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Facebook Comment Prompts Arrests In Cyberbullying Suicide Case
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times reports on the arrests of two girls, ages 12 and 14, who allegedly harassed another 12-year-old girl who committed suicide. The girls are facing third-degree felony charges, and the police involvement was spurred by a comment on Facebook by the older of the two. 'In Internet shorthand it began "Yes, ik" — I know — "I bullied Rebecca nd she killed herself." The writer concluded that she didn't care, using an obscenity to make the point and a heart as a perverse flourish. Five weeks ago, Rebecca Ann Sedwick, a seventh grader in Lakeland in central Florida, jumped to her death from an abandoned cement factory silo after enduring a year, on and off, of face-to-face and online bullying. ... Brimming with outrage and incredulity, the sheriff said in a news conference on Tuesday that he was stunned by the older girl's Saturday Facebook posting. But he reserved his harshest words for the girl's parents for failing to monitor her behavior, after she had been questioned by the police, and for allowing her to keep her cellphone.'"
The only parents responsible are those of the girl who killed herself. The world is tough place if you don't teach you kid enough coping skills to deal with words, you are failure as a parent.
If you are parent its impractical to monitor what your kid does all the time, at least once they reach school age. You certainly can pay enough attention to them to know if they are contemplating killing themselves and do something about it. They girls parents should been able to see things were very wrong, should have taken her to get some medical or psychological attention where should would probably have been hospitalized. Instead of trying to arrest children for teasing each other parents need to pay attention to their kids.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You obviously don't have children.
Please take my advice: don't.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
Luckily, my parents granted me with the mental fortitude and tools to survive.
It's too bad they didn't also correct your grammar.
While I understand that it's bad, I also have a VERY VERY hard time condoning the punishment of essentially free speech.
I WILL NOT stand by and allow someone to be punished for speaking something that I find offensive. I don't care if it offends you, it's not your right to avoid offense.
Surely, you understand this important distinction, as the prosecution of protected speech has so many social negatives.
At what point do you propose that speech transitions into a felony akin to armed robbery? How do you make that distinction?
What is the edge case? I want to point out that in an average grade 7 glass, there are 30 students, 10 of whom are probably doing a bit of bullying and 5 of whom are probably targets.
Do you toss 10 of them in prison? How does the "crime" of bullying change when exactly the same behavior causes a suicide in one particularly vulnerable kid, but doesn't in the other 18,450 classrooms in the country? Are the other 75,000-some bullies less liable for their behavior?
I am generally opposed to handing out sentences that are not justified other than by the idea of "sending a message" because studies and numerous social experiments have shown that this has almost no effect on other similar offenders, and only serves to spend lots of money and destroy more lives.
The point the GP was making wasn't that bullying was OK, it's that prosecuting bullies (who are maybe 10%-20% of the school population, on some level) is asinine, and having the severity of the punishment depend so much on the outcome, rather than the actual behavior is problematic (although not entirely unjustified).
It's worth pointing out that attempted murder is prosecuted with about 30% of the severity of murder.
If bullying-leads-to-suicide is a crime that justifies 5 years, does bullying-without-suicide justifies 1.5 years?
I think not.