Rebecca Sedwick An Heros Self Over AskFM Posts
Rebecca Sedwick was a 12 year old girl with weak parents and an even weaker self esteem. She saw some nasty posts about her on a few social media sites, including AskFM, and decided the only way out was to swan dive from a Cement Plant. Now Florida Police have arrested two girls for “cyber bullying” although I don’t think the law favors the police.
From USAToday here:
Florida officials have charged two girls, ages 12 and 14, with felonies for allegedly taunting and bullying another 12-year-old girl until she committed suicide.
Such criminal charges are extremely rare, although the problem of bullying and victimizing other teens is an age-old one.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Tuesday that he made the arrests Monday after one of the two girls posted on Facebook as recently as Saturday that she had bullied the victim, Rebecca Sedwick of Lakeland, Fla., and didn’t care that she had died.
Rebecca, who killed herself Sept. 9, was “terrorized” by as many as 15 girls who picked on her for months through online message boards and texts. One message said she should “drink bleach and die.” The online harassment allegedly continued after she transferred to a different school.
The suspects were charged as juveniles with aggravated stalking, a third-degree felony.
“Bullying in and of itself is not a crime. But bullying makes up the predicate acts for stalking or aggravated stalking,” Judd said.
Judd said a feud had erupted after the 14-year-old suspect began dating a boy Rebecca had been seeing. She “began to harass and ultimately torment Rebecca,” Judd said.
The sheriff said the tipping point leading to the arrests came when one of the suspects purportedly showed a lack of remorse for Rebecca’s death by allegedly posting on Facebook on Saturday: “Yes ik [I know] I bullied REBECCA nd she killed her self but IDGAF [I don’t give a (expletive)]”
The suspect told deputies that her Facebook account was hacked and that she did not write that post, WTSP-TV reported.
Rebecca’s mother, Tricia Norman, told WTSP last month that the constant bullying drove her daughter to kill herself, and that the school district did not do enough to protect her.
“They would tell her she’s ugly, stupid, nobody liked her, go kill herself,” said Norman, who launched an anti-bullying campaign Rebecca Sedwich — Against Bullying, on Facebook.
Rebecca ran away in November and was hospitalized the following month for three days after cutting herself. At one point, the school stepped in to separate the girls’ schedules because of fights. Rebecca later changed schools, but the bullying continued online, on sites such as Ask.fm, Kik, Instagram and Voxer, authorities said.
Judd said that on the morning of Sept. 9, Rebecca texted a boy she had met online from the cement tower, saying she couldn’t take it anymore and she was jumping.
Wow, that Rebecca was a little social media attention whore to the bitter end. Texting goodbye from the top of a cement plant sure was dramatic, huh? I noticed the last names of the Mom and the daughter didn’t match up. Divorced children can experience trauma from the breakup of the parents, and it seems like these parents let social media and a cell phone babysit this precious snowflake. According to the video, the Mom didn’t want her daughter to “hate her” so she allowed her to go back on social media and back on the cell phone. At least that lack of hate will provide this grieving Mom a little comfort, and of course as a solid Democrat, the mom will refuse to take any responsibility for being such a shitty parent in all of this.
But at least Rebecca gets to be the new poster child for cyber-bullying. Maybe she can be the Matthew Shepherd for the sensitive set.
