One
year ago today, October 17th 2012, my daughter was assaulted at school by a
girl she barely knew. Another girl video-taped the assault and shared it with
other students moments afterwards, because it was the “cool” thing to do. As we
pieced the details together, we discovered that a third girl, my daughter’s
former best-friend, played a significant role in this event, as well.
Apparently, there was a barrage of bullying and cyber-bullying events prior to
that day. One of which included a pizza box with obscene language, directed at
my daughter, being delivered to her in the school cafeteria during the lunch
hour. I had no knowledge of the bullying by this group of girls, which apparently
had begun three months prior. The first I had heard about this harassment was
the day I picked her up from the nurse’s office at school. My daughter kept it
from us, for fear of creating more drama and the embarrassment of having her
parents get involved. She also knew the former friend’s parents most-likely
wouldn’t do anything about it, as we had previous issues with this individual.
Since the summer of 2012, when the cyber-bullying began, my daughter has
experienced severe debilitating migraine headaches, insomnia, depression,
anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Her grades took a nosedive and she was in
jeopardy of not graduating on time with the rest of her class. She has been
hospitalized twice, once for cutting and once for a suicide attempt. My husband
and I have spent an ungodly amount of sleepless nights wondering if we were
going to be among those parents who have “lost a child”. None of this has been
shared with many people outside our tight-knit family and close friends, until
now. The reason? It’s time to take a stand, and it takes a village to do so.
Unbeknownst to us, during the months prior to my daughter’s
assault, a recent graduate from my daughter’s high school began following her
on a popular social-networking site. She started to pay more attention to my
daughter’s online discussions as they started to turn and now continuously
included her desperate pleas to end the “blasting” by this group of girls. Reading
the vile comments directed at my daughter generated a hurt so deep inside my
heart, I wept for days… “stupid ass girl, they never learn”, “but you mean so
f****** little and I know you’re way below me”, “a worthless piece of sh**”, “I
hate you with everything inside me”, “everyone thinks you’re a stupid b****,
it’s great”, “I hope only bad things come to you”, “just die”, “I should
f****** kill you”… When the cyber-bullying escalated, this young lady sent my
daughter a private message letting her know she had also been the target of
bullying before and if she ever needed someone to talk to, she could call her.
My daughter had taken this girl’s phone number and began to talk to her about
her problems. They eventually became very close friends, despite the scrutiny
this girl experienced by her peers because my daughter was younger than her and
apparently didn’t meet their “standards”. The day my daughter was assaulted,
after leaving me a message on my cell phone, this young lady was the next call
she made. Without hesitation, my daughter’s friend came to be with her while
she waited in the office for me to come pick her up. During that time, my
daughter’s friend gave a very detailed statement to the campus police officer
regarding the bullying that occurred prior to the assault. For at least an
hour, she scrolled through the online posts and took screenshots of all the
cyber-bullying and emailed each one to the officer. The girl who assaulted my
daughter was immediately arrested. Since I was not directly available, the
school’s Vice-Principal took it upon himself to press charges. After the video
of the assault began to make its rounds, the girl responsible for recording it
was also cited. Since there was no proof that the third girl played a role in
the assault itself, other than being heard during the video laughing and
supporting the assault, our hands were tied, and she was not cited for
anything. That wasn’t good enough for us.
My daughter wrote out a formal complaint and took
photocopies of the screenshots to the local courthouse. Within 24 hours,
temporary restraining orders were issued for all THREE girls. Shortly
thereafter in court, permanent restraining orders were issued for the maximum
time allotted – three years. The restraining order against my daughter’s former
friend is a tricky one, as she is also our next-door neighbor. During the time
she had the temporary restraining order and prior to court for issuance of the
permanent one, her family also began to harass my daughter and our family (the
apple does not fall far from the tree). They blasted a radio on their side yard
during the night and pointed it towards my daughter’s bedroom window, they
installed high-wattage bulbs in their side yard light fixture and left them on
all night to annoy her, they egged our home and cars and they made erroneous
claims to the city about a supposed illegal shed in our back yard. Because of
this, and since it could not be proven which family member was doing the
harassing, the judge decided to add the rest of our family members onto her permanent
restraining order so that we could all be protected. Since the time all three
restraining orders were issued, two of the girls (our neighbor being one) have
violated theirs and were subsequently arrested for it. They both continue to
test the waters, and it’s only a matter of time before another arrest will be
made – we’ll see to that.
In the meantime, my daughter is healing. The hurt, betrayal
and cruelty have taken its toll on her, though. She is a changed person – once
cheerful, optimistic and outgoing – she is now guarded, fearful and isolated.
She has a very small handful of friends and doesn’t socialize much. Her “best
friend” at school is a former teacher and coach of hers. She doesn’t eat lunch
with everyone else; she prefers to eat inside with an adult, where it is safe.
I can’t tell you she won’t hurt herself again – neither can she. While she does
use her newly-acquired coping skills, there are times when her feelings are so
overwhelming, these methods of coping still occasionally fall by the wayside.
She struggles with the emotions that led her to hurt herself EVERY DAY. She
still has sleepless nights, now has to take a handful of medications to prevent
her migraines and combat her depression and anxiety and prefers to sleep on the
pull-out bed in the family room, rather than her bedroom, because it feels
safer and less “invaded”. She attended summer school and an extensive
outpatient recovery program for her psychological issues, rather than doing
“normal” fun summer activities with her friends this year. She sees a
psychiatrist and psycho-therapist on a weekly basis, attends bible study and
youth group regularly and requires tutoring in her most basic of subjects in
school. Her grades have begun to finally come up and, at times, we see the
“light” in her eyes, but these are too “few and far between” for our comfort
level. We realize it takes time, and I have faith, but when she is not well, it
is gut-wrenching to witness. She is forever different.
