Girl's death forces US to face bullying culture

15 year old Massachusetts student Phoebe Prince

Whatever the Prince family expected for their daughter Phoebe when they moved to America from a village in the west of Ireland, it cannot have been what eventually transpired.

Phoebe only joined her Massachusetts school last northern autumn. Within six months, she had hanged herself in a clothes cupboard, the victim of a "relentless" bullying campaign.

In the aftermath of her death, South Hadley High School has been forced to confront terrible questions about the way some of its children treated the newcomer.

And this week, criminal charges have been filed against nine of the teenagers who made her life so miserable. Now that the charges have been announced, Phoebe's parents and other observers have been asking: what about the teachers who failed to protect her?

The case, which has sent waves of dismay across the entire state and even nationally, centres on the misery suffered by Phoebe Prince, who was just 15 years old when she took her own life on January 14, after what a prosecutor said had been months of bullying and taunting on school grounds, all arising, apparently, from her having dared briefly to date a school football player who was popular with other female students.

The athlete and another male student face charges of statutory rape in addition to the charges filed against four female students that range from assault, violation of civil rights resulting in injury and criminal harassment to disturbance of a school assembly and stalking. Three other younger girls face juvenile charges.

The abuse, which included the declaration that the girl was an "Irish s***", were made in person and in text messages on Facebook.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said the charges, which could bring heavy sentences, are "a message that there will be consequences for this kind of behaviour".

The death of Phoebe, who grew up in County Clare, Ireland, but was born in Bedford, England, was among cases that spurred the state legislature in Boston to pass new anti-bullying laws earlier this month.

The District Attorney who announced the charges, Betsey Scheibel, said Phoebe's death "followed a torturous day for her in which she was subjected to verbal harassment and threatened physical abuse". Her tormentors threw a can at her as she walked home. Prince, still in her school clothes, was found in a cupboard by her sister.

The tormenting of the girl began almost from her first day at the school in South Hadley, a town in western Massachusetts where her family settled last September.

While Scheibel said that four students and two members of the teaching staff had tried at times to intervene to protect Prince, "the actions or inactions of some adults at the school are troublesome". These, she added, nonetheless did not rise in her view to the level of criminal behaviour. "A lack of understanding of harassment associated with teen dating relationships seems to have been prevalent."

Not everyone is satisfied the adults should be let off while nine students are facing charges, including one state legislator who is calling for an inquiry into failures within the school common room. "I would hope the South Hadley school system would fully investigate and determine who knew what and when," said John Scibak, a Democrat who represents the town.

The District Attorney said the girl's mother had spoken to "at least two staff members" about the bullying and had noted that the bullying of her daughter was "common knowledge" at the school.

"What Scheibel had to say was as much an indictment of a look-the-other-way, kids-will-be-kids culture that permeated South Hadley High," Kevin Cullen, a columnist with the Boston Globe, wrote yesterday. "Whatever we expect students to do in these situations, there were adults at the high school who didn't intervene. The Mean Girls called Phoebe an Irish s***. They followed her. She had no quarter. They made it torture for her to come to school every day because the insults and the intimidation were, as Scheibel put it, relentless."

For its part, the school said it would not make any statements on the filing of the charges against its students until later this week or maybe next week when it had reviewed the evidence collected by Scheibel. An anti-bullying consultant, Barbara Coloroso, told CBS News yesterday that she had advised the school on ways to identify and stamp out cases of harassment long before the suicide and that her counsel had not been properly followed up.

For those who knew Phoebe, though, it comes too late. Not everyone at Phoebe's new school loathed her: Sergio Loubriel, 14, told the Boston Herald he had asked her to a winter dance with him, and regretted he had never told her that he had a crush on her. "I wish I could have stopped it. I wish I could have talked to her when she got home."

THE ACCUSED

Sean Mulveyhill, 17. Charged with statutory rape, violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly.

Kayla Narey, 17. Charged with violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly.

Austin Renaud, 18. Charged with statutory rape.

Ashley Longe, 16. Charged as a youthful offender with violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury.

Sharon Chanon Velazquez, 16. Charged as a youthful offender with stalking and violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury.

Flannery Mullins, 16. Charged as a youthful offender with stalking and violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury.

Three 16-year-old girls, whose names were not released, face delinquency charges that include the civil rights offence, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly.

- INDEPENDENT, AP