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 was the kid being bullied and singled out?”
Probably campaigning for an LGBT Center or something.
I notice in all of these boring "I stood up to my bully and made him back down" stories it is always one bully.
Just one.
If there are ever any more they are so awed by you and your great power that they embrace you like a brother.
And usually the "bully" was just running his mouth.
Some how these tales of inspiration do not work very well for a kid who is being beat bloody on the school bus by four larger children.
Unhappy children make other children unhappy.
Mom and Dad can’t get along? Take it out on another kid.
Older brother whupping on you? Take it out on another kid.
Don’t understand how to diagram a sentence? Take it out on another kid.
Some kid has a nice bike and you don’t? Take it out on the kid.
Little Susie smiled at Billy instead of you? Take it out on Billy.
Children need to be taught self control.
ARTH ping!
Someone needs to be put on the carpet and the details need to be accumulated and made public.
Enrollment by Gender: | |
|---|---|
| Male | 272 |
| Female | 276 |
Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity: | |
|---|---|
| American Indian or Alaska Native | 1 |
| Asian | 2 |
| Black or African American | 2 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 12 |
| Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander | 1 |
| Not Specified | 0 |
| Two or more races | 25 |
| White | 505 |
My suggestion is to stop replying to Ikeon, his replies do not merit replies.
He’s on my ignore list from now on.
LOL!
I’m not bullying you. I made a suggestion to you reply to your posts (regarding this topic).
Why did they keep contacting the indifferent school instead of contacting the other parents? If the parents had got together and decided they did not want their children to be a bully or a victim, they could have had some social events in which the parents played games with their children, take them to a park with swings and slides, a picnic—anything to isolate troubled pairs and give loving but firm counsel from four parents. The kid needed one or two champions among the kids themselves, and also one or more staff or faculty.
Perhaps the parents of the victim themselves were shy and nonassertive. Now they know — not acting boldly when the situation calls for it can be deadly. God bless and comfort them all, especially the innocent siblings of the little boy. RIP
That said, hope the family sues the school bigly.
In my observation of life in general, most “officials” in a situation side with the bully. I’ve seen it over and over in multiple settings. If the victim fights back, they punish them. Unless, somehow, the victim manages to “beat” the bully. In today’s schools, no fist fight to settle it is allowed any more.
Thanks for your input, Ms. School Principal. How's your cat?
My son who was very, very small for his age got in trouble for retaliating against a much larger kid in middle school. However, both boys were called in and so were both sets of parents. The boys became very good friends after that. Like you said though, my little son was called in first.
Hindsight is 20 20 but there are many things he could have done like confronting the parents and the bullies, teach the youngster how to defend himself, go directly to the school board..
Same thought -- if only a posse of the kid's churchmen had shown up waiting for him outside the school or bus stop, or the motorcyclists had done a ride-by and circled the bully...
When FR's old DC chapter was freeping anti-war protesters in front of Walter Reed Army Hospital 2004–2012, those commies were giving us and the family members of the soldiers a hard time—until the night Rolling Thunder showed up...
This happened to me when I was 14.
It took me 20 years to emotionally recover.
The school did nothing.
“The parents were apparently both quadriplegic and were learning disabled, rendering them unable to remove the child from the school.”
There’s video of both parents standing at the funeral and of daddy (big guy with a shaved head and tats) walking behind the casket and pallbearers.
Clearly you have never been bullied.
In Jr HS, everyday I had a gang of about 10 follow me around.
One guy would sharpen his pencil every class and stab me in the back when the teacher turned her back.
A couple of guys would take turns bashing my head into lockers.
Twice I want to the office to get help.
Nothing happened.
Eventually I went toe to toe and beat the heck out of the gang leader.
They left me alone after that but it took me 20 years to emotionally recover.
Astounding, isn't it?
Yeah, strange that detail is missing.
Puzzling. Incomprehensible, can’t remotely imagine what it might be.
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