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I have to agree with you Athena. I really think it is like that. But there was bullying even in places near the Air Force Base.

Definitely. I'm not saying that anywhere is totally exempt from bullying... it just seems as though the most extensive cases are in smaller communities.
 
I will admit that I've committed aggressive acts directed towards those more vulnerable than myself. However, none of these individuals chose suicide. Now that I ponder this, I must admit a certain level of disappointment in myself. Perhaps I was not aggressive enough. I only ever went so far. There was a line I would not cross. Pity, that.
 
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AND this is why I believe we should take that girl out, strip her naked and just wail on her. I'm sorry, you don't write "accomplished" on a girls facebook who just died. I am tempted to let these folks have a piece of my mind..they ARE on facebook right?

One article states that the bully wrote "accomplished" on Pheobe's page and the other article states that the bully wrote "accomplished" as her own status on the day Pheobe died.

Either way, the sentiment is the same and is beyond vile. It's actually jaw droppingly unfeeling and cruel. I can't even really get my head around the obscene level that they took this.

Its shocking and so very disturbing.
 
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Fun-loving Phoebe Prince remembered by Irish and U.S. friends
By
APRIL DREW
,
Irish Voice Reporter
Fun-loving Phoebe Prince remembered by Irish and U.S. friends


O’Donoghue said the Prince family are all in the U.S. trying to come to terms with what happened to Phoebe.

Meanwhile back in the U.S. class mates of Phoebe remember her fondly "She was so outgoing and she just kind of drew you in," South Hadley High School freshman Meghan Kennedy, told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. "The second you met her you wanted to know everything about her. She could have this life conversation with you like you knew her. It was really nice to meet her."

"She had this thing about her," said Kennedy, who described her as "a beautiful, charming and overall sweet girl to everyone who knew her."

Darragh Joyce, a friend from Limerick who met Prince on at Villiers, a co-ed boarding school in Limerick, Ireland, said she liked to read Shakespeare and Dante. She enjoyed movies like "Donnie Darko" and bands like My Chemical Romance. Her favorite subjects in school were English and home economics.

He said Prince had a "big presence" in every class.

"The teachers were always telling her to stop laughing," said Joyce. "She had a very contagious laugh so everyone would laugh when she would laugh even if it wasn't funny."
Her very popularity may have got her in trouble when she moved to SouthHadley

"Her adjustment problem was she got popular quick and she ran right up against the beautiful kids," South Hadley parent Lucas Gelinas told the New Hampshire newspaper . "She started taking some of that magnetism away from them."
Phoebe also kept much of the inner anguish to herself. She missed her father, Jeremy Prince, a gardener in Ireland.

But heartbroken friends in Ireland thought she was adjusting well in America.

"On Phoebe's networking pages she had pictures of loads of new friends," said Joyce, 15. "Everyone thought she got along fine."

In Ireland, he said, "she was the biggest presence in the class and everyone wanted to be her friend."

Alas things turned out far different when she moved to America. Now friend son both sides of the Atlantic are left to grieve."It is a sad day for us all" said Pat O'Donoghue.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Fu...by-Irish-and-US-friends--89571197.html?page=2
 
Phoebe Prince had sweet life in Ireland before U.S. nightmare

Phoebe went to school in the exclusive Villiers college in nearby Limerick. She is remembered there as a warm, outgoing girl popular in a coed boarding school environment where fast friends were made for life.

Villiers has a Protestant ethos and is fee-paying. The student body is multi-denominational and diverse, including students from Spain, Mexico, South Africa, Germany and Russia.
One can only imagine what the change to America and the much-faster pace meant to Phoebe when the family resettled in Massachusetts. It must have been a very difficult time. Her father stayed behind in Claire. Her mother, whose family hails from the South Hadley area, had wanted to reconnect with family there.

Phoebe the country schoolgirl would have found it difficult to relocate no matter what. Unknown to her parents though, she was entering a school where bullying was tolerated and school administrators did not want to be bothered


the article also states the Pheobe's mother was a teacher back in Ireland.

http://www.irishcentral.com/story/n...-in-ireland-before-us-nightmare-89751062.html
 
Family of Phoebe Prince retains attorney
Prince family may be considering filing civil suit against School officials
By
ANTOINETTE KELLY


The family of Phoebe Prince has hired Attorney Rebecca Bouchard and could enter new legal territory should they decide to file a civil suit against school officials at South Hadley High School.

Bouchard is not commenting about her new clients, but it is believed the family could be considering taking such an action against the school.

Proving that school officials were negligent in their handling of the bullying case would be no easy feat.

“If the school administrators have specific knowledge of harassment and assault and stalking and intimidation and fail or refuse to take steps, then they need to be held accountable,” explained attorney Bradley Henry to the Cape Cod Times.

In 1997, Henry represented the family of MIT student Scott Krueger, who died after drinking alcohol at a fraternity party.

Henry points to Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel’s description of the behavior of school officials as “troublesome” when charging nine students on Monday as significant.

“The mere fact that the district attorney’s office was troubled enough by such conduct to comment about it publicly suggests there is strong evidence behind those concerns,” he added. “Where there is smoke, there is fire.”

No charges have been filed against school officials to date.

If the suit were to go ahead, the onus would be on Bouchard to prove that the actions, or lack thereof, on the part of school officials and the suicide of the Irish teenager were directly linked.

“If there’s a clear line of causal events from the harassment to the student’s suicide, and if school administrators were aware of some or all of these events and failed to act, there should be no reason at all that they should not be held accountable for those failures to act,” said Henry.

The arraignment of three of the teenagers charged in the case takes place next Thursday.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Family-of-Phoebe-Prince-retains-attorney--89829387.html
 
I can underatand this, I was too poor to me cyber-bullied, but I got it in plenty in other ways. If I'd had a little less backbone you could have been me your talking about.
 
I can underatand this, I was too poor to me cyber-bullied, but I got it in plenty in other ways. If I'd had a little less backbone you could have been me your talking about.
Me too. Sometimes being a sensitive person isn't such a good thing....
 
Exploring The Link Between Bullying And Suicide

Can bullying lead to suicide? That’s the question at the heart of a case in Massachusetts, where nine students are charged in connection with the death of a young woman. Phoebe Prince, allegedly the victim of their bullying, hanged herself in January. Her case is once again raising questions about the real life consequences of bullying and what can be done to stop it. Host Michel Martin talks to two anti-bullying advocates: Nicholas Carlisle, executive director of the group No Bully, and Miriam Rollins, national director of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids. Also joining the conversation is William Pitt, who discusses how childhood bullying nearly brought him to the brink of suicide.

You can listen to the program @ the link. I only caught two minutes of it and won't be able to fully listen till later tonight...just wanted to post for anyone else who may be interested.
 
Lawyers for three teenage girls accused of participating in the bullying of a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide entered not guilty pleas Thursday on their behalf to charges including civil rights violations and criminal harassment. Ashley Longe, Sharon Chanon Velazquez and Flannery Mullins, all 16, did not appear in Franklin-Hampshire Juvenile Court for their arraignments.
A judge ordered them to have no contact with the family of Phoebe Prince, a South Hadley High School freshman who hanged herself in January after what prosecutors called an "unrelenting" three-month bullying campaign by six teenagers. Prosecutors say Prince was targeted after she briefly dated a popular boy.
A prosecutor has said school administrators and teachers knew about the harassment but did little to stop it.
"This is the first step in a long process," Alfred Chamberland, Mullins' lawyer, said Thursday. Lawyers for the other two defendants left the courthouse without commenting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100408...jbGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawNmdWxsbmJzcHN0b3I-
 
Court filing reveals taunted teen's anguish in final hours
CNN) --
During the last afternoon of her life, 15-year-old freshman Phoebe Prince was loudly berated in the high school library and she was taunted again as school let out, court documents say.
And, as she walked home in tears, one of the students passing by in a car called Prince names and tossed an empty can at her, according to the 38-page court filing that offers the first detailed account of a high school bullying scandal that has gained the national spotlight.
Prince used her cell phone to send text messages to a friend, saying that she was distraught over the relentless hazing. Her last text message went out at 2:48 p.m. She also received two messages but never opened them, the document states.
By 4:55 p.m., she was dead
[...]
Rest is at http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/09/massachusetts.bullying.suicide/index.html
 
http://www.telegram.com/article/20100409/NEWS/100409703/0/NEWS05
Bullied girl reportedly pleaded for help at school, sent back to class
Prince was sent back to class, where she told a witness that school officials had no plans to intervene and that “she was still going to get beat up,'' prosecutors said.



http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jtSfPUlJn7oUv4nT-KF2Kqs7J6mQD9EVM6700
Documents: Bullied teen sought help from school
By STEPHANIE REITZ (AP) – 2 hours ago

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. — Phoebe Prince, the Massachusetts high school freshman who took her own life after what prosecutors called relentless bullying by classmates, spoke to a school administrator one week before her death about a threat of physical violence, court documents reveal.

The documents, filed in connection with charges against six South Hadley High School students, raise new questions about how much school officials knew about the bullying. They also provide a glimpse into the final, tortured hours of Prince's life shortly before the 15-year-old hanged herself at home Jan. 14.

On Jan. 7, according to the documents, Prince went to a school administrator after learning that one of the defendants, Flannery Mullins, had told fellow students that she was going to "beat Phoebe up" and that she "needed to watch out at break after second block.


Read the case against Longe
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/04/09/longe.pdf

Read the case against Mullins
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/04/09/mullins.pdf

Read the case against Velazquez
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/04/09/velazquez.pdf
 
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/04/gov_patrick_fau.html

Governor faults S. Hadley officials in Phoebe Prince bullying case

Governor Deval Patrick said this morning that South Hadley school officials should be "held accountable" for their handling of the bullying that preceded Phoebe Prince's suicide, describing reports that Prince had personally turned to administrators for help as "outrageous."

"I'm telling you, this is outrageous, what you and I and others are reading and hearing about this," Patrick said in a radio interview on WTKK-FM. "The more we hear, the worse it sounds."

Patrick discussed the Prince case on his monthly appearance on the "Ask the Governor" segment of the Jim and Margery Show. The Prince case has captured international attention and sparked intense criticism of school officials for not doing more to protect the 15-year-old freshman, who committed suicide Jan. 14.

Host Jim Braude introduced the topic by mentioning a story in today's Globe that reported Prince's appeal to administrators and detailed the alleged harassment she endured at the hands of two groups of teenagers angry over her relationships with two older male students.

Braude said he believed school officials displayed a "callous disregard" and asked Patrick if he was troubled that they haven't been charged criminally.

"They should certainly be held accountable," Patrick said, later adding that "it's incredibly upsetting to me that the adults don't seem to have acted like adults."

But Patrick said parents and other adults must also play a role in preventing bullying. Citing his support for anti-bullying legislation, he cautioned that it is "not a substitute for adults acting like adults."

"That is the parents of the bully, it's other adults in the school, it's adults in the community," he said. "All of us have a responsibility to step up and deal with this."

Patrick described his childhood in Chicago as an example, saying children were under close watch from parents and neighbors alike.

"There was all kinds of things we didn't have, but one thing we had was a very strong sense of community," he said. "That was a time when every child was under the jurisdiction of every single adult on the block. So if you messed up down the street in front of Ms. Jones, she would straighten you out as if you were hers, then call home so you got it two times."

"There's something about that responsibility that adults took for all the children that we've got to recapture not just in South Hadley, but all across the Commonwealth," he said.
 
TV psychologist Dr Phil McGraw has revealed that students "mimicked the hanging" of Irish schoolgirl Phoebe Prince at the high school dance in South Hadley, Massachusetts that was held only two days after her death.
The revelation is another shocking detail in a case that has seen six high school students charged with helping cause her suicide and school authorities coming under nationwide scrutiny for how they reacted to it.

http://www.irishcentral.com/story/ne...-90432164.html
Appearing on the Anderson Cooper Show on CNN, Dr Phil stated that bullying expert Barbara Coloroso had confirmed the incident which occured at the winter cotillion dance which had gone ahead despite the fact that Phoebe had been found dead just days earlier.

Dr. Phil questioned why the school authorities allowed the dance to go ahead and stated that the school authorities behaved very badly during the whole bullying episode that led to her death. "They didn't tell the truth about what they knew." he stated.
 
Documents have been released outlining the bullying of Pheobe Prince in much more detail. It really gives you an idea how relentless and cruel they were too her. There are three PDF One for Sean Mulywhatever, Ashley Longe, and Flannery Mullins.

Sean is the guy she slept with or dated, he then broke up with her and got back together with his girlfriend Kayla Narey. Sean called Phoebe a whore, a slut, and encouraged the bullying that she endured. To the point that apparently Pheobe was being called a whore, cunt, and slut by Ashley in the presence of Kayla and Sean while the watched and were visibly giving eachother affection.

That happened on the same day that she killed herself.

Fucking Punks.

Documents outlining the specifics of the bullying are at link below.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/court_documents_outline_allege.html
 
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South Hadley official refused to let frightened Phoebe Prince leave school early
Parents step up calls for school officials to resign

By ANTOINETTE KELLY , IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/So...hoebe-Prince-leave-school-early-90740874.html

Officials at South Hadley High School are under mounting pressure to resign in the wake of the Phoebe Prince tragedy.

Parents have joined forces to attend a special "public commentary" school meeting Wednesday.

Parent Luke Gelinas says superintendent Gus A. Sayer, principal Daniel Smith and school committee chairman Edward J. Boisselle should go.

He made the call as more details of Phoebe's final weeks were revealed in D.A. Elizabeth Scheibel’s criminal complaints against three 16-year-old girls in the case.

The documents show that 15-year-old Phoebe was refused permission to go home because she was afraid of being beaten up by the gang of teenagers.

She was told she had to stay in school.

Sayer disputes the explanation.

He says Phoebe approached an assistant principal who was busy with another disciplinary matter and was told to go back to class for that reason. Sayer said the incident was reported third-hand in Scheibel's complaint.

Boisselle said there would be “serious consequences” if such an accusation is true and said school officials will know more after they meet with Scheibel Wednesday.

“We are not going to be pushed around by a mob mentality,” Boisselle said.

But Gelinas blasted the board, saying their response was "typical of what was happening,” Gelinas said. “The truth is just going to keep coming out.”

Governor Deval Patrick has also criticized the school's handling of Phoebe's complaints.

"The adults don’t seem to have acted like adults,” Patrick said. “They (educators) should certainly be held accountable.”
 
But how are they to be held accountable? They won't be charged criminally (nor should they be, in my opinion), but they can't be sued civilly and the district is unwilling to take significant action against them.

It's ridiculous. They should repeal that "Public Duty Rule".
 
But how are they to be held accountable? They won't be charged criminally (nor should they be, in my opinion), but they can't be sued civilly and the district is unwilling to take significant action against them.

It's ridiculous. They should repeal that "Public Duty Rule".
Why cant they be charged criminally if they knew what was happening and she asked them for help, and they threw her to the lions, they showed total disregard for her safety, I know they can't charge them just for being a disgusting group of worthless body parts, but they are responsible for the safety of the students and this was happening at school as they ignored it which is the same as being part of it actually their inactions probably encouraged the harassment
 
But how are they to be held accountable? They won't be charged criminally (nor should they be, in my opinion), but they can't be sued civilly and the district is unwilling to take significant action against them.

It's ridiculous. They should repeal that "Public Duty Rule".

The prosecutor did not find the actions of the teachers/admin "criminal" so I doubt that they will ever be charged.

What I am gathering from the accountability aspect is that the more information that comes out the worse the school looks and residents of the town and parents are now actively calling for the big boss to resign and step down.

Did you read the PDF's that outline the bullying in detail (only 3 of the 6 so far) It seems that this was almost a collective effort to break Pheobe, and it went on and on and on. At one point she asked to go home because she was scared but was sent back to class, she also asked students if she could "walk in the middle" of them in the halls because she was so fearful of being attacked.

I mean, in one instance, one of the bullies walks into Pheobe's Latin class and berates her, calling her a whore and threatening her. Pheobe broke down crying and a classmate tried to comfort her. The teacher I believe reported that particular incident.

If it were me, I'd be fighting back every single day (shocker ; ) until the administration had to listen, and the bullies understood that I wasn't going to take their shit.
 
That's what's so damn heartbreaking for me... that no one stood up for this girl and that, when she snapped, she snapped in the wrong direction.

No, I haven't read the PDFs yet as I'm sure they will enrage me. :sad:
 
That's what's so damn heartbreaking for me... that no one stood up for this girl and that, when she snapped, she snapped in the wrong direction.

No, I haven't read the PDFs yet as I'm sure they will enrage me. :sad:

I know. :sad: I think people tried but maybe they were scared themselves? I am positive that I would have knocked one of them out and would have protected Pheobe. She definitely snapped in the wrong direction, I wish she could have found the courage to stand up to them and fight back. But again, we are all different.

Bullies only pick on people that they can pick on, otherwise they stop.

On a random note:

Pheobe had been texting her friends all day regarding the abuse, stating that school was becoming "almost intolerable. Through timing it is surmised that one of those texts was sent on that infamous walk home when the can was thrown at her and she was called a whore once again by Ashley Longe. Do you think that this was the straw that broke the camels back? The can incident occurred after a particularly brutal session of torment that went on in the library that day.

Pheobe was dead within 2 hours. She got into the house, plugged her cell phone in to charge, and hung herself with the scarf that her sister bought her for Christmas, not leaving a note. This screams impulse to me. Why charge your phone? Why not take some time and write a note saying goodbye to your family. And a scarf as a noose?

I don't think Pheobe woke up that day and decided she wanted to die.
 
That's just it - kids are taught to mind their own business. What parent in their right mind encourages their kid to involve themselves in someone else's conflict?? But it's become abundantly clear that this is exactly what we need to teach our kids to do.

I think Phoebe's death was definitely impulsive. Teenage suicide tends very much to be that way, as they are impulsive creatures by nature. Who knows what finally set her off? A song could have come on, she could have run across an old message... it could have been anything.
 
That's just it - kids are taught to mind their own business. What parent in their right mind encourages their kid to involve themselves in someone else's conflict?? But it's become abundantly clear that this is exactly what we need to teach our kids to do.

I think Phoebe's death was definitely impulsive. Teenage suicide tends very much to be that way, as they are impulsive creatures by nature. Who knows what finally set her off? A song could have come on, she could have run across an old message... it could have been anything.

From what I have read in the PDFS, that day that she killed herself had been particularly humiliating and brutal for her. She had been in the library studying and Sean, Ashley and Kayla were also in there. Ashley was calling her a whore, Irish slut, and ho across the room, apparently Sean was egging this on.

While Ashley taunted Pheobe, Kayla and Sean become visibly affectionate with eachother, purposely in Pheobe's direct line of sight. Kayla would laugh as Ashley called her names. Pheobe was openly crying and other students were trying to distract her from the bullies but it was too much, too loud, to obvious.

They also wrote "is a cunt" and "Irish Slut" next to Pheobe's name on the sign in sheet.



Sean was the beginning of all of Pheobe's problems. It was her relationship with him that unleashed the wrath of Kayla Narey and Ashley Longe on her. Once he was done with Pheobe, and got back together with Kayla he joined in on the bullying and helped encourage it and facilitate it.

Some close to the case say that Sean may have actually started a relationship with Pheobe with the promise to "stop the bullying" in return for ..........but at the end of the day he just tossed her away, got back with Kayla and bullied the shit out of her.

Still what is most disturbing to me is that apparently these students mimicked the action of hanging in the hallways the day after she died, were overheard saying things like " I don't care if she is dead" wrote "accomplished", and "it was her own fault" all over facebook. It blows my mind that after she died they had NO remorse, no heart, and didn't think "Oh my God, we went too far"

They were happy she was dead, as if they literally accomplished what they set out to do. Disgusting.
 
Pheobe was dead within 2 hours. She got into the house, plugged her cell phone in to charge, and hung herself with the scarf that her sister bought her for Christmas, not leaving a note. This screams impulse to me. Why charge your phone? Why not take some time and write a note saying goodbye to your family. And a scarf as a noose?

I don't think Pheobe woke up that day and decided she wanted to die.

Are they 100% sure she killed herself? To me that sounds hinky... how do they know those bitches and that bastard didn't "string her up"? Why would she plug her phone in to charge it and then kill herself? That's a little too weird to me... no suicide note, no "I can't take this anymore"? These people were threatening her... did they even check the house for prints or did they just assume she committed suicide?
 
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