parents of cyberbullying victim slap bullies and their parents with lawsuit

[sio]

[TW for bullying/sexual harassment]

In response to cruel cyberbullying that has left their 16-year-old daughter feeling humiliated and unable to sleep, a pair of fed-up parents are striking back at the offending classmates in a unique and public way: They're suing all seven of the teens for libel and all of their parents for negligence.

Comments

[tabaqui]

Awesome and excellent. I hope they win big time.

[aviv_b]

Good. I know parents don't always know what their kids are up to online, but I think holding parents responsible rather than schools is more appropriate.

The schools have limited authority as to what they can do, especially if the bullying takes place off school property, doesn't use school equipment and isn't during school hours. I can't see a school getting involved in take-down orders or policing kids' behavior on their own time and their own tech.

Maybe when parents have to take off time to go to court (even if they don't end up paying damages) and incur the expense of getting legal representation, there will be a increase in parents who take their kids' bullying seriously.

[sio]

this article does not say whether or not they have found that this Instagram page was created or maintained during school hours/on school computers but i wouldn't be a bit surprised if there was evidence proving that it did happen.

in 99% of bullying cases, the school is equally responsible because they fail to do ANYTHING about the bullying that does go on on their (land) property, their time and in the case of these days, their (technology) property. they'd rather kiss the ass of bullies and victim-blame than do their fucking jobs to ensure that all students obtain a peaceful education as is their right.

however, i DO think that more victims' parents should sue bully parents. the more times bully parents have to pay for their kids' crimes (whether it's wages lost in time off, money for lawyers and/or fines/whatever when smart judges rule against their little criminals), the bigger of a message it will start sending to the rest of them to properly parent their kids better.

[nextdrinksonme]

What if the family is barely getting by and the parent(s) don't have the money for fines/lawyers or work multiple jobs and therefore can't monitor every second of their kids' days? Or they do watch their internet usage at home with parental settings and such, but their kids are doing this stuff from a friend's house or the public library? Yes, sometimes parents don't care about this kind of stuff, but there can also be very valid reasons why they may not know their kid is a bully or reasons why a lawsuit like that could destroy and bankrupt the family. Does a bullying child deserve to become homeless, which could very well be a possible result of a lawsuit where that family was poor?

[sio]

sorry, but that's not an excuse. one of my best friends in school came from an extremely poor family. the oldest siblings were in high school when we were in grade school and were barely passing cuz they had to work to keep the household going since mom was disabled and could not work. yet she didn't go around harassing other kids.

in fact, she was bullied horribly, with them calling her mother all sorts of ableist slurs, in addition to being bullied herself for not having "trendy" clothes. same assholes that harassed me, except they came up with other excuses to harass me.

plenty of people have bad home lives (and i can name FAR worse examples than that friend's situation) and somehow manage not to bully. so excuse me if i don't feel like having sympathy for bullies.

[romp]

It seems like this might be the only thing that makes it socially unacceptable to be a shit. Terrorizing others should not be a right of passage.

I'd be happy to drop the word "bullying" and act like children are as important as adults. Call it assault and intimidation and stalking and treat the cases accordingly.

[kleios_kiss]

Absolutely, I like dropping "bullying" and calling it "assault and intimidation," good call.

[moonshaz]

This, sfm!

[sio]

agreed! broken down, every element of bullying is a crime under the law anyway. assault and battery. slander and/or libel. intimidation, as you mentioned (tho that might fall under the blanket term of harassment?). stalking. in the worst cases, rape and molestation.

time to treat these little criminals as exactly what they are.

[kleios_kiss]

As to the "schools don't care" bit, I'd say that, at least on an anecdotal level for a very specific population in NYC (aka poor), schools are unwilling to take action because it will reflect badly on them and they'll lose state and federal funding. With things like "No Child Left Behind," and with the way things are done in NY (not sure about elsewhere), schools essentially get scored based on a number of factors, and depending on how high you score, that's the amount of funding you get. So I had some really awful students, like a kid who I was pretty certain must be sociopathic. Seriously disturbed, talking about "smacking up bitches" and openly talking about drug dealing, telling myself and other female teachers about things he'd like to do to us, singing about eating pussy, and mercilessly making fun of other students. I practically reported him to the administration everyday and kept detailed records of his actions and conversations. Was he ever suspended? No. Why? Because if we had too many suspensions, the school would get a

[moonshaz]

parents of cyberbullying victim slap bullies and their parents with lawsuit

[sio]

Grumpy Cat FTW.

also your icon is adorable :)