School Bullying Council

A ray of hope, and a touch of grace.

That’s the mantra that the family of Howard County teen Grace McComas hopes will prevail in confronting incidents of bullying. Addressing a group of parents and school leaders Saturday, they said the emerging epidemic played a part in Grace, a 15-year-old, ending her own life on Easter Sunday.

The McComas family joined forces with Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice to send a powerful message in a forum called “A Ray of Hope: A Pro-kindness, Anti-bullying, Teen Suicide Prevention Outreach,” at Howard High School.

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“This situation has really gotten out of hand,” Rice, the co-host of the event, told the audience of more than 100, adding that he was devastated to see that bullying incidents are now a factor in suicide. “That struck a nerve in my body, and everything I stand for.”

A host of local and state leaders, including County Councilman Calvin Ball who co-hosted the forum, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, and Maryland first lady Katie O’Malley, gathered to hear and air concerns about bullying.

Saying that his own sister was bullied, Rice told members of the crowd that they had to tackle the issue together to give a voice to those suffering in silence. “Football aside, I want to be a voice in this,” he said.

The McComas family said that Grace, who attended Glenelg High School, committed suicide after months of online torment via Twitter. On Saturday, the family released some of the tweets their daughter had received in the months leading up to her death.

According to tweets read aloud at the event, Grace was told repeatedly that she was hated and that her existence was God’s sense of humor. She was encouraged to kill herself.

Mother Chris McComas told the crowd that Grace was kind, exuberantly happy, and tender-hearted. “Too tender-hearted, in fact, in a world that can be cruel,” she said, as the girl’s sisters sat weeping.

Fighting tears, father Dave McComas told the crowd that a tweet was like “an instant auditorium,” and that the name cyber-bullying doesn’t capture the impact of social media harassment. “It should be called water-boarding … it is constant torture. Grace was in constant torture.”

By the end of the forum, tensions ran high as parents and students shared stories about enduring layers of bureaucracy in the Howard County school system to get help in bullying situations. O’Malley, who has created Maryland’s Bullying Awareness Week, said that protocols requiring victims to fill out a state-issued reporting form aren’t enough.

“It’s the schools that need to do the snitching for the kids,” O’Malley said. “We can’t make the victim [do it]; they’re already fragile. They’re not brave, so we have to be brave for them. The forms are great, but they’re just one avenue.”

Pam Blackwell, director of student services for Howard County, said that “bullying is a symptom of a school climate not working,” and that professional development programs about bullying are a high priority. She said most cyber-bullying takes place on devices at home, and the system would need parents’ help to ensure that students are being monitored.

Incidents of bullying, harassment and intimidation affected nearly 4,700 Maryland students last year, according to the most recent statistics published by the Maryland State Department of Education. Last year, there were 409 cases in Anne Arundel County, 541 in Baltimore City, 510 in Baltimore County, 314 in Carroll, 54 in Harford, and 300 in Howard.

Parents and students said that the forum was overdue in Howard County.

“It was an eye-opening opportunity for the school system,” said Ginger Dudek, the parent of a Reservoir High School freshman who was bullied for years until he fought back for the first time this year. “They have forms and stuff, but there’s no support.”

Dudek’s son, Chris, was glad that attendees, as well as experts and officials, heard students’ voices.

“It seems like they don’t care as much as they should,” Chris said. “It will be good to see something change.”

erica.green@baltsun.com

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ho-ray-rice-bullying-20120505,0,1365977.story

A Towaco man who overcame a severe childhood disability to become a professional musician is suing the Cherry Hill school district on behalf of 10-year-old student Akian Chaifetz.

Through the non-profit organization Drums and Disabilities (DAD), the aim of which is to aid autistic children through music instruction, Towaco resident Pat Gesualdo filed a federal complaint Thursday alleging that Chaifetz’s rights were violated by his former special education teacher, Kelly Altenburg.

“Akian was bullied, harassed, and publically humiliated, which is a direct violation of his civil rights,” Gesualdo told Patch. “The teacher needs to be removed immediately.”

Prior to the filing of this complaint, Altenburg had already hired legal representation as a result of the allegations.

DAD’s suit names as defendants: Cherry Hill Public Schools, the Cherry Hill Education Association, Horace Mann School, and Altenburg speficically.

Although the boy’s father has publically and petitioned for Altenburg’s removal in a series of YouTube videos, Gesualdo says Stuart Chaifetz is unconnected with the lawsuit.

Instead, he says, the pair will collaborate with lawmakers to pass zero-tolerance legislation that would fire teachers who violate the civil rights of disabled children regardless of their tenure.

“Stuart wants to work the legislative angle,” Gesualdo says.

As a music educator whose program has been implemented at various school districts throughout the state, Gesualdo says he is not out to threaten teachers’ jobs.

He would like any legislation to provide a window in which a teacher could self-report any incidents to administrators and parents before the situation worsened.

“I’m a teacher too,” he says. “I work with teachers. I train teachers. Nobody wants this because of a couple of crazy teachers.

“But when the union and the school board and the principals come out and defend teachers for their actions, that’s where they have to draw the line,” he says.

The statute Gesualdo has invoked in the lawsuit is the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504 of which addresses failures to provide appropriate services to children with disabilities.

Under the law, a finding of wrongdoing may result in “the awarding of monetary reimbursement or other corrective action appropriate to the needs of the child; and appropriate future provision of services for all children with disabilities,” according to the U.S. Department of Special Education.

Although DAD is listed as the complainant in this case, Gesualdo says neither he nor his organization stands to benefit materially from any potential damages awarded from his lawsuit.

“Under a 504 violation that money goes to the state,” Gesualdo says. “At that time they could in fact advocate for the money to the parent, but Stuart didn’t want to get involved.”

Gesualdo says the reason he was motivated to take legal action is because he understands first-hand the nature of both bullying and disability. He suffered from a childhood developmental disorder that saddled him with severe dyslexia, braces from his ankles to his knees, and a crippling stutter.

“I had no fine motor skills,” he says. “Drumming helped re-train the synapses in my brain, and by the time I graduated high school, I had completely alleviated my disability 100%.”

“I have lived every side of this issue,” Gesualdo says. “This isn’t about me. It’s because of all the little boys and girls out there [who face these challenges], and I will go state to state if I have to.”

http://montville.patch.com/articles/towaco-man-files-lawsuit-on-behalf-of-bullied-autistic-cherry-hill-boy

Lauren Alaina, the 2011 “American Idol” runner-up, heard about the Easter Sunday suicide of Glenelg High School sophomore Grace McComas, 15, from a Twitter message.

Alaina, 17, of Georgia, said Sunday that she was saddened to hear about Grace, whose parents said she took her life after being cyber-bullied. Alaina helped the hashtag “blue4grace” trend online when the singer sent a personal message to her nearly 300,000 followers.

Blue was Grace’s favorite color.

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“It is horrible,” Alaina said of Grace’s death. “It is just so sad.”

Alaina said she is not sure who reached out to tell her about Grace, but that person asked her to support Grace’s family. Alaina wrote: “#blue4grace prayers to her family. It’s horrible when the world loses young people.”

Alaina said she was cyber-bullied before her fame on “Idol” — and even more so afterward.

“It is just really bad; people are just so mean,” Alaina said.

Said Alaina: “You just have to ignore it, because responding and letting it get to you is what they want.”

If the bullying gets really bad, she said, teens should delete their social media accounts. If the situation is painful, teens should “tell someone that can do something about it,” she added.

Alaina recalled a situation from her time in a Georgia high school when a girl bullied and threatened another girl. One of the victim’s friends printed out the messages and brought them to school. The bully got in a lot of trouble, Alaina said.

“I have insecurity problems like every teenage girl, but you have to work through them,” Alaina said. “You have to accept yourself so everyone else can.”

Cyber-bullying is “a waste of time,” Alaina continued. “The only reason why people do it is because they are insecure. I think everyone needs to mind their own business.”

Alaina called on teens to take action when someone is being harassed online.

“If you see it happening to other people, stand up for them,” she said. “It is a horrible feeling to have people bashing you online.”

ywenger@baltsun.com

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-cyber-bullying-side-20120422,0,436989.story

Katie Anger, a bright-eyed redhead from West Friendship, opened the door for cyber-bullying as a middle-schooler, when she installed the “Honesty Box” app on her Facebook page.

Some teens used the now-defunct Facebook feature to criticize her anonymously, tell her that no one liked her and say things they would never have said to her face.

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“I felt like I almost had no one that would help me through it or be there for me,” recalled Katie, 16, now a junior at Maryvale Preparatory School in Brooklandville. “You just feel alone. I kept telling myself, I’ll be out of middle school in no time and I’ll get a fresh start.”

Such attacks — among the nearly 4,700 cases of bullying, harassment and intimidation reported by Maryland schools in the last academic year — are common encounters for teens online. Cyber-bullying creates a vexing situation for parents and schools to police, because the harassment and intimidation is pervasive, easily kept out of a parent’s view and inescapable to a generation tied to the Internet.

Unlike traditional schoolyard teasing, cyber-bullying can take place 24 hours a day, and often happens off school grounds, making it difficult for school officials to track. And because discipline is left to local school officials, it varies across Maryland, and is considered too subjective to some parents and teachers.

The consequences of cyber-bullying resounded in Maryland after the Easter Sunday suicide of 15-year-old Grace McComas. Her parents said the sophomore at Glenelg High School in Howard County took her life after months of being victimized online.

“This incident underscores the 21^st-century bully, equipped with a cell phone and a Facebook account, is a constant source of torment for our kids. There is no walking away. There is no hiding,” said New Jersey state Sen. Barbara Buono, who was the lead sponsor on anti-bullying legislation there. The state’s law, considered to be the most progressive in the country, requires all schools to have an in-house anti-bullying specialist.

The New Jersey law was passed in January 2011, following the suicide of a Rutgers University freshman who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate secretly filmed him kissing a man and posted the video online.

“The 21^st-century bullies have made our kids prisoners of their own existence,” Buono said.

Maryland is one of 45 states that spell out the consequences for cyber-bullying in anti-bullying laws, said Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a senior policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States. When the Denver-based commission conducted the same survey in 2005, no state had a clearly defined cyber-bullying provision, she said.

Meanwhile, the White House on Friday endorsed a bill by U.S. Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, and Mark Kirk, R-Illinois — co-sponsored by Maryland Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin — that calls on schools to do more to protect students against bullying and harassment.

The Safe Schools Improvement Act, which ties anti-bullying policies to federal funding, would require schools to have a code that prohibits the conduct, to do more to prevent it and to set new reporting standards.

Why kids cyber-bully

Gregory Fritz, a Brown University professor of psychiatry and human behavior, said cyber-bullying is receiving more attention because of the number of suicides directly related it. He said two groups of young people are cyber-bullies: regular kids and deviant ones.

Children and teens, especially those in middle school and ninth grade, seek acceptance in peer groups with rules that can be cruel or arbitrary, said Fritz, who also is academic director at Bradley Hospital in Rhode Island. Young people will try to reduce their own insecurity at the expense of others.

The age group is also prone to being impulsive and thinking in extremes, two traits that perpetuate cyber-bullying, Fritz said. With a click of a mouse, a teen can send a hurtful message without having thought twice, he said.

Anger and other Maryvale students attended a multi-school diversity conference last week on cyber-bullying, depression, drug awareness, gender stereotypes and disabilities.

It is one of several planned for the Baltimore region, including a forum to be scheduled in early May by Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice and Howard County Councilman Calvin Ball.

Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, will be the keynote speaker Thursday at an anti-bullying seminar hosted by Howard County schools and the local PTA.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/howard/bs-md-ho-cyber-reader-20120422,0,1664908.story

A Seminole County family that rocketed into the national consciousness a year ago after the father threatened children he accused of bullying his daughter appeared on television this morning to say that they hope their experience will help others.

James Willie Jones, was videotaped on Sept. 3, 2010, giving a profanity-laden tirade to students and a bus driver on a school bus. He said then that the students had bullied his disabled daughter, Chatari. This morning, he said that although he regretted the incident, he is convinced that his intervention saved his daughter’s life.

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“She could’ve been – right now – not even with us,” he told NBC’s Today Show of his daughter, who has cerebral palsy.

Chatari was hospitalized temporarily because of stress from the bullying, in which other students threw a condom at her head, hit her, twisted her ears and called her names.

Jones also said this morning he was not angry that he was prosecuted in connection with the incident.

“I did something wrong, so I had to pay the price for what I’d done,” he explained. Jones had to pay a $3,000 fine and perform community service.

For her part, Chatari said she hopes other people will learn and be inspired by her family’s experience.

“I can help other people with this situation,” Chatari said.

The girl said her father’s advocacy on her behalf and the positive support her family had received had also emboldened her to stand up – for herself and others – when she sees or is the victim of bullying.

“I will call the bully out and tell them ‘That’s not right,’” she said.

Chatari’s mother, Deborah McFadden-Jones, now drives her to school each day at what McFadden-Jones described as “a great school that’s very involved with her.”

The girl said her first day of school earlier this week was a positive experience.

“It was awesome,” she said.

McFadden-Jones added that she is proud of her daughter for adopting such an anti-bullying stance.

“I feel that she has grown up,” she said of the teen. “She has started healing.”

apalm@tribune.com

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-chatari-jones-bullying-today-show-20110901,0,5165624.story

Never bully somebody bigger than you. You never know when they might be Zangief in disguise.

Casey Haynes had had enough. He’d been bullied all his school life, and when Ritchard Gale decided it would be fun to throw a few punches at the overweight kid, Casey snapped. Diving forward, Casey lifted his attacker bodily into the air before slamming him to the concrete in a manner akin to the character Zangief from Street Fighter, leading to the moniker “Zangief Kid.”

Casey was suspended for 4 days from his school in Sydney, Australia, while the instigator of the fight, Ritchard, was suspended for 21 days. An online outpouring of congratulations to Casey for standing up to bullying soon followed, along with debate over if Casey was in the right to deliver a pile-driver to the smaller boy.

Internet group Anonymous has taken up Casey’s cause, reposting the video and remixing it with Team Fortress 2 and Street Fighter, DDOS’ing the school’s website, and prank calling Ritchard Gale and his family.

The mother of the bully recently went on Australian TV and said that she wanted her son to apologize to Casey, saying of the viral video “We don’t need this posted everywhere. I would like him to apologize.”

Whether or not the kid was in the right, one thing is for sure; he’s got a hell of a career in wrestling waiting for him.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108538-Kid-Becomes-Little-Zangief-in-Response-to-Bullying

Social networking means many teenagers are never far from a bully, harassment or unwanted sexual messages.

Teens are joining social-networking sites at younger ages, spreading bullying and other ugly behaviors to the virtual realm. As a result, officials have been ramping up efforts to prevent threats like online harassment and “sexting.”

“In the past, you dealt with a bully on the playground. You left and it was over,” said Officer Marc MacDonald, a school resource officer with the Fairfax County police. “These kids are 24 hours a day into social media, on their phones, everywhere they go. They can’t just walk away from it.”

One in three teens ages 12 to 17 have been subjected to online harassment, according to a 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project presentation. Fifteen percent said they received sexting messages.

Locally, Lakelands Park Middle School in Gaithersburg notified parents last year after authorities found students making threats online. A 14-year-old girl in Prince William County was charged with stalking for posing as a boy on Facebook to strike up a relationship with another girl. And Montgomery County officials busted a middle school boy who rented out his iPod Touch so others could view photos of nude female classmates.

Such cases have spurred authorities to put cyberbullying and other social-media-related crimes on their radars.

President Obama held an anti-bullying conference last week, and the D.C. Bar Association’s upcoming youth law fair will focus on cyberbullying.

The law fair aims to teach teens that cyberbullying can lead to anxiety, depression and poor performance in school, just like physical bullying, said Vanessa Taylor, the association’s events and outreach coordinator.

“Once you send a message, you can’t take it back,” she said.

The problem is especially prevalent among middle schoolers, experts said. That’s when youth usually begin going online without assistance from their parents and start using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, said Michelle Boykins, spokeswoman for the National Crime Prevention Council.

Boykins said online aggression often starts after an in-person dispute.

“Something happens at school or a mall that’s a confrontation that turns into a war of words or harassment online,” she said.

And sometimes, those physical confrontations themselves end up the Web. Last week, a video of a fight at High Point High School briefly surfaced on YouTube. Students have said the fight was posted to bring attention to violence at the school.

“This was a clear and explicit cry for help,” said Prince George’s school board member Edward Burroughs. “In other cases, there are times when we have students post fight videos just for entertainment or for no good cause.”

Police and school officials say they sometimes are hamstrung in efforts to discipline offenders. Forty-four states and the District have bullying laws, but only six include language specifically about cyberbullying, according to the Cyberbullying Research Center. Legislators in Maryland and Virginia have pushed to explicitly include text messages and social networks in harassment legislation.

Social networks, though, are also stepping up safety measures. Formspring, a social network with a reputation as a forum for bullying, announced that it will work with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to better detect online bullying. And Facebook is preparing to debut a system to let users report abusive content to someone they know — like a parent or teacher — in addition to asking the site to remove it.

ebabay@washingtonexaminer.com

http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime-punishment/2011/03/officials-push-combat-cyberbullying