California: Father honors son's memory in campaign against bullying

Jeff Lasater established Jeremiah Project 51, named after his son, 14, who killed himself at school after years of taunting.

By Catherine Saillant, Los Angeles Times
June 4, 2010

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Kathy Lodge didn't know how to help her 13-year-old son deal with constant harassment at his Antelope Valley school. Then one day she Googled "bullying" and "'teens" and found a website called Jeremiah Project 51.

Jeff Lasater, the nonprofit group's founder, answered the hotline and guided Lodge through the process of documenting her son's taunting, demanding action from Palmdale school officials and getting him into another school.

Now Lodge is a volunteer for Project 51, answering other parents' calls for help. In 17 months, the nonprofit organization has grown from one father's crusade into a growing national network of parents helping other parents deal with the age-old issue of bullying.

Lasater named Project 51 for the number on his son's football jersey, the one Jeremiah, 14, wore a few days before taking his own life. Tall and awkward, Jeremiah had been bullied since middle school and that didn't change when he started his freshman year at Vasquez High School.

Lasater had met with school officials about the problem and was told it would be handled. But on Oct. 20, 2008, a police officer walked into Lasater's Reseda muffler shop and informed him that Jeremiah had shot himself in the head in a bathroom stall at school.

At lunch that day, some boys had thrown chili at his son and pulled down his pants. The shock of his son's suicide propelled Lasater into action.

Project 51 maintains a 24-hour hotline for parents and children and offers support groups, counseling and referrals for attorneys to take action against recalcitrant schools.

Lasater said schools almost always resist Project 51's intervention and don't like to acknowledge that they have a bullying problem. "I tell them that all of the reports on my desk tell me something differently," he said.

Lasater and the nonprofit group's board hope to set up Project 51 chapters across the country to spread the word that bullying behavior can be minimized when parents get involved and schools take action. It is also developing a peer-mentoring program to help schools squelch the problem from within.

"This is my therapy," said Lasater, a big man with a tired face and a rumpled voice. "Every kid we save, we honor my son."

Lasater's willingness to lean on school boards has ruffled some feathers. He said one school official in North Carolina sent him a letter calling Project 51 "the biggest bully organization I ever saw." But parents who have been helped by Project 51 — and he says there have been about 100 so far — say that they turn up the heat only if schools fail to take bullying seriously.

"We're not a vigilante group," said Maureen Bowman, a Pennsylvania mother who volunteered for Project 51 after Lasater helped with a bullied son who tried twice to commit suicide in the eighth grade. "But there has to be a different mind-set. Bullying is serious and schools need to treat it that way."

Lasater felt he had no choice but to attack the problem after Jeremiah died. It was the only way he could live with the nagging voice inside his head that said he could have done more to help his son, he said.

"There has not been a day go by where I don't think about what I could have done differently, how I should have gotten myself educated about bullying," Lasater said. "I will question why and how come until the day I die."

Lasater, who lives in the Antelope Valley and commutes to his muffler shop in Reseda, typically rises at 4 a.m. to answer e-mail and take care of the nonprofit's business before work. Sometimes he takes his lunch break to address school groups.

Family life hasn't been easy. His older son Nathan was unable to return to school after Jeremiah's suicide but is doing well enough in independent study that he will soon graduate. His former wife is dealing with their son's death in her own way and is not involved in the nonprofit group, Lasater said.

Lasater said he thought about giving up the nonprofit until he visited the bathroom stall where his son died. It was a moment that changed his mind.

Since then, he has gone to schools to tell Jeremiah's story and to urge districts to adopt anti-bullying programs. So far, only San Fernando Valley Academy has adopted Project 51's four-step plan.

Lasater said he asked Jeremiah's former school to adopt a similar program, but it has refused. Last year, he sued the Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District, alleging that it knew that Jeremiah was being bullied and didn't do enough to prevent his death.

The lawsuit has been tentatively settled but Lasater and school district officials declined to provide details.

Brent Woodard, superintendent of the Acton-Agua Dulce district, said changes have been made in the way district schools approach bullying. Each incident is documented and principals send reports to the district office each month, Woodard said.

"It's still a raw nerve in the community," he said of Jeremiah's suicide. "If there's a positive, it's that it brought bullying to the forefront."

catherine.saillant@latimes.com