Ryan Halligan
Who was Ryan Halligan?
According to Ryan Halligan’s Story, Ryan was a sweet, fun-loving 13 year old boy who was bullied and cyberbullied for many years during his lifetime (“Ryan’s Story”). After attempting to fight off bullies, Ryan actually became what he thought was friends with one of his bullies. This relationship, however, turned out to be a lie when the former bully used Ryan’s trust to get personal information and then spread lies about Ryan to the rest of his classmates. Ryan thought things were getting better for him when he began instant messaging a girl he had a crush on. They talked about personal information, with Ryan believing he was friends with someone that he could completely trust. But, she too, used Ryan to gain personal information about him that she would share online by posting screenshots of their conversations online. When this girl told Ryan that he was a loser, he responded by saying, “It’s girls like you who make me want to kill myself” (“Ryan’s Story”). On October 7, 2003, Ryan Halligan committed suicide by hanging himself. His older sister was the one who found his body. |
Phoebe Prince
The New York Times reports on the case of Phoebe Prince from Massachusetts in a March 29, 2010 article. Phoebe Prince was a 15 year-old student who moved from Ireland to South Hadley, Massachusetts. Prince was a freshman at South Hadley High School in 2010 and during her time there she had to deal with relentless cyberbullying from several of her peers. Eventually all of the harmful messages and bullying at school led to Prince hanging herself from a stairwell in January 2010. Prince suffered through three months of threats and harassment from her fellow classmates.
Six teenagers, two boys and four girls ages 16 to 18, had charges brought against them after Prince committed suicide. The felony charges the teens were facing included statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly. The statutory rape charge coming from two boys having sex with Prince while she was still underage.
Teachers and other administrative faculty were aware of the harassment being directed towards Prince, but failed to do anything about it. The bullying arose from Prince having a relationship with a senior boy. Aside from the cyberbullying, Prince also endured physical bullying while at school. She was bullied in the library, lunchroom, hallways, and on her way home from school (Eckholm, Erik, and Katie Zezima).
Six teenagers, two boys and four girls ages 16 to 18, had charges brought against them after Prince committed suicide. The felony charges the teens were facing included statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly. The statutory rape charge coming from two boys having sex with Prince while she was still underage.
Teachers and other administrative faculty were aware of the harassment being directed towards Prince, but failed to do anything about it. The bullying arose from Prince having a relationship with a senior boy. Aside from the cyberbullying, Prince also endured physical bullying while at school. She was bullied in the library, lunchroom, hallways, and on her way home from school (Eckholm, Erik, and Katie Zezima).
Rebecca Ann Sedwick
Rebecca Ann Sedwick
attended Crystal Lake Middle School when she began to be taunted by a group of
15 other girls on her Facebook page (“The Story of Rebecca Ann Sedwick”).
Her mother then decided to send her to a new school, Lawton Chiles Middle
Academy, hoping that this would stop the online bullying that Rebecca was
experiencing. But, the cyberbullying continued. Rebecca was still
receiving harmful messages on her Facebook page, which was eventually shut
down. But the girls found more ways through social media to cyberbully
Rebecca. On September 8, 2013, instead of going to school, Rebecca Ann
Sedwick walked to an abandoned industrial site and jumped off one of the
structures to her death. She was only 12 years old.
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