By ARIELLA MONTI
Mary, then 14, and the 13-year-old male Long Beach Middle School student who posted the page, started a relationship in the summer of 2007, which Mary ended two months later because, she said, she wanted to date one of the boy’s friends instead. According to Mary, immediately after their breakup, the boy and his friends created the group, which stated online, “This group is for the many people that have extreme hatred for the sut hore (sic) skank.”
While only eight people had signed on as members of the group when it was shut down by My Space six weeks later, the site had become so well-known among students that Mary was called a “bitch” by an elementary-school girl she didn’t know at last year’s Irish Day parade and festival.
“There were kids who knew who she was in the elementary school because of this My Space thing,” said Mary’s mother, Jane, who took the issue to the school district, the Long Beach Police Department and the Nassau County Legislature.
According to Jane, the school district could not do anything, since the online bullying took place on a home computer. The police department spoke to the parents of the offending teens, and Jane is working with County Legislator Denise Ford to pass legislation to combat the problem.
“Random girls thought I said all this stuff about them, and I didn’t even really know them,” said Mary, who endured whispers and stares from students in the hallways of Long Beach High School, where she was a freshman. “These girls threatened to fight me all the time.”
Jane called the whole experience “a public lynching,” as teenagers who never met her daughter got involved in what began as an issue between two people.
Mary said she received insulting instant messages on a regular basis from students she barely knew, and was forced to change her cell phone number twice in an effort to avoid the constant threatening text messages and calls. She quickly found herself alone, she said, with all of her friends siding with her ex-boyfriend.
“All my friends stopped talking to me except for one,” said Mary of her best friend, with whom she is still close. “She’s the only one that stood up for me.”
The situation escalated when Jane confronted school district officials and mentioned a discussion she had with the boy’s father in a nearby town. Unaware that the student was a not a Long Beach resident, the school district promptly told the boy and his sister that they had to leave the middle school and attend the appropriate district, Jane said.
“When he was moved out of school, all hell broke loose,” said Jane. “No one cared that this kid was trying to smear her reputation.”
The boy’s father declined to comment.
In an instant message conversation the boy had with Mary’s close friend in February 2008, a copy of which the Herald obtained, he wrote, “I want revenge on her ... she will be shot beecuz everyone hates her.”
Not taking the threat lightly, Jane took a printed copy of the online conversation to the Long Beach Police Department, which followed up two weeks later, but no action was taken, according to Jane.
Mary left the high school to be home schooled two months after the group was created and she was harassed. “I was thinking about going back for senior year,” said Mary, who is now a sophomore and continues to be home schooled by her mother. “I don’t know if I want to be in a school with all of those kids.”
Long Beach schools Superintendent Dr. Robert Greenberg said that while the district deals seriously with these types of incidents, because they took place outside the school and involved a student who was not living in the district, there was little the school could do.
“We had him removed from the school district because he didn’t live here,” Greenberg said. “And what we choose to do is work with the girl student in the district to provide as much support to the family as we can.” Mary said the experience made her stronger, but only after a period of depression. “This is not a part of growing up,” she said in response to those who told her that bullying is a part of life. “People commit suicide over something like that.”
Johanna Mathieson-Ellmer, the director of safety education at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Long Island, defined cyber-bullying as “the willful, repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones and electronic devices.” The definition was created by experts Dr. Sameer Hinduja and Dr. Justin Patchi, who co-founded cyberbullying.us. In an incident reported nationwide, Megan Meier, 13, of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., committed suicide after a friend’s mother pretended to be a 16-year-old boy she liked and for months led her to believe they were in a relationship. The woman, still pretending to be the boy, later argued with Megan via instant message and told her the world would be better off without her. She was never charged with a crime.
In 2003, 13-year-old Ryan Patrick Halligan of Essex Junction, Vt., was called gay by classmates over the Internet. After months of taunting and threatening, he committed suicide. His father, John, has been working to create laws governing cyber-bullying. “Since cyber-bullying is a relatively new issue, courts on both the federal and state levels have not had the opportunity to establish legal precedent that could serve as a benchmark for states and school administrators,” said Mathieson-Ellmer. “To date, there are no laws in New York state specific to cyber-bullying, but we are part of a group of 13 other states that are drafting legislation to deal with it.”
According to Mathieson-Ellmer, a problem with proposed cyber-bullying laws is that some violate freedom of speech protection. “Even the American Civil Liberties Union has opposed cyber-bullying laws on those grounds,” she said.
“I don’t know how many parents could stand back when their daughter is being called a whore or a slut,” said Jane, who, like John Halligan, has made it her mission to educate the public about the psychological dangers of bullying. “To me, that wasn’t ‘kids will be kids.’”
Mary has now come to terms with the experience, but said she still continues to get calls at her new number, and just last week two girls on the street mouthed “bitch” to her as she and her mother drove by them.
Mary now attends a church in Rockville Centre, both for services and social opportunities, and has a new group of friends and a new boyfriend. “Everything’s better now,” she said, despite the continued harassment. “I surround myself with better people.” Asked if she had any fear that going public with her story would incite more harassment, she said, “Maybe it will, and at the same time maybe it’s going to help somebody. If it helps one person and everyone in Long Beach hates me again, I think it’s worth it.”
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
