1 Ohio school, 4 bullied teens dead at own hand

[jpalamar]

Originally Posted by yahoo.com news article

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.

If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.

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."

___

Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room.

"Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English.

At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.

Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic.

"Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."

Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her.

She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself.

When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.

Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana.

"Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile."

___

Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says.

He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class.

"It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges."

Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.

"They called him fag, homo, queer," says his mother, Jan. "He told us that."

Bullies once knocked a pile of books out of his hands on the stairs, saying, "'Pick up your books, ******,'" says Dan Hughes, a friend of Eric's.

Kids would flick him in the head or call him names, says 20-year-old Drew Juratovac, a former student. One time, a boy called Mohat a "homo," and Juratovac told him to leave Mohat alone.

"I got up and said, 'Listen, you better leave this kid alone. Just walk away,'" he says. "And I just hit him in the face. And I got suspended for it."

Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007, two weeks before a choir trip to Hawaii.

His parents asked the coroner to call it "bullicide." At Eric's funeral and after his death, other kids told the Mohats that they had seen the teen relentlessly bullied in math class. The Mohats demanded that police investigate, but no criminal activity was found.

Two years later, in April 2009, the Mohats sued the school district, the principal, the superintendent and Eric's math teacher. The federal lawsuit is on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court considers a question of state law regarding the case.

"Did we raise him to be too polite?" Bill Mohat wonders. "Did we leave him defenseless in this school?"

___

Meredith Rezak, 16, shot herself in the head three weeks after the death of Mohat, a good friend of hers. Her cell phone, found next to her body, contained a photograph of Mohat with the caption "R.I.P. Eric a.k.a. Twiggy."

Rezak was bright, outgoing and a well-liked player on the volleyball team. Shortly before her suicide, she had joined the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and told friends and family she thought she might be gay.

Juratovac says Rezak endured her own share of bullying — "name-calling, just stupid trivial stuff" — but nobody ever knew it was getting to her.

"Meredith ended up coming out that she was a lesbian," he says. "I think much of that sparked a lot of the bullying from a lot of the other girls in school, 'cause she didn't fit in."

Her best friend, Kevin Simon, doesn't believe that bullying played a role in Rezak's death. She had serious issues at home that were unrelated to school, he says.

After Mohat's death, people saw Rezak crying at school, and friends heard her talk of suicide herself.

A year after Rezak's death, the older of her two brothers, 22-year-old Justin, also shot and killed himself. His death certificate mentioned "chronic depressive reaction."

This March, her only other sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose at age 21.

Their mother, Nancy Merritt, lives in Colorado now. She doesn't think Meredith was bullied to death but doesn't really know what happened. On the phone, her voice drifts off, sounding disconnected, confused.

"So all three of mine are gone," she says. "I have to keep breathing."

___

Most mornings before school, Jennifer Eyring would take Pepto-Bismol to calm her stomach and plead with her mother to let her stay home.

"She used to sob to me in the morning that she did not want to go," says her mother, Janet. "And this is going to bring tears to my eyes. Because I made her go to school."

Eyring, 16, was an accomplished equestrian who had a learning disability. She was developmentally delayed and had a hearing problem, so she received tutoring during the school day. For that, her mother says, she was bullied constantly.

By the end of her sophomore year in 2006, Eyring's mother had decided to pull her out of Mentor High School and enroll her in an online school the following autumn. But one night that summer, Jennifer walked into her parents' bedroom and told them she had taken some of her mother's antidepressant pills to make herself feel better. Hours later, she died of an overdose.

The Eyrings do not hold Mentor High accountable, but they believe she would be alive today had she not been bullied. Her parents are speaking out in hopes of preventing more tragedies.

"It's too late for my daughter," Janet Eyring says, "but it may not be too late for someone else."

___

No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program.

Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies.

But that's not so different from most high schools. Senior Matt Super, who's 17, says the suicides unfairly paint his school in a bad light.

"Not everybody's a good person," he says. "And in a group of 3,000 people, there are going to be bad people."

StopCyberbulling.org founder Parry Aftab says this is the first time she's heard of two sets of parents suing a school at the same time for two independent cases of bullying or cyberbullying. No one has been accused of bullying more than one of the teens who died.

Barbara Coloroso, a national anti-bullying expert, says the school is allowing a "culture of mean" to thrive, and school officials should be held responsible for the suicides — along with the bullies.

"Bullying doesn't start as criminal. They need to be held accountable the very first time they call somebody a gross term," Coloroso says. "That is the beginning of dehumanization."

I can't belive those kids actually laughted at the way the kid was dressed at a funeral. I really belive they need to approval public beating the **** out of people for doing dumb stuff like this.

[420sx]

No words.. just really sad.

[Elliott18t]

I never understood what made other kids so high and mighty to pick on someone else. They must have really deep rooted problems that they have to take it out on someone else. Its ok, those same people will end up being the scum of the earth anyways.

[Big_Jim]

I used to get bullied a lot in school. Went through tons of crap.

It all stopped when the one kid that was doing most of the bullying had his face mashed into a locker.

[Munky]

So sad...I agree that the kids that laughed at the funeral should be beaten in public.

[james_ls]

People need to be made an example of...plain and simple.

This type of **** makes me sick.

[Import Junky]

a shame but it happens all over america.

[Foolinaround]

When i went through highschool, we used to bust each others chops but everyone laughed at the end and it never got to this extent.

We lost a total of 9 kids due to deaths while i was in school,and more after i graduated. None were suicides just accidents/sickness
I feel like it wasnt ever this bad,because everyone was raised right around me i guess.

They need to bring back corporal punishment on kids,its getting out of hand.

[BlkWhtTSI]

that is absurd, if my daughter hung herself because of bullying and i saw kids laughing at her in her casket i would go ape sh!t. Kids today are just unbelievably selfish and disrespectful to peers and elders. its a shame that no body put a stop to this. There had to of been warning signs and teachers had to of noticed the bullying. Suicide prevention should be a required class/training for any person looking to educate adolescents/young adults.

[james_ls]

Originally Posted by Foolinaround

When i went through highschool, we used to bust each others chops but everyone laughed at the end and it never got to this extent.

We lost a total of 9 kids due to deaths while i was in school,and more after i graduated. None were suicides just accidents/sickness
I feel like it wasnt ever this bad,because everyone was raised right around me i guess.

They need to bring back corporal punishment on kids,its getting out of hand.

No one understands the "STOP" line anymore...

[Khellen]

Wow, random phone calls in the middle of the night making death threats? Isn't that the point where something NEEDS to happen? It's definitely not teasing when your calling people in the middle of the night and threatening someone...that's just malicious. If I found out someone was making death threats to one of my friends or family I'd be furious.

[c0nfl1kt]

tl;dr

I think we should bring death by stoning back.

[Munky]

Originally Posted by c0nfl1kt

I think we should bring death by stoning back.

[~Brian~]

I'd smack the **** out of those girls if I saw them making fun of the chick in the casket.

[natethegreatt]

who sues a school for bullying? that never happened when i was a kid. and i was a kid about 8 years ago

[OutToWinPAHC]

It's human nature, especially in youth, what school doesn't have a bully, who doesn't get made fun of.

[dsm4life04]

Welcome to America. We're all over the world trying to stop violence and incorporate the way we think things should be run elsewhere. Maybe we should look inside our boarders and realize that our country is as violent and disturbing as any other country in the world and address our own problems first...it makes me f****** sick.

[FocusDude]

If the school were to reprimand or make a example out of the bullies they would be sued, if they don't do anything about bullying they will get sued. Either way, way to raise your local taxes.

I went to public school until I started 9th grade. K-6 was awesome, 7 and 8 was ridiculous. I spent most of 8th grade in in school suspension. I was one of the bigger dumb dumb's in the class and would stand up for whoever was being picked on (unless I thought the person deserved it), I was fat and I threw the weight around pretty well. Nothing ever happened to those tormenting, and the tormenting continued. Many teachers would stand back afraid to get in to the mix, one teacher who did break up a fight was then suspended and who knows what else for apparently using to much force. WTF, 3 chicks were destroying one girl, I suppose the teacher should have taken a seat and asked for popcorn?

After 8th grade I begged my 'rents to send me to catholic school, stating if I would have stayed in the public school I would never improve. Catholic school ruled, well until the girls came in. If any male made a derogatory comment to another male, it was directly to the gym. Gloves on, in the ring, and whoever stands wins (Well sometimes the Brother or Father would step in if really needed). The next day the beef was settled and the boys were bull****ting and bumming smokes off each other in the bathroom.

You can't tell Junior he is a waste of class space like a teacher once told me.
We are to concerned with making sure all our little angels feel wonderful about themselves instead of dropping them down the 2 pegs to where they really belong.

[OutToWinPAHC]

I can agree to that. And not all victims kill themselves because they are picked on. Some people just hate life all to much and "bullying" feeds the fire. I don't think anyone is responsible for this other then the person who took their life.

[FocusDude]

Originally Posted by OutToWinPAHC

It's human nature, especially in youth, what school doesn't have a bully, who doesn't get made fun of.

True, I wonder if we are not preparing our children to accept life's assholes like we used to.

You could call me anything you want, I've been treated so much worse by the people that care for me the most. Your opinion matters none to me, I knew who loved and cared for me and would/could seek comfort in them.

It's really a shame so many kids today do not seem to have the safe haven to find comfort in, or if they do have the structure, they may have never been taught it exists.

edit: I am totally down for public beatings/hangings.. **** would change quickly.