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Nine Charged in Bullying of Massachusetts Teen Who Killed Herself

MyOwnDrum

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I, for one, am glad they are prosecuting these young people for their criminal behavior. The school that they all attended should have taken strong action against them long before it came to this.

I think that young people should follow the same laws as adults. I think schools should not tolerate criminal activity on school grounds. I think the school officials should also, in some way, be called to task.

FOXNews.com - Nine Charged in Bullying of Massachusetts Teen Who Killed Herself

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- Nine teens have been charged in the "unrelenting" bullying of a teenage girl from Ireland who killed herself after being raped and enduring months of torment by classmates in person and online, a prosecutor said Monday.

Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley was stalked and harassed nearly constantly from September until she killed herself Jan. 14. The freshman had recently moved to western Massachusetts from Ireland.

"The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school. The bullying for her was intolerable," Scheibel said.

Six teens -- four girls and two boys -- face charges including statutory rape, assault, violation of civil rights resulting in injury, criminal harassment, disturbance of a school assembly and stalking. Three younger girls face delinquency charges.

Scheibel said the harassment began in September. She said school officials knew about the bullying, but none will face criminal charges.
 
Bullies like that deserve to burn. I don't care if some are underage. They should be tried as adults.
 
This is a tragic story and I hope that justice is served.

Further information:

Last fall, she moved from Ireland into western Massachusetts, a new town, a new high school, a new country, a new culture. She was 15, when all that matters is being liked and wearing the right clothes and just fitting in.

She was a freshman and she had a brief fling with a senior, a football player, and for this she became the target of the Mean Girls, who decided then and there that Phoebe didn’t know her place and that Phoebe would pay.

Kids can be mean, but the Mean Girls took it to another level, according to students and parents. They followed Phoebe around, calling her a slut. When they wanted to be more specific, they called her an Irish slut.

The name-calling, the stalking, the intimidation was relentless.

Ten days ago, Phoebe was walking home from school when one of the Mean Girls drove by in a car. An insult and an energy drink can came flying out the car window in Phoebe’s direction.

Phoebe kept walking, past the abuse, past the can, past the white picket fence, into her house. Then she walked into a closet and hanged herself. Her 12-year-old sister found her.

You would think this would give the bullies who hounded Phoebe some pause. Instead, they went on Facebook and mocked her in death.

They told State Police detectives they did nothing wrong, had nothing to do with Phoebe killing herself.

And then they went right back to school and started badmouthing Phoebe.

They had a dance, a cotillion, at the Log Cabin in Holyoke two days after Phoebe’s sister found her in the closet, and some who were there say one of the Mean Girls bragged about how she played dumb with the detectives who questioned her.

Last week, one of the Springfield TV stations sent a crew to South Hadley High to talk to the kids.

One girl was interviewed on camera, and she said what was common knowledge: that bullies were stalking the corridors of South Hadley High.

As soon as the TV crew was out of sight, one of the Mean Girls came up and slammed the girl who had been interviewed against a locker and punched her in the head.

The Mean Girls are pretty, and popular, and play sports.

So far, they appear to be untouchable, too.

The untouchable Mean Girls - The Boston Globe
 
This is a tragic story and I hope that justice is served.

Further information:



The untouchable Mean Girls - The Boston Globe

Wow, amazing. I happen to have a 15 yr old daughter. Whenever we watch a movie depicting nasty high school girls, she always informs me how unrealistic that is, that it never happens at her school.

I thank God she attends a school where this sort of stuff doesn't occur.
 
Welcome to Massachusetts.

Sad thing is, this will probably get blamed on the school.
 
Welcome to Massachusetts.

Sad thing is, this will probably get blamed on the school.

Well it sort of depends. If certain actions, like physical violence, were done at school and the school didn't do anything then the school needs to look at how they handle situations like this. But the school should not hold majority of the blame. Still though my heart goes out to this girl and her family as I was also the victim of high school bullying and it is really difficult to deal with at times.
 
Well it sort of depends. If certain actions, like physical violence, were done at school and the school didn't do anything then the school needs to look at how they handle situations like this. But the school should not hold majority of the blame. Still though my heart goes out to this girl and her family as I was also the victim of high school bullying and it is really difficult to deal with at times.

Schools are powerless these days. They can't discpline problem kids, they can't expel them, they can't count on parents to get involved.

It's daytime juvenile prison daycare in many areas. Learning is a complete afterthought.
 
Well it sort of depends. If certain actions, like physical violence, were done at school and the school didn't do anything then the school needs to look at how they handle situations like this.
Would certainly agree with that.
But the school should not hold majority of the blame. Still though my heart goes out to this girl and her family as I was also the victim of high school bullying and it is really difficult to deal with at times.
Would LOVE to know if at any time the parents of these little bitches were made aware of what a bang-up job they did raising their kids (before it was too late).
 
This is why people should just learn to fight well enough to defend themselves from crap like that. Beat these girls asses, and they'll eventually stop.
 
Would LOVE to know if at any time the parents of these little bitches were made aware of what a bang-up job they did raising their kids (before it was too late).

Well I know in my case when my parents finally were able to convince the school to address the problem, the parents of the students said I was making it all up. Even after four or five teachers came forward and said exactly what I said. Oddly enough though so same teachers never once tried to stop the kids. So, I think at first these parents will probably go through some denial because I don't think many, if any, parents imagine their kids to grow up like these girls did.
 
Well I know in my case when my parents finally were able to convince the school to address the problem, the parents of the students said I was making it all up.
Their idiocy doesn't surprise me, and I expect the parents of these bullies to be equally clueless, though it's going to be a bit difficult for them to deny or rationalize the facebook mocking of the girl's death.
 
This is why people should just learn to fight well enough to defend themselves from crap like that. Beat these girls asses, and they'll eventually stop.

Not everyone CAN physically fight though, and even if you can, that doesn't work quite as well with girls, I don't think. Then there's also the fact that, sadly, under zero tolerance policies, a victim physically fighting back against bullies would be a hell of a lot more likely to incur disciplinary action than every nasty incidence of bullying they committed.

Unfortunately, a lot of bullying victims are in a no-win situation. Fight back, be disciplined. Report the bullies, be harrassed for reporting them. Try to ignore them, they'll often escalate in an attempt to get a reaction. We shouldn't expect the bullied to solve the problem, quite often just getting through the day is hard enough for them.

Anyone else now feeling really, really glad to be out of high-school?
 
Yeah for sure. I think the zero tolerances for fighting thing is a mistake. Sometimes people get in scruffs. Now it's all dependent upon conditions and school and stuff; but not all fighting is bad. Sometimes fighting makes the bully shut his big fat mouth.
 
Can we just put some perspective on this?

First of all, hanging yourself in a closet is a very extreme reaction by a teenager to "Nobody likes me!!!"

At different times in our teenage lives, we all felt that way. And who hasn't been the object of some bullying at varying times? Really? Seriously? Who hasn't been party to or the object of some bullying?

It's part of growing up. It's not a very pleasant aspect of being a kid but it's just part and parcel of the maturing experience. Kids are mean. We all know this. No creature reverts to its primal sadistic state with such alacrity and glee as a kid outside the presence of adults. It's about pecking order and social dominance and just the fact that you are dealing with immature little snots. But it is what it is.

Has anyone stopped to think that maybe these kids didn't do much more than any other kids at any other school but this time their bullying is being magnified as a cause to keep from addressing that Phoebe may have had some compounding stresses or mental illness that caused her to take her own life?
 
Can we just put some perspective on this?

First of all, hanging yourself in a closet is a very extreme reaction by a teenager to "Nobody likes me!!!"

At different times in our teenage lives, we all felt that way. And who hasn't been the object of some bullying at varying times? Really? Seriously? Who hasn't been party to or the object of some bullying?

It's part of growing up. It's not a very pleasant aspect of being a kid but it's just part and parcel of the maturing experience. Kids are mean. We all know this. No creature reverts to its primal sadistic state with such alacrity and glee as a kid outside the presence of adults. It's about pecking order and social dominance and just the fact that you are dealing with immature little snots. But it is what it is.

Has anyone stopped to think that maybe these kids didn't do much more than any other kids at any other school but this time their bullying is being magnified as a cause to keep from addressing that Phoebe may have had some compounding stresses or mental illness that caused her to take her own life?
being raped and physically assaulted is not the same as "nobody likes me".....
 
Can we just put some perspective on this?

First of all, hanging yourself in a closet is a very extreme reaction by a teenager to "Nobody likes me!!!"
Not sure you're up on all the facts of the case -- you might change your mind.
 
Pretty shocking story. I never believed something like this could be possible. Or go this far.

Guess the movies sometimes are not completely wrong...
 
being raped and physically assaulted is not the same as "nobody likes me".....

The rape part may very well have been the root cause of her taking her own life.

Physically assaulted is just hyper-inflated code for "the kids were fighting".
 
Not sure you're up on all the facts of the case -- you might change your mind.

I am well aware of the compounding reason for this girl's issues.

I am not sure these kids should be charged and prosecuted for behaving like kids.

The rapist is who I would go after.
 
Can we just put some perspective on this?

First of all, hanging yourself in a closet is a very extreme reaction by a teenager to "Nobody likes me!!!"

At different times in our teenage lives, we all felt that way. And who hasn't been the object of some bullying at varying times? Really? Seriously? Who hasn't been party to or the object of some bullying?

It's part of growing up. It's not a very pleasant aspect of being a kid but it's just part and parcel of the maturing experience. Kids are mean. We all know this. No creature reverts to its primal sadistic state with such alacrity and glee as a kid outside the presence of adults. It's about pecking order and social dominance and just the fact that you are dealing with immature little snots. But it is what it is.

Has anyone stopped to think that maybe these kids didn't do much more than any other kids at any other school but this time their bullying is being magnified as a cause to keep from addressing that Phoebe may have had some compounding stresses or mental illness that caused her to take her own life?

Well, there's ostracism and the popular girls tittering behind their hands at you, and then there's daily harrassment, physical abuse and sexual violence. Most instances of bullying are somewhere in the middle, but when you hear someone's taken their own life over "bullying", unless you have the deatils, you really can't know exactly what they've been dealing with.
 
I am well aware of the compounding reason for this girl's issues.

I am not sure these kids should be charged and prosecuted for behaving like kids.

The rapist is who I would go after.

Most 'kids' don't stalk and criminally harass people. In real life, this would be actionable. For some reason, our society lets adolescents get away with stuff that the rest of us would be prosecuted for.
 
Yeah for sure. I think the zero tolerances for fighting thing is a mistake. Sometimes people get in scruffs. Now it's all dependent upon conditions and school and stuff; but not all fighting is bad. Sometimes fighting makes the bully shut his big fat mouth.

Oh yeah, I've seen kids who've been attacked daily finally snapping and giving the bullies a good hard smack, and coincidentially, the administration are eager enough to intervene then, finally! Any policy that doesn't differentiate between unprovoked aggression and self defence is just far too black and white to work in the real world.
 
Well, there's ostracism and the popular girls tittering behind their hands at you, and then there's daily harrassment, physical abuse and sexual violence. Most instances of bullying are somewhere in the middle, but when you hear someone's taken their own life over "bullying", unless you have the deatils, you really can't know exactly what they've been dealing with.

No you can't...but I haven't heard anything beyond the rape that would justify prosecuting kids for being kids.

I mean, who hasn't heard someone called a slut in high school or seen others get in to brief scraps in the hall. And everyone knows there was always that one kid who drew the taunts of everyone else and that kid usually grows up to be the most handsome and successful at 30.

I am just saying...hanging herself in a closet...I doubt thats because she got called a slut and had a can thrown at her from a passing car. It just seems so sensationalized.
 
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No you can't...but I haven't heard anything beyond the rape that would justify prosecuting kids for being kids.

I mean, who hasn't heard someone called a slut in high school or seen others get in to brief scraps in the hall. And everyone knows there was always that one kid who drew to taunts of everyone else and that kid usually grows up to be the most handsome and successful at 30.

I am just saying...hanging herself in a closet...I doubt thats because she got called a slut and had a can thrown at her from a passing car. It just seems so sensationalized.

Oh hell yeah, there may well be underlying issues that lessened er ability to cope, but from the information we have it does look like what she suffered at school wasn't just teasing and thoughtless comments. I'm not saying we should prosecute teenagers just for being thoughtless and too quick to run off at the mouth, but what about when it isn't just teasing, or a scrap in the hall? What about when it's being tormented daily or attacked by a gang of people, or being thrown down the stairs, and sexually assaulted?

There's our normal high school turbulence, and then there's actual, agressive, undeserved bullying of a weaker person to the point where psychological or even physical harm can occur. I'm not sure we can do anyting about the first, but we damn well need to do more to tackle the second.
 
I am well aware of the compounding reason for this girl's issues.

I am not sure these kids should be charged and prosecuted for behaving like kids.

The rapist is who I would go after.
Both boys are charged with rape, all six older kids (4 girls, 2 boys) are charged with bodily injury in addition to other charges. Three 16yr olds are charged with "assault by means of a dangerous weapon." I presume all were friends, subsequently chiding her continuing after she was dead.

So when you ask, "maybe these kids didn't do much more than any other kids at any other school" - I gotta say, not likely.
 
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