Enough is Enough—But What Now?

I recently prepared a presentation for a group of social workers. The topic was tolerance and diversity.

As part of a team that promotes anti-bias education at conferences all over the country, I had lots of great slides to choose from while assembling my presentation. Looking over images of our films, resources and happy kids eating lunch together during a Mix It Up event made me stop and reflect on all the great work we do—and it made me really proud. Teaching tolerance! I was inspired.

Then I got to a series of slides that changed my emotional state considerably. The slides featured news clip after news clip about young people who had committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied.

There were so many of them.

I had seen these images in presentations dozens of times, but for some reason that day, flipping through that tragic series of young lives filled me with deep sadness and dread. For every young person on that screen, there had been months of misery that ultimately became unbearable. There was a family suffering unimaginable grief. And there was a community of people left behind wondering what they could have done.

Rebecca Sedwick wasn’t among the slides, but the Winter Haven, Florida girl’s story will likely find its way into future presentations for a number of troubling reasons: 1) Rebecca died horribly, throwing herself off an abandoned building; 2) she was twelve years old; 3) her primary tormentor reportedly continued posting online after her death, declaring “IDGAF” (I don’t give a f***); (4) the poster and another girl who bullied Sedwick were arrested and charged as adults for aggravated stalking and banned from school for a year; and (5) the names and photographs of the arrested girls, ages 12 and 14, were publically released by Polk County Sherriff Grady Judd.

After a sad, gruesome death, news of an arrest feels good. But the fact remains that the two suspects (remember, their guilt has not been determined in a court of law) are children. Furthermore, they have become targets of public outrage and literal poster children for what amounts to a community-wide “zero tolerance” policy, which—to a community reeling from a tragedy—seems like a solution. But it’s not.

The eye-for-an-eye logic at play in Winter Haven will not deter children who are developmentally incapable of anticipating consequences. And it will not force these tweens to understand or repent for the devastating effects of their reported actions. The juvenile justice system is not perfect, but it exists to rehabilitate youth like Rebecca’s tormenters—children whose brains are still growing. If sentenced in the adult system, the girls will probably be incarcerated longer, alongside grown women in an environment unlikely to foster compassion or promote positive life choices. Charging these two with felonies feels like the right choice to some people in Winter Haven now, but will it still feel right if the girls go on to victimize others upon their release? 

A true solution would prioritize, mandate and fund education, rehabilitation, mental health and prevention programs, and research into why kids bully each other and how we can help them stop. A true solution would not reduce Rebecca’s decision to end her life to a single reason or set of circumstances, but instead consider the entire picture of her life, her own mental health status, her access to support and whether she lived and attended school in an environment where kindness and standing up for others are valued and promoted.

Nothing about teen suicide is easy to understand, but after meditating on the faces in the news clippings and on Rebecca’s story, two clear messages emerged for me. One, we must work harder to find bullying interventions that work. And two, hauling juveniles who bully into the adult corrections system is not one of them.

van der Valk is a writer and associate editor for Teaching Tolerance.