So sad: Phoebe Prince

[Rachel Bronwyn]

Phoebe Prince, South Hadley High School's 'new girl,' driven to suicide by teenage cyber bullies

What's particularily sick is the harrassment continued after she'd died all over a Facebook page entitled "We Killed Phoebe Prince". Apparently students are pretending to hang themselves publically, mocking her death, as if it's something to laugh at.

Her school didn't even have the good graces to postpone their celebratory dance, which took place three days after Phoebe killed herself.

I hate hearing about shit like this. This is one of those issues that makes me so angry I could spit.

[Soccermom]

I clicked on the link thinking it was just gonna be another story about how a girl got her feelings hurt and committed suicide because her boyfriend broke up with her and called her a whore or something. But these kids seriously fucked her over. This is crazy. Damn.

Curious though, it mentions charging the boys with statutory rape, but in the list of crimes, it makes no mention of any over the top physical contact. What's up with that?

Also, personally I'm GLAD it takes as long as it does(if not longer!) for Facebook and other sites to release personal data.

[PyroWildcat]

She said the investigation looked at whether the adults' failure to help Phoebe amounted to criminal behavior.

"In our opinion, it did not," she said.

LIKE HELL.

[Soccermom]

Seriously though, two males are being charged with statutory rape(A very very serious charge that will be with them for the rest of their lives) and the worst I can see that they did was a girl in the mob threw a Red Bull can at her.

I hope the mob mentality isn't swinging the OTHER way, into over penalizing these children.

[Nihtgenga]

Bloody hell.

[Rachel Bronwyn]

The dudes charged with statutory rape are seventeen and eighteen. Both had some form of sex with the victim, who was fifteen. That's statutory rape.

In conjunction with statutory rape, Sean Mulveyhill faces charges of violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly. The statutory rape charge is just the icing on the cake. I'm sure if he hadn't been involved in bullying her he wouldn't have been charged with statutory rape.

The other was the eighteen year old, who I have no sympathy for, simply because, when you're "legally adult" there's absolutely no excuse to be having sex with fifteen-year-olds you know to be fifteen as you go to high school with them. I can stomach seventeen (though, given the amount of abuse the seventeen-year-old unloaded on the girl, I figure he deserves to be charged with statutory rape as well), but as a legal adult you should know the law and behave in accordance with it.

Violation of civil rights resulting in bodily injury alone can result in a ten year prison sentence though so it's not as though the girls are getting off easy with these charges.

[OneWingedAngel]

throw the damn book at them, they deserve it for the physical and emotional damage they put this poor girl through. Make an example out of em!

[Soccermom]

Ah. None of the articles I could find in my 15 second google search gave me this info.

[Soccermom]

Originally Posted by OneWingedAngel

throw the damn book at them, they deserve it for the physical and emotional damage they put this poor girl through. Make an example out of em!

See, it is this kind of thinking that leads to Big Brother.

"If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear!"- No.

[Soccermom]

I can't help but feel sympathy for the aggressors, twisted as they may be. They are children, and because of the national attention this is bound to receive, they will be treated likely far more harshly than the law will dictate. Had the girl simply got her parents involved, or the faculty, or simply refused to go to school, the aggressors would have been at worst expelled.

She killed herself though, and now their lives will be devastated. I'm not saying what they did was not wrong, but as someone who was bullied throughout school and never felt the need to take my life, I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who would make that choice.

[Rachel Bronwyn]

If you never felt the need to kill yourself, you obviously can't relate to what she went through. Whether the experiences were similar or not, she obviously percieved the bullying in a very extreme manner. When you're fifteen and there are nine people with a vendetta against you, not only harrassing you opportunistically, but going out of their way to make your life hell in and outside school for an entire year, and all your cries for help fall on deaf ears, you are experiencing something far beyond being called fat on the playground.

She did get her parents involved who did contact the faculty. They turned a blind eye. They chose to let the situation escalate.

None of the kids charged will be affected by this in the long-term. In the meantime, they'll be inconvenienced, as they should be.

[JBird]

This is just inhumane. I'm at a lost for words. I've been picked on for most of my junior high school career, and I would know what that's like. But the extremes these girls went to? And over something so petty?