dafromasta
Member
I membered this reading the Myspace thread. It was in VT that this man Mr.halligan came and talked to our school. His son committed suicide from cyber bullying and now he goes around and makes speeches to schools. Pretty heavy shit, the guys in so much pain. Heres the story...
If We Only Knew, If He Only Told Us
October 7, 2003 will always be the day that divides my life. Before
that day my son Ryan was alive. A sweet, gentle and lanky thirteen year
old fumbling his way through early adolescence and trying to establish
his place in the often confusing and difficult social world of middle
school. After that day my son would be gone forever, a death by
suicide. Some would call it bullycide or even cyber bullycide. I just
call it a huge hole in my heart that will never heal.
Our son Ryan was a sweet, gentle and very sensitive soul. He was born
in Poughkeepsie , NY just a week before Christmas. That Christmas, Ryan
was the best present of all. As he grew, his affectionate way made it
irresistible to hug him and feel him hug you back. He had the magic
ability to bring a smile to anyone that looked his way. As he grew, he
developed a wonderful sense of humor too. And when we moved into new
neighborhoods twice during his life, kids quickly gravitated to his
warmth and friendliness.
But there were early concerns
with Ryan’s speech, language and motor skills development as he neared
kindergarten. Ryan received special education services from pre-school
through the fourth grade. We will always be grateful for the entire
staff at Hiawatha Elementary School in Essex Junction for being so
wonderful and caring for our son. The special education team there fell
in love with him and his drive to do his best every day. By the time he
reached the fifth grade, he was assessed to be on grade and no longer
needing special education services. But as he became older, he also
became more aware that he was not as academically strong as most of his
classmates. This began to bother him deeply as he headed into middle
school. He had to work much harder at homework, re-reading assignments
several times to comprehend the material. He was hard on himself, no
matter how much we tried to lessen the academic pressure and focus his
awareness of his other strengths.
I often told Ryan
that there are all kinds of intelligence, for instance: academic,
music, physical and social intelligence. I always felt his strength was
social intelligence- that his very warm, sweet, caring and sensitive
personality would take him far in life because people liked being with
him. One of the best compliments we ever received about Ryan was from a
parent that said they loved having him over and wanting his sweetness
to rub off onto their child.
It was during the fifth
grade that we first began to encounter the bullying problem. A certain
kid and his friends picked up on Ryan’s academic weaknesses and his
poor physical coordination. But since he was not being physically
bullied by these boys, only by words, we advised him to just ignore
them, walk away and remember that he had good friends to count on. We
even went so far as to get him a therapist to further help him develop
coping skills and to boost his self-esteem during this school year. By
the end of fifth grade he seemed fine and so, based on the therapist’s
advice, we stopped the sessions.
Ryan’s middle school,
Albert D. Lawton (ADL) in Essex Junction, Vermont had grades 6 through
8 in the same building. It was a bit of a scary transition for Ryan
coming in as a very young 6 th grader into a building with some pretty
older looking 8 th graders lurking through the hallways. As with his
early school years, Ryan still struggled to make average grades. School
still was not easy for him and he often brought up the concern of being
put back in “sped” (special ed.)
Sure enough, the
bullying problem resurfaced on and off during his first middle school
year, but never to a point that gave us great concern. Again, we had
the conventional adult belief that this was just kids being kids, a
part of growing up ... that encountering mean kids in middle school was
just inevitable. But the situation got much worse for him during the
7th grade.
In December 2002, the bullying problem
surfaced again to a significant level. There was an evening that month
when he just had a melt down … a very tearful session at the kitchen
table. We thought 7th grade was going fine but discovered he was
bottling up a lot of bad experiences during the first few months.
Again, it was the same kid and his friends that bullied him on and off
since the 5th grade. They were tormenting him again and he said he
hated going to school, that he never wanted to go back there. He asked
that night if we could move or home school him.
I was
torn between wanting to be his bodyguard all day and feeling he needed
to (again) learn how to manage the situation as a part of growing up.
We sat at the kitchen table discussing our options that evening. We
explained that moving in the middle of the winter was not a good time
and home schooling was not an option because Mom worked part-time. I
said, “That’s it Ryan. I had enough. Let’s take it to the principal and
have him put a stop to it once and for all.” To that, Ryan exclaimed,
“No dad, please don’t do that. They will only make it worse. I see it
happen all the time.” Instead Ryan asked that we help him learn how to
fight so he can “beat the heck" out of this kid if he or his 8th grade
friends tried to jump Ryan.
How I wish I could now
turn back the clock. I wish we instead looked into why Ryan did not
trust his school administration to address the problem in the first
place. But at that moment in time, I immediately thought of the movie
“The Karate Kid” and said so to Ryan. We laughed and agreed that was
exactly what was needed for this situation. But instead of karate, Ryan
was much more interested in Billy Blank’s Taebo Kick Boxing program
which often aired as a 30 minute commercial in this time frame. He
asked that we get him this program along with the punching bag and
boxing gloves for Christmas.
After a short discussion
with Kelly, we bought Ryan the “Taebo” kick boxing training kit for
Christmas that year. All through the month of January and into
February, Ryan and I got down to business. After dinner every evening
we did this exercise program together. These are some of my favorite
memories of time spent with Ryan. We talked about a lot of things
during these workouts including strategies in dealing with the bully
and his friends. I was quite proud of him, seeing his self confidence
build. It truly felt like the "Karate Kid" movie, getting him ready for
the big match. But I reminded Ryan that he was never to start a fight
with this kid, but he certainly had my permission to “whale on him” the
moment he laid a hand on Ryan.
Sure enough, we got a
call from the assistant principal after a school day in February
2003. He just broke up a fight between Ryan and the bully at the nearby
Maple Street Park in our village. He said Ryan was ok but wanted us to
be aware. We were very grateful for his intervention. When we found
Ryan walking home, he was both scared and elated. He was shaking but
said he got a few good punches in and felt good he was able to stick up
to the bully. He said, “I got a few good punches in before Mr. Emory
got there. That kid probably won’t mess with me anymore.” We were all
feeling pretty relieved that day for Ryan; for being able to stand his
ground and seemingly make it through a typical teenage rite of passage.
As the months followed, he seemed to be doing great. He
was still struggling academically, but that was always the case for
Ryan since kindergarten. He acted out like a typical middle school age
kid – moody at times but also very sweet and funny most of the
time. The "normal" ups and downs were what we observed. And we were
always there for him, always reminding him how much we loved him. For
the rest of 7th grade, I kept checking in with Ryan and asking him if
that kid was still bothering him. His answer was always the same …
that since that fight, the bully had left him alone. I often thought to
myself, “This plan worked perfectly!”
One day Ryan’s
answer surprised us. He said he was now friends with the kid. We were
not happy with this news. We warned him to watch his back since this
kid was his nemesis for so long. We discouraged the friendship but
decided to back off, feeling he was of age to make decisions like this
and potentially have to learn from a misjudgment. How I wish we instead
ended the so called friendship right from the start.
Ryan’s young teen life included swimming, camping, skateboarding,
biking, snowboarding, playing computer games and instant messaging. A
typical array of “healthy” and “normal” teen activities … or so it
seemed. My son loved being on-line, staying connected with his friends
after the school day and throughout the summer. But during the summer
of 2003, a greater deal of time was spent on-line, mainly instant
messaging. I was concerned and felt compelled to remind him of our
internet safety rules.
Our last rule was a safety one. I told my two older children that they
had to use the password I gave them for any accounts they signed up. I
promised I would not read personal messages or spy on them but, “God
forbid you don’t follow the first few rules and you just disappear one
day, I will want instant access to all of your activities on-line.”
Never in a million years did I imagine this rule would someday end up
becoming the key to unlocking the mystery of why my son took his own
life.
A few days after his funeral I logged on to his
AOL IM account because that was the one place he spent most of his time
during the last few months. I logged on to see if there were any clues
to his final action. It was in that safe world of being somewhat
anonymous that several of his classmates told me of the bullying and
cyber bullying that took place during the months that led up to his
suicide. The boy that had bullied him since 5 th grade and briefly
befriended Ryan after the brawl was the main culprit. My son the
comedian told his new friend something embarrassing and funny that
happened once and the friend (bully) ran with the new information that
Ryan had something done to him and therefore Ryan must be gay. The
rumor and taunting continued beyond that school day … well into the
night and during the summer of 2003. During the summer, my son
approached a pretty “popular” girl from his school on-line and worked
on establishing a relationship with her; I’m sure as a surefire way to
squash the “gay” rumor before everyone returned to school in the fall.
When the 8 th grade school year started up again, Ryan approached his
new girlfriend in person. I’m sure he was never prepared to handle what
happened next. In front of her friends she told him he was just a loser
and that she did not want anything to do with him. She said she was
only joking on-line. He found out that her friends and her thought it
would be funny to make him think she liked him and to get him to say a
lot of personal, embarrassing stuff. She copied and pasted there
private IM exchanges into ones with her friends. They all had a good
laugh at Ryan’s expense.
Now certainly my son was not
the first boy in history to be bullied and have his heart crushed by a
pretty girl’s rejection. But when I discovered a folder filled with IM
exchanges throughout the summer and further interviewed his classmates,
I realized that technology was being utilized as weapons far more
effective and reaching then the simple ones we had as kids. Passing
handwritten notes or a "slam" book has since been replaced with on-line
tools such as IM, Websites, Blogs, cell phones, etc. The list keeps
growing with the invention of every new hi-tech communication gadget.
It’s one thing to be bullied and humiliated in front of a few kids.
It’s one thing to feel rejection and have your heart crushed by a girl.
But it has to be a totally different experience then a generation ago
when these hurts and humiliation are now witnessed by a far larger,
online adolescent audience. I believe my son would have survived these
incidents of bullying and humiliation if they took place before
computers and the internet. But I believe there are few of us that that
would have had the resiliency and stamina to sustain such a nuclear
level attack on our feelings and reputation as a young teen in the
midst of rapid physical and emotional changes and raging hormones. I
believe bullying through technology has the effect of accelerating and
amplifying the hurt to levels that will probably result in a rise in
teen suicide rates. Recent statistics indicate that indeed teen suicide
is on the rise again after many years of declining rates.
I want to be very clear. I don’t blame Ryan’s suicide on one single
person or one single event. In the end, Ryan was suffering from
depression. This is a form of mental illness that is brought on by
biological and/or environmental factors. In Ryan's case, I feel it was
the "pile on effect" of the environmental issues mentioned above that
stemmed from his middle school life. Tragically, teenage depression
often goes undetected against the backdrop of typical teen angst. And
since most of us have never received basic education in the signs and
prevention of teenage suicide at any point in our lives, young people
suffering from depression are at greater risk.
We
have no doubt that bullying and cyber bullying were significant
environmental factors that triggered Ryan’s depression. In the final
analysis, we feel strongly that Ryan's middle school was a toxic
environment, like so many other middle schools across the country for
so many young people. For too long, we have let kids and adults bully
others as a right of passage into adulthood inside a school
building. We place accountable for this tragedy, first and foremost, on
ourselves as his parents... but also on Ryan’s school administration,
staff and the young people involved. As parents, we failed to hold the
school accountable to maintain an emotionally safe environment for our
son while he was alive. But accountability and responsibility should be
shared by all involved - parents, bullies, bystanders, teachers and
school administrators ... basically the whole system.
Something had to happen in response to this tragedy. It had to be
something substantial and sustained, not just a short lived sympathetic
response. We decided to take all this intense pain and channel it into
productive areas to help other young people avoid the same fate as our
son. You’ll learn on the other pages about the bully prevention law we
spearheaded in Vermont that holds schools much more accountable in
preventing and responding to the issue. We also worked closely with I-Safe America
to raise awareness about cyber bullying and the severe emotional impact
it can have on a young person. We've done several national and local
news media interviews to spread this story. And we continue to
collaborate with various suicide prevention groups to drive into our
Vermont schools more education about depression and suicide prevention
among middle school and high school students.
Nothing
can ever bring back our Ryan. Nothing will ever heal our broken
hearts. But we hope by sharing the personal details of our tremendous
loss, another family will have been spared a lifelong sentence to this
kind of pain.
Vibs to his family, you can visit the site athttp://www.ryanpatrickhalligan.org/index.htm
If We Only Knew, If He Only Told Us
October 7, 2003 will always be the day that divides my life. Before
that day my son Ryan was alive. A sweet, gentle and lanky thirteen year
old fumbling his way through early adolescence and trying to establish
his place in the often confusing and difficult social world of middle
school. After that day my son would be gone forever, a death by
suicide. Some would call it bullycide or even cyber bullycide. I just
call it a huge hole in my heart that will never heal.
Our son Ryan was a sweet, gentle and very sensitive soul. He was born
in Poughkeepsie , NY just a week before Christmas. That Christmas, Ryan
was the best present of all. As he grew, his affectionate way made it
irresistible to hug him and feel him hug you back. He had the magic
ability to bring a smile to anyone that looked his way. As he grew, he
developed a wonderful sense of humor too. And when we moved into new
neighborhoods twice during his life, kids quickly gravitated to his
warmth and friendliness.
But there were early concerns
with Ryan’s speech, language and motor skills development as he neared
kindergarten. Ryan received special education services from pre-school
through the fourth grade. We will always be grateful for the entire
staff at Hiawatha Elementary School in Essex Junction for being so
wonderful and caring for our son. The special education team there fell
in love with him and his drive to do his best every day. By the time he
reached the fifth grade, he was assessed to be on grade and no longer
needing special education services. But as he became older, he also
became more aware that he was not as academically strong as most of his
classmates. This began to bother him deeply as he headed into middle
school. He had to work much harder at homework, re-reading assignments
several times to comprehend the material. He was hard on himself, no
matter how much we tried to lessen the academic pressure and focus his
awareness of his other strengths.
I often told Ryan
that there are all kinds of intelligence, for instance: academic,
music, physical and social intelligence. I always felt his strength was
social intelligence- that his very warm, sweet, caring and sensitive
personality would take him far in life because people liked being with
him. One of the best compliments we ever received about Ryan was from a
parent that said they loved having him over and wanting his sweetness
to rub off onto their child.
It was during the fifth
grade that we first began to encounter the bullying problem. A certain
kid and his friends picked up on Ryan’s academic weaknesses and his
poor physical coordination. But since he was not being physically
bullied by these boys, only by words, we advised him to just ignore
them, walk away and remember that he had good friends to count on. We
even went so far as to get him a therapist to further help him develop
coping skills and to boost his self-esteem during this school year. By
the end of fifth grade he seemed fine and so, based on the therapist’s
advice, we stopped the sessions.
Ryan’s middle school,
Albert D. Lawton (ADL) in Essex Junction, Vermont had grades 6 through
8 in the same building. It was a bit of a scary transition for Ryan
coming in as a very young 6 th grader into a building with some pretty
older looking 8 th graders lurking through the hallways. As with his
early school years, Ryan still struggled to make average grades. School
still was not easy for him and he often brought up the concern of being
put back in “sped” (special ed.)
Sure enough, the
bullying problem resurfaced on and off during his first middle school
year, but never to a point that gave us great concern. Again, we had
the conventional adult belief that this was just kids being kids, a
part of growing up ... that encountering mean kids in middle school was
just inevitable. But the situation got much worse for him during the
7th grade.
In December 2002, the bullying problem
surfaced again to a significant level. There was an evening that month
when he just had a melt down … a very tearful session at the kitchen
table. We thought 7th grade was going fine but discovered he was
bottling up a lot of bad experiences during the first few months.
Again, it was the same kid and his friends that bullied him on and off
since the 5th grade. They were tormenting him again and he said he
hated going to school, that he never wanted to go back there. He asked
that night if we could move or home school him.
I was
torn between wanting to be his bodyguard all day and feeling he needed
to (again) learn how to manage the situation as a part of growing up.
We sat at the kitchen table discussing our options that evening. We
explained that moving in the middle of the winter was not a good time
and home schooling was not an option because Mom worked part-time. I
said, “That’s it Ryan. I had enough. Let’s take it to the principal and
have him put a stop to it once and for all.” To that, Ryan exclaimed,
“No dad, please don’t do that. They will only make it worse. I see it
happen all the time.” Instead Ryan asked that we help him learn how to
fight so he can “beat the heck" out of this kid if he or his 8th grade
friends tried to jump Ryan.
How I wish I could now
turn back the clock. I wish we instead looked into why Ryan did not
trust his school administration to address the problem in the first
place. But at that moment in time, I immediately thought of the movie
“The Karate Kid” and said so to Ryan. We laughed and agreed that was
exactly what was needed for this situation. But instead of karate, Ryan
was much more interested in Billy Blank’s Taebo Kick Boxing program
which often aired as a 30 minute commercial in this time frame. He
asked that we get him this program along with the punching bag and
boxing gloves for Christmas.
After a short discussion
with Kelly, we bought Ryan the “Taebo” kick boxing training kit for
Christmas that year. All through the month of January and into
February, Ryan and I got down to business. After dinner every evening
we did this exercise program together. These are some of my favorite
memories of time spent with Ryan. We talked about a lot of things
during these workouts including strategies in dealing with the bully
and his friends. I was quite proud of him, seeing his self confidence
build. It truly felt like the "Karate Kid" movie, getting him ready for
the big match. But I reminded Ryan that he was never to start a fight
with this kid, but he certainly had my permission to “whale on him” the
moment he laid a hand on Ryan.
Sure enough, we got a
call from the assistant principal after a school day in February
2003. He just broke up a fight between Ryan and the bully at the nearby
Maple Street Park in our village. He said Ryan was ok but wanted us to
be aware. We were very grateful for his intervention. When we found
Ryan walking home, he was both scared and elated. He was shaking but
said he got a few good punches in and felt good he was able to stick up
to the bully. He said, “I got a few good punches in before Mr. Emory
got there. That kid probably won’t mess with me anymore.” We were all
feeling pretty relieved that day for Ryan; for being able to stand his
ground and seemingly make it through a typical teenage rite of passage.
As the months followed, he seemed to be doing great. He
was still struggling academically, but that was always the case for
Ryan since kindergarten. He acted out like a typical middle school age
kid – moody at times but also very sweet and funny most of the
time. The "normal" ups and downs were what we observed. And we were
always there for him, always reminding him how much we loved him. For
the rest of 7th grade, I kept checking in with Ryan and asking him if
that kid was still bothering him. His answer was always the same …
that since that fight, the bully had left him alone. I often thought to
myself, “This plan worked perfectly!”
One day Ryan’s
answer surprised us. He said he was now friends with the kid. We were
not happy with this news. We warned him to watch his back since this
kid was his nemesis for so long. We discouraged the friendship but
decided to back off, feeling he was of age to make decisions like this
and potentially have to learn from a misjudgment. How I wish we instead
ended the so called friendship right from the start.
Ryan’s young teen life included swimming, camping, skateboarding,
biking, snowboarding, playing computer games and instant messaging. A
typical array of “healthy” and “normal” teen activities … or so it
seemed. My son loved being on-line, staying connected with his friends
after the school day and throughout the summer. But during the summer
of 2003, a greater deal of time was spent on-line, mainly instant
messaging. I was concerned and felt compelled to remind him of our
internet safety rules.
- No IMing/chatting with strangers
- No giving any personal information (name/address/phone) to strangers
- No sending pictures to strangers
- No secret passwords
Our last rule was a safety one. I told my two older children that they
had to use the password I gave them for any accounts they signed up. I
promised I would not read personal messages or spy on them but, “God
forbid you don’t follow the first few rules and you just disappear one
day, I will want instant access to all of your activities on-line.”
Never in a million years did I imagine this rule would someday end up
becoming the key to unlocking the mystery of why my son took his own
life.
A few days after his funeral I logged on to his
AOL IM account because that was the one place he spent most of his time
during the last few months. I logged on to see if there were any clues
to his final action. It was in that safe world of being somewhat
anonymous that several of his classmates told me of the bullying and
cyber bullying that took place during the months that led up to his
suicide. The boy that had bullied him since 5 th grade and briefly
befriended Ryan after the brawl was the main culprit. My son the
comedian told his new friend something embarrassing and funny that
happened once and the friend (bully) ran with the new information that
Ryan had something done to him and therefore Ryan must be gay. The
rumor and taunting continued beyond that school day … well into the
night and during the summer of 2003. During the summer, my son
approached a pretty “popular” girl from his school on-line and worked
on establishing a relationship with her; I’m sure as a surefire way to
squash the “gay” rumor before everyone returned to school in the fall.
When the 8 th grade school year started up again, Ryan approached his
new girlfriend in person. I’m sure he was never prepared to handle what
happened next. In front of her friends she told him he was just a loser
and that she did not want anything to do with him. She said she was
only joking on-line. He found out that her friends and her thought it
would be funny to make him think she liked him and to get him to say a
lot of personal, embarrassing stuff. She copied and pasted there
private IM exchanges into ones with her friends. They all had a good
laugh at Ryan’s expense.
Now certainly my son was not
the first boy in history to be bullied and have his heart crushed by a
pretty girl’s rejection. But when I discovered a folder filled with IM
exchanges throughout the summer and further interviewed his classmates,
I realized that technology was being utilized as weapons far more
effective and reaching then the simple ones we had as kids. Passing
handwritten notes or a "slam" book has since been replaced with on-line
tools such as IM, Websites, Blogs, cell phones, etc. The list keeps
growing with the invention of every new hi-tech communication gadget.
It’s one thing to be bullied and humiliated in front of a few kids.
It’s one thing to feel rejection and have your heart crushed by a girl.
But it has to be a totally different experience then a generation ago
when these hurts and humiliation are now witnessed by a far larger,
online adolescent audience. I believe my son would have survived these
incidents of bullying and humiliation if they took place before
computers and the internet. But I believe there are few of us that that
would have had the resiliency and stamina to sustain such a nuclear
level attack on our feelings and reputation as a young teen in the
midst of rapid physical and emotional changes and raging hormones. I
believe bullying through technology has the effect of accelerating and
amplifying the hurt to levels that will probably result in a rise in
teen suicide rates. Recent statistics indicate that indeed teen suicide
is on the rise again after many years of declining rates.
I want to be very clear. I don’t blame Ryan’s suicide on one single
person or one single event. In the end, Ryan was suffering from
depression. This is a form of mental illness that is brought on by
biological and/or environmental factors. In Ryan's case, I feel it was
the "pile on effect" of the environmental issues mentioned above that
stemmed from his middle school life. Tragically, teenage depression
often goes undetected against the backdrop of typical teen angst. And
since most of us have never received basic education in the signs and
prevention of teenage suicide at any point in our lives, young people
suffering from depression are at greater risk.
We
have no doubt that bullying and cyber bullying were significant
environmental factors that triggered Ryan’s depression. In the final
analysis, we feel strongly that Ryan's middle school was a toxic
environment, like so many other middle schools across the country for
so many young people. For too long, we have let kids and adults bully
others as a right of passage into adulthood inside a school
building. We place accountable for this tragedy, first and foremost, on
ourselves as his parents... but also on Ryan’s school administration,
staff and the young people involved. As parents, we failed to hold the
school accountable to maintain an emotionally safe environment for our
son while he was alive. But accountability and responsibility should be
shared by all involved - parents, bullies, bystanders, teachers and
school administrators ... basically the whole system.
Something had to happen in response to this tragedy. It had to be
something substantial and sustained, not just a short lived sympathetic
response. We decided to take all this intense pain and channel it into
productive areas to help other young people avoid the same fate as our
son. You’ll learn on the other pages about the bully prevention law we
spearheaded in Vermont that holds schools much more accountable in
preventing and responding to the issue. We also worked closely with I-Safe America
to raise awareness about cyber bullying and the severe emotional impact
it can have on a young person. We've done several national and local
news media interviews to spread this story. And we continue to
collaborate with various suicide prevention groups to drive into our
Vermont schools more education about depression and suicide prevention
among middle school and high school students.
Nothing
can ever bring back our Ryan. Nothing will ever heal our broken
hearts. But we hope by sharing the personal details of our tremendous
loss, another family will have been spared a lifelong sentence to this
kind of pain.
Vibs to his family, you can visit the site athttp://www.ryanpatrickhalligan.org/index.htm
