(WHAS11) - Nine teens are facing charges after authorities say they bullied a girl who ultimately took her own life.
It happened in Massachusetts, where an anti-bullying consultant says school administrators didn't follow procedures for protecting kids
Phoebe Prince, 15, hanged herself in January but the suspects were charged in the last week of March.
Prosecutors say the girl was verbally assaulted and threatened with bodily harm for 3 months. Two of the suspects have been charged with statutory rape
WHAS11's took a look at the issue of bullying locally and the policies in place.
The case of Phoebe Prince shows one of extreme of bullying. But it’s not unheard of in this area, a girl in Mount Washington killed herself a few years ago and her parents say it was because she was being bullying over the internet.
Other parents locally say their kids are the victims of harassment and bullying over text messages in elementary school.
One father says his daughter is an 11-year-old in a Jefferson County Elementary School and over the past 6 months he says she has received threatening text messages over her cell phone from a fellow classmate. He wants the messages to stop, especially after he heard about what happened with Prince in Massachusetts and what happened to Rachel Neblett in Bullitt County.
Neblett, 17, killed herself in October of 2006 after her parents say she was Cyberbullied. One of the last messages she received on MySpace said ‘I'm not going to put you in the hospital I’m going to put you in the morgue’.
Cheryl Dolson with Safe and Drug Free Schools in Jefferson County says there is a district policy against bullying that can result in anything from a call to parents to calling the police.
They have initiatives in place to combat bullying, but if it happens off school property and through text messages and the internet, they ask parents to step in and say bystanders are also part of the solution.
“About 85% of the student population is not directly involved, so with those bystanders that are not directly involved we ask them to stand up and help kids around them,” said Dolson.
Dolson says that if 2 or more kids step in to help, bullying stops within 15 seconds.
In the case of Neblett, there was a police investigation but no one was ever charged in connection with her bullying.
The father in this story is trying to work with his daughter’s school to stop the text messages.
