Cops: Taunted boy killed self

Boston Herald ^

[VermiciousKnid]

Hi TofT,

I found your reply to LadyJag interesting — in fact I went back and re-read LadyJag’s original post because of it.

Both of you speak of being bullied by boys in school. In my case, while the boys certainly did their share of pigtail pulling, by far the worst bullies at my schools were girls, and usually small packs of them. I went to public schools in NYC in the 70s, BTW.

I hated bullies back then, and I detest them still to this day and so, after a one or two incidents of my own in junior high, almost all of my contact from then on with bullies was not on my own behalf, but on the victim’s. (At a final height of 6 feet, it was a foolish bunch of girls who would tangle with me personally.) I was indeed “that crazy white girl”.

Additionally, I happen to agree with you that NO child should have to worry about this kind of bullying in school, but I do wish that the schools didn’t punish a kid who is being bullied for defending himself. That sort of “zero tolerance” sends the wrong message in both directions. It tells the good kid that it doesn’t matter what he does, he’s screwed, and it tells the bully that bad behavior gets the same response from adults that good behavior does. There is no incentive to change.

I keep thinking about this poor little boy and his parents and saying, why didn’t SOMEBODY stand up for him? No other kids did, the teachers didn’t, the school itself didn’t, and (forgive me), his parents didn’t either. He should have been removed from the school. It seems that everyone around this child fell down on the job, and it makes me sad. I almost wish I was a young girl again, so I could stand up for him myself.

Regards,

[Tired of Taxes]

VermiciousKnid,

Boy, do I wish I had a friend like you back in school. :-) I don’t think it’s crazy at all for a 6 ft. girl to stand up for herself. However, a 5’2” bit of nothing doing the same is pretty crazy. So, I think I have the market on “crazy” cornered here. ;-)

My saving grace was that I had the very last bus stop. There were times when I was threatened to be jumped, but as the bus rolled on and they realized how far they’d have to walk back home, they would get off the bus. So, I was a very lucky person.

For me, too, aside from a few incidents, I mostly had problems with other girls, and I went to school in the late ‘70’s, too. As bad as things were back then, I wonder if times were easier for us. I honestly don’t know. I homeschool our three sons.

I agree with you about zero tolerance. A few posts above, I posted a link to a video of a news report about this story. The school’s response to the bullying was so pathetic. I can’t stop thinking about this young boy, too, and wishing someone would’ve helped him. Obviously, he was raised to be a nice kid, played sports, went to church on Sundays. He was just in way over his head at school.

I’ve met so many parents who started homeschooling due to bullying at school. One family had a daughter who was assaulted by a boy, and the principal got angry with the parents for calling the police. :-0 Another had a son who was fighting cancer in middle school, and the kids there were harrassing and beating him up. Often, school mothers would come to our homeschool meetings to look into homeschooling. I’ll never forget one mother whose two sons had gone to 13 different schools. Don’t ask me how she found 13 different schools. But, at every school, these two boys were being shoved around and beaten up. This type of story seems so common.

[VermiciousKnid]

LOL...I wasn’t always 6 feet tall, TofT. In fact, I was among the smallest kids in the school at the start of junior high. But when I was 14, I started to shoot up — 8 inches in one year! By 17 I was a 6-footer.

As I said, it was rare for a one-on-one bullying situation in my schools, and in my experience it was ALWAYS a racial incident. “That Crazy White Girl” really was my nickname among many of the bullies, though I admit I never uttered, “I’m gunna eat your EYES!” to anyone. Wish I had, though...I’d be a legend! LOL

Regards,

[Altura Ct.]

More...we are a terrible nation tripe. I guess we are all guilty of killing this child. We must conform. We must conform. Of course his home life, Socialistic BS and many other factors probably contributed to this but we don’t want to look at that.

[AppyPappy]

We have stripped the morals out of the school which enables the bullies to control the school.

[Tired of Taxes]

Ok, then you were just as crazy as I was. At least up to a certain age. :-) Yes, the trouble I encountered in high school usually was a racial incident for me, too, but before high school, I went to predominately all-white Catholic schools, and I encountered trouble there, too, mostly from boys.

Ah, the stories I’ll bet we both could tell... But, I never tried “I’m gonna eat your eyes,” either. That’s truly a classic.