Irish girl bullied to suicide in Boston, MA USA.

Sceala Clann T.D. Location: Derry roots

Very sad. 15-year-old Irish girl killed herself after being raped and enduring months of bullying by classmates.
The prosecutor has brought charges.
I agree with this idea. Any kid involved should spend time in jail or at the very least be permanently suspended from school and made to work off an incredibly high fine - like one that takes you the rest of your life to pay off!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/us/30bully.html
9 Accused in Bullying Before a Suicide
A prosecutor in western Massachusetts brought criminal charges Monday against nine teenagers accusing them of relentlessly humiliating and threatening a 15-year-old girl who hanged herself in January.
The charges, including felony indictments for two boys and four girls who were 16 or over, were an unusually sharp legal response to the problem of adolescent bullying, which is increasingly conducted in cyberspace as well as in the schoolyard and has drawn growing legal attention.

In the uproar that followed the suicide of the girl, Phoebe Prince, of South Hadley, and of an 11-year-old boy in nearby Springfield last year, the Massachusetts legislature stepped up work on an anti-bullying law that is now near passage. The law would require school staff members to report suspected incidents and principals to investigate them. It would also demand that schools teach about the dangers of bullying. Forty-one other states have anti-bullying laws of varying strength.

In the recent case, two boys and four girls, ages 16 to 18, face felony charges including statutory rape, violation of civil rights, harassment and disturbing a school assembly, Elizabeth D. Scheibel, the Northwestern district attorney, said at a news conference in Northampton, Mass. Three younger girls have been charged in juvenile court.

Flanked by state and local police officers, Ms. Scheibel said that Pheobe Prince’s suicide followed nearly three months of taunting and physical attacks by a cluster of students at South Hadley High School.

“The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school,” Ms. Scheibel said. The conduct of those charged, she said, “far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels.”

It was particularly alarming, the district attorney said, that some teachers, administrators and other staff members at the school were aware of the harassment but did not stop it. “The actions or inactions of some adults at the school were troublesome,” she said, but would not lead to criminal charges.

Ms. Prince had recently moved to the United States from Ireland when she started at South Hadley High School as a freshman last fall. The taunting started when she had a brief relationship with a senior boy; some students reportedly called her an “Irish slut,” knocked books out of her hands and sent her threatening text messages.

On the day of her death, the investigation found, students abused her in the school library, in the lunchroom and the hallways and threw a canned drink at her as she walked home.

Some of the students plotted against Ms. Prince on the Internet, using social networking sites, but the main abuse was at school, the prosecutor said.

“The actions of these students were primarily conducted on school grounds during school hours and while school was in session,” Ms. Scheibel said.

Ms. Scheibel refused to provide details about the charges of statutory rape, but experts said those charges could mean that the two boys had sex with the girl when she was under age.

Legal experts said they were not aware of other cases in which students faced criminal charges for such harassment, but added that the circumstances appeared to be extreme and that juvenile charges were usually kept private.

Both the House and Senate have passed versions of the anti-bullying law, but disagreement remains on whether all schools will be required to conduct staff training about bullying — a provision in about half the states with such laws and that is vital, said Robert O. Trestan, Eastern States Civil Rights Counsel of the Anti-Defamation League, which has led the fight for legislation in Massachusetts.

The prospective law, Mr. Trestan said, is aimed at changing the culture in schools and preventing bullying but would not make bullying a crime. “These indictments tell us that middle school and high school kids are not immune from criminal laws,” he said. “If they violate them in the course of bullying someone, they’ll be held accountable. We don’t need to create a new crime.”

A lawsuit involving another case of high school bullying, in upstate New York, was settled on Monday. A gay teenager had sued the Mohawk Central School District, saying school officials had not acted to protect him from taunts.

In the settlement, the district said it would increase staff training to prevent harassment, pay $50,000 to the boy’s family and reimburse the family for counseling, The Associated Press reported. The boy has moved to a different district.

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Irish girl bullied to suicide in Boston, MA USA.