It is not clear what some students at South Hadley High School expected to achieve by subjecting a freshman to the relentless taunting described by a prosecutor and classmates.
Certainly not her suicide. And certainly not the multiple felony indictments against several students at the Massachusetts school.
The prosecutor brought charges on Monday against nine teenagers, saying their taunting and physical threats were beyond the pale and led the freshman, Phoebe Prince, to hang herself from a stairwell in January.
The charges were an unusually sharp legal response to the problem of adolescent bullying, which is increasingly conducted in cyberspace as well as in the schoolyard and has drawn growing concern from parents, educators and lawmakers.
In the uproar around the suicides of Prince, 15, and an 11-year-old boy subjected to harassment in nearby Springfield last year, the Massachusetts legislature stepped up work on an anti-bullying law that is now near passage. The law would require school staff members to report suspected incidents and principals to investigate them. It would also demand that schools teach about the dangers of bullying. Forty-one other states have anti-bullying laws of varying strength.
In the Prince case, two boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face a different mix of felony charges that include statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment, stalking and disturbing a school assembly. Three younger girls have been charged in juvenile court, Northwestern district attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said at a news conference in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Appearing with state and local police officials on Monday, Scheibel said that Prince’s suicide came after nearly three months of severe taunting and physical threats by a cluster of fellow students.
“The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school,” Scheibel said.
The conduct of those charged, she said, “far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels.”
It was particularly alarming, the district attorney said, that some teachers, administrators and other staff members at the school were aware of the harassment but did not stop it.
“The actions or inactions of some adults at the school were troublesome,” Scheibel said, but did not violate any laws.
Christine Swelko, assistant superintendent for the South Hadley Public Schools, said school officials planned to meet with the district attorney this week or next.
“We will then review this evidence, and particularly the new information, which the district attorney’s office has, but did not come to light within the investigation conducted by the school,” Swelko said in a statement.
“Once we are able to obtain this information we will be able to make a more comprehensive statement and possibly take further action against the students still attending South Hadley High School,” Swelko said.
Prince’s family had recently moved to the US from a small town in Ireland, and she entered South Hadley last fall. The taunting started when she had a brief relationship with a popular senior boy; some students reportedly called her an “Irish slut,” knocked books out of her hands and sent her threatening text messages, day after day.
At South Hadley High School, which has about 700 students, most students and teachers refused on Monday to talk about the case. Students waited for parents in the pouring rain and a sports team ran by, with one student telling reporters, “Go away.”
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