TRAGIC! 10 freakin years old!!!...

[one_voice]

Ashlynn Conner, 10-Year-Old, Hanged Herself After Bullying, Parents Say

A few weeks ago, 10-year-old Ashlynn Conner told her mother she was being bullied at Ridge Farm Elementary School and in her neighborhood in Ridge Farm, Ill., WTSP reported.

Last week, Ashlynn's mother, denied her daughter's request to be home schooled. The following day, the 10-year-old's sister found her hanging in her closet by a scarf.

The devastated single mother told WCIA3 News she knew her daughter was being picked on, but not to that extent.

"They'd call her a slut," a tearful Conner told the station, "'Ashlynn's ugly.' 'She's fat.'"

While no one from the Georgetown Ridge Farm School District was available to speak with WCIA, they issued a short statement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/ashlynn-conner-ten-year-o_n_1092683.html

The family of a 10-year-old honor student who killed herself last week said the girl had struggled with bullying at both her school and in her community.

Ashlynn Conner, a student at Georgetown Ridge Farm Elementary School in Vermilion County in east central Illinois, told her mother two weeks before her death that she was being bullied, CBS Chicago reports.

Stacy Conner, the girl's mother, told WCIA-TV that students had been teasing her daughter for years.

"They'd call her a slut," she told the station. "Ashlynn's ugly. She's fat."

Though she realized her daughter was being bullied, she said she did not know how to respond. She hopes her coming forward with her daughter's story may help other families going through similar struggles.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/ashlynn-conner-suicide-fa_n_1092521.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl11%7Csec1_lnk2%7C112419

She was a baby!!!



:cry:

link for those that don't go to HuffPo. Thanks NYC_SKP

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/11/13/family-blames-bullying-for-10-year-old-girls-suicide/

[sakabatou]

1. Damn

:(

[Stuart G]

2. Very sad. nt

[Fumesucker]

3. Damn..

:cry:

[emilyg]

4. Beyond sad. Sob.

[NYC_SKP]

5. Here's a non-Huffington Post link for those, like me, who don't go there...

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/11/13/family-blames-bullying-for-10-year-old-girls-suicide/

Here is the girl, a victim of criminal neglect by her mother, the school, society.



:cry:

[one_voice]

6. I will add your link to the OP....

thank you!

[Still Blue in PDX]

9. How was it criminal neglect by the mother?

Just what IS a mother to do?

My heart aches for what this poor girl endured and for her mother, too. Being a single mother is difficult enough. Hell, being a mother is difficult. I understand Ashlynn wanting to be homeschooled, but that isn't always possible.

Bullies should rot in hell. And/or jail.

:cry:

[NYC_SKP]

10. It is, naturally, a leap...

...a bit tongue in cheek of me to jump to that conclusion and I'm not professing to know enough to say that conclusively.

But having read up on it a bit and having seen some footage of the mom responding in the news, I am going to go out on a limb and say that this mom was not a good mom.

I could get bashed for this but it's true.

Some moms are not good moms and kids deserve better.

Maybe there weren't options, maybe there weren't signs, but the chances are that there were signs and there were options and the mom just wasn't listening.

That's the impression I have.

Sad in any event.

:cry:

[Lyric]

20. If it were my child?

See, I went through this shit when I was in school. I was absolutely tortured over being "fat". I told my Mom, she ignored it because she felt that nobody would listen to her because she was poor and didn't speak well or have much education. I wound up suicidal by 15, although (thankfully) my own attempt failed and I got some therapy and medication.

So if *my* child came home and told me, "Mom? Some kids at school...they constantly say that I'm fat, I'm ugly, I'm a slut..."? I'd be IN that office, having a direct and to-the-fucking-point conversation with the principal and the counselor, in which I'd tell them "You either STOP this, or I WILL pull my child out of school, homeschool him, and sue you and the BoE for everything I can. I don't care what you have to do--expel the other kids, transfer the bullies to a different school, force them into some kind of reparative therapy--whatever you have to do. But the abuse and harassment of MY child stops TODAY, period."

I've already done a similar thing twice--once when the school brought in the Boy Scouts to come recruit. They did it at lunchtime, when the kids were a captive audience, and they didn't tell the parents in advance. I wound up with a 7-year-old coming home, SO excited about camping and fishing and all those Boy Scouts things, and I had to explain to him that he couldn't be a part of that because the BSA hates his gay parents and won't let our atheist family participate. He was devastated, and I was HEATED. Seven is too damned young to be forced to come to terms with homophobia and religious discrimination, and all because the administrators "didn't think" about how that situation might hurt the kids who weren't ALLOWED to participate. I went off, and the principal nearly fell out of her desk chair apologizing over that one. We wound up agreeing that any further BSA visits to the school would be "excused absence" days for atheist kids or other kids who couldn't "belong" according the the BSA rules.

The most recent time was just a few weeks ago. LyricKid just started middle school this Fall, and he loves all of his teachers except one. That one is a hateful, misanthropic old b-word who honestly shouldn't be allowed within 50 feet of children, much less allowed to TEACH them. Twice now, LyricKid and his best buddy who lives down the street and is in his class, have come home in tears over something that woman did or said. She's spiteful and vindictive. She punishes the entire class whenever one kid commits even a minor infraction. She deliberately singles kids out for humiliation. LyricKid forgot his notebook one day, and she stood him up in front of the class and told everyone that "this was an example of the kind of irresponsible crap" that she "was not going to tolerate", because "anyone with half a brain cell can remember a notebook". She belittled the kids, called them stupid, lazy, you get the point.

For the first two weeks, I was supportive at home and told him to try befriending her and seeing things from her point of view. Some people are just cranky, and dealing with them is a part of life. I thought maybe since all his previous teachers were practically angels on earth, he was overreacting to the first negative teacher experience he'd ever really had. But it finally got to the point that he was throwing up in the mornings before school out of sheer anxiety, and starting to become withdrawn and sad. I was afraid he was going to end up with an ulcer or serious anxiety/depression problems. So I wrote an e-mail to the principal and the counselor, telling them everything that I'd heard from both kids about this woman, and told them that (1) I wanted Boo put into counseling to help him deal with the anxiety because it was affecting him physically, and (2) I wanted them to talk to this teacher and fix the problem. If that didn't work, then I wanted him OUT of this woman's class. They got back to me the very next day. We all met up to discuss the situation, and things are much better now. Boo sees the counselor regularly, they did a mediation with the teacher, and according to Boo, she is behaving much more professionally in class now. No more name-calling, no more bullying and humiliation. Apparently I was not the only parent to complain. Not a big surprise there.

Half the reason I was so damaged by school is because MY parents were timid due to their low self-esteem and lack of education, and were uncomfortable "getting involved". I'm not one of these helicopter parents who swoops in the very moment that anything less-than-perfect happens to my precious little snowflake, but I'm also not going to brush off legitimate, traumatizing problems as "kids will be kids" or "cranky people will be cranky". Kids should go to school to learn; they don't go to school to be bullied, humiliated, and singled out for social rejection and abuse.

I love teachers, and I support PUBLIC schools 100%, no exceptions. But I do not, and will never, tolerate bullying--whether via the other kids, or an incompetent teacher. I wish to god that bullying were taken more seriously in all schools, because it screws kids up for life. I'm still scarred. I know LOTS of other people who are too, many of them right here at DU. This shit needs to stop. Maybe if we start prosecuting the PARENTS of bullies who do nothing to address the problem, and refuse to believe that their precious little psychopaths have done anything wrong...maybe we'd actually get somewhere. Bullies LEARN bullying behavior; it's not inborn. If a child is bullying other kids, there is something seriously fucked-up in their home, and it needs to be dealt with--by the law, if necessary.

[laundry_queen]

23. I agree with every word you said

Especially the last paragraph. And my parents were the same - too timid to actually confront the teachers and very good at convincing me that somehow I must be at fault when I had 1 bullying teacher in particular. I refuse to have that happen with my kids. Luckily we haven't run into anything yet and thankfully, the schools that my kids go to have principals that I personally KNOW. I know there would be some action if I went in with a serious complaint.

And I totally agree, children who bully learn that behavior at home. I was a bit of a bully (ie "mean girl") in junior high and high school and that had a lot to do with me being bullied and emotionally abused and severely controlled/micromanaged by my parents (while at the same time being told I was better, prettier, smarter than everyone else). I say 'a bit' because I never bullied to someone's face but I often gossiped and spread rumors. I learned to put people down to make myself feel better, that's what my parents did. I shudder to think what I may have been like if there had been the internet and facebook back then, where you can 'bully' without looking into the eyes of the person you are bullying.

[Pacifist Patriot]

24. Wish I could rec a response.

[Still Blue in PDX]

28. Thank you for your excellent reply!

I appreciate it. Every parent should read it.

Oregon has anti-bullying laws on the books, and I hope they are enforced.

I was bullied in school too, and I also attempted suicide when I was 13. Fifty-four years later I still remember what it felt like, and I still am a wuss when other people criticize me. Once when my supervisor asked me what had happened to me when I was a kid to make me so hypersensitive I didn't have an answer for her, because I was never abused at home, but now I realize it was the bullying at school, and it was definitely mild compared to what kids endure today with the social networking and the generally increased cruelty of people.

[reggie the dog]

31. +lots

[badgerpup]

52. bless you...

I was bullied to the point where my parents finally allowed me to change schools...
AFTER my textbooks were vandalized.

Me? I was told "Ignore it...they just want attention"

Guess what...that doesn't always work- especially trying to ignore somebody trying to pull your hair out.

I survived without trying to kill myself or anyone else...but I've got a good bit o' Samsonite (i.e., 'baggage') over 40 years later.

Glad I never had kids...don't think I would have been a good parent.

[snooper2]

30. Mother goes down the street and talks to the little bastards parents

Mother talks to the little bastards herself...

Mother beats the little bastards...


If anybody ever gives my daughter a hard time when she starts going to school or in the neighborhood as she grows up, this father is going to put some flesh against a concrete wall.

[LiberalEsto]

42. She could have talked to the teacher

or the principal, or the school counselor, or a school nurse.

If the mother didn't know what to do, she should have kept contacting people until she got someone helpful.

For a kid to come out and tell a parent she is being bullied, means the bullying must have been severe. Kids usually won't talk about it with parents, for fear that they will be ordered to fight back, or end up singled out by classmates as a tattletale.

I was a victim of school bullying that left me with lifelong emotional scars. I still can't handle sitting at a table in the middle of the room when I go to a restaurant. I need to sit with my back against the wall. This developed from kids sneaking up behind me and pushing me so I spilled my food, or other cute pranks.

I also worked for the Maryland Center for Assault Prevention (now Metro CAP), part of a national program called CAP that teaches kids how to resist bullying, physical assault and sexual assault.
One thing CAP stresses is for kids to talk to a trusted adult. And if that adult can't help, keep going to other trusted adults until they find someone who does help.
Link: http://www.internationalcap.org/programs_programs.html

[handmade34]

43. yes, it is difficult

I was a single mother and my son experienced the same abuse and suffering at school... I was working two jobs and had 2 other children...One day I took my son to school(8th grade)on my way to work and he asked the same question that he had been asking for a while "Do I HAVE to go to school". This time I could tell by his behavior that it was serious... I immediately took him home and started that week on created a curriculum to present to the state so I could homeschool him. Almost anything is possible when your child's welfare is at risk...

It is most likely not criminal neglect by the mother in this case but we need to empower all women (all parents) to do what is best for their children and not be brainwashed into thinking just because "everyone else is doing it" or because society says you should" that they have to kowtow to authorities when you know your child is unsafe...

[bigwillq]

7. How very, very sad.

:(

[Initech]

8. I hate bullies and bullying so much. God damn them.

[shanti]

11. poor child...

:cry: she definitely didn't deserve that. also, i cannot even imagine the pain and guilt her mother must be going through now. truly a tragedy!

[ProfessionalLeftist]

12. This is just horrific.

No excuses for it. Not. One.

[Tsiyu]

13. Listen to your children

Mamas and Daddies and other caregivers... we tell them to "tell someone" but we don't tell them what to do if that "someone" doesn't really hear...

This was a guestbook response from another 10-year-old:

i am so sorry for what happened to your daughter, i am 10 years old too and sometimes i get bullied too but i do not get pushed around, kinda bulling i live in Danville so i do not go to her school i go to liberty school and we talked about what happened to your daughter today and i am gonna tell the truth i did cry and the teacher handed us a piece of paper and told us to either step on it or crumble it up and then after that she said to unfold it and said that it is all crumbled up now and and we could not change it back to how it looked before and that what happened to your daughter, she can not come back after its crumbled up and then we took another piece of paper and she said write names down who has bullied you and write what they did and what for, i am really sorry for what happened to your daughter i can feel how she feels because i am 10 years old,and she is some where up in the sky good, just know your daughter is with god in....his hands and she is up there with her grandma, and granpa just know she is somewhere up there good with someone she knows.just know i am thinking about her.


A lot of "gawd" stuff in most of the responses, but still, this post hit me.

[Catherine Vincent]

14. Sigh!

:(

[applegrove]

15. I was just thinking about a girl who was too shy to ask to go to the bathroom in shop

class in grade 7. So she wet her pants. She was sitting by herself on the bus on the way to our home school,sobbing. The popular boys in the class were taunting her. I sat down beside her and put my arm around her. She cried into my arms. And me and some of the girls in my class started yelling insults back at the boys such as "you peed your pants in grade one you idiot - leave her alone". She left the school pretty soon after that. There was surely more I could have done at the time and in the days afterwards. I didn't befriend her after that. I just wasn't conscious enough of a person to really make a difference in anybody's life at that age...or for a long time. I hope she is okay. I certainly would rather have to live with the ways I was humiliated myself as a kid than with the memory of being a bully (which I never was). I wish you could teach kids that. That it gets better.

[Capitalocracy]

17. You probably made more of a difference than you think. nt

[renate]

37. what you did was amazing

There is no doubt that however painful and embarrassing an experience that was for her, you made it so much better than it would have been if she'd had to sit alone. Bless you--you did a wonderful, compassionate thing and you made an immeasurable difference. I wish I could give you a million of these :hug:

[RainDog]

16. k&r n/t

[reggie the dog]

18. what kind of mother or father calls their own kid ugly and fat?

[Lyric]

19. The mother didn't say that--she was quoting what the bullies at school said.

And honestly, it was probably a LOT worse than that. You wouldn't believe some of the vicious, hateful things that kids will say and do to "fat" kids.

Hell, you wouldn't believe some of the vicious, hateful shit that ADULTS will say to and about "fat" people.

[barbtries]

21. Ashlynn

:cry:

we are so sick. when the country itself is the world's bully, what do we teach our children?

occupy.

[Bowwowwow09]

22. The only way to stop bullying is for OTHER STUDENTS to step up

Getting administrators and teachers involved usually makes things worse. The kid becomes more of a target for bullying, and the bullies will just be more discrete about it.

I'm lucky enough to never have really been bullied. However, I remember seeing it happen a lot. The fat kids, the ugly kids, the poor kids, the dirty kids, the dumb kids...they all got labeled and bullied. But that pretty much all changed my junior year of high school. Our all-state linebacker stood up for a tiny freshman one day and lunch. The kid always sat by himself at the far end of our lunch table. A senior came up and poured his milk all over his lunch tray. Jerome stood up, walked over to the bully and punched him as hard as he could in the stomach without saying a single word. Jerome got suspended for 3 days and had to miss 4 weeks of football games, but after that moment, bullying was cut drastically in our school.

It all boils down to popularity. We have primal instincts to assert our dominance over those who are weaker. We also have the desire to be liked. Bullying often accomplishes both of these. Almost every high schooler looks up to the popular kids. They want approval by them. When Jerome stood up for the freshman, people saw that the coolest kid in school didn't find bullying cool. Of course, it didn't eliminate bullying, but everyone from my high school will acknowledge that Jerome's actions made a huge difference. Most fights come with a much harsher punishment than a 3 day suspension, but the principal knew what he did and couldn't throw the book at someone for doing the right thing (even if he used violence to accomplish it).

[Pacifist Patriot]

25. I have never been prouder of my freshman son than when a teacher sent me an email....

a few weeks ago. He has no idea she even sent it to me.

While leaving class, my son apparently saw an upperclassman deliberately bump into another kid in the hallway and make a derogatory comment about gays. My son grabbed the bully by the sleeve and said something like (quoting teacher's email here), "Yo dude, homophobia is like so yesterday. You might want to cut it out or everyone's going to figure out you're a total douche and want nothing to do with you. I'd rather have a gay friend any day rather than an ignorant hateful dick like you."

It appears the bully did not turn on him, but rather a couple of other kids just outside this classroom clapped and made supportive remarks.

When I first started the email I thought I was going to get a lecture about my son's crude language. Instead the teacher said she was very proud of my kid and was glad someone like him was in one of her classes. Presumably he does not use "douche" and "dick" while in the history class itself.

ETA: Okay, I have had plenty of opportunities to be extremely proud of my son. This is just one among many. He was a really difficult child, but something happened in puberty and he's just become the coolest teenager.

[uponit7771]

26. +1

[raccoon]

32. Sounds like a great kid! nt

[Pacifist Patriot]

41. He's definitely a lesson in don't worry overly much when they're young.

Five year old sociopaths can turn out just fine. ;-)

[reggie the dog]

33. it probably has to do with the way he has been raised

[WillParkinson]

36. + infinity

Tell your son thanks from my family.

[classof56]

48. Great story! Thanks for posting and...welcome to DU!

Glad to have you on board!

[uponit7771]

27. What's shameful is other teachers see this and don't stop it before it goes too far

[Horse with no Name]

29. Incredibly sad.

We have noticed some bullying at school and immediately went to the school to stop it.

The offender was a child that was held back last year and is older and bigger than the rest of the kids.


These poor parents! It is NOT what it was when we were kids. Please listen to your children.
Keeping them in my thoughts.

[reggie the dog]

34. am i the only asshole here who bullied when the were 10 to 12?

i got bullied, felt bad and then would do the same shit to someone "weaker" than me

the first year or 2 of high school i stopped just because there really was no one to pick on unlike when i was in 8th grade say, and by the time i was a jr. i had "tuned in and turned on" and couldnt be bothered with the whole "pecking order" shit anymore, but for a couple of years i was a dick. i once acted the bully to impress some other kids but had the sense to loundly apologize to the victim the next day on the same bus ride home so as at least to publicly apologize, but i remember in primary school i and many others used to pick on a kid because he was fat, that guy would have justified reason to punch me in the mouth if he saw me again.

anyone else on here like that?

i should note that before i got into lsd and the like jr year in high school i had been a racist, sexist, homophobe but by my first year at the university those aspects of me ceased to exist.

perhaps most of you here were always nice, i was a dick, typical middle class white suburban slob republican/libertarian voting selfish prick and somewhere in the 16 to 19 range i got my head out of my ass

i hope none of the people i bullied in jr high suffered too much from it

i will not tolerate such behaviour from my own kids.

[PassingFair]

35. I had a boyfriend that admitted to me that he was a bully in grade school.

He told me that his first year of high school gym class
he noticed that most of the kids he had bullied in previous
grades were bigger than him and would probably kick his ass.

He never bullied anyone again.

[ZombieHorde]

47. I was extremely selfish, but I did not bully anyone. nt

[Paper Roses]

38. This breaks my heart. There are no words adequate to express my sorrow.

[tcaudilllg]

39. And someday, those bullies will become Republicans.

[NewJeffCT]

40. What a horrible tragedy

I feel so sorry for her family & friends.

:cry:

[DeSwiss]

44. K&R n/t

[sonias]

45. Damn it!

A cry for help is a cry for help. All of them should be taken seriously.

Poor little Ashlynn. May she rest in peace now. So very tragic.

:cry:

[RebelOne]

46. My friend's son killed himself at a high school here in North Georgia.

He was fat and was constantly bullied. One day. he took his father's 22-caliber gun to school. He stood up in class and declared, " I m not going to take it anymore." He then shot himself in the head, which killed him. He was only 15.

[crim son]

49. Awful, awful, awful.

All three of my kids were bullied to one degree or another and there is no question that the fact that being supportive as parents is helpful but not always the final solution. My oldest son suffered to the point where I overrode his objections and called the school to discuss the situation. To his credit, the school principal called an assembly the next day and the problem, in general, was the subject of a looooong discussion. It helped, but in the case of my oldest son the torment didn't end until he screwed up his courage and fought back. One punch and he was never again a target. What's the lesson in that? My youngest boy also had it rough until his father happened to witness him being attacked by another kid. My ex's reaction was not pretty but I can tell you that nobody bothered Henry for the rest of that school year. Bullies remain bullies in part because their aggressive behavior is not adequately dealt with when it first becomes obvious. Unfortunately I've spoken with the parents of such children on one or two occasions and it wasn't hard to understand why their kids had problems. Sad as hell.

[Enthusiast]

50. The bullies? They are just acting like Republican adults.

Right wing fascist filth.

[Ken Burch]

51. That's a very good point.

Bullying is an inherently right-wing trait...it's about punishing people for not being "normal", for not "fitting in"-it's about crushing difference through fear.

That is the right-wing mindset in a nutshell.

It's why, for example, upper-class "public schools" in Britain(public meaning private in the UK)have always had a tradition of bullying and humiliation-and why none of the headmasters of those schools has ever done a damn thing to stop it.

[Enthusiast]

54. Yes.

If we look back to 20th century history we see that bullying was a key element of fascism. This must be well known to our opponents because they are actively promoting bullying, especially the bullying of gays. This is precisely like their 20th century Nazi counterparts. Who did the Nazis come after? They persecuted homosexuals, Jews, socialist, communists, Gypsies, and the physically and mentally disabled. The disabled were characterized as useless eaters. This isn't a historic parallel it is exactly the same.

My suggestion to the American people would be to WAKE THE F UP!

[Zoeisright]

53. I wish that mother would sue the fuck out of the school. AND

the bullies AND their parents AND the teachers, the school board, the principal, everybody involved. That is the ONLY thing that will make these schools sit up and pay attention.