Published: April 11, 2010 at 4:30 AM
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND
By MICHAEL KIRKLAND
WASHINGTON, April 11 (UPI) -- The image of her face haunts fathers and mothers who've seen it on the news and on the Web, the graceful 15-year-old Irish girl.
Her smiling eyes gave no sign of what was to come, that she would become the target of such vicious school bullying that last January she went from school into the stairwell outside her family's apartment and hanged herself with a scarf she'd received for Christmas.
Reports said the bullying apparently reached such a ferocious intensity in the halls of South Hadley (Mass.) High School, even the faculty and administration became aware of it, though some school district officials dispute that, arguing Phoebe Prince bore her suffering in silence.
That contention might ring hollow for some parents, since so much of the worst bullying occurred publicly at the school during school hours.
The Boston Herald said if anything the treatment got worse in the last few days before the recent Irish immigrant killed herself. Much of the harassment was sexual, with obscene drawings and taunts of "slut" and "Irish whore."
One staff member allegedly was present when Prince, studying in the library during lunch only hours before she went home to hang herself, was surrounded by a group of students who called her names and blocked the door so Prince could not leave. Again, school officials argue the staff member did not hear the conversation.
Nine schoolmates ages 16 to 18 have been charged in the case, six with adult felonies -- two boys and four girls -- and three girls as juveniles.
One of the girls charged allegedly wrote the word "accomplished" on her Facebook page the day Prince hanged herself. The Herald said the girl was rebuked by a former student on the Web site, but a few days later one of the alleged bully's friends told the former student's sister, still a South Hadley student, she'd better watch her back.
Donna Tower, who has three granddaughters who graduated from the high school told the Herald: "What a rotten little town we have. This is obscene."
Besides charges against the alleged bullies, what can be done about such vicious behavior?
The Massachusetts Legislature, which had been working for a while on an anti-bullying law, expedited the process and the law is near passage, The New York Times said. The law would require staff members to report suspected incidents of school bullying, require principals to investigate them and require schools to teach about the dangers of bullying, the Times said. Forty-one states have anti-bullying laws.
About 5,000 U.S. teenagers kill themselves each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, with suicide attempts many times that number. There are no figures for how many of those suicides or attempted suicides were caused by bullying.
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of the short story Prince's life is the seeming indifference of school officials who must have known how she was being treated -- and gave scant notice to two meetings with Prince's mother, who complained about that treatment.
But a little-known, and apparently little regarded, 10-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision gives parents the power to take action in court and seek damages against school inaction. If a school district ignores harassment, and a child is effectively denied an education, a parent can take the district to court and ask that the district be punished -- in the pocketbook.
LaShonda Davis "was allegedly the victim of a prolonged pattern of sexual harassment by one of her fifth-grade classmates at Hubbard Elementary School, a public school in Monroe County (Ga.)," the 1999 Supreme Court opinion in Davis vs. Monroe County said.
LaShonda told her mother and her teacher, and her mother reported the many incidents to school officials, including the principal, the high court said.
The harassment finally ended in mid-May 1993 when the boy pleaded guilty to sexual battery, but not before LaShonda's high grades had dropped and her father discovered in April 1993 she had written a suicide note. At the time, Lashonda was 10 years old.
LaShonda's family filed suit against school officials and the school district under federal Title IX -- which bans sexual discrimination in schools receiving federal money -- but the lower federal courts said the law, while covering school officials who engaged in sexual discrimination, did not encompass student-on-student harassment. The language in Title IX includes no private right to sue.
In May 1993, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision, recognized the right to sue but made sure the grounds for suing were narrow and to the point. Even so, the ruling appears to apply to those severely bullied in school through the use of sexual harassment.
LaShonda's family could sue under Title IX, a 5-4 court majority said. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined the four-member liberal bloc to form the majority, and wrote the majority opinion.
"We consider here whether a private damages action may lie against the school board in cases of student-on-student harassment," O'Connor wrote. "We conclude that it may, but only where the funding recipient (a school receiving federal funds) acts with deliberate indifference to known acts of harassment in its programs or activities. Moreover, we conclude that such an action will lie only for harassment that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit."
In other words, school districts can be liable under the law if they ignore severe harassment that prevents a student from getting an education.
O'Connor rejected the school district's contention the ruling would mean every bully would have to be expelled.
"We stress that our conclusion here -- that (school districts) may be liable for their deliberate indifference to known acts of peer sexual harassment -- does not mean that (districts) can avoid liability only by purging their schools of actionable peer harassment or that administrators must engage in particular disciplinary action. We thus disagree with (the Monroe school district's) contention that, if Title IX provides a cause of action for student-on-student harassment, 'nothing short of expulsion of every student accused of misconduct involving sexual overtones would protect school systems from liability or damages.' ... In fact, as we have previously noted, courts should refrain from second guessing the disciplinary decisions made by school administrators."
Title IX says, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance," but included no private right to file suit until the Supreme Court said it did.
Despite its narrowness, the Supreme Court ruling in LaShonda's case is a legal weapon in the hands of parents of children who are bullied at school, and a vivid incentive for school officials to rise above their apathy.
Her smiling eyes gave no sign of what was to come, that she would become the target of such vicious school bullying that last January she went from school into the stairwell outside her family's apartment and hanged herself with a scarf she'd received for Christmas.
Reports said the bullying apparently reached such a ferocious intensity in the halls of South Hadley (Mass.) High School, even the faculty and administration became aware of it, though some school district officials dispute that, arguing Phoebe Prince bore her suffering in silence.
That contention might ring hollow for some parents, since so much of the worst bullying occurred publicly at the school during school hours.
The Boston Herald said if anything the treatment got worse in the last few days before the recent Irish immigrant killed herself. Much of the harassment was sexual, with obscene drawings and taunts of "slut" and "Irish whore."
One staff member allegedly was present when Prince, studying in the library during lunch only hours before she went home to hang herself, was surrounded by a group of students who called her names and blocked the door so Prince could not leave. Again, school officials argue the staff member did not hear the conversation.
Nine schoolmates ages 16 to 18 have been charged in the case, six with adult felonies -- two boys and four girls -- and three girls as juveniles.
One of the girls charged allegedly wrote the word "accomplished" on her Facebook page the day Prince hanged herself. The Herald said the girl was rebuked by a former student on the Web site, but a few days later one of the alleged bully's friends told the former student's sister, still a South Hadley student, she'd better watch her back.
Donna Tower, who has three granddaughters who graduated from the high school told the Herald: "What a rotten little town we have. This is obscene."
Besides charges against the alleged bullies, what can be done about such vicious behavior?
The Massachusetts Legislature, which had been working for a while on an anti-bullying law, expedited the process and the law is near passage, The New York Times said. The law would require staff members to report suspected incidents of school bullying, require principals to investigate them and require schools to teach about the dangers of bullying, the Times said. Forty-one states have anti-bullying laws.
About 5,000 U.S. teenagers kill themselves each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, with suicide attempts many times that number. There are no figures for how many of those suicides or attempted suicides were caused by bullying.
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of the short story Prince's life is the seeming indifference of school officials who must have known how she was being treated -- and gave scant notice to two meetings with Prince's mother, who complained about that treatment.
But a little-known, and apparently little regarded, 10-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision gives parents the power to take action in court and seek damages against school inaction. If a school district ignores harassment, and a child is effectively denied an education, a parent can take the district to court and ask that the district be punished -- in the pocketbook.
LaShonda Davis "was allegedly the victim of a prolonged pattern of sexual harassment by one of her fifth-grade classmates at Hubbard Elementary School, a public school in Monroe County (Ga.)," the 1999 Supreme Court opinion in Davis vs. Monroe County said.
LaShonda told her mother and her teacher, and her mother reported the many incidents to school officials, including the principal, the high court said.
The harassment finally ended in mid-May 1993 when the boy pleaded guilty to sexual battery, but not before LaShonda's high grades had dropped and her father discovered in April 1993 she had written a suicide note. At the time, Lashonda was 10 years old.
LaShonda's family filed suit against school officials and the school district under federal Title IX -- which bans sexual discrimination in schools receiving federal money -- but the lower federal courts said the law, while covering school officials who engaged in sexual discrimination, did not encompass student-on-student harassment. The language in Title IX includes no private right to sue.
In May 1993, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision, recognized the right to sue but made sure the grounds for suing were narrow and to the point. Even so, the ruling appears to apply to those severely bullied in school through the use of sexual harassment.
LaShonda's family could sue under Title IX, a 5-4 court majority said. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined the four-member liberal bloc to form the majority, and wrote the majority opinion.
"We consider here whether a private damages action may lie against the school board in cases of student-on-student harassment," O'Connor wrote. "We conclude that it may, but only where the funding recipient (a school receiving federal funds) acts with deliberate indifference to known acts of harassment in its programs or activities. Moreover, we conclude that such an action will lie only for harassment that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit."
In other words, school districts can be liable under the law if they ignore severe harassment that prevents a student from getting an education.
O'Connor rejected the school district's contention the ruling would mean every bully would have to be expelled.
"We stress that our conclusion here -- that (school districts) may be liable for their deliberate indifference to known acts of peer sexual harassment -- does not mean that (districts) can avoid liability only by purging their schools of actionable peer harassment or that administrators must engage in particular disciplinary action. We thus disagree with (the Monroe school district's) contention that, if Title IX provides a cause of action for student-on-student harassment, 'nothing short of expulsion of every student accused of misconduct involving sexual overtones would protect school systems from liability or damages.' ... In fact, as we have previously noted, courts should refrain from second guessing the disciplinary decisions made by school administrators."
Title IX says, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance," but included no private right to file suit until the Supreme Court said it did.
Despite its narrowness, the Supreme Court ruling in LaShonda's case is a legal weapon in the hands of parents of children who are bullied at school, and a vivid incentive for school officials to rise above their apathy.
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