Another young life lost to suicide, due in part to the taunts of bullies who allegedly started sending death threats to a gay teen.
“Mom, you don’t know how it feels to be hated.”
That’s what 14 year-old Kenneth Weishuhn’s mother, Jeannie Chambers, says her son told her about the teasing, bullying, and Facebook anti-gay hate page some kids in his school made after he recently came out publicly as being gay.
According to KTIV.com,
“People that were originally his friends, they kind of turned on him,” said his sister Kayla Weishuhn.
Teasing started in school, according Kayla, a sophomore. She says it was the boys in her class, that bullied her brother over his sexuality.
“A lot of people, they either joined in or they were too scared to say anything,” she said.
Apparently the boys who were leading the bullying were given a warning, but that didn’t stop the bullying. Jeannie Chambers is torn about what should be done next.
“I really don’t want to ruin somebody else’s life, or take someone else’s son or daughter from them. But, I don’t know what it’s going to take to get it to stop,” said Chambers.
And those are the big questions: What do you do when children are ruining other children’s lives? What punishment is appropriate for these teen bullies?
And how do we prevent another senseless, devastating death?
I disagree with Mike L, and I agree with Archy, HeatherN, and Julie Gillis; bullying, physical and emotional, can leave lasting scars. Why does “bullying” (a general term for many different levels of harm) get labeled en masse as “no big deal”? No offense to Mary above, but if we were discussing rape, would it be okay to say “Some can handle it and some cannot”? We’re discussing bullying, of course, not rape, except that some bullies have raped their targets. It happened to me, it’s happened to others. I was abused as a child sexually, physically, and emotionally at… Read more »
We’re all different. We have different stories and personalities. Some can handle bullying, some cannot. We all react and take things differently. Suicide is the worst option to solve anything, but anyone who commits it obviously was troubled too much to see it that way. WE’RE ALL HUMAN. Consider that before judge someone on something as horrible as this.
Incredibly long prison sentences.
I have to wonder, is it because perhaps we as a society and as parents are not preparing our kids for the real world. The real world is brutal, there are winners , there are losers. What constitutues winning and losing varies with the area where you work and live. IMHO, kids are taught they are ALL WINNERS, well sorry but they aren’t, some are simply losers. They might lose thru no fault of their own but they still lost. I was bullied as a kid because I was small and came from a relatively poor family and my cloths… Read more »
Two things-Yes, I think kids should get actual grades, if there are teams that lose… they lose. I think learning to fail gracefully is a good thing to know. Winning gracefully is also a good skill. Life can be brutal. So is the choice to start working to make it less brutal where we can (getting teachers and parents on board in terms of teaching highly volatile teens NOT to treat each other like shit) or is the choice to let the Lord of the Flies happen and fuck the losers? Cause I’d personally vote for number 1. I’m not… Read more »
I’m struck by how often the slogan “Life isn’t fair” is used to somehow suggest that it’s not our moral responsibility to MAKE it fair.
Right, I mean…we socialize ourselves all the time. Little babies are taught to eat a certain way (at a table) and to use the toilet. Toddlers LOVE to bite when they don’t get what they want. Should we allow that? Cause that would create a very interesting society filled with infected bites! We teach them to use words at an early age to indicate their displeasure and frustration instead of biting and hitting. I’m not sure why middle and high school should be any different. So what if the instinct is to bully? That doesn’t make it a fair or… Read more »
Screw fair, how about livable. When I was a kid and a teenager I’d have taken not-miserable any day of the week…fair was an unimaginable dream.
I wish the bullying didn’t happen and of course I would change it if I could BUT my point was that I was taught how to deal with by the values instilled in me by my parents, that is that what is important is how I view myself and my deeds not how others view them. @Copyleft: My point is that nowadays we seem be ONLY (and ignore everything else) seem to be trying to make this fair. Of couse reality tells us that FAIR is a subjective word and it means something different to everyone. This is where Political… Read more »
Ok, good point, but does that have anything to do with how we change the system for teens? What can we learn and take away from that and bring it back to how to stop bullying?
Unfortunately Julie, we aren’t going to stop bullying, we should try YES for sure BUT we aren’t going to stop it. SO, if that is true ( my assumption of course) , then we have to lessen the damage and IMHO, we do that by showing kids that they have to learn to deal with the bully.
So absolutely. There would need to be a few points of intervention. 1) the kids themselves (and not punishing the bullied from fighting back cause this happens). 2) parents need to deal with the reality if their kid bullying someone. 3) schools need more authority to deal effectively with things they see.
You guys would all probably LOVE Jeremy Feists’s piece It Gets Better… With Fists
How I was told by many people to stop my bullying – Bash the shit outa the bully. What would that accomplish? Respect? Yes I did fight back sometimes n scare the hell out of them but there are times it got me into trouble. Seeing as a I didn’t want to screw up my school history I held myself back. There were times I could have beaten the bullies up but what if I went too far, a single hit can kill, so jailtime would do what for me? So we teach the kids to deal with it themselves… Read more »
“My point was that I was taught how to deal with by the values instilled in me by my parents, that is that what is important is how I view myself and my deeds not how others view them.” I’m glad that worked for you, but that doesn’t actually work for everyone. Sometimes it actually makes things worse. I was taught the same thing by my parents, and bullying still screwed me up. I come from a very loving home with parents who were sympathetic when I told them about how I was bullied. They loved me unconditionally (still do,… Read more »
Bullies are generally well known by name in the schools where they operate.. by faculty as well as students. Now, we could argue that teachers or administrators need to step in and deal out some discipline to bullies–but that inevitably runs up against the bullies’ parents, who are themselves largely to blame for their child’s sick and vicious attitudes. And teachers nowadays are powerless to enforce discipline in the face of parents, who are the REAL bullies. I suggest that at least one aspect of the solution should address this power imbalance. Teachers should be the masters of the school… Read more »
Yep, yep, yep. Parent’s today are too defensive in the face of school administrators who are addressing a problem. When I was in high school, I caught shit for all infractions brought forth by the school (and I was relatively good). Skipped a class? Grounded from all media and friends. I failed one class because I just didn’t get it, so I gave up instead of asking for help. When my report card came home I got my hard-earned concert tickets taken away and donated to friends who didn’t fail the class, and they made me quit my part-time job… Read more »
If your kid is facing deadly conditions at school, you pull him from school, end of story. I don’t understand how parents keep sending these kids in for more and more damage.
Kids with suicidal thoughts often hide it from everyone in their lives. There is still a strong stigma against sharing these problems because it is a sign of weakness and these children fear further rejection. Kids that muster the courage to seek help often don’t have the tools to express what they are feeling. Many people don’t recognize the signs and will dismiss them as normal.
Unfortunately, I think lots of people think of bullying as normal (see Mike L’s above) but I haven’t read a news story yet where the parents didn’t know their child was being bullied and the extent of it. To think that one’s kid is being ruthlessly bullied but is ‘coping with it pretty well’ is negligence, in my book. Going to school is not more important than living; it’s just not. The conditions that kids face there, even kids who are not being bullied ‘the worst’ are deplorable and I would venture to guess not something that adults would put… Read more »
Agreed. And the bullies who grow up with no consequences do the same thing in their adult life I imagine. No reason to think that if pushing people around didn’t work in high school it wouldn’t in college, work, or elsewhere. Adults do learn to be more subtle about it, but if the basic senses of empathy and compassion weren’t built early on…hard to see why they’d turn a corner later. As for those who are bullied, seems like they either grow up to be very very compassionate and work hard against bullying in their adult lives or if they… Read more »
These stories always sadden me deeply, but one thing I just don’t understand is why are kids killing themselves these days in seemingly higher numbers than when I grew up? We had bullies back then, and often they were much more violent. We didn’t have sensitivity training or tolerance training for school staff, so usually bullying was ignored. Was it just that the media didn’t give it as much attention, or has something changed over the years that has eroded a child’s ability to positively overcome this unfortunately normal part of adolescence? I’d really love to know.
I wonder if more kids actually are committing suicide, or if it’s just being more reported now.
The internet and social networking I believe plays a huge factor. The kids can’t even get away from the bullying when they go home. They probably feel as if they don’t have anywhere to escape.
I don’t know about this school in particular, but I’ll add that a lot of schools actually aren’t doing enough to provide support for bullied kids. This is particularly true for LGBT kids, where there are still schools with policies that prevent teachers from “promoting the homosexual lifestyle,” by being sympathetic when their students are bullied.
The rhetoric in the title of the article I linked to is perhaps a little strong, but frankly I understand it after reading it. It’s an example of a district that had policies in place that, I think, really hurt the students.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202
Talon, there is a backlash against recognizing prejudice. Jerks want to defend the indefensible by saying political correctness has gone out of control. They don’t want to take responsibility for thoughtless or hateful behavior by making excuses. Other simply refuse to believe that bullying can push some people to suicide.
One excuse that seems to be gaining popularity is the cliché “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”. It places all responsibility upon the victim while forgiving the bad behavior of bullies.
This story is heart-breaking…especially since I am the mother of an 11 year old boy who has yet to run the gauntlet of bullies so many kids encounter in middle school and beyond….I drive him to and from school and I worry about being too protective, but when I hear stories like this, I wonder if I am doing enough to protect him or prepare him for the cruel world out there….Will he be able to insulate himself from the stupid, random insults and bullying that kids do? I also, think about the kids I knew in JHS and HS….last… Read more »
“I really don’t want to ruin somebody else’s life, or take someone else’s son or daughter from them. But, I don’t know what it’s going to take to get it to stop,” said Chambers.”
Sadly that is probably what it is going to take, and the grieving parents will have no one to blame but themselves.
And since it seems to be a problem in a numbe rof these cases, where religious belief is involved, it should be treated as an aggravating circumstance and that particular sub-community held to account for incitement to violence – preferably by their own religious leaders, but failing that, by some other form of authority.
Suicide is a personal choice, end of story. We cannot hold ANYONE else accountable for a personal choice. Saying that someone is “bullied” into suicide removes the individual agency involved in suicide and questions the entire idea of “right to die” in the first place. Is a terminally ill patient who chooses to die also “bullied” into suicide by their disease? If the answer is yes, then their death is not actually a choice and needs to be regulated (is the disease really incurable? should we get a second opinion?). On the other hand, if not, then suicide is a… Read more »
Suicide happens when the person choosing suicide feels like that is their only option left. It’s not like they’re sitting around saying “gee, you know, a lot of people are bullying me. I have three options: I could ask for help, I can try to stand up for myself, of I can commit suicide. I think I’ll choose suicide.” A person asking for assisted suicide due to a terminal disease is not the same as someone who is perfectly physically healthy committing suicide. The person asking for assisted suicide is making a rational decision. They can weigh their options, and… Read more »
Steph,
In your world 14 year olds cannot make rational decisions: your post suggests they are subject to a narrow and distorted perspective. I disagree with your worldview, I believe that 14 year olds are perfectly capable of rational choices. I do not think there will be a way past this impasse.
In my world, that of working with, raising, and observing children 8 and upwards, the older and more experienced a human child becomes the more rational their choices may become. However, many teens make irrational choices often. As do, I might add, adults. In the case of bullying, ostracism and teen suicide (or it’s opposite teen homicide), there may well be chemical changes connected to continuous anxiety and depression that make options of self violence seem entirely rational, even when the decision is not. Humans thrive in social environments of acceptance and suffer psychologically during the opposite. In any regard,… Read more »
Julie,
I have no reason to believe (and have seen no evidence to believe) that bullying is any worse today than it was 10 years ago, or 100 years ago.
It’s part of growing up, that’s it.
What I do believe is that the rapid dissemination of news has made the bullying problem seem larger than it did before.
In order for bullying to be “out of hand” we would need a baseline comparison. None exists.
I can easily think of things that are different today than in days when I was in school such as more parents working, perhaps less guidance for kids in genera, far more social media and ways for teens to reach each other outside school hours (txting, twitter, FB etc. That kind of harassment is brand new). In addition I think there is increasing pushback against gay and lesbian teens who, back in my day would have worked hard to pass and now are out. I agree that the rapid dissemination of news allows us to hear stories that can make… Read more »
Do you think bullying is a normal part of growing up? I just saw this. Do you think FB harassment up to a 24/7 kind of period is normal? Being called all the names in the book, rumors spread on social media, pictures etc is normal behavior for teens? Even if you do think it is somehow a baseline human trait, do you think it is right and healthy for a child to be put through it? I do think displays of dominance and aggression are part of the human animal but just like we teach toddlers not to hit… Read more »
Julie, I graduated from High School in the early 2000s. Photos and info could be rapidly shared with everyone over AIM pretty quickly. Sometimes it was embarrassing, sometimes it wasn’t. The thing is, it’s all so insignificant. Looking back, no one even remembers who did what with whom anymore. Compared to your accomplishments in college, and where you ended up after college, almost everything in high school has become insignificant. From my standpoint, I think things have improved dramatically, if anything. You talk about “24/7 facebook bullying” but all I know is that members of my parent’s generation had to… Read more »
Class of 2005 here, for the record. I was “lightly” bullied in high school – by which I mean frequently teased, but no violence or threats of violence. I can look back NOW to when I was 14/15 and see how insignificant all my little dramas, disputes, and dilemmas were. No doubt. But I can also remember how, when I was that age, none of it seemed insignificant. To the contrary – everything was monumental. Instances of being teased would replay in my head for days afterwards. I had elaborate fantasies of revenge against the perps. I got really mad… Read more »
Teenagers have a growing mind, the mind between the kid stage and adult stage but the emotions are at the adult level, the hormones are new and causing havoc, sexuality is cranking up and adding a whole new level of drama to their lives but the last part of the brain to develop governs “rational thought”, the emotional maturity, the ability to handle all of these new stresses. This leaves them vulnerable to doing “stupid shit”, and it also can feel like the world is ending even for stresses adults see as small.
Firstly, Mike, the idea that somehow physical bullying is worse than emotional bullying is incorrect and actually quite a harmful view to have. It’s like suggesting that domestic abuse, or child abuse, is only about physical abuse…which fails to recognize the damage that psychological and emotional abuse can have on someone, particularly a child. I don’t know if you’re just trying to push buttons or what, Mike…but I ask that you read what a few of us have been writing about our own experiences with bullying. It wasn’t just a kid criticizing our clothing once. We’re talking about repeated incidents… Read more »
Mike, I graduated in 2002, what we went through was fucking nothing compared to facebook. Facebook is 24/7, and what makes it different from AIM is the high speed spreading of information, public posts, etc on a platform that is used by far more people (not a mix of msn, aim, yahoo, but most people are probably on facebook now). These posts can be seen by outsiders, by parents, older siblings, friends n family, even random strangers. I never saw anything remotely like what I’ve seen for facebook when I was at school and I dare say that neither have… Read more »
Bullying can and is out of hand. The difference between past bullying and bullying now is: technology mixed with society. Technology makes it easier to bully someone and society makes it easier for the victim to believe the taunts. There’s no denying that.
There is something of a motto among suicide prevention groups: “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” In the case of something like a terminal illness, the problem is actually no longer temporary but permanent. The only thing that will change is that it’ll get worse. In the case of bullying, however, the problem is temporary…thus the mantra. And yes, when these teens commit suicide bullying is not the only factor, but it is always a factor. These teens (or pre-adolescents in some cases) are looking at their current situation and are unable to imagine that it can… Read more »
HeatherN,
If you honestly believe these things, then you must agree that no one can be blamed for the suicide except for the teen.
According to you, the problem is temporary, but the teen has failed to see it that way. It is improper to blame others for the teen’s own misperceptions.
What is it proper to blame the other teens for? Bullying, abuse, the creation of a hostile enough environment that a teen may (correctly or not) believe that self violence or violence towards others is warrented.
If the suicide is the teen’s responsibility, then what of the bullies. Or do they go about scot free to act in toxic manner?
What’s your solution to the systemic problem, Mike?
Also Mike, I believe you are a lawyer yes? Is there any chance you’d offer us your personal take on bullying (outside of the arguments here)? I ask because while it can be informative to discuss what the legal pov might be on who is responsible for what, I’d also enjoy hearing your personal take.
They may be one and the same, but would still like to know.
I’m not a lawyer yet, I’m still in law school, but I’ll give the best take I can. The law on bullying isn’t clear yet, and very many of us were really hoping that the Dharun Ravi case would collapse (except for personal injury attorneys, who gleefully watched with dollar signs in their eyes). In most instances, the law is extremely concerned with two ideas. First, people should only ever be punished for volitional acts (people are punished for choices, not things beyond their control). Second, people should, at most, be held accountable for foreseeable damages (though this is relaxed… Read more »
How does emotional abuse play a part then? Only an idiot would believe words can never harm. Sticks n stones may break my bones but words can surely hurt when done right. In Australia I believe we have a new law with a possible 10year sentence for bullying in the extreme. I fully support a law which punishes those who wilfully use emotional manipulation, words, etc to abuse someone. If words didn’t hurt then psychologists would be far more rare than they are today. I could take the hits, the fighting didn’t bother me much, it was the words that… Read more »
Me??? I’m quite clear about emotional scars.
I meant Mike, couldn’t reply to his as the tree is too deep. Sorry:P
Archy, You act like I haven’t read about the “scars” of emotional bullying. I have read about them, indeed, I’ve had to read about them extensively for school. And what I’ve found is that they’re impossible to quantify and hotly debated, even within the mental health community. If you look at court transcripts and expert testimony you can find loads of statistics both “proving” and “disproving” that any amount of emotional “scarring” exists in any given situation. The fact of the matter is that it’s far from clear. In these instances, what people *want* to believe begins to matter more… Read more »
Cause schools may or may not be adequately addressing the needs of the bullied student. Often, the child who is bullied is encouraged to leave the school for a safer venue, rather than the bully made to leave (which makes more sense to me). Several cases like that here in Austin.
I agree it is not as simple as saying a bully was the sole cause of a teen taking his/her life. However it can certainly contribute to a toxic environment which led a teen to take his/her life.
So yes the problem (bullying) may be temporary…but the problem (bullying) shouldn’t be there to begin with.
Speaking as someone that self-harmed and had many suicidal thoughts in his teens due to bullying I felt I should comment. Define rational? If your health was suffering and you felt it was getting worse, you had a decade+ of bullying reinforcing negative beliefs in yourself, found your life got worse and worse over quite a few years where you feel helpless, empty, you’ve sought help and the MULTIPLE levels of help failed, would it be rational to believe your life will magically turn around one day or would the years of experience mean the rational thought is life will… Read more »
I don’t know what you want me to say here, but I still disagree with your point of view. I don’t know what you were bullied for, it wasn’t really clear, but it’s hard to believe it was something that truly mattered in the larger scheme of things. When I was in high school (I graduated almost a decade ago), people were bullied for the usual stuff: they were short, or they were fat, or they were ugly. Now, less than 10 years later, all anyone talks about is what college people got into, what kind of grad school they… Read more »
I suppose it all depends on your perspective. You seem to believe that in high school there is nothing a person can go through verbally or with online tools that would constitute emotional abuse. That it’s something to just get over. Ok. Others would disagree. Same with getting beat up, that’s not a good thing for kids to grow up with. I hope that if you eventually have kids they are neither the bullyers nor the bullies, but especially not the bullies because it seems clear you wouldn’t have a lot of support for them other than “it’s part of… Read more »
“You seem to believe that in high school there is nothing a person can go through verbally or with online tools that would constitute emotional abuse. That it’s something to just get over. Ok. Others would disagree.” Here’s something that makes no sense to me: if a parent were to do to their kids what bullies do, they’d have social services all over them. If an adult were to threaten another adult in the same way bullies do, they’d potentially be arrested or, at the very least, there’d be grounds for a restraining order. When a kid bullies another kid… Read more »
Right. Parents abusing kids = not good. Adults threatening adults in the work place = not good. Both = potential suits, involvement from the state. Kids bullying kids = part of life. Like I mentioned, in a day care setting if a toddler is a biter and doesn’t stop that’s the kid asked to leave the day care not the bitee. We don’t tolerate it then, why in high school? My guess? The administrators and teachers were in high school and they probably were bullied/the bullies/witnessed bullying that no one stopped. So why intervene now? Like it’s a rite of… Read more »
HeatherN, you make an excellent point…the same behaviours in different relationship contexts would constitute harrassment or abuse. Ok, we can’t go around charging kids when someone takes their own lives, but there SHOULD be a punishment mechanism in place for kids who bully/harrass others, regarless of the outcome. Detention and/or suspension, I suppose would be a couple of ways to go, but what about some sort of re-training? I honestly believe that, if we could make these bullies more empathetic by showing them what kind of impact their actions can have, they would be inclined to stop. When I was… Read more »
Agreed.
It’s the fact that it happens during a very important part of your life. You’re a child, you’re still learning about the world and you end up learning to fear others, you have a brain that can’t fully comprehend all of your emotions and then you end up with emotional abuse that cripples adults, what do you think it would do to a child? The most common mistake people make in bullying is assuming the words don’t hurt, the bullying doesn’t hurt or mean much, that it’s just playful banter but the reality is it’s a stress that many adults… Read more »
I agree with you it is a personal choice but that choice can be changed by the actions of others so in a way other people are responsible for it sand should take some responsibility if people accepted him i bet he would have never even considered suicide. It is tragic and i hope he R.I.P.
HELLO, MY NENE AND I AM A VERY MUCH CONCERED PARENT WHEN IT COMES TOO BULLYING. I KNOW FIRST HAND OF HOW BULLYING CAN DESTROY A CHILD’S LIFE AS WELL AS THE FAMILY. I ALMOST LOST MY SON TOO SUICIDE LAST YEAR IN OCTOBER, DUE TOO BULLYING. THAT DAY CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER, AND THAT’S WHEN I SAID ENOUGH IS ENOUGH IT’S TIME THAT SOMEONE TAKES A STAND AND SPEAKS OUT, SUPPORT, AND PROTECT OUR FUTURE (THE CHILDREN). PEOPLE NEED TOO STOP HIDING, AND OPEN THEIR EYES AND UNDRESTAND THAT BULLYING IS VERY SERIOUS, BELIVES THAT IT DOES EXIST, AND… Read more »