College freshman commits suicide after sex tape posted on internet by roommate
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The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
This is why I find you so confusing. This is not what you were suggesting a few days ago, you were suggesting that these suicides were in fact influencing each other.
That's not what I said, reread my post.
Yes it can, I'm glad you're finally seeing this.
LuckyNumber7
Blue Crack Addict
God only knows if you dare suggest that a 13 year old shouldnt be commiting suicide at such an early age... I've been accused of claiming this is all a conspiracy, of being insensitive, backtracking, of having this extremely complex point that cant be understood. I make the case that I think there's more to it than these articles are posting (because they make it seem so simple - he was bullied therefore he killed himself) and apparently that's a crime. Of course, that statement gets brought up and reversed agianst me. I've apparently never experienced any of this therefore I wouldnt know (because the posters who've said that know about my personal life).
Not to note some of the quite obnoxious posts directed towards me.
This all happens because I suggest that it's not normal for a 13 year old to commit suicide (relative to older people) and all of the sudden two of the 6 are 13 years old.
That's a crime. Sorry, you're all right, it's perfectly normal that a 13 year old commited suicide. Furthermore, I think they were murdered. Furthermore, I dont like gay people. Furthermore, all of my arguments were backtracked. Furthermore, I'm a hardass. Furthermore, I've never experienced social rejection. Or deep depression. And the best part of all, I dont know how to use Google.
You'll note that those who provoked such a response from me got it. Those who were friendly, clearly didnt.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Of course 13 year olds shouldn't be commiting suicide. Suicide is not normal for any age group. No one, not one person has suggested otherwise...
Um, if you could show me where I was unfriendly I would greatly appreciate it.
A stor
Refugee
No Martha, you are not making any of this up. Cyberbulling is an all to easy of a way to abuse others.
Bullying in generations past, only took place on the school yard. The children who were taunted most likely had that safe haven at home. Parents screen the phone calls and the schools actually did something about it. Again, there was no cyberspace.
When, I was in High School. If you had beat another kid in the face. You were expelled. No exceptions. Yeah, they were actually able to do that back then. Teachers was also allowed to brake up a fight. Making sure neither child was seriously injured. They could reach out and touch your physco brat, if they were out of control. Restraining them. From hurting others. The schools would then call the police and the bully kid parents. Well, they had to deal with the situation. Not the child who was being picked on.
Lucky Number 7, don't you know that there were gay kids when I went to school? Of course there were. And for the most part, no one cared. Gays had just as many friends as the rest of us. Including being friends with the heterosexual kids. As a teenager during the Glam Rock and Punk generation. We were much more tolerant of others. Than, what I see is happening today.
Moonlit_Angel
Blue Crack Addict
I do think Lucky's right in the fact that the media does indeed like to jump on what they see as some sort of epidemic, or take some incidents and make it seem like everywhere you turn this danger exists or something like that. For every child who does commit suicide there are many who don't. They get bullied just as much but something prevents them from taking that same route. Maybe they're lucky to have some support system behind them, maybe they're particularly tough and can fight back more easily, maybe they're able to ignore it better, who knows, whatever the case may be.
I am all for working to stop kids from being bullies-believe me, I sympathize with those who've been bullied, I truly do. I was in their shoes in school, too. But the sad fact does remain that bullies do exist as of now, and we do need to teach kids how to properly respond to such nastiness. We need to make it clear that they do not have to resort to such drastic acts to solve the problem. And we need to do that in connection with learning how to stop bullying from happening. Regardless of how commonly it's occurring, the bottom line is that it is going on, and we should definitely investigate why this crap is happening so we don't have to report stories like this anymore.
You're quite welcome, and I applaud the way you and your husband, as well as your neighbors, raise your kids. You don't need to hit to make your point clear, that is definitely true. Firm yet loving parental guidance seems to do the trick just fine.
I love hearing that there's still gentlemen like your husband and your son out there, that's really reassuring. I totally agree with you, I'm not wild about those words, either. I would never let a guy call me any of those terms (and fail to understand why any woman would let a man call her such words), and I don't like using them towards other people, either. I know too many girls who've had men treat them like crap, and I find it disgusting. But again, both those men and women were not raised in homes where they were taught how to properly interact with each other.
Again,
to you and your neighbors-I'm glad you seem to get it. Keep up the good work-society is that much better off with people like your families in it 
.
Angela
I am all for working to stop kids from being bullies-believe me, I sympathize with those who've been bullied, I truly do. I was in their shoes in school, too. But the sad fact does remain that bullies do exist as of now, and we do need to teach kids how to properly respond to such nastiness. We need to make it clear that they do not have to resort to such drastic acts to solve the problem. And we need to do that in connection with learning how to stop bullying from happening. Regardless of how commonly it's occurring, the bottom line is that it is going on, and we should definitely investigate why this crap is happening so we don't have to report stories like this anymore.
Thank you Angela for the complement.
My husband and I are old fashion parents. We never hit our children but they always knew exactly what they were allowed to do and what they couldn't. I said it before. Life lessons begin at home. Praise your children for being who they are. Teach them through example to be polite and respectful of all others. All of us are different is some aspect. It is nothing to be afraid of. We should embrace these differences.
I give my husband a lot of credit. He always acts like a gentleman and never behaves in a vulgar fashion. Both of us have had "gay" friends. Neither one of us is homophobic. So our children aren't either. But, my point is that my son learned from his dad. How to be a man. My husband was never disrespectful towards anyone. Especially women.
It shocks me that young men and young women think that vulgar words such as bitch, slut, ho and etc. Are okay. They are not. It is abuse. I wonder if there parents use the same language.
There is a muslim teenage girl who's family are my neighbors. You will never hear filthy words out of her mouth. Her parents are the same way, always treating everyone with kindness and respect. Children learn what they see and parents are the strongest influence.
You're quite welcome, and I applaud the way you and your husband, as well as your neighbors, raise your kids. You don't need to hit to make your point clear, that is definitely true. Firm yet loving parental guidance seems to do the trick just fine.
I love hearing that there's still gentlemen like your husband and your son out there, that's really reassuring. I totally agree with you, I'm not wild about those words, either. I would never let a guy call me any of those terms (and fail to understand why any woman would let a man call her such words), and I don't like using them towards other people, either. I know too many girls who've had men treat them like crap, and I find it disgusting. But again, both those men and women were not raised in homes where they were taught how to properly interact with each other.
Again,
to you and your neighbors-I'm glad you seem to get it. Keep up the good work-society is that much better off with people like your families in it .Angela
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
FYM requires a thick skin and a consistent argument.
Sometimes it takes a while to develop both.
Sometimes it takes a while to develop both.
this is so true. who knows (i mean average ordinary people without doing research or hearing a statistic) how many teenagers commit suicide in a month, year, etc. this reminds me of when the media jumped on school shootings years ago, yet studies were released showing school shootings were actually down. the news sure didn't make it seem so.
Liesje
Blue Crack Addict
Correction: worse than you think. I don't see anyone else in this thread trying to say it was any more or less severe than what the parents have stated.
I agree with Angela. As I said originally, I think a major factor is that kids these days, in general, seem to lack coping skills. Maybe kids are driven to/resort to suicide younger and faster (humoring Lucky here) because they do not have the ability to see the bigger picture, to see beyond the crappy situation they might be in at that particular moment. This in NO WAY excuses bullies or bullying behavior, but....this is just what I have been observing over the years, as someone who works closely with students both in a supervisory role and the fact that I work in a call center for a college. I also see how the parents influence these attitudes and often unintentionally create learned helplessness in their children, again contributing to the lack of coping skills and emotional maturity. Of course, my evidence is purely anecdotal, but I'll stand by it. There is a trend of the kids ages 17-19 being more and more dependent on their parents and less able to deal with life on their own and it directly effects my job and my team and how we operate every year. I don't really care what the media thinks one way or another, they have no effect on my day to day work activities but teens and young adults who think they are The Shit and yet still drag umbilical cords do.
I guess unlike the point Lucky was making earlier, it does not matter to me how long someone has been bullied or "how bad" it really was, because if a kid is emotionally immature and lacking coping skills then what another kid might be able to shrug off will stick with him/her and drag him/her down. "Perception is reality".....
MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
By MEGHAN BARR, Associated Press Writer
MENTOR, Ohio – Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.
The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.
It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died at his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.
Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.
If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.
Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket — and laughed.
"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."
___
Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room.
"Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English.
At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.
Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic.
"Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."
Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her.
She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself.
When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.
Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana.
"Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile."
___
Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says.
He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class.
"It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges."
Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.
"They called him fag, homo, queer," says his mother, Jan. "He told us that."
Bullies once knocked a pile of books out of his hands on the stairs, saying, "'Pick up your books, faggot,'" says Dan Hughes, a friend of Eric's.
Kids would flick him in the head or call him names, says 20-year-old Drew Juratovac, a former student. One time, a boy called Mohat a "homo," and Juratovac told him to leave Mohat alone.
"I got up and said, 'Listen, you better leave this kid alone. Just walk away,'" he says. "And I just hit him in the face. And I got suspended for it."
Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007, two weeks before a choir trip to Hawaii.
His parents asked the coroner to call it "bullicide." At Eric's funeral and after his death, other kids told the Mohats that they had seen the teen relentlessly bullied in math class. The Mohats demanded that police investigate, but no criminal activity was found.
Two years later, in April 2009, the Mohats sued the school district, the principal, the superintendent and Eric's math teacher. The federal lawsuit is on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court considers a question of state law regarding the case.
"Did we raise him to be too polite?" Bill Mohat wonders. "Did we leave him defenseless in this school?"
___
Meredith Rezak, 16, shot herself in the head three weeks after the death of Mohat, a good friend of hers. Her cell phone, found next to her body, contained a photograph of Mohat with the caption "R.I.P. Eric a.k.a. Twiggy."
Rezak was bright, outgoing and a well-liked player on the volleyball team. Shortly before her suicide, she had joined the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and told friends and family she thought she might be gay.
Juratovac says Rezak endured her own share of bullying — "name-calling, just stupid trivial stuff" — but nobody ever knew it was getting to her.
"Meredith ended up coming out that she was a lesbian," he says. "I think much of that sparked a lot of the bullying from a lot of the other girls in school, 'cause she didn't fit in."
Her best friend, Kevin Simon, doesn't believe that bullying played a role in Rezak's death. She had serious issues at home that were unrelated to school, he says.
After Mohat's death, people saw Rezak crying at school, and friends heard her talk of suicide herself.
A year after Rezak's death, the older of her two brothers, 22-year-old Justin, also shot and killed himself. His death certificate mentioned "chronic depressive reaction."
This March, her only other sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose at age 21.
Their mother, Nancy Merritt, lives in Colorado now. She doesn't think Meredith was bullied to death but doesn't really know what happened. On the phone, her voice drifts off, sounding disconnected, confused.
"So all three of mine are gone," she says. "I have to keep breathing."
___
Most mornings before school, Jennifer Eyring would take Pepto-Bismol to calm her stomach and plead with her mother to let her stay home.
"She used to sob to me in the morning that she did not want to go," says her mother, Janet. "And this is going to bring tears to my eyes. Because I made her go to school."
Eyring, 16, was an accomplished equestrian who had a learning disability. She was developmentally delayed and had a hearing problem, so she received tutoring during the school day. For that, her mother says, she was bullied constantly.
By the end of her sophomore year in 2006, Eyring's mother had decided to pull her out of Mentor High School and enroll her in an online school the following autumn. But one night that summer, Jennifer walked into her parents' bedroom and told them she had taken some of her mother's antidepressant pills to make herself feel better. Hours later, she died of an overdose.
The Eyrings do not hold Mentor High accountable, but they believe she would be alive today had she not been bullied. Her parents are speaking out in hopes of preventing more tragedies.
"It's too late for my daughter," Janet Eyring says, "but it may not be too late for someone else."
___
No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program.
Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies.
But that's not so different from most high schools. Senior Matt Super, who's 17, says the suicides unfairly paint his school in a bad light.
"Not everybody's a good person," he says. "And in a group of 3,000 people, there are going to be bad people."
StopCyberbulling.org founder Parry Aftab says this is the first time she's heard of two sets of parents suing a school at the same time for two independent cases of bullying or cyberbullying. No one has been accused of bullying more than one of the teens who died.
Barbara Coloroso, a national anti-bullying expert, says the school is allowing a "culture of mean" to thrive, and school officials should be held responsible for the suicides — along with the bullies.
"Bullying doesn't start as criminal. They need to be held accountable the very first time they call somebody a gross term," Coloroso says. "That is the beginning of dehumanization."
MENTOR, Ohio – Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.
The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.
It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died at his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.
Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.
If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.
Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket — and laughed.
"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."
___
Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room.
"Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English.
At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.
Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic.
"Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."
Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her.
She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself.
When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.
Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana.
"Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile."
___
Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says.
He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class.
"It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges."
Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.
"They called him fag, homo, queer," says his mother, Jan. "He told us that."
Bullies once knocked a pile of books out of his hands on the stairs, saying, "'Pick up your books, faggot,'" says Dan Hughes, a friend of Eric's.
Kids would flick him in the head or call him names, says 20-year-old Drew Juratovac, a former student. One time, a boy called Mohat a "homo," and Juratovac told him to leave Mohat alone.
"I got up and said, 'Listen, you better leave this kid alone. Just walk away,'" he says. "And I just hit him in the face. And I got suspended for it."
Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007, two weeks before a choir trip to Hawaii.
His parents asked the coroner to call it "bullicide." At Eric's funeral and after his death, other kids told the Mohats that they had seen the teen relentlessly bullied in math class. The Mohats demanded that police investigate, but no criminal activity was found.
Two years later, in April 2009, the Mohats sued the school district, the principal, the superintendent and Eric's math teacher. The federal lawsuit is on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court considers a question of state law regarding the case.
"Did we raise him to be too polite?" Bill Mohat wonders. "Did we leave him defenseless in this school?"
___
Meredith Rezak, 16, shot herself in the head three weeks after the death of Mohat, a good friend of hers. Her cell phone, found next to her body, contained a photograph of Mohat with the caption "R.I.P. Eric a.k.a. Twiggy."
Rezak was bright, outgoing and a well-liked player on the volleyball team. Shortly before her suicide, she had joined the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and told friends and family she thought she might be gay.
Juratovac says Rezak endured her own share of bullying — "name-calling, just stupid trivial stuff" — but nobody ever knew it was getting to her.
"Meredith ended up coming out that she was a lesbian," he says. "I think much of that sparked a lot of the bullying from a lot of the other girls in school, 'cause she didn't fit in."
Her best friend, Kevin Simon, doesn't believe that bullying played a role in Rezak's death. She had serious issues at home that were unrelated to school, he says.
After Mohat's death, people saw Rezak crying at school, and friends heard her talk of suicide herself.
A year after Rezak's death, the older of her two brothers, 22-year-old Justin, also shot and killed himself. His death certificate mentioned "chronic depressive reaction."
This March, her only other sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose at age 21.
Their mother, Nancy Merritt, lives in Colorado now. She doesn't think Meredith was bullied to death but doesn't really know what happened. On the phone, her voice drifts off, sounding disconnected, confused.
"So all three of mine are gone," she says. "I have to keep breathing."
___
Most mornings before school, Jennifer Eyring would take Pepto-Bismol to calm her stomach and plead with her mother to let her stay home.
"She used to sob to me in the morning that she did not want to go," says her mother, Janet. "And this is going to bring tears to my eyes. Because I made her go to school."
Eyring, 16, was an accomplished equestrian who had a learning disability. She was developmentally delayed and had a hearing problem, so she received tutoring during the school day. For that, her mother says, she was bullied constantly.
By the end of her sophomore year in 2006, Eyring's mother had decided to pull her out of Mentor High School and enroll her in an online school the following autumn. But one night that summer, Jennifer walked into her parents' bedroom and told them she had taken some of her mother's antidepressant pills to make herself feel better. Hours later, she died of an overdose.
The Eyrings do not hold Mentor High accountable, but they believe she would be alive today had she not been bullied. Her parents are speaking out in hopes of preventing more tragedies.
"It's too late for my daughter," Janet Eyring says, "but it may not be too late for someone else."
___
No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program.
Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies.
But that's not so different from most high schools. Senior Matt Super, who's 17, says the suicides unfairly paint his school in a bad light.
"Not everybody's a good person," he says. "And in a group of 3,000 people, there are going to be bad people."
StopCyberbulling.org founder Parry Aftab says this is the first time she's heard of two sets of parents suing a school at the same time for two independent cases of bullying or cyberbullying. No one has been accused of bullying more than one of the teens who died.
Barbara Coloroso, a national anti-bullying expert, says the school is allowing a "culture of mean" to thrive, and school officials should be held responsible for the suicides — along with the bullies.
"Bullying doesn't start as criminal. They need to be held accountable the very first time they call somebody a gross term," Coloroso says. "That is the beginning of dehumanization."
Jive Turkey
ONE love, blood, life
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There is no outbreak of bullying or of gay kids killing themselves. There was one somewhat notable incident because of the use of social media. After that, the media jumped on a bunch of other incidents that would have otherwise not made it outside of their communities. That doesnt make these deaths any less tragic, but it's not worse than its ever been
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
while i agree, what i do think is important is that we now how how bad it is and has been for years.
it is absolutely true that it might seem like it's an epidemic, it probably isn't. just like all these missing kids and "Amber Alerts" make us think that there's more of a problem than there actually is. kids are kidnapped every day, kids kill themselves every day. we just now hear of it more, and the social media aspect gives it a contemporary hook as well as a sense of impending danger for older parents who don't know very much about "The Face Page."
however, the important thing, i think, is that we are now aware of problems that once received scan attention, and it's what might be known as a "teachable moment." right wing anti-gay groups deny all over the place that gay kids kill themselves at higher rates, and we all know that's horseshit.
Jive Turkey
ONE love, blood, life
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2005
- Messages
- 13,645
A stor
Refugee
Thank you Angela for your kind words. We did our best as parents. My grand daughter is being raised with the same values. Respect and kindness towards all others.
My God, what kind of monsters would attend Sladjana's funeral and laughed at her?
I was a teeager once, we all were. There were exchange students from Europe who attended my high school. We thought they were "cool!" We loved their accents, asked them about their countries and never made fun of them. It makes me sick that the parents of these monsters think there is nothing wrong with their kid. I'm telling you there is something seriously wrong with them. Physcotic perhaps? This is not normal behaviour for anyone.
I know it is a different generation now. But, to go to a funeral and laugh at the loved one who died? Is beyond me.
My generation wasn't perfect, far from it. But, I know one thing for sure. None of my childhood friends would have attended a funeral of a class mate and thought it was funny. We would have been crying.
My God, what kind of monsters would attend Sladjana's funeral and laughed at her?
I was a teeager once, we all were. There were exchange students from Europe who attended my high school. We thought they were "cool!" We loved their accents, asked them about their countries and never made fun of them. It makes me sick that the parents of these monsters think there is nothing wrong with their kid. I'm telling you there is something seriously wrong with them. Physcotic perhaps? This is not normal behaviour for anyone.
I know it is a different generation now. But, to go to a funeral and laugh at the loved one who died? Is beyond me.
My generation wasn't perfect, far from it. But, I know one thing for sure. None of my childhood friends would have attended a funeral of a class mate and thought it was funny. We would have been crying.
A stor
Refugee
Actually, I am seeing this in my own neighborhood. Parents who are too young to take on the job of parenting are letting the kids "fight it out." Even as young as kindergarden. Children are punching each other in the face.
While, I was growing up. If you were in the back alley, screaming at another kid. Your mother brought you inside. Sat your little butt in a chair and you couldn't go outside until you learned how to play nice.
I'm sorry, but parents were tougher parents back then. We were not allowed to hit or call each other names. We would get punished for it. Each and everytime.
Bullies were not popular. The other kids wanted nothing to do with them. Making them friendless. This taught them. To get it together if they wanted friends. Most of the time they did. Even saying "I'm sorry" and becoming a best friend to the child they picked on.
My mom had three rules when I was a teenager. 1. The school better not call me. Meaning they would only called if you were misbehaving or not doing your homework. 2. The police better never come to our house because of you. 3. Don't you ever get in trouble with a boy. She figured that covered everything.
I think the term you're looking for is psychopathic. Psychopaths have no remorse and don't care when one of their victims dies, or in this case, commits suicide.
I agree, something is very wrong with young people today. The lack of remorse and laughter over someone's suicide is troubling. I have read articles that teenagers' brains are not as developed as adults, but is there another factor coming in here? Has technology and social networking ruined human interaction? Are parents these days really that bad? What is going on?
Jive Turkey
ONE love, blood, life
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- Mar 28, 2005
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Just saw my girlfriend post this in the facebook newsfeed
It Gets Better Project
While reading through all the posts here, where people are asking 'what's wrong with these bullies?' 'where were the parents?', I just keep wondering 'where were their friends?'. Life can be shitty sometimes for everyone. Whether its from bullying, relationships, work, whatever. The only thing that sometimes makes things bearable is someone to talk to. Even if a friend didn't come to me first and I noticed they were down, I'd always try to talk them through things and cheer them up. Apart from teaching kids not to bully and to be respectful and nice to other people, it's equally important to remind them that a little unsolicited kindness, even to a stranger, can make a world of difference. I cant help but think how these kids lives could have been saved had someone just took it upon themselves to randomly sit down next to them at the lunch table and made them feel wanted
It Gets Better Project
While reading through all the posts here, where people are asking 'what's wrong with these bullies?' 'where were the parents?', I just keep wondering 'where were their friends?'. Life can be shitty sometimes for everyone. Whether its from bullying, relationships, work, whatever. The only thing that sometimes makes things bearable is someone to talk to. Even if a friend didn't come to me first and I noticed they were down, I'd always try to talk them through things and cheer them up. Apart from teaching kids not to bully and to be respectful and nice to other people, it's equally important to remind them that a little unsolicited kindness, even to a stranger, can make a world of difference. I cant help but think how these kids lives could have been saved had someone just took it upon themselves to randomly sit down next to them at the lunch table and made them feel wanted
financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
Is there any statistical proof that teen suicides are increasing?
I am as docile as you get but I think that if I were there they might have walked away with a couple fewer teeth, frankly.
A stor
Refugee
Thank you Pearl that was the term I was looking for. Have some young people become so numb, they can not relate to another's feelings?
Sadly at my age, I have been to many funerals. None of them were a laughing experience.
Social networking and technology. Was non-existent in my youth. You had to deal with people, face to face. Being accountable for your words and actions.
Still there is the factor of parents who should be knowing what their child is doing. "While you live under my roof. Your life is my business." Not fair, tough. No one said it would be.
It is quite easy for one parent to phone another. When the problem first starts. Or alert the school their child is attending. What shocks me is that nothing is being done, until it is too late. These young people didn't kill themselves because they were only teased once. The abuse they suffer has gone on for months, even years and everyone has their breaking point.
Moonlit_Angel
Blue Crack Addict
Good
. And you're welcome.I'm kinda ashamed to admit, though, that I agree with this post:
I may not have actually done that, but I sure would've thought about doing it, or something similar, at least. I hate the idea of resorting to their level, but honestly, laughing at the funeral...that's just sick. And heartless. I sincerely hope somebody put them in their place for that behavior and kicked them out.
I hate to do the whole, "What's wrong with kids today?" thing, though. This isn't unique to this generation. If social networking had been around in the 1950s, or the 1920s, or 1800s, or whatever, these same problems would've existed then, too. And had we had the kind of 24 hour news media Khanada alluded to in their post, we would've heard about this stuff more often back then, too.
Every generation has its cruel kids, its bullies, today's society is no better or worse than the previous ones. And if those bullies grow up to spawn new bullies, the cycle's going to continue until somebody finally has the sense to put a stop to it. Plus, once again, we need to start targeting adults for their bad behavior just as much as we do kids. Especially given that by definition, being an adult means you're supposed to know better than to act like a jerk.
Angela
A stor
Refugee
Good
I'm kinda ashamed to admit, though, that I agree with this post:
I may not have actually done that, but I sure would've thought about doing it, or something similar, at least. I hate the idea of resorting to their level, but honestly, laughing at the funeral...that's just sick. And heartless. I sincerely hope somebody put them in their place for that behavior and kicked them out.
I hate to do the whole, "What's wrong with kids today?" thing, though. This isn't unique to this generation. If social networking had been around in the 1950s, or the 1920s, or 1800s, or whatever, these same problems would've existed then, too. And had we had the kind of 24 hour news media Khanada alluded to in their post, we would've heard about this stuff more often back then, too.
Every generation has its cruel kids, its bullies, today's society is no better or worse than the previous ones. And if those bullies grow up to spawn new bullies, the cycle's going to continue until somebody finally has the sense to put a stop to it. Plus, once again, we need to start targeting adults for their bad behavior just as much as we do kids. Especially given that by definition, being an adult means you're supposed to know better than to act like a jerk.
Angela
I agree Angela. Bullying is much easier now, than in generations past. And you are right, there have always been bullies. That is my point. "Life lessons begin at home." Children look to their parents, learning how to function in the world around them.
I'm not saying that adults who were abused as kids. Can not raise wonderful children. They certainly can and most often they do. But, teaching them the right values and respect. Begins long before high school.
deep
Blue Crack Addict
Lured Into a Trap, Then Tortured for Being Gay
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/nyregion/09bias.html?src=mv
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/nyregion/09bias.html?src=mv
A stor
Refugee
OMG...this literally makes me sick to my stomach. The attackers should recieve life in prision with no chance of parole. Attempted murder should be added to the charges.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
In every teenage age group there's been a slight increase since 2001.
A stor
Refugee
Thank you BVS for the information. It is very sad when a young person takes their own life.
I graduated in 1974. Around 1200 kids for grades ten through twelve. Two of my class mates died from drowning. One because of an unintentional drug overdose. Zero because of suicide.
1200 kids in one school. At least ten percent of the population is gay. Do the math. No one was bullied like I am reading in these horror stories. Because my HS would have never permitted it. If you beat another kid in the face. You were automatically expelled. No question about it.
nathan1977
Rock n' Roll Doggie
Disgusting.
financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
With respect, this is all strictly anecdotal, we cannot extrapolate into assuming that gay students are less tolerated or more subject to bullying in schools as compared to a previous generation - surely it's the opposite if anything?
I am also deeply sceptical of the assumption that bullying is something new in schools, even of the suggestion that it has somehow massively increased in recent years - BVS has already cited the stats that stated that suicide rates among teens have only shown a slight increase - and that might be due to better reporting. Or, actually, it might be nothing to do with peer pressure, it might be due to the pressures they're being put under by their so-called elders and betters - have we considered this possibility?
In Ireland at the moment, it's quite fashionable to be gay, a lot of the young fellas walk around the place as though they were auditioning to be presenters on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I accept America is different, with the organised homophobia promoted by some of the right wing churches.
nathan1977
Rock n' Roll Doggie
Ohio's Mentor High School Under Scrutiny After Spate of Suicides
Four kids in the same school, bullied for different reasons.
Four kids in the same school, bullied for different reasons.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
i went to a low-key fundraiser last night for the "It Gets Better Project." we raised over $10K. it was a nice evening.
and then i saw the gay torture story, and i wish i were surprised. it's really not surprising that gay kids -- minority kids in cities, white kids in rural America -- are under threat when the right wing feels it perfectly appropriate to present gay people as a clear and present threat (a gathering storm?) to children, to families, to God, to the military, to the continuation of life on earth.
please understand that -- even here, in FYM -- your words have an effect upon the psyches of young gay men and women, as well as the transgendered, the bisexual, and the questioning.
the Pope, Maggie Gallagher, the Republican Party -- anyone who has demonized gay people for political gain has blood on their hands.
and then i saw the gay torture story, and i wish i were surprised. it's really not surprising that gay kids -- minority kids in cities, white kids in rural America -- are under threat when the right wing feels it perfectly appropriate to present gay people as a clear and present threat (a gathering storm?) to children, to families, to God, to the military, to the continuation of life on earth.
please understand that -- even here, in FYM -- your words have an effect upon the psyches of young gay men and women, as well as the transgendered, the bisexual, and the questioning.
the Pope, Maggie Gallagher, the Republican Party -- anyone who has demonized gay people for political gain has blood on their hands.
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