1 Ohio school, 4 bullied teens dead at own hand

MENTOR, Ohio – Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.

The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.

It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died at his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.

Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.

(snip)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101008/ap_on_re_us/us_bullying_one_town_6

Thankx Daisy, I just saw this myself. Snipped from the article:

Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket — and laughed.
"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."

How horriffic. Why would those "girls" even go to the funeral? If that had been my family - I kinda think I would have been put in jail because I would not have stood by and watched that @#$@#$%. Its about respect.

I see this everyday - this generation have absolutely no respect for anything or anyone. Rule one - in order to respect anyone else you first have to respect yourself. So what does that tell ya?

If we don't start to reign in these kids, our communities are just going to get worse.
Some of you may not agree with what I'm going to say. There is no one fix that will stop all of the kids but I honestly do believe that if you can find a way to make these bullies feel what they make their victims feel it will stop. IOW figure out a way to "bully the bullies" - not for any length of time mind you but a way to make them feel how the others feel.

Something has to be done. Our children need to feel safe and develop a strong sense of self for all this to stop.

Our society is going backwards, no respect, no love, no manners..............unbelieveable.

I just read this and was coming to post too. I know firsthand how bad it can be in the schools but this still shocked me to the core. The sheer NERVE of some of these kids is what scares me. Who would go so far as to attend the funeral and mock the dead victim? That's psychopathic behavior. True sociopathy is supposed to be somewhat unusual. Even rarer in females than in males. There are seemingly normal kids--seems about equal between boys and girls--running in packs displaying it now. What happened?

pugglesworth said:

I just read this and was coming to post too. I know firsthand how bad it can be in the schools but this still shocked me to the core. The sheer NERVE of some of these kids is what scares me. Who would go so far as to attend the funeral and mock the dead victim? That's psychopathic behavior. True sociopathy is supposed to be somewhat unusual. Even rarer in females than in males. There are seemingly normal kids--seems about equal between boys and girls--running in packs displaying it now. What happened?

Click to expand...

bbm

Not enough active and positive parenting...

:cow:

Reproducing should be a privilege, not a right. Sadly there's no way around that one..

all suicides are devastating, but Sladjana Vidovic is especially breaking my heart. her family moved out of their native country to escape a warzone, yet it was in America that she was terrorized and driven to death.