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9 MA Cyberbullies Indicted For Causing Suicide
Raul654 writes "Massachusetts teenager Phoebe Prince committed suicide on January 14. After her death, it was revealed that she had been the target of cyberbullying for months (and that her teachers were aware of it and did nothing). Today, nine of her classmates were indicted on charges including harassment, stalking, civil rights violations, and statutory rape. Prince's suicide echoes the earlier case of Megan Meier, who committed suicide after being cyberbullied by a classmate's mother."
Stupid laws passed of dubious Constitutional muster aimed at preventing another tragedy of this sort just as we saw after Megan Meier's suicide. Queue the national histeria.
Look: this sort of thing has been going on a long time. (While I was bullied extensively in grade school a lot of that stopped at least for me by the time I reached high school, but I can still relate.) It's tragic but not much can be done. The administrators are often clueless and/or helpless, as are the teachers, and there is only so much they can do anyway.
I survived and thrived because my parents did a good job in helping address this sort of thing with me (by talking to me about it. not by interfering). I found out later that some of my teachers had been bribing some of the bullies to stay away from me, but that didn't matter much since I was beat up by plenty of other kids as well.
So instead we will turn our schools into prisons.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This is just going to make suicide look like a more attractive option to targets of bullying
Yes. All the sympathy, compasion and righteous anger is, not without reason, for the girl. It is likely that those who yearn for sympathy, compasion and someone to defend them will now see killing themselves as a possible avenue to gain these rewards. It is a shame that none of the blame for the girls death seems to be directed at the person who put a noose around her neck and hung her.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
Oh yah, I guess there wasn't time for bullying with all that child molestation going on.
Seriously, though, I still don't buy it. You give me *facts*, then you'll convince me. You give me fuzzy pie-in-the-sky nostalgia, and I call bullshit.
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The bummer part is that the two guys, at some point at least, must have been at least SOMEWHAT nice to the girl if they were dating (article states she was "Dating a popular senior football player") and having sex. They will be the ones that get hit the hardest by this. I'm guessing charges such as "Criminal Harassment" and "Stalking" will end up as no more than slaps on the wrist while the two guys will have the sex offender stamp for the rest of their lives.