The guilty party
I keep seeing news features about the Irish girl in an American school, who killed herself after months of bullying. Everyone acts as if this was somebody’s fault. As if anyone was to blame but her.
Don’t get me wrong. I loathe bullies. I was bullied mercilessly for almost six years, and it ran the gamut: public ridicule, physical persecution, social ostracism. If it were possible to give every bully in the world a solid ass-kicking, en masse and simultaneously, I’d grab a tub of popcorn and settle in to watch. And maybe film the spectacle, so I could relive the happiest moments at my leisure.
But she killed herself. Her persecutors didn’t bully her to death, they bullied her and she killed herself. Some are trying to blame the school board, for knowing about the problem and not somehow preventing it. Well, first of all, how exactly in today’s litigious society is anyone expected to control the narcissistic young monsters that populate today’s schools? And second, even if the school board HAD known and HAD possessed the ability to make the bullying cease, and failed to do so, they would have been guilty of that and only that: failing to stop bullying when it was ongoing.
Because she killed herself. She didn’t die because she was bullied; she died because she was stupid and weak and found it easier to take her own life than to seek help from friends or family.
It was an awful tragedy, and I wish it could have been prevented. But the perpetrator of the tragedy isn’t around to face any of the accusations.
Because she killed herself.
Don’t get me wrong. I loathe bullies. I was bullied mercilessly for almost six years, and it ran the gamut: public ridicule, physical persecution, social ostracism. If it were possible to give every bully in the world a solid ass-kicking, en masse and simultaneously, I’d grab a tub of popcorn and settle in to watch. And maybe film the spectacle, so I could relive the happiest moments at my leisure.
But she killed herself. Her persecutors didn’t bully her to death, they bullied her and she killed herself. Some are trying to blame the school board, for knowing about the problem and not somehow preventing it. Well, first of all, how exactly in today’s litigious society is anyone expected to control the narcissistic young monsters that populate today’s schools? And second, even if the school board HAD known and HAD possessed the ability to make the bullying cease, and failed to do so, they would have been guilty of that and only that: failing to stop bullying when it was ongoing.
Because she killed herself. She didn’t die because she was bullied; she died because she was stupid and weak and found it easier to take her own life than to seek help from friends or family.
It was an awful tragedy, and I wish it could have been prevented. But the perpetrator of the tragedy isn’t around to face any of the accusations.
Because she killed herself.