually, as I tried staying away from getting physical, one day that prick stepped over the line and I reflexively split his lip. Got a black eye out of the encounter, but,
nobody ever tried to bully me again.
Exactly....something strange here.
Four elementary schools, 2 middle schools, two high schools. St Michaels Catholic school. St. John the Evangelist Catholic School
https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/indiana/st-michael-s-catholic-school-307591
Been to the school 20 times and did not take the child out of the place.
~~~
That was my first thought. Get him out of there. But upon reflection, it’s not a solution, not unless you are full committal to home schooling. I doubt he thought it would ever come to suicide. I had fights with bullies when I was in school, specially in the early years. I had things broken. It’s not exceptionally unusual. Though I wouldn’t say it’s “normal” exactly either, but I agree the school definitely should have done something though. When I was in school, particularly in high school, if you were caught fighting, both sides usually got suspended. No exceptions for who started it, which seems unfair, but it was a strong deterrent, because after a few suspensions they start talking expulsion... and that’s how it should be. Then it’s not a one-off personality conflict or someone having a really bad day. Just like in society with adults, violent children and sociopaths should not get to ruin everyone’s lives and pursuits.
If those parents have evidence of 20+ complaints, it’s easily time to start talking to lawyers.
I don’t have kids but I can’t imagine I would not have pulled my child out of that school pretty quickly.
I play the odds. 1/150,000,000 is only 2x the chance of winning the lottery.
otoh i realize most people are stupid, really stupid, and after reading your posts, the odds are very much in your favor.
I can tell you how I stopped this...
I’m the oldest of 4 by 6 years. One day during summer when school was out my youngest brother came home crying. I found out the neighborhood group of 8-9 yo kids were playing baseball down at the end of the subdivision. One kid much bigger than the rest (basically fatter) had bullied my brother. I marched my brother down the street and even he thought “I” was going to do something. Instead I ordered my little brother to pick up the bat and hit that kid upside the head. My brother looked at me with eyes the size of saucers, as did the bully. My brother was frozen until I yelled at him. He grabbed the bat and took one step towards the bully and I told him to drop the bat. I turned to the bully and told him next time he won’t be the one with the bat. No more problem.
All throughout Jr. High and HS I operated like that. Whether I knew you or not I didn’t tolerate anyone getting bullied anywhere in my vicinity. Since I was a letter jock that meant I had to get in the face of my friends and teammates from time to time but I made it clear if you bullied younger or weaker kids you were going to have to deal with me. I called myself a bully of bullies.
Now I don’t know why there aren’t kids that have this attitude today. To be fair about how different it is today, the world was vastly different in a small college town 50 years ago. But still, really? No kid(s) nowadays intervene for the weak and vulnerable?
I don’t even recognize the place anymore...
Bullies in government schools are a feature, not a bug. Like prison rapists, they serve Caesar’s purposes of suppressing unscheduled thought.
If you mean the excuse used by the future felons, it was that he had the Bennet Tombstones and was a four eyes. This justified, in their dark little hearts, beating the crap out of him.
If you mean the real reason, it was because their parents failed in their job of civilizing their little savages and the teachers find bullies useful.
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