Sorry, bullying is NOT a felony, even if the target commits suicide...

reply to post by defcon5

So far all I can find is the same article, copypastad in hundreds of different places. This article states the girls were arrested because the sherriff was offended by a facebook comment, not because a crime was committed. Maybe you have a better source then?

I hate to be the one to say this, but what are kids this age doing on facebook?! Isn't it age 13 or older? They don't need electronic communication devices at this age. I thought they were banned in schools?

The parents need to take a responsibility in this. Enough with excuses like I didn't know she installed the Facebook app. I thought all the FB addicts have every single person they know added as friends. Surely her daughter was a 'friend'. She could read the posts, see they are posted by mobile, by dates and time etc. she took her out of school, good, now take the kids e device away as well.

Don't get me wrong, I do feel sympathy to the mother losing her child.

reply to post by TKDRL

Both were charged with aggravated stalking, a third-degree felony and will be processed through the juvenile court system.

Rebecca was bullied from December 2012 to February 2013, according to the probable cause affidavit. But her mother, Tricia Norman, has said the bullying began long before then and continued until Rebecca killed herself.

The older of the two girls acknowledged to the police that she had bullied Rebecca. She said she had sent Rebecca a Facebook message saying that “nobody” liked her, the affidavit said. The girl also texted Rebecca that she wanted to “fight” her, the police said. But the bullying did not end there; Rebecca was told to “kill herself” and “drink bleach and die” among other things, the police added.

The alleged bullying soon escalated to confrontations at school, including at least one physical attack, according to police.

I as well as LOTS of news stories have stated that this carried on into the school until the parents had to remove her to another school, then it continued via cyberbullying. Even the teachers admit they were aware of the situation.
Under Florida law they're guilty...
There is case law to support this...
This law has been around since 98, and its not new...
The end...

reply to post by boncho

Did not mean to assume, just that any opinion on a public bullying case usually will provide no actual insight into the case. Which makes it pointless, beyond chest beating...

A good point, and well worth noting.

It's really sad when a person can't go about there business without getting bullied. I used to get picked on a lot when I was younger. I got through it because there were adults like my mom and her friends who pumped up my ego and basically made me conceited by telling me I was better then the people who picked on me and that they were just jealous of me. By people making me conceited, it worked for me and made me look at the situation differently and I no longer let bullies get to me. Today, my bullies are lowlifes who have nothing going for them. Karma is a ****!!!

I don't understand how someone could go out of their way just to make someone's life miserable. There are some people in this world who just don't care how their actions affect another person. As long as they are having fun making someone else's life hell they will continue to do things for the lolz.

After being bullied myself, I don't think bullies should be put in jail or juvie. Those places are for real criminals. They need psychological help to get to the bottom of why they bully other people.

I know that people with mental illnesses and low self esteem don't handle criticism well at all. I speak from experience. I have landed in the hospital with severe depression after getting verbally abused. The first verbal attack was the start of more hospitalizations that I can even remember (well over 25 times). I truly believe it was the trigger for my bipolar illness. A disease that no one in my large family ever had.

I just hope that we all consider that unless we have lived in someone else's shoes you can not assume that your actions (verbally assaulting someone) will have no consequences. Words can kill by throwing people into despair.

The suicide rate has grown to epidemic proportions.

According to the WHO, suicide rates increased by 60% worldwide from 1950 to 1995

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

I believe we are all in this world to help each other in whatever way we can. Your words may have already killed someone, perhaps a stranger at wits end, and you don't even know it.

Be Kind, even to your enemies, please.

reply to post by MysterX


That's all very good advice but she was only 12. It's obvious she didn't have these strategies and felt hopelessness, no way out.

Apparently the bully was posting haven't you killed yourself yet? Go jump off a cliff.
It's must have been very taunting.

as much as I feel for this mother, I cannot wrap my head around all this cyber bullying going on these days with parents complaining about it being done to their child.
For crying out loud cut off the kids ways to get online as much as possible. Monitor it. No Facebook one or any other social media. I saw the mother on doctor drew tonight, she said she knew about the bullying. The child was deleting the apps to show her mother. Then installs them back. Then takes it to school with her.

reply to post by MysterX

That's it..it doesn't get ANY deeper than that in the real, everyday world as opposed to the intellectual pondering one.

What an obscenely arrogant rant this post is.

What you just said would make sense if it WERE REALISTIC. If science - i.e the logical examination of phenomena - yielded evidence that what you are claiming is true, then naturally - being a logical, sensitive and educated person, I would have to concede; but what you're claiming GOES AGAINST THE FACTS.

How many people do you think suffer the scars of bullying? By scars, I mean experience a trauma of sorts - trauma being defined as a feeling of tension, anxiety, fear, in situations which occurred when they were younger.. Countless people receive government support because of the bullying they experienced younger. These people are given the diagnosis of "depression" "bi-polar" "PTSD" "dissociative disorder" etc in order to claim benefits.

A reason why I am even a developmental psychologist with a focus on trauma is BECAUSE I WAS A VICTIM OF CHILDHOOD BULLYING. I was the unwitting victim of forces beyond my control. But had the system done more - and they damn right should have done more - like expel the sociopath who was bullying me - I would have had a less traumatizing experience and would have been spared the 12 or so years of not finishing school and unemployment.

Let me help describe to you what trauma is, because you don't seem to have a clue. Trauma is described as a state of HYPER AROUSAL. The "arousal" in question is emotional arousal.. First, let me remind you that the "nervous system" is a real physical thing, which includes the brain, spinal chord, nervous tracts, with interactions with many bodily systems, endocrinal, respiratory, cardiovascuular, etc. When the body experiences trauma, the nervous system is overloaded with stimulation; this triggers what behavioral psychologists call the fight-flight or freeze reactions. Trauma is a RESPONSE to threat. When an animal is being threatened, it has 3 options before it. Option number 1 and 2 are reactions of the sympathetic nervous system: they are excitatory emotions. One says "fight" and you fight. This is what you are saying should happen whenever a kid experiences bullying. But what if this kid is ordinarily shy and introverted? Or high arousal, and hyper-active? What if he has a sensitive nervous system? These people will feel the emotions of fight and flight too intensely. The fear and shame of the bullying become too great to consciously integrate; this trigger the freeze response.

In nature, the freeze response occurs after an animal realizes it has no viable option other than to play dead. However, when fear is involved with the freeze response occurs, an extremely damaging feedback loop can begin to form. The overly-excited nervous system begins to feel any emotion as a "threat". Think about it. Dissociation (the freeze effect) occurs because emotional arousal was too high. Freezing is the body/minds responds to these abnormal levels of energy. By leaving the body, the mind can "relax" and feel "safe". However, this state can become pathologically ingrained. The trauma is still locked in the body (nerve tracts, which affect muscle tension, heart rate, respiratory rate, and myriad other bodily functions)when the creatures decides to dissociate.

Having experienced this, I am astonished at how much our bodies determine our emotional realities, and so, our own particular experiences. Just because you have grown up experiencing strength and fortitude, doesn't mean someone else, subject to entirely different influences, would react differently. In my case, my mother went through a major depression when I was 12 years old - with many suicide attempts; my dads job was to keep his family together, so naturally, he focused all his energy on helping my mother. No longer having the intimate and close relationship that I used to have with her made ME get depressed. I don't know why but I wasn't happy then.

Being so unhappy and so neglected by my family during this period in my life made me vulnerable to being bullied. Do you understand? The external influence of my family life and my relationship with my mother affected my emotional state. When my family life broke down - so did my emotional state. Since I was only 12 years old - and developmentally speaking, the frontal-lobe (which deals with executive functions like cognition, self reflection, logical thinking etc) is immature. My response was limited to how I felt. When I went to school, all I felt was worry and anxiety. When others saw me this way - they too had their own emotional reactions, in kind: rejection. I lost alot of my old friends this year, and it was simply due to my crumbling home life. People want to be around high energy - not low energy. The trauma I was experiencing at home, and the neglect I was experiencing, both from my mom and dad, as well as my sister, I had no one to turn to. Besides, the shame of being bullied - of having had friends, and to see my life fall apart the way it was, was itself a traumatizing reflection. It was humiliating to the extreme.

These outside conditions predisposed me to the predations of others. In grade 8, while I was teased a lot for my height, most kids weren't callous. They had some degree of self constraint. However, there are specific personalities that take great pleasure in inflicting pain on other kids. Perhaps, for the bully, this type of reaction is a projection of their own rejection of the weakness they see in themselves. If, for example, they have an abusive parent, or experience abusive in some other way, seeing weakness in other's - particularly, seeing shyness, anxiety, in others, incites a hatred in them. They transfer the feeling they see in themselves, project it upon the person who they see exhibiting it, and seek to destroy it.

The bully I dealt with had extreme sociopathic tendencies. Low, monotone voice; rejection of social rules; a seeming obliviousness to social pressures, and derived a morbid sense of pleasure from hurting me.

To repeat. With trauma, it is a bodily response. The formative event may have been long past, but the high emotional arousal, the frozeness, it induced , remains locked in the bodies response cycles. This situation impairs social development and results in what psychologist call developmental trauma. The personality which grows around such a dysregulated, highly aroused nervous system is shaky, and lacks stability. The self appraisals we do create this notion we call "self esteem". It is a tacit, sometimes direct acknowledgement of who we are as individuals, reified as certain ideas about ourselves which neatly harmonize with the underlying nervous system function. For the socially traumatized, the only emotion they know is "bad".

The science shows that bullying causes real life long troubles in many susceptible people. Not all people are blessed with the same circumstances, and so, will not respond to the experience of bullying in the same way.
The people who engage in rampant bullying need to be isolated from the people they're hurting. To not do so allows the bully to inflict greater trauma, greater suffering, on another life.

We have to help people like that - like me, who didn't have the resources to help themselves

reply to post by _BoneZ_


So what. The girl had more issues then someone bullying her.

It's the dam medias fault that this is being made into a big deal

Another pathetic soul killed itself. who cares.

I'm sick of this whole lets blame everyone else for our kids' problems epidemic that's taking over America right now. Be a god damn parent. Parent's that care do not go to the media. I live near where this happened.It's all over the news. Frankly I'm sick of hearing about how it's everyone elses fault but HERS. As the OP said...no one forced her to do it.

mirageofdeceit
Bullying is a form of psychological torture. It should be treated very harshly indeed.

Some of the comments here suggesting that bullying is not serious are outrageous. I suppose it is OK to harm small animals, too? That is where murderers start out.

Comparing bullying to hurting small animals are we now?

Is this what ATS has come to?

That comment is so ridiculous. Mods need to do their jobs.

A person should never bully anyone else.

The golden rule should always be followed. Do unto others...

If you don't want it done to you, don't be hypocrite and go and doing it to other people.

You don't like being called names? Don't call people names.

You don't like being physically harassed? Don't physically harass other people.

Now, if you are being bullied you need to do something about it.

Try to make light of a bully, make a joke out of it, if you can. Make a friend out of him/her. That doesn't always work.

Be prepared. If you know where a bully is going to be, avoid that place. Don't walk around alone, find someone who will walk with you to or from school/playground/park. If you see the bully walk the other way, avoid him

Communicate. Let the person know how he or she is making you feel by the way they are treating you. Talk with a teacher and let them know, talk with your parents and let them know. If you are being bullied, do not keep it to yourself. It is not something that is to be embarrassed about. Your parents and teachers need to know. Your parents need to take actions. They need to talk to your teachers, they need to find the person doing the bullying and talk with him/her, they need to find the parents of the bully as well and talk with them.

If you are a parent DO NOT let your child be bullied. Prepare them to handle bullies. Children should not have to face them alone. If you are shy or timid, DO NOT be when it comes to bullies. You need to stand your ground and take action.

No one needs to face a bully alone.

Good simple video for young ones about bullying:

ETA:
How to Beat a Bully Without Your Fists

nightstalker78
reply to post by _BoneZ_

 

So what. The girl had more issues then someone bullying her.

It's the dam medias fault that this is being made into a big deal

Another pathetic soul killed itself. who cares.

I'm sick of this whole lets blame everyone else for our kids' problems epidemic that's taking over America right now. Be a god damn parent. Parent's that care do not go to the media. I live near where this happened.It's all over the news. Frankly I'm sick of hearing about how it's everyone elses fault but HERS. As the OP said...no one forced her to do it.

The amount of empathy you show for your fellow man is astounding.... *sarcasm*

How would you feel if your son or daughter killed themselves? I hope that is one pain you never have to live through regardless of your callous pathetic comment....

Darkphoenix77

nightstalker78
reply to post by _BoneZ_

 

So what. The girl had more issues then someone bullying her.

It's the dam medias fault that this is being made into a big deal

Another pathetic soul killed itself. who cares.

I'm sick of this whole lets blame everyone else for our kids' problems epidemic that's taking over America right now. Be a god damn parent. Parent's that care do not go to the media. I live near where this happened.It's all over the news. Frankly I'm sick of hearing about how it's everyone elses fault but HERS. As the OP said...no one forced her to do it.

The amount of empathy you show for your fellow man is astounding.... *sarcasm*

How would you feel if your son or daughter killed themselves? I hope that is one pain you never have to live through regardless of your callous pathetic comment....

edit on 18-10-2013 by Darkphoenix77 because: punctuation

My man,you must be young. I've been on this earth 36 years. Long enough to smell bull# when I see it. This story reeks of it. Trust me,they've been tryin' to feed it to us down here in Florida.I have a 6 year old daughter. I couldn't imagine her killing herself. But you know what? if she wanted to be a coward and off herself? I'll call her on it. I'll tell her I love her. I'll embrace my child and let her know she can come to me with anything. She already knows it. As a parent I'm sorry but there's lousy parenting going on in the OPs story.

reply to post by Broom


While what you've suggested are all viable options, sometimes bullying is unruly, and so rooted in the developmental trauma - internal dysregulation of the victims nervous system - that the ability to make an effective connection with the bully, that is, the ability to access emotions that aren't encumbered by anxiety and fear, is completely compromised.

There is no thus no viable solution to this sort of bullying other than to directly threaten the bully. By "threaten" , I mean any course of action that deters further bullying. First, we should approach the bully and attempt to reason with him/her in hope that the underlying desire to bully will be uncovered, and the bully can more empathically relate with the bullied. If this doesn't work, the threat becomes a real threat: if it doesn't end, he will be expelled.

Also, the ability to recognize bullying for teachers should go beyond the personal resports of the student being bullied. To often, the shame and fear of being perceived as a "rat" by other student forbids going to the authorities. Teacher should understand this impulse and be aware of the more subtle clues: quietness, dejection, and awkward socializing are big signs.

To think, back when I was being bullied, - and this bullying left me absolutely dysfunctional, sweating and experiencing a non-stop feeling of toxic shame, anxiety and self consciousness, for a teacher to "leave it as it is" because the student was unwilling to reveal what was occurring to him, was shameful and fatuous. We are the freaking adults; we can't just indolently stand by and listen to what a student says, knowing what we do about "pride reactions" kids have to bullying. We recognize the problem, scope out the problem, and remove the problem.

Of course, this isn't the easiest thing to do. Teachers already feel burdened by the teaching, marking, planning that they have to do. To also play psychologist and to remain attentive to the social skills of their students, and to pay a special attention to those students who are bullying and being bullied, might be too much for them. However, it is necessary that we develop solutions that help the bullied students, who already feel so powerless, and face a lifetime struggle with socializing if this experience is snubbed on its head, in the beginning. The general rule being, the less the trauma, the less problem it causes. The longer and more enduring the sense of trauma, the deeper the disorganization in the nervous system becomes. Kids like this will be the ones you see looking down in the hall ways, fearing to look up at others, to face their eye contact.

That this even exists - that these poor souls are stricken like this because of he malicious abuse of others - says we have more to do. We need to help identify these students EARLY ON; kids with bullying tendencies should be watched; kids who are susceptible to bullying should be monitored. If we can do this, we can help build a more safe environment for EVERY kid who goes to school, not just those with more advantageous circumstances.

reply to post by Astrocyte


You make some good points. Most schools have counselors that deal with these sorts of problems. So perhaps, instead of going to an already swamped teacher about the problem, find the school counselor, or equivalent.

reply to post by Broom


Perhaps that is the best solution. We need guidance counselors with a more thorough and up-to-date psychological training. And they need to be the ones, particularly early on, who keep an eye on the developmental progress of the students they monitor.

For this to be effectively done, we need more of these psychologists. When I was in school, a school of about 500 students, there were 4 guidance counselors. That means, each counselor had 125 students to deal with! You can hardly keep a keen eye on a students social development if you have 125 of them to follow. We need to buttress these numbers by adding double the number. 8-10 counselors each covering 50-60 students. These counselors should be given access to classroom periods to analyze how the students relate with one another; which students seem disengaged, and dealing with bullying. The counselor can then inform the teacher to be aware of this student and be vigilant of who may be causing him trouble.

This is how the problem can be found. To deal with it requires a sound combination of parental, guidance counselor, teacher, and possibly psychological support. A psychologist can be brought in (many schools do this) to help the counselor teacher handle the issue.

Nervous system dysregulation is a painful fact, a difficult reality that many people develop early on in life. For them, the school years are are years of psychological torture. The dysregulation they feel is hammered in further by adolescent callousness. Working with the bullied kid is important and necessary; but we also need to expunge students who are unable to keep themselves from bullying other children. I understand why they do it - but their response is maladaptive; it coarsens their personality, and inflicts untold damage on the kid they do it to.

As a side note, I'm sure someone will wonder, why is it some people reflect on their bullying as a "good thing"? This is a a poorly thought out analysis of the effect bullying had on them. Here is why. The "positive spin" they give to the bullying is related to their current emotional reality; if they've become a mature, individuated personality, they will naturally feel proud of their ability to overcome their bullying. They will think - wrongly - that their response was a typical, default reaction. In reality, there response was do to many circumstances shaping and priming their experience. Maybe someone important helped develop their sense of self - showed them interest and midwifed their blossoming individuality. Or, maybe, their bullying was simply not as bad that experienced by others. Perhaps it came later in life - and so hadn't become a hardened experience which those with earlier trauma learn to live with.

Countless explanations abound for why people become the way they are. Yes, in the end, most of us will admit that the bad things which happened to us helped us become who we are. But that doesn't mean the bad is something to be sought or sanctioned. Bullying is an evil that doesn't always help; there aren't always success stories from bullying. But rather, stories - stories which I hear everyday - of anxiety, fear, panic, - feelings rigidly built into the nervous system - which affects their daily living.

So, the only mature response to bullying is to try to minimize it.

Over the past 4 years I have been very uncomfortable with the sensational media coverage of suicides (mostly by people under 18 and, to a lesser extent, college students). The sensationalized media exploitation often has included a favorite performer of the deceased chiming in on the media coverage of a young person gone too soon.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention offers the following recommendations for reporting about suicides:


* More than 50 research studies worldwide have found that certain types of news coverage can increase the likelihood of suicide in vulnerable individuals. The magnitude of the increase is related to the amount, duration and prominence of coverage.

* Risk of additional suicides increases when the story explicitly describes the suicide method, uses dramatic/graphic headlines or images, and repeated/extensive coverage sensationalizes or glamorizes a death.

* Covering suicide carefully, even briefly, can change public misperceptions and correct myths, which can encourage those who are vulnerable or at risk to seek help.

* Avoid reporting that death by suicide was preceded by a single event, such as a recent job loss, divorce or bad grades. Reporting like this leaves the public with an overly simplistic and misleading understanding of suicide

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention shares the following chart for US reporters:


One thing is clear: US media is NOT following any of these restrictions and has instead chosen a sensational approach attributing the suicide of youths to one single event/cause.

Journalistic Standards in Reporting Suicide Outside the United States
en.wikipedia.org...
Various countries have national journalism codes which range from one extreme of, "Suicide and attempted suicide should in general never be given any mention" (Norway) to a more moderate, "In cases of suicide, publishing or broadcasting information in an exaggerated way that goes beyond normal dimensions of reporting with the purpose of influencing readers or spectators should not occur."

The study's author, University of London psychologist Alex Mesoudi, recommends that reporters follow the sort of guidelines the World Health Organization and others endorse for coverage of any suicide:
- Use extreme restraint in covering these deaths — keep the word "suicide" out of the headline, don't romanticize the death, and limit the number of stories. Photography, pictures, visual images or film depicting such cases should not be made public" (Turkey).
- While many countries do not have national codes, media outlets still often have in-house guidelines along similar lines.
- Guidelines on the reporting of suicides in Ireland were introduced recently which attempt to remove any positive connotations the act might have (e.g. using the term "completed" rather than "successful" when describing a suicide attempt which resulted in a death).
- The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's journalistic standards and practices manual discourages the reporting of the details of suicide.

My Thoughts
The sensationalist reporting of youth suicides has dramatically changed in the last 5-10 years; this reporting feels more like an exploitation of the death which gives the deceased young person the "I'll show them" moment or last word that so many young people struggling through a tough period strive for in their misguided, suicidal thought process. When celebrities are added to the mix after death, the exploitation of the deceased becomes even more dangerous. One of the main reasons that journalistic standards would not allow the sensationalized reporting of today is that such reporting serves as a catalyst for troubled youth who emulate the sensationalized suicide to be loved in death where in life they felt no love.

I feel that so much of these senseless deaths could be alleviated if the reporting of youth suicides were not sensationalized. Obviously there are other, more important, safeguards that are critically important to suicide prevention; but this would be a great beginning.

This story strikes close to home as my niece (11) was bullied earlier this year to the point she was afraid to go to school .... and now she is the one bullying another girl! The kids mother went to the school and reported it and my niece got suspended. After she got grounded for her own bullying she attempted to jump out of her window to kill herself. As I write this she is under a 72 hour evaluation at Johns Hopkins.

I'm sure it was just all an act because that girl really knows how to manipulate her mother - but you can never be too careful.

On topic - "bullying" can be so many different things so it shouldn't be punishable as a felony. Stalking, attacking etc are already crimes so that's good enough IMO.

nightstalker78

Darkphoenix77

nightstalker78
reply to post by _BoneZ_

 

So what. The girl had more issues then someone bullying her.

It's the dam medias fault that this is being made into a big deal

Another pathetic soul killed itself. who cares.

I'm sick of this whole lets blame everyone else for our kids' problems epidemic that's taking over America right now. Be a god damn parent. Parent's that care do not go to the media. I live near where this happened.It's all over the news. Frankly I'm sick of hearing about how it's everyone elses fault but HERS. As the OP said...no one forced her to do it.

The amount of empathy you show for your fellow man is astounding.... *sarcasm*

How would you feel if your son or daughter killed themselves? I hope that is one pain you never have to live through regardless of your callous pathetic comment....

edit on 18-10-2013 by Darkphoenix77 because: punctuation

My man,you must be young. I've been on this earth 36 years. Long enough to smell bull# when I see it. This story reeks of it. Trust me,they've been tryin' to feed it to us down here in Florida.I have a 6 year old daughter. I couldn't imagine her killing herself. But you know what? if she wanted to be a coward and off herself? I'll call her on it. I'll tell her I love her. I'll embrace my child and let her know she can come to me with anything. She already knows it. As a parent I'm sorry but there's lousy parenting going on in the OPs story.

Age does not = wisdom......btw, I'm 38 junior. I gave you a star because out of your whole statement I do agree with one thing you said......the media are sensationalizing it. I am sure most parents do not think "You know, I think that one day Julie just might go toss herself off a bridge!" It comes as a shock, and because someone chooses to end their life does not necessarily make them a coward or mean that their was lousy parenting to blame. I would be careful what you say on parenting because with most households needing 2-3 jobs minimum these days to just stay afloat that is a label no parent is safe from being labeled with in the event something bad happens. Without personally knowing the people you have no right to make a blanket statement on the parenting involved. I reiterate, I hope that it is a pain you never have to endure and experience.

reply to post by RedParrotHead


Mmm, there's an underlying problem there. Bipolar, maybe.