The Bullying of Phoebe Prince

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Area high school students interviewed Wednesday said they are bewildered that criminal charges were filed against nine teenagers from South Hadley High School in connection with the bullying of Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide in January. They said the charges seem extreme for behavior they say takes place in schools across the country every day.
"If anyone should be charged for anything, it should be the teachers at that school for criminal negligence, because they apparently knew what was going on and didn't do anything to stop the bullying," said junior Ian Steinberg, while walking home from Northampton High School in the rain Tuesday afternoon.
...
"Everyone is thinking, 'well I'm sure they didn't intend for that to happen,'" Resnick said. "A lot of people feel like it is unfair because it completely ruins nine people's lives when they made some mistakes while they were that young."
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http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/03/31/reflecting-on-fairness-in-a-weird-situation

The HS comments just reek of self-entitlement without responsibility.

Unfortunately serious bullying happens all the time, incidents that would be followed with firings, lawsuits, and expulsions anywhere else are tolerated in American HS settings. This incident captured the attention of the MSM.

Here are some pics of the bullies:

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100331arraignment_tuesday_for_3_teens_in_phoebe_prince_bullying_case/srvc=home&position=recent

It can't begin to undo the damage they've done, but at least it looks like they have a little justice coming their way.
 
I find it funny that these dumb teens think that older male bullies (and their friends) bullying on a younger girl and getting indicted is 'going too far'. They knew what the fuck they were doing and now they whine because they are going to be someone's ass buddy for 10-20 years.

Boo fucking hoo.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']I haven't read enough to understand the statutory rape charge - any ideas?[/QUOTE]

Maybe she tried to fit in by degrading herself?

...

As far as bullying, my kids haven't had to deal with it yet. The Boy is larger and stronger than most kids his age give or take a year or two. Caitlyn seems to have her mother's ability to charm.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']I haven't read enough to understand the statutory rape charge - any ideas?[/QUOTE]

My gut reaction is that Phoebe was on the slutty side, slept with the 2 guys being charged, school found out, bullying ensued. Of course that is only the first thought that pops in my head, this happened a few towns away from me, and I've barely followed it at all. Just another case of the news outlets going batshit crazy over "something bad happened to pretty white girl!".
 
[quote name='AdultLink']I find it funny that these dumb teens think that older male bullies (and their friends) bullying on a younger girl and getting indicted is 'going too far'. They knew what the fuck they were doing and now they whine because they are going to be someone's ass buddy for 10-20 years.

Boo fucking hoo.[/QUOTE]

I see slaps on the wrist all around.

At most we can only hope after the blame game, and what they did really sinks in, a few of them will off themselves over guilt.
 
By that age people definitely know what they're doing. They should be charged for whatever laws they've broken, for sure. There's no reason why it should be treated any differently.
 
[quote name='SpazX']By that age people definitely know what they're doing. They should be charged for whatever laws they've broken, for sure. There's no reason why it should be treated any differently.[/QUOTE]

I agree. The problem I have is that the charges are only being filed as a result of the suicide. This all has been happening for months.
 
If you are throwing things at people, bullying mentally, and laughing at her funeral like they were, you know the fuck you were doing. Don't drop the soap kids.
 
[quote name='opterasis']My gut reaction is that Phoebe was on the slutty side[/QUOTE]

is phrasing it that way absolutely necessary? or even accurate?
 
[quote name='mykevermin']is phrasing it that way absolutely necessary? or even accurate?[/QUOTE]

Agreed, was going to respond to myself as:

1. That's a big assumption to make--that she was promiscuous.

2. I hate that phrasing as it's a terrible double standard in our society. A high school guy (or any age really) sleeping with a few different girls is a "stud", "lucky bastard" etc., while a girl doing the same is a "slut." :bomb:
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']Agreed, was going to respond to myself as:

1. That's a big assumption to make--that she was promiscuous.

2. I hate that phrasing as it's a terrible double standard in our society. A high school guy (or any age really) sleeping with a few different girls is a "stud", "lucky bastard" etc., while a girl doing the same is a "slut." :bomb:[/QUOTE]

It's never going to change. I still believe that in general women are the better of our species.
 
[quote name='AdultLink']If you are throwing things at people, bullying mentally, and laughing at her funeral like they were, you know the fuck you were doing. Don't drop the soap kids.[/QUOTE]

QFT. Die bullies.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']is phrasing it that way absolutely necessary? or even accurate?[/QUOTE]

No, it's not. But like I said, it was my gut reaction, and that's how I think in real life. I figured my point would get across regardless of how I worded it. I just can't think of any other reason 2 statutory rape charges would have been thrown in the mix.
 
[quote name='xxDOYLExx']It's never going to change. I still believe that in general women are the better of our species.[/QUOTE]

Girls maybe but women? No way. A wise man once said, "There's a reason it's called 'girls gone wild' and not 'women gone wild'. When girls go wild, they show their tits. When women go wild, they kill men and drown their kids in a tub."
 
[quote name='javeryh']girls maybe but women? No way. A wise man once said, "there's a reason it's called 'girls gone wild' and not 'women gone wild'. When girls go wild, they show their tits. When women go wild, they kill men and drown their kids in a tub."[/quote]

:rofl:
 
[quote name='opterasis']No, it's not. But like I said, it was my gut reaction, and that's how I think in real life. I figured my point would get across regardless of how I worded it. I just can't think of any other reason 2 statutory rape charges would have been thrown in the mix.[/QUOTE]

Do you always say what you think precisely as you think it? I imagine that would make for some awkward exchanges with other people.
 
[quote name='opterasis']No, it's not. But like I said, it was my gut reaction, and that's how I think in real life. I figured my point would get across regardless of how I worded it. I just can't think of any other reason 2 statutory rape charges would have been thrown in the mix.[/QUOTE]

Well I imagine she fucked those two dudes in one way or another, but the reason she did is up in the air. I imagine them bullying her could have led to it.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Do you always say what you think precisely as you think it? I imagine that would make for some awkward exchanges with other people.[/QUOTE]

just like the really old lady from golden girls.
 
[quote name='xxDOYLExx']It's never going to change. I still believe that in general women are the better of our species.[/QUOTE]

Women should be held to a higher moral standard because they're "better"?

That's kind of like a fundamentalist muslim expaining that his religion has the highest respect for women, that's why he wants them covered head-to-toe and accompanied by a man at all times.
 
It's hard to weigh in on all this because there aren't enough facts being told...
I did see that bit on cnn.com when the reporter talked to the principal in the front door of his school for a bit, before he got pissed off about the resignation question then decided to threaten to call the police in order to get them to leave...what a dick...

It's really hard to prevent bullying...it's gonna happen and there is no way teachers and administrators can watch over 2k or 3k students at once. Shit...wasn't there like a case where some teen killed her self when she got cyber bullied on myspace or something?
 
[quote name='camoor']Women should be held to a higher moral standard because they're "better"?

That's kind of like a fundamentalist muslim expaining that his religion has the highest respect for women, that's why he wants them covered head-to-toe and accompanied by a man at all times.[/QUOTE]

Two totally separate thoughts, not well written. My bad. Thats not at all what I meant.
 
No, it's not. But like I said, it was my gut reaction, and that's how I think in real life. I figured my point would get across regardless of how I worded it. I just can't think of any other reason 2 statutory rape charges would have been thrown in the mix.
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You can't think of any other reason 2 rape charges would be thrown in other than 'shes slutty'? My gut reaction is you're a douchebag.
 
I highly doubt that the statutory rape charge is the result of one of the guys having had sex with the girl that killed herself. My guess would be that in the process of investigating the situation, the guys or girls involved admitted to having sex.

The rape charges are probably entirely unrelated to the suicide, but they're pressing those charges just to put icing on the cake. Good for them, I hope these kids rot. As someone whose middle and high school years were spent dealing with bullies and other assholes, I can attest to the level of mental and emotional damage that shit causes.
 
the best I can come up with re: rape is that she was physically harassed/assaulted by the kids, and some of the actions were potentially sexual assault (in terms of touching/insertion), and were thus bumped up to statutory to scare the kids into plea bargains.
 
It's statutory rape people. Why is that so hard to read/comprehend? She was 15 at the time she had sex with a 17 year old and an 18 year old while consent is at 16.

She dated both of those boys until the popular girls shamed them because they were jealous. It's a messy cornucopia of lonely shunned girl, insecure girls, and pussy-whipped dudes.

I love that these kids are gonna fry and I hope that they make the teachers pay as well. The number of times I got thrown out of a class because it was easier to send the scrawny victim away rather than four bullies that even the teacher was scared of is ridiculous.
 
They absolutely should have charges brought against them. Bullies (all verbal abuse btw) almost caused me an almost irreversible mental breakdown in 8th grade that was only remedied by a psychiatric drug. Though once I got through that, I developed a reputation and confidence that ensured that I wouldn't be bothered by dipshits like that again. As far as the teachers being blamed by some of the students, yes and no. Some of the teachers I had were very accommodating to my mental illness and allowed me to make up missed work when I was out due to anxiety. Others, including the school principal, were assholes.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']Agreed, was going to respond to myself as:

1. That's a big assumption to make--that she was promiscuous.

2. I hate that phrasing as it's a terrible double standard in our society. A high school guy (or any age really) sleeping with a few different girls is a "stud", "lucky bastard" etc., while a girl doing the same is a "slut." :bomb:[/QUOTE]

This can easily be explained using evolutionary psychology.

For a man, from an evolutionary standpoint, there is no downside to being promiscuous. Sperm are cheap to produce and more sex = more spread of genes. Thus the instinct to be promiscuous. (of course, society may provide some disincentives to doing this... child support, religion, etc.)

For a woman, if we exclude twin births, she can only realistically expect to have at most about 1 child per year (~9 months gestation and a few more month of natural birth control while breast feeding). Furthermore, she expends a lot of resources and to a small degree risks her life for each pregnancy. Thus, it benefits her evolutionarily to be selective and not waste her resources carrying the child of a man with poor genes. Thus the instinct to be selective.

Also, humans are naturally polygynous... in our society, this mainly expresses itself as serial polygny since simultaneous polygyny is illegal.

Our attitudes are based upon these instincts. Of course, social conventions and the invention of birth control have altered our behavior somewhat as well.
 
[quote name='ITDEFX']It's really hard to prevent bullying...it's gonna happen and there is no way teachers and administrators can watch over 2k or 3k students at once. Shit...wasn't there like a case where some teen killed her self when she got cyber bullied on myspace or something?[/QUOTE]

We're not talking "yo momma" jokes here.

When a parent comes to the school (twice!) to raise awareness of a repeated, invasive, physically threatening harrassment for a specific student it should throw up huge red flags. This girl had vile slurs perpetrated against her on the internet, had things thrown at her, was constantly put in a state of torment and fear.

The bullies deserve the lion's share of punishment but teachers and administrators should not be left off the hook.
 
America is stuck in 1950s sitcom mentality when it comes to bullying, in that the standard stereotypes are allowed to fly. The nerds get picked on, the jocks get all the girls, the fatties are losers, anyone wearing anything slightly strange is to be avoided, etc. No one wants to come up and flat out start taking charge against it, because then the kid is seen as a pussy or the parents are overbearing or whatever.

If I ever have kids - if - I'm probably going to suggest they take self defense classes, even if it's just of the Bobby Hill School of Nut Kicking. It's so frowned upon for kids to stand up for themselves unless they happen to be the sluggish assholes or preppy bitches, and it's such a weak double standard.

As for women/girls, Chris Rock knows the score. Men tell more lies, but women tell bigger ones. Men say they love you. Women say "it's not yours."
 
Bullying needed to be taken seriously decades ago. Sad to say, but Phoebe is just another statistic. Her situation is only notable in that she committed suicide, but still not entirely unique.

It's sad, but oftentimes these days the victim gets into as much or even more trouble than the perpetrators. The victim usually has nobody to turn to. If they decide to fight back, they get in trouble for fighting and get a criminal record and shit like that. It's sad, but fighting back, enduring the abuse, and suicide are the only ways to deal with bullying. Mind tricks don't work. Bullies, contrary to popular belief, are very secure individuals who genuinely take pleasure in what they do.

In my opinion, a thorough beating delivered by Phoebe would have helped to avoid her suicide as well as further bullying. Unfortunately, that carries criminal penalties and expulsion. I think it should be completely legitimate if physically provoked, but it's not. The alternative is anti-bullying rules, but little of substance has come of those.
 
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[quote name='Chuplayer']
The alternative is anti-bullying rules, but little of substance has come of those.[/QUOTE]

Well there are some anti-bullying programs that have been shown in research (lots of studies) to reduce bullying. Largely based on a program developed by a professor named Dan Olweus. A lot of it is conducted in Norway.

A brief summary of research findings: http://www.clemson.edu/olweus/Research_OBPP.pdf
 
The worst thing that ever happened to victims of bullying was Columbine. Prior to that, if someone is bullying you, you knock their teeth out. Post-Columbine however, bullies get to skirt by underneath the radar, while the victims who choose to fight back end up getting arrested and expelled from school regardless of the circumstances.

It's a circular problem too, as the bullies have their group of friends who will defend each other, and plead ignorance to any bullying, while the victims end up getting painted as socially isolated weirdos who just randomly acted out in a violent way due to what the bullies will claim was an innocuous incident that the person took the wrong way. Regardless of the circumstances, school administrators will always side with the bully and his six friends who claim innocence over the person getting bullied who has no one to back him up.
 
No matter how things play out for those kids, you know it's going to haunt them for the rest of their lives, knowing their actions resulted in someone killing themselves. I have no doubt the parents are going to fight with best lawyers money can buy and in the end I have a good feeling the charges will be dropped. What type of evidence can the state come up with to make all those charges stick? DNA? Eyewitnesses? Video recordings? Internet Postings? Those kids are going to get punished alright, but not as hard as some might want it to be.

Everyone here has been bullied or know someone who has been bullied at some point during their early childhood...yea it's painful, it's hard...some people can't take it, others adapt somehow and make it.

As for the teachers, yea there are tons of so called "seminars" about bullying but you know what? most of them can't really do anything about it because if you accuse a student of bullying, you can bet your ass he/she will tell their parents and the parents will rain hell on you by complaining to the principal. These incidents are "rarely" documented because the school has to report all disciplinary actions (suspensions) to the district HQ. Principals want to keep a clean image so they can keep their jobs so most of these incidents are never reported and the student gets like All Day Detention or miss recess.

Heck that's exactly what happened at a school I worked at for a few years back. There was this one sixth grader (a big black kid) constantly picked on female students. When I asked why nothing was being done about it (I was an IA back then so I couldn't do shit), they all told me it's his hormones and there is nothing we can do about it. Well I wasn't going to stand by and watch these students (some of which were my students) get picked on, so I intervened. There were a few clashes with this kid throughout the year and I had him stay in side while everyone was on recess (it was the only thing I was authorized to do :( ) and had him write me letters explaining what he did, why he did it and what facts can he give me to justify his actions..boy did that kid hate me for it..but who the fuck cares..he knew it was on the verge of being accused of sexual harassment.

Anyways towards the end of the school year I got word from other students that he was planning on doing damage to my car on the last day of school so he can get away with it considering it was the last day for him. Confronted him and his response was, "well you will find out won't you?".. and that was the last straw, called the police officer assigned to that school and reported it. The officer was very supportive and said there is a zero tolerance for stuff like that even if he was joking and if I wanted to, I could press charges and have him spend the weekend in JH. I declined that offer, instead suggested that the officer contact him and his parents and make them aware of the consequences of his actions (in other words make him shit in his pants for the weekend).

The next day the principal bitched at me for calling the cops. Was he suspended for making that remark/threat or bullying others? Nope...he was giving in school suspension where all he did was work on assignments in a room by himself. I explained to the principal that I took all the necessary steps before resorting to calling the cops. All those steps failed because the principal refused to believe any of her black children were trouble makers (her being black herself), while she has a reputation from her staff members as being protective of her black student population while everyone not black can go to hell in her mind.

When that kid hit middle school, he got his ass in trouble all the time. I learned of this because I happened to be working in the after school program in that same middle school. Eventually he brought a knife to school and was expelled from the public school system. Good riddance as that kid was nothing but trouble. I feel sorry for all the kids he picked on throughout the years and hope that they have overcome any emotional problems that this bully may have caused.
 
[quote name='Chuplayer']It's sad, but oftentimes these days the victim gets into as much or even more trouble than the perpetrators. The victim usually has nobody to turn to. If they decide to fight back, they get in trouble for fighting and get a criminal record and shit like that. It's sad, but fighting back, enduring the abuse, and suicide are the only ways to deal with bullying. Mind tricks don't work. Bullies, contrary to popular belief, are very secure individuals who genuinely take pleasure in what they do.

In my opinion, a thorough beating delivered by Phoebe would have helped to avoid her suicide as well as further bullying. Unfortunately, that carries criminal penalties and expulsion. I think it should be completely legitimate if physically provoked, but it's not. The alternative is anti-bullying rules, but little of substance has come of those.[/QUOTE]

In America the bullies know the rules and know how to manipulate them to their best advantage, similar to how a powerful prison gang operates.

I agree that mind tricks don't work (outside of "revenge of the nerds") yet I don't think bullies are all that secure, at least not in this case. The one girl felt threatened because Phoebe slept with her boyfriend, and she took out her hurt feelings on the naive freshman girl instead of her powerful senior boyfriend. She mobbed up with her friends to assault Phoebe, slandered her on the internet and threw things at her from a car. To me that screams of insecurity.
 
I want to make one thing clear: Columbine did not happen due to bullying. Look at the research and all the evidence. Those kids were just plain fucked up. Yes, they had their run ins with jocks and whatnot, but the fact is that they were unhinged crazies with access to weapons paired with their diseased minds.

Being a nerd growing up afforded me no end of torture, so I used to look at those two kinds with a tinge of sympathy. But having looked at the story up and down extensively, make no mistake - it wasn't because of bullying.
 
[quote name='spmahn']The worst thing that ever happened to victims of bullying was Columbine. Prior to that, if someone is bullying you, you knock their teeth out. Post-Columbine however, bullies get to skirt by underneath the radar, while the victims who choose to fight back end up getting arrested and expelled from school regardless of the circumstances.

It's a circular problem too, as the bullies have their group of friends who will defend each other, and plead ignorance to any bullying, while the victims end up getting painted as socially isolated weirdos who just randomly acted out in a violent way due to what the bullies will claim was an innocuous incident that the person took the wrong way. Regardless of the circumstances, school administrators will always side with the bully and his six friends who claim innocence over the person getting bullied who has no one to back him up.[/QUOTE]

No doubt Columbine upped the ante but it's always been this way in American HS. The more they try to fix it, the more fucked up it gets.

[quote name='ITDEFX']No matter how things play out for those kids, you know it's going to haunt them for the rest of their lives, knowing their actions resulted in someone killing themselves. I have no doubt the parents are going to fight with best lawyers money can buy and in the end I have a good feeling the charges will be dropped.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the honest post and I'm sure that even though you went through a lot those girls the kid was picking on really appreciated it. The way that schools work in America is almost unbelieveable.
 
[quote name='Strell']I want to make one thing clear: Columbine did not happen due to bullying. Look at the research and all the evidence. Those kids were just plain fucked up. Yes, they had their run ins with jocks and whatnot, but the fact is that they were unhinged crazies with access to weapons paired with their diseased minds.

Being a nerd growing up afforded me no end of torture, so I used to look at those two kinds with a tinge of sympathy. But having looked at the story up and down extensively, make no mistake - it wasn't because of bullying.[/QUOTE]

That may be, but it doesn't change the MSM and school administrator perception that it was caused by bullying. Or videogames for that matter.
 
Doesn't matter. Be interested in the truth, not some slanted shade of it. I'm absolutely against bullying and think there should be dire consequences to the few pompous shitbags that get away with it. But Columbine is hardly case study material on this subject. The kid from Virginia Tech is more along those lines, and even that lines up only if you look at the angles a certain way.

The MSM is done with Columbine, except for isolated incidences where some idiot is trying to sell a book or a study. Take away all that sensationalism and look at the raw material there, and you find a different story than "lonely DOOM playing nerds had their revenge fantasy come true."

It was a horrifying event, the more I look at it. You'll have to excuse me for that.
 
[quote name='ITDEFX']No matter how things play out for those kids, you know it's going to haunt them for the rest of their lives, knowing their actions resulted in someone killing themselves. I have no doubt the parents are going to fight with best lawyers money can buy and in the end I have a good feeling the charges will be dropped. What type of evidence can the state come up with to make all those charges stick? DNA? Eyewitnesses? Video recordings? Internet Postings? Those kids are going to get punished alright, but not as hard as some might want it to be.

Everyone here has been bullied or know someone who has been bullied at some point during their early childhood...yea it's painful, it's hard...some people can't take it, others adapt somehow and make it. [/QUOTE]

Except that part of the problem is that it clearly doesn't and didn't haunt these kids that their actions led this girl to commit suicide. They mocked her on Facebook even after her death, made jokes about her funeral, and continued their assault even after she was no longer around to defend herself.

Sadly I do agree with you that these kids won't get punished nearly as severely as they should. At worst they'll end up with some serious community service, but will otherwise go about their normal lives.
 
[quote name='camoor']In America the bullies know the rules and know how to manipulate them to their best advantage, similar to how a powerful prison gang operates.

I agree that mind tricks don't work (outside of "revenge of the nerds") yet I don't think bullies are all that secure, at least not in this case. The one girl felt threatened because Phoebe slept with her boyfriend, and she took out her hurt feelings on the naive freshman girl instead of her powerful senior boyfriend. She mobbed up with her friends to assault Phoebe, slandered her on the internet and threw things at her from a car. To me that screams of insecurity.[/QUOTE]

The very first incident may have been done out of insecurity. Every subsequent incident screams of having a good time at somebody else's expense. Especially when a group of bullies gang up on one person. They can all feed off of each other's energy and laughter.
 
[quote name='camoor']
Thanks for the honest post and I'm sure that even though you went through a lot those girls the kid was picking on really appreciated it. The way that schools work in America is almost unbelieveable.[/QUOTE]

I just got sick of the shit I was seeing happening in that school and left and went on to better things. Never got a thank you from any of their parents, but I saw those kids when I worked at the other school and they remembered me and always glad to see me. Just found out that the principal of the school is finally retiring...about fucking time. She was a bad one, loved by parents, hated by her staff.

[quote name='spmahn']Except that part of the problem is that it clearly doesn't and didn't haunt these kids that their actions led this girl to commit suicide. They mocked her on Facebook even after her death, made jokes about her funeral, and continued their assault even after she was no longer around to defend herself.

Sadly I do agree with you that these kids won't get punished nearly as severely as they should. At worst they'll end up with some serious community service, but will otherwise go about their normal lives.[/QUOTE]

Yep, its going to be a slap on the wrist for them. I am pretty sure they will probably be transferred to an alternate school (you know the school where they send all the fuck ups to). As for the principal, I'm not taking his side, but it's gonna be hard to pin the blame on him. I am sure he has questioned his entire staff about the incident and I have a feeling there are going to be a few "resignations" in lue of terminations from some of his staff members , but the principal isn't going to be stepping down because of this. The school board/Superintendent isn't going to ask him to resign. Principals are extremely powerful people and not easy to get rid of unless they really fuck up like steal shit or accused of sexual misconduct with one of their staff members....but in most cases they resign rather than get fired. So bottom line is that guy isn't going anywhere but I am sure some of his staff members won't be coming back after the school year is done.
 
My first thought:

http://www.cvuhs.org/faculty/joe/greece/archlchs.htm

[FONT=century gothic, arial, helvetica]"He was once engaged to Neobule, daughter of Lycambes, a rich and respectable man. Although Archilochus had been promised her, the father changed his mind and married her to someone else. Archilochus became enraged and went around town destroying the reputations of the father, the fiancee and her sisters in obscene ways. He harassed them to the point at which they chose to die. This event often reappeared throughout his poetry. "It is taken as a proved fact that this singer is one whose love was second only to his hate in its crude ferocity, and it is assumed that he was a poet that used his song as another might a weapon or a tool, for ends that were selfish and immediate" (Burnett 21). His lyrics were used to cause misery to those who displeased him. His personality was that of bitterness and hatred. "[/FONT]

Now, that is bullying.
 
[quote name='SpazX']By that age people definitely know what they're doing. They should be charged for whatever laws they've broken, for sure. There's no reason why it should be treated any differently.[/QUOTE]

The unfortunate thing is the situation likely would've been treated entirely different if all of these kids were 10 years-older. At the age this girl was, you are pretty much powerless to do anything yourself. You have to rely on parents and teachers. It's not like you can threaten to call the cops or hire a lawyer to sue them for harassment. You can't go file for a restraining order.

And sadly, there are a lot of adults who either view things as normal or an overreaction. I guess there are a lot of people that went through it themselves, so they see it as a circle of life thing. Of course, there is also the far too common occurrence of parents refusing to believe their children could do anything wrong, which pretty much makes any attempts at appealing to an authority useless anyways. I remember my brother getting bullied by our neighbor growing up. When my mom called his parents, their response was, "What are you going to do? Boys will be boys."
 
[quote name='Chuplayer']The very first incident may have been done out of insecurity. Every subsequent incident screams of having a good time at somebody else's expense. Especially when a group of bullies gang up on one person. They can all feed off of each other's energy and laughter.[/QUOTE]

The mob mentality definately plays into it. But I'd never classify it as "having a good time". Constantly hurling slurs, ruining her reputation and throwing a can from a moving car goes beyond play.

This is partially what I think was going on:

Brain-scanning studies show that schadenfreude is correlated with envy. Strong feelings of envy activated physical pain nodes in the brain's dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; the brain's reward centers , such as the ventral striatum, were activated by news that the people envied had suffered misfortune. The magnitude of the brain's schadenfreude response could even be predicted from the strength of the previous envy response.
Click to expand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
 
[quote name='Cantatus']The unfortunate thing is the situation likely would've been treated entirely different if all of these kids were 10 years-older. At the age this girl was, you are pretty much powerless to do anything yourself. You have to rely on parents and teachers. It's not like you can threaten to call the cops or hire a lawyer to sue them for harassment. You can't go file for a restraining order.

And sadly, there are a lot of adults who either view things as normal or an overreaction. I guess there are a lot of people that went through it themselves, so they see it as a circle of life thing. Of course, there is also the far too common occurrence of parents refusing to believe their children could do anything wrong, which pretty much makes any attempts at appealing to an authority useless anyways. I remember my brother getting bullied by our neighbor growing up. When my mom called his parents, their response was, "What are you going to do? Boys will be boys."[/QUOTE]

I was a lifeguard at a local pool.

We kicked a kid out for using the f-word and s-word after repeated warnings - families with small children will complain about that sort of thing so it's a rule we enforce.

Wouldn't you know it, that evening the mother comes around and in front of the evening rush starts yelling that we're dumb shits who don't know what the fuck we're doing, she needs to work and she isn't going to pay all this fucking money to the pool if they're not going to look after her kid all day. :roll:
 
[quote name='camoor']I was a lifeguard at a local pool.

We kicked a kid out for using the f-word and s-word after repeated warnings - families with small children will complain about that sort of thing so it's a rule we enforce.

Wouldn't you know it, that evening the mother comes around and in front of the evening rush starts yelling that we're dumb shits who don't know what the fuck we're doing, she needs to work and she isn't going to pay all this fucking money to the pool if they're not going to look after her kid all day. :roll:[/QUOTE]

LOL now that was funny.

So you babysit huh?
 
[quote name='Cantatus']The unfortunate thing is the situation likely would've been treated entirely different if all of these kids were 10 years-older. At the age this girl was, you are pretty much powerless to do anything yourself. You have to rely on parents and teachers. It's not like you can threaten to call the cops or hire a lawyer to sue them for harassment. You can't go file for a restraining order.

And sadly, there are a lot of adults who either view things as normal or an overreaction. I guess there are a lot of people that went through it themselves, so they see it as a circle of life thing. Of course, there is also the far too common occurrence of parents refusing to believe their children could do anything wrong, which pretty much makes any attempts at appealing to an authority useless anyways. I remember my brother getting bullied by our neighbor growing up. When my mom called his parents, their response was, "What are you going to do? Boys will be boys."[/QUOTE]

I've heard that one before. That sort of thing makes me believe that the parents think it's ok for children to harass others. I would have said, "if I find out this continues to happen, I will file a restraining order again your stupid fuck kid or call the cops and make sure he spends the weekend in JH." Seriously bullies need to spend at least 1 full weekend in JH. From the time they get out of school on Friday til 6pm Sunday night. After that lets see if that fuck head wants to continue bulling someone after getting a taste of what it's like being locked up.
 
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