Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Tag: bullying suicides

• Sammy’s Story

  Posted at 3:17 pm by kayewer, on May 10, 2025

  I want to tell you this week about Sammy, a ten-year-old budding astronomer, fishing enthusiast and outdoorsman. As is the case with any child, Sammy went through a mouthful of primary teeth which were quite a sight. He also used glasses.

  The family, including Sammy’s parents and siblings, moved to Indiana from Florida, and Sammy was not warmly welcomed by his fellow students. An article in People alleges that Sammy attempted to bring his teachers’ attention to the bullying he experienced, and was promptly disciplined for being “disruptive.”

  Beatings were ignored. Girls told Sammy he should hang himself. He did. While his family went out to buy ingredients for pancakes for breakfast, rather than face another morning of terror at the hands of people–both kids and adults–who hated him, Sammy left this world. His brother found him when they returned home.

  At his funeral, one of the girls who prompted Sammy to use this very exit option, snapped a photo of his open casket and was seen laughing at the image on her cell phone later. It’s unclear what became of this bully or her photo.

  Who do we hold responsible for these actions? Among people ages 10 to 24, death by their own hands is the leading cause outside of any diseases, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

  We grownups frequently wonder how prejudice and hatred continue in our country, and the answer is right here in American classrooms. If the teachers and faculty do nothing, why should children follow any protocol when it comes to acceptance, empathy and compassion?

  I could also tell you the story of Adriana, who died/was proxy killed by the Central Regional School District in New Jersey, or another student named Olivia. Every state has at least one name to atone for. All of these first names have one thing in common: bullying permitted by adults.

  There is a movement to make bullying legislation into law and name it after Sammy. It cannot bring back the countless children who cut their lives short to avoid a school environment where beatings are allowed and trying to point them out is punished, but it can make adults answer for their ignorance.

  Here is Change.org’s link to their petition to make bullying seen and heard so it can be stopped: https://www.change.org/p/tell-congress-to-enact-anti-bullying-legislation-in-honor-of-10-year-old-sammy-teusch/psf/share?source_location=default_membership

  Here is an article link as well: https://people.com/parents-10-year-old-boy-killed-himself-bullied-file-wrongful-death-lawsuit-against-school-district-8763274

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  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged bullying, bullying legislation, bullying suicides, Sammy Teusch

• For Charlotte

  Posted at 3:23 pm by kayewer, on September 21, 2024

  I was ready to post one of my usual stories about life, but just before I started to log in, a pop-up stopped me short. My heart, which has been chipped away at for a good fifty years, lost another tiny piece when I clicked on and read the article.

  An Australian girl named Charlotte has been murdered by proxy. Her wonderful mother, Kelly, would not agree with me, and I will deal with the guilt of telling this in my own way because she has a bigger heart than I at this moment (which I will explain later).

  Charlotte was twelve years old. Twelve, and at that brief gap of development between youngster and teenager when life is just beginning to make some sense, the unfairness of the world has entered the subconscious, and the future is a tangible thing both awesome and terrifying. She was a year 7 student at a Sydney private school–Santa Sabina College in Strathfield–and had been bullied for at least two years. The most recent event was “investigated,” and the girls involved allegedly denied it. Of course they would, because they wanted to do it again, and again.

  One day from the past, recently brought to light, found another girl confronting a crying Charlotte in the girls’ restroom. The school simply called Kelly to come pick her up. We can’t have somebody exhibiting signs of heartbreak or vulnerability in a school setting, now can we.

  Kelly contacted a local radio host, Ben Fordham from G2B breakfast show. “‘These issues cannot be swept under the carpet. I will not let my daughter’s memory be swept under the carpet either. How many more children need to lose their lives before they get it? How many parents need to feel the pain of never being able to pick up their child from school again before they get it? We’re broken forever.”

  At the same time, she also said something I wish I could right now. “Please, I must stress and I beg, I do not wish any little girls to feel responsible for this. I don’t want any other mum not being able to wake up their child in the morning. They are also just little girls so they don’t understand. Charlotte made a mistake on a moment of grief, she did not meant to do this, she did not understand.”

  Every child, whether sports star, shop ace or A+ academic genius, needs to understand. They need to be responsible. What do you prefer, that they cheer or hold a party at the gravesite? They might as well, for all the attention the adults are paying to what happened.

  I would like to talk to any of these so-called faculties who sweep bullying under the rug. You are also sweeping a CHILD under a rug when you ignore what is happening. You are also encouraging criminal behavior among your students, because once they are allowed to torment a victim who doesn’t matter to you, there is no reason for that human being to matter to them. You are permitting torture, endorsing participation in discrimination and supremacy mindsets, and you turn the other way when a victim dies!

  I have already gone over this with another local young woman who died at school from bullying (see “Felicia’s Story” from November 04, 2023). Every time it happens, it’s as if these ignorant bullies and suit-wearing conference table dwellers pull out pieces of my heart with pliers. This is a CRIME and an embarrassment to our society that we feel bullying is not something that needs to be treated as an affront to dignity and worthy of strict punishment, including banishment from the public and private school system, suspension, community service, fines and even public apology.

  Yes, some of these bullying victims retaliate, and yet we seem surprised by that. Victims are supposed to stay quiet and take it. I haven’t seen any evidence otherwise.

  So the bullies won’t be charged with anything, and we will see another article pop up in another news feed on social media. We accept it, we do nothing about it, and we don’t care, obviously.

  Shame on us all.

  Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13853949/Heartbreaking-text-Australian-girl-sent-taking-life-dad-claims-school-huge-mistake.html?ito=push-notification&ci=Aw6V2hP5xb&cri=L9-evVOMAX&si=kKwv_EZzmFnV&xi=cfa9e0dc-f75b-4549-8d0b-35aba9913c54&ai=13853949

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• Bullying and the Old Wounds

  Posted at 1:26 am by kayewer, on May 11, 2014

  Folks who were victims of bullies over the past few decades likely have mixed emotions about the subject being a hot topic today. Back in the old days, the excuse for bullying was that “kids are cruel,” and faculty members threw up their hands and just doled out detention to the instigators, telling victims to “suck it up.” Recent studies, however, have shown that child victims of bullying abuse become adults with psychological and sociological issues; suicide numbers among adults trying to overcome the terrors of bullying are disturbing, and subjects in a decades-long National Child Development Study for Great Britain found that anxiety, depression, under- or unemployment also plaque victims long after the caps and gowns have been put away. Study subjects often cite poor health, few friends and limited social contact. I’m providing a link for those interested in a brief detail of the actual study (other articles, published in April 2014, are available by search):

  http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1863836

  Today’s victims can be assaulted on social media, something not available to us older citizens when we endured the pains of childhood, thank God. Another recent report shows that victims are desperate enough to bring weapons to school to combat the traumas dealt them by savage underage bullying cretins. The idea behind victim retaliation is possibly to see what it is like to be the giver of pain, rather than the recipient. It certainly seems like a bully has a balance of power, as they laugh over the victim and often have the support of others. Unfortunately, weapons often cause death rather than apologies, and the dead can’t tell a victim they’re sorry. Not once in any article about bullying retaliation did it ever come out that the victim got satisfaction from the acts they commit: no resolution from those who bullied them. In fact, when the faculty, police and/or strike force teams come in, the victim often commits suicide. The bully, in a sense, commits a delayed murder by proxy. The faculty still doles out detention.

  In order to combat bullying, some think it might be helpful to learn directly from the bullies themselves, and work to create an environment of cooperation. If a bully thinks that a fellow student doesn’t wear the right clothes, let the bully finance some new ones. Some think that implying a stigma to bullying will encourage tolerance, which might be an interesting point: discrimination of any kind, even to the most minor difference in human nature, implies that there is a majority among humans, which there is not and never will be. We will never have a this state or a that state, nor can a school of kids ever have a one hundred percent perfect ideal, no matter how much anybody wants it.

  Besides, why on earth would anybody go out of their way to deliberately create a human being who will be their personal burden later in life. If you bully Billy at age twelve, and he winds up on the dole at 22, whose taxes are keeping food on his table? It’s a pointless exercise in trying to put one’s personal issues at ease at another person’s expense. The real issue is with the bully, not with somebody else. When it comes down to basics, WE ARE ALL SOMEBODY ELSE’S SOMEBODY ELSE. Put that on a shirt with my name on it, and I will feel that I have created a message that matters.

  A bully needs to look within and decide the put a stop to all the negativity that they can spread non-stop like a cancer. It takes a lot of negativity to be a bully, and it’s time wasted. Go bone up on the school subject that most troubles you, take a long walk or something. Bullying is pointless and just creates more problems than it’s worth. Studies prove it.

   

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  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged bully, bullying, bullying suicides, National Child Development Study for Great Britain

• The Bullying Story Continues

  Posted at 2:02 am by kayewer, on June 3, 2012

  Joel Morales, 12 years old from Harlem.  He hanged himself in his apartment.  I read his story in work during lunch and, as so many other bully assisted suicides have done over the years, it broke my heart.  As an adult in the workplace, I steeled myself not to cry and to regain my composure.  Some people might not take kindly to such sympathy and empathy in a business environment.

  Then a bizarre thought came to me:  Joel’s fellow students might prefer that I jump up and down with glee on the table and celebrate, because somebody they decided didn’t belong on this planet was gone, and why should anybody be sad?

  Nowhere in the articles I’ve read does it say that the school grieves for him.  Maybe some students can admit that, even when adults pressured him to tell them that he was being picked on, he didn’t snitch.  He found it hard to talk about.  It is hard to confide in somebody that, even though you are not a terrorist, murderer, child molester or ruling despot, little things can make ordinary people hate you.

  So what was wrong with Joel Morales that he was bullied to death?  He was short, and he was smart.

  I guess that means the kids in the two Harlem schools he attended should only exist if they are tall and dumb?  Not in this world.

  Setting aside my opinions (that maybe those immature classmates should not be promoted to the next grade, or that the teachers should be fired, or the obvious bandage solutions like laws, counseling and more parental responsibility), as my heart protests in my ribcage and my blood pressure inches up and my brain cries out in frustration over bullying cases like this, I wonder what his classmates really have to say?  One did tell authorities that a comment about Joel’s father, who had also died in a suicide, sent the young man over the edge.

  One of the reasons why I didn’t go to see the Bully movie, was that reviews indicated that nobody interviewed actual bullies for the story, but concentrated instead on the victims.

  Recently an anonymous caller to a feedback forum in the Camden, NJ Courier-Post newspaper confessed to being a bully and wanted to apologize for the damage done to past victims.  Reading that, too, made me want to cry.  I ache for the various aspects of the human condition, because I am also human. We all stray from our humanity on occasion, which is why there is bullying and a chance to repent.  The solution to the bullying problem must really come from the perpetrators.  I think it would really be interesting to hear from bullies about why they do what they do. And if being smart is a bad thing, I would even tolerate poor grammar and sentence structure to get the full story.

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