School Bullying Council

Story Published:
May 10, 2011 at 10:54 AM PDT

Story Updated:
May 10, 2011 at 5:29 PM PDT

SEATTLE — A 12-year-old girl who prosecutors say sought revenge by bullying a former friend with her own Facebook account pleaded not guilty on Monday.

The girl has been charged in juvenile court with first-degree computer trespass and cyberstalking.

The girl, along with an 11-year-old girl also charged in the case, were classmates at Issaquah Middle School with the 12-year-old victim.

The three were friends but had a falling out that prosecutors say spilled onto Facebook.

The two girls who have been charged allegedly logged into the victim’s Facebook account and edited pictures to depict a knife pointing at her head, drew devils horns and added word bubbles reading “I’m a slut.”

Using the victim’s account, the girls posted comments on other profiles saying “Have sex with me,” and soliciting men for oral sex.

“I was hurt and sad and very angry,” Leslie Cote said in an interview last month.

KOMO News normally does not identify crime victims, but Leslie and her family chose to discuss the incident that she says left her crying and unable to sleep for weeks.

“Some people looked at me differently, and then judged me differently now because of what happened,” she said.

Leslie said the former friends had access to her Facebook account because she had accidentally saved the password in the web browser on one of their computers.

When police confronted the two girls, both allegedly admitted they accessed Leslie’s Facebook account without permission because they were mad at her.

“This case reveals the dark side of social media sites used by young people,” King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said in a news release. “Many kids think that on a social media site that their actions will be anonymous and that they are free to use it as weapon to bully, harass, and intimidate another person.”

The 11-year-old girl who allegedly took part in the scheme has not been arraigned. A hearing has been scheduled for later this month for a judge to determine whether the girl understands that her actions were wrong.

According to the King County Prosecutor’s Office, state law presumes that children age 8 to 11 are not capable of committing crimes.

The judge also ordered the 12-year-old not to have contact with the victim, either in person or online.

If convicted as charged, the girls could serve up to 30 days in juvenile detention.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/121577664.html

In Illinios, two Emerson Middle School students have been charged by Park Ridge Police with harassment in an alleged case of cyber-bullying against a female classmate.

The 13- and 14-year-old girls, both of Park Ridge, were charged Dec. 23 under a local ordinance and are scheduled to appear before the Park Ridge Peer Jury, police said.

According to police the girls are accused of setting up a page on the social-networking site, Facebook, that included offensive and derogatory statements about a 13-year-old girl. Requests to “friend” the page were then sent out to more than 80 classmates, said Park Ridge Police Cmdr. Lou Jogmen.

The father of the 13-year-old victim contacted police after learning about the site, Jogmen said. Two Park Ridge detectives interviewed about 10 Emerson Middle School students before identifying the two girls who were allegedly responsible for the Facebook page.

Jogmen said detectives spent more than 15 hours on the case, and he called it a “pretty substantial investigation.”

For the past several years, Emerson, in cooperation with the Niles Police Department, has held seminars for parents on the topic of cyber-bulling and how to protect their children online.