Mitt Romney is struggling to contain a 50-year-old story that has people discussing why it shouldn't matter almost as much as why it does. 

 The Washington Post ran an article about Romney's history of pranks at his high school, the tony Cranbrook School in a wealthy Detroit suburb, and one incident stuck out: According to several on-the-record classmates, Romney led a posse of boys to pin down a presumptively gay student, John Lauber, and Romney snipped off his bleached blond hair while Lauber cried and screamed for help. Romney says he doesn't recall the incident, and that Lauber's sexual orientation "was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s." His old classmates disagree. Here are five reasons this "cruel and nasty" incident from high school could haunt Romney's presidential bid:

On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh dismissed the notion that the alleged high-school pranks committed by presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney count as “bullying,” saying “You had long hair in 1965, you were gonna get razzed. It didn’t matter,” adding that “1965 is a great year, bullying was legal.”

After reading this story would you consider taxng churches? Particularly the ones that have become so politically active?

NEW YORK -- Long a lightning rod for conservative criticism, the Girl Scouts of the USA are now facing their highest-level challenge yet: An official inquiry by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

At issue are concerns about program materials that some Catholics find offensive, as well as assertions that the Scouts associate with other groups espousing stances that conflict with church teaching. The Scouts, who have numerous parish-sponsored troops, deny many of the claims and defend their alliances.

The inquiry coincides with the Scouts' 100th anniversary celebrations and follows a chain of other controversies.

Earlier this year, legislators in Indiana and Alaska publicly called the Scouts into question, and the organization was berated in a series aired by a Catholic broadcast network. Last year, the Scouts angered some conservatives by accepting into a Colorado troop a 7-year-old transgender child who was born a boy but was being raised as a girl.

Some of the concerns raised by Catholic critics are recycled complaints that have been denied by the Girl Scouts' head office repeatedly and categorically. It says it has no partnership with Planned Parenthood, and does not take positions on sexuality, birth control and abortion.

"It's been hard to get the message out there as to what is true when distortions get repeated over and over," said Gladys Padro-Soler, the Girl Scouts' director of inclusive membership strategies.

In other instances, the scouts have modified materials that drew complaints – for example, dropping some references to playwright Josefina Lopez because one of her plays, "Simply Maria," was viewed by critics as mocking the Catholic faith.

The new inquiry will be conducted by the bishops' Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth. It will look into the Scouts' "possible problematic relationships with other organizations" and various "problematic" program materials, according to a letter sent by the committee chairman, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne, Ind., to his fellow bishops.

The bishops' conference provided a copy of the letter to The Associated Press, but otherwise declined comment.

Girl Scout leaders hope the bishops' apprehensions will be eased once they gather information. But there's frustration within the iconic youth organization – known for its inclusiveness and cookie sales – that it has become such an ideological target, with the girls sometimes caught in the political crossfire.

"I know we're a big part of the culture wars," said the Girl Scouts' spokeswoman, Michelle Tompkins. "People use our good name to advance their own agenda."

"For us, there's an overarching sadness to it," Tompkins added. "We're just trying to further girls' leadership."

With the bishops now getting involved, the stakes are high. The Girl Scouts estimate that one-fourth of their 2.3 million youth members are Catholic, and any significant exodus would be a blow given that membership already is down from a peak of more than 3 million several decades ago.

The inquiry coincides with a broader effort by the bishops to analyze church ties with outside groups. Rhoades' committee plans to consult with Girl Scouts leaders and with the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry, which has been liaising with the Scouts for two years about various complaints.

The federation's executive director, Bob McCarty, praised the Girl Scouts for willingness to change some program content.

"I don't think any of this material was intentionally mean-spirited," McCarty said. "I think a lot of it was lack of attention."

However, McCarty expressed doubt that the Girl Scouts' most vehement critics would be satisfied regardless of what steps are taken.

"It's easier to step back and throw verbal bombs," he said. "It takes a lot more energy to work for change."

Mary Rice Hasson, a visiting fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, accuses McCarty of "whitewashing" Girl Scout programs and policies that struck some Catholics as counter to church teaching.

"They just repeated the Girl Scouts' denials," Hasson said. "Families' concerns were minimized or ignored."

Hasson is pleased that the bishops are launching their own inquiry but is skeptical that further rifts can be avoided.

"A collision course is probably a good description of where things are headed," she said. "The leadership of the Girl Scouts is reflexively liberal. Their board is dominated by people whose views are antithetical to the teachings of the Catholic Church."

One of the long-running concerns is the Girl Scouts' membership in the 145-nation World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

The association, known as WAGGGS, is on record as saying girls and young women "need an environment where they can freely and openly discuss issues of sex and sexuality." It also has called for increased access to condoms to protect against sexually transmitted diseases.

Some critics want the Girl Scouts of the USA to pull out of the world group; the scouts aren't budging.

"Our world is becoming smaller and our young people need to have those opportunities to engage with their peers from around the world," said the Girl Scouts' CEO, Anna Maria Chavez. "But simply being a member does not mean that we will always take the same positions or endorse the same programs as WAGGGS."

To the Girl Scouts, some of the attacks seem to be a form of guilt by association. Critics contend that Girl Scouts materials shouldn't contain links to groups such as Doctors without Borders, the Sierra Club and Oxfam because they support family planning or emergency contraception.

One repeated complaint, revived in February by the Catholic broadcasting network EWTN, involves an International Planned Parenthood brochure made available to girls attending a Girl Scout workshop at a 2010 United Nations event. The brochure – "Healthy, Happy and Hot" – advised young people with HIV on how to safely lead active sex lives.

The Girl Scouts say they had had no advance knowledge of the brochure and played no role in distributing it.

Another complaint involved a Girl Scout blog suggesting that girls read an article about Chavez – who is Catholic – in Marie Claire magazine. Critics said the blog's link led to a Marie Claire home page promoting, among other items, a sex advice article.

The Girl Scouts' website addresses some of the recurring criticisms.

"Parents or guardians make all decisions regarding program participation that may be of a sensitive nature," it says.

And although it's a secular organization, the Girl Scouts embrace partnerships with religious groups. Scouts can earn a "My Promise, My Faith" pin for activities linked to their religious beliefs.

The Girl Scouts have been entangled in the culture wars as far back as the 1970s, when some conservatives became irked by the prominence of feminists such as Betty Friedan in the organization's leadership.

In 1993, Christian conservatives were outraged when the Girl Scouts formalized a policy allowing girls to substitute another word for "God" – such as Allah or Buddha – in the Girl Scout promise that reads: "On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country."

Among the disgruntled was Patti Garibay, a troop leader in Cincinnati who'd raised three daughters as Girl Scouts. In 1995, she founded the American Heritage Girls, which calls itself a "Christ-centered" alternative and now claims 19,000 members in 45 states.

Garibay said many of the newest members are from Catholic families disenchanted with the Girl Scouts.

One uneasy Catholic parent is Jody Geenen of West Bend, Wis., a troop leader for the past 14 years as her three daughters – now 18, 14 and 12 – became Girl Scouts.

She complains about some program materials adopted by the Girl Scouts in recent years. One example she gave: a patch honoring Hispanic labor organizer Dolores Huerta, whose shortcomings – in the eyes of some Catholics – include a 2007 award from Planned Parenthood.

Geenen hopes the Scouts will change their ways. "I love the Girl Scouts," she said. "But it can't remain the way it is."

American Heritage Girls signed a memorandum of mutual support in 2009 with the Boy Scouts of America, and some local units conduct joint activities. The Boy Scouts have no equivalent pact with the Girl Scouts, and the two organizations have, to an extent, become polarized ideologically.

Even in the face of criticism, the Boys Scouts stand by their policy of excluding atheists and barring gays from leadership roles. The Girl Scouts have no such policies.

"When you have a leadership brand like Girl Scouts, it's natural that we would have some critics," said Chavez. "We're proud of our inclusive approach because that is what has always made this organization strong."

Girl Scout controversies surfaced recently in two state legislatures.

In Indiana, Rep. Bob Morris wrote to his colleagues depicting the Girl Scouts as a radical group that promotes abortions and homosexuality. He later apologized for "reactionary and inflammatory" comments, but stood by his contention that the Scouts have links with Planned Parenthood.

In Alaska, Rep. Wes Keller – before deciding whether to support a resolution honoring the Girl Scouts – said he needed to investigate information "floating around the Internet" about the alleged Planned Parenthood link. Keller later said he was convinced the rumors were baseless; the resolution passed unanimously.

Anacortes

Geoff's story 

“Three of us oversaw an after school program funded by the school district. Me, Jim and Nancy, all volunteers. Jim and Nancy were teachers. I ran a small boat charter, whale watch service. We involved kids aged 12-16 in outdoor projects focusing on the bounty of our shoreline. We had our company tour boat that we could use to cruise close to shore or to scoot out to one of the islands for different marine projects. Usually 18-20 kids showed up four times a week after school. A few more than that would join us on Saturday when we would cap the day with a meal cooked over the fire pit.

Things were running pretty good until we received a complaint from one girl’s mom that her daughter had been bullied. I’d been working with kids long enough to realize that when girls bullied each other it was much harder to recognize, and stem, then when boys would pick on a kid. We tried to watch the kids closely after the mom’s complaint but I couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary.

The mom complained again saying she would take it to the school council if we didn’t do something about it. We didn’t know what “it” was and the mom wouldn’t allow us to talk directly to her daughter about it.  Not knowing exactly what to do we tossed it to the kids to see what they might think.

In the past we had done some readings together as a group. We had looked at various survival books with accompanying stories of survival. On afternoons that kept us indoors we would occasionally watch some of the TV survival programs to give the kids some entertainment and some education. What I had in mind was to set up the bullying issue within our group and see what the kids said. Maybe they could come up with something to read together that would give us some base line from which we could tackle the problem.

That is what we did. We pulled all the kids together one Saturday morning in our community center room, where we kept our stuff and had snacks, when the weather was inhospitable. I told them there was a terrible case of bullying going on in a school outside of Seattle. It got so bad one kid attacked another with a knife. I shared that bullying seemed to be part of growing up that we all wanted to forget, particularly if we were on the receiving end. I asked an open question to see if any of them felt like they had ever been bullied. I was shocked to see how many hands went up.

Nancy told a story of how she had been bullied at her middle school to such a level she begged her parents to change schools. She shared that she never told the school principal who was behind it. It stopped when the ringleader started to pick on another girl. She said most of the verbal attacks went on in the bathroom or at recess when teachers could not see what was going on. She said she was embarrassed that she never spoke up but understands why people are reluctant to speak up. She remembers what it was like to be afraid.

A number of kids told their stories. A fair amount of them were boys, which surprised a number of the kids, particularly the girls.

Geoff, aged 15, said he was with a group of kids back in Minnesota who used “kids in justice” which was the name given to a group of kids, randomly selected, that handed out “justice” to group members who had trespassed in various ways. He explained that one of his teachers had all the kids read, “Touching Spirit Bear” that dealt with a kid who was a very aggressive bully and thug. When he mentioned the book a number of the kids shouted out they had read it and how much they loved it. We kicked the theme around for a little while deciding we would all read the book as a group. Geoff said it had a lot of survival type info as well as the story of how this kid is dealt with by the community. I volunteered to go to the bookstore and get us enough copies to read. I said I would go while they were having lunch.

Geoff went on to explain that their justice group was based on tribal law, he forgot which tribe, in Canada that used a sacred rite of justice to correct or punish a member of the tribe who had broken their laws or offended another member of the tribe. He said the kids were all given a playing card, which they would write their name on with a marking pen. The cards were then put in the center of the group, shuffled, with four to six cards being drawn by someone who had no affiliation with the group. That would be easy as there were a number of people in the center who could do a drawing. I said I would get the cards during lunch if the kids wanted to go forward. We took a vote. One hundred percent raised their hands.

The bookstore only had five copies of  “Touching Spirit Bear” so I put in an order for twenty more. The clerk said they would arrive on Wednesday, which was good enough. I bought two sets of playing cards and an assortment of markers.

When I got back to the group they were all excited about the book and setting up some sort of peer justice league to deal with problems we had obviously missed. It was a little embarrassing to realize the kids were having issues none of us knew anything about. When we assembled I asked if we needed any leader to oversee the justice group? Most of the kids pointed to Geoff who agreed to be the “consultant.” We wrapped the day with a meal of halibut and salmon cooked on the grill. Kids tossed on spuds, onions and peppers to round out the feast.

On Wednesday morning I picked up the books. When the kids arrived after school the numbers of attendees had swelled by eleven new members. Geoff told us these kids were drawn to the group by the lively conversation at school about our group, our outdoor activities and how we were going to deal with challenges like bullying.

I passed out the books with a promise to buy ten more. We agreed to read the first two chapters by tomorrow. I allowed Geoff to form the circle, oversee the name writing on the cards, shuffle them and the invitation to one of the center’s staff to pull six cards. Once the cards were drawn Geoff read out the names asking them to step out of the circle. He explained that they were the judges but that they were not supreme. They had to further pick from the remaining cards “Advisors” who would counsel each judge on their decisions. The judges would then have to agree on any final outcome. The “advisors” could negotiate with the other judges “advisors” to try to convince that judge of a particular action. Geoff impressed on the kids that they were all in and all valuable. There was a lot of excitement and we broke feeling we could take on anything.

Geoff stuck around to talk with us about how to bring up the bullying issue. He was more diplomatic than we were, as we wanted to dump it on the table, say it was forbidden and blah blah blah if we saw or heard anything about anyone being bullied. He wanted to bring it up as a topic of conversation allowing the group to define bullying and any punishment for it.

At out next meeting Geoff ran the show. He introduced the subject drawing on the character in the book. (Most of the kids were half way through the book so we agreed we’d finish it by Saturday). He asked kids to define bullying making notes on the butcher paper he had hung up on the wall. The kids were very enthusiastic and out spoken about what they wanted to happen to anyone who bullied. They were more draconian than we would have been insisting any kid who bullies should be put out of the group, reported to the school and the police. Believe it or not just about every kid agreed to those terms. There were lesser punishments for wise remarks, swearing, rough housing etc. Some of them were quite funny involving carrying around dead fish in a burlap bag for an afternoon, cleaning the dishes in the Sound, wearing clothing backwards and being ignored by everyone for a day. The silent treatment! Geoff added one new idea just as the kids were going to break up. He had all but the judges toss their cards back in the pile. He asked Nancy to draw two cards, until they were all gone, putting them in separate stacks. He explained that these couples would look out for each other no matter what. They were more than partners – they were bound to protect and support each other. The kids loved it. Not one of them seemed disappointed by the pairings. Some boys were with a girl partner; some older kids were with a younger kid. Did not seem to matter, they all embraced it-

The book was a great success. We had great group activities around the characters, the relationships and the actions of each character and how we might learn from what they did in the story. Every kid played a role in the conversation. Every kid seemed to grow in confidence from meeting to meeting. Geoff didn’t have to do too much with the judges because very little needed to be judged. There were the occasional out bursts and shoving matches that resulted in a kid carrying around a bag of fish for an afternoon or doing the dishes in freezing cold water. All in all things were great.

Thanks to Geoff speaking up, and stepping up, I think we have found a way for kids to deal with most issues that they want dealt with in a fair way by their peers. For us Geoff has made our “job” much easier.”

The Book "Trust Kids" can be ordered through Lulu Publishing

I’d love to know if Republican women support:

1) Their 18 year old son being held down and humiliated as his hair is cut by the 18 year son of the governor.
2) Their 17 year old son being referred to as "ata girl" every time he opens his mouth.
3) Though Willard gave donations to Planned Parenthood years ago he is now determined to cut off all funding. He is against all abortion procedures no matter how the woman was impregnated. Statistically, one or more related by blood or marriage to a member in the forum have had an abortion.
4) Though Willard Mitt Romney wrote a letter to the Log Cabin folks in support of gay rights he now wants to be even a bigger bully by supporting a Constitutional Amendment to ensure your sons and daughters remain 2nd class citizens via institutionalized discrimination and bullying.
5) Though Willard Mitt Romney claimed he would be more supportive than Ted Kennedy to gay issues he now says he does not support gay adoption or gay people having children.
6) WillardMitt Romney is now pushing to curtail birth control products for women. Who rushes to his defense but Bristol Palin (a harlot according to his holy book) to tell the president that he shouldn’t listen to his daughters. She makes $30,000.00 a presentation to talk about abstinence, as she bounces her out of wedlock baby on her knee. Is she really the Republican role model?
7) I'll presume you know all the other curtailments he promotes to put women back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.
8) Willard wants to roll back the benefits of the evolving health care plan so you will have a ceiling again on your coverage, your kids wont be covered to age 25, and that lump you had on your breast at 19 will knock you out of coverage as it is a pre-condition.
9) He wants to send your sons and daughters back into Iraq.
10) He supports the Ryan plan. The Republican congress yesterday voted to fund the military by making cuts to funding to the poor, the sick, the elderly.
11) Willard Mitt Romney thinks its perfectly fine to increase your son and daughters college borrowing rate to 6.8 from the present 3.4-if you read the Ryan plan that is stated in writing. He, Willard, is on record in support of the Ryan plan-
12) Willard’s Mormon church promotes discrimination. Are you okay with that?
So, ladies, tell us what you think about all this for your sons and daughters----

Oh Lord, I see the Romney campaign hasn't gotten any better at this whole "connecting with the common folk" thing. Their first-pass response to the Romney bullying report:

Romney campaign asking Romney's old Cranbrook friends to come out in support of the candidate in light of the Washington Post article

Yes, that will help. Get everyone from Mitt's old, crazy-expensive prep school for rich people to come forth as character witnesses. Because that's the one thing the Mitt campaign was really lacking in: A bunch of wealthy, born-into-privilege people explaining to the common folks about what a ripping fine fellow that Mitt Romney really is, regardless of whatever nasty or creepy behavior you might previously have heard of. More of that, please.

"Ron Thomas, left reacts when he finds out two police officers will be charged in the beating death of his son, Kelly Thomas."

 John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection.

...A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
.
“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”
“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

A 13-year-old girl hanged herself after being bullied at school for months by a group of 'mean girls' who tormented her with names and threats of violence.

Seventh grader Rachel Ehmke killed herself after what her parents said were months of abuse at her Kasson, Minnesota middle school.

Her tormentors put chewing gum in her schoolbooks and wrote the word 'slut' across her locker - even though she had never kissed a boy.

With another girl, she was cornered in the locker room by a 'clique' of girls who then threatened her.

And days before she took her life, an anonymous text message was sent out to other students at the school calling Rachel a 'slut' who needed to be forced out of the school

 

A Republican lawmaker in Missouri on Wednesday announced that he was gay and called on his colleagues to revoke their support for a “horrible” bill that would prevent the discussion of homosexuality in schools.

“I will not lie to myself anymore about my own sexuality,” state Rep. Zachary Wyatt said during a press conference at the State Capitol. “It has probably been the hardest thing to come to terms with. I have always ignored it, didn’t even think about it or want to talk about it. I’ve not been immune to it. I hear the comments — usually snide ones — about me.”

“I’m not the first or last Republican to come out. I’ve just gotten tired of the bigotry being shown from both sides of the aisle on gay issues. Being gay has never been a Republican or Democrat issue.”

 

Alex Boston, 14, and her parents decided to take the legal action after the youngster's school and the police said they were powerless to help.

Miss Boston claims the classmates created a fake Facebook account in her name which included a photograph of her which had been distorted.

They also allege that the account was used to post a racist video on YouTube - which suggested that Miss Boston disliked African-Americans - and was used to leave comments on Facebook pages of her friends which suggested she smoked marijuana and was sexually active.

...She complained to teachers at Palmer Middle School in Kennesaw, Georgia, but was told they were powerless to help because the alleged bullying took place outside of the school.

Police officers also told the teenager and her parents that they could not intervene because there was no cyber-bullying law in Georgia which applied to this case.

Instead, officers advised the concerned family to send a complaint to Facebook and request that the fake account was removed from its site.

However, several requests to Facebook failed and so the family instead decided to sue those they claimed were behind the site.

n the wake of another gay Mormon suicide, this time by a seventeen year-old boy in the town of Mountain Green, Utah, more than three hundred people are expected to attend a May 1 community speak-out and vigil against bullying and suicide at the Ogden, Utah amphitheater. Sources are reporting seventeen year-old Jack Denton Reese ended his life on Sunday, April 22. He had been bullied at school. After his death, students at his Ogden-area high school wore their Sunday best to school to remember him.

A local United Church of Christ is donating the candles for the vigil. Organizer Marian Edmonds, pastor of City of Hope Church in Salt Lake City and organizer of the OUTReach resource center in Ogden, will staff a table at the event to recruit mentors to help work with LGBT young people to prevent suicide. And Mormons are volunteering to speak, including Bonnie Flint, an LDS mother and educator. "It is especially important that member of the LDS faith stand up against discrimination and bigotry," she writes. "Others are watching us. In the most recent LDS General Conference, President Dieter Uchtdorf [of the LDS Church's First Presidency] reminded us that we are to love, forgive, and avoid judging others. Like the family of Lehi in the Book of Mormon, we are each in our own wilderness, wandering and hoping to find the best path back to God. We must all learn to love, support, and accept our brothers and sisters as they travel through their wildernesses."

On Monday, April 23, an 18-year-old Ogden resident on a community panel spoke about the dangers of bullying. Alex Smith told the packed room about the bullying his boyfriend, Jack, experienced at school.

What no one in the room yet knew, including Alex, was that Jack had already taken his own life.

The death of Jack Reese is the latest known suicide of a gay teen in Northern Utah.

One official told Ogden OUTreach director Marian Edmonds, off the record: “It happens here about once a week, but officially, you know, it doesn’t happen here.”

OUTreach is hosting a community panel and discussion, A Community Stands up – Northern Utah Addresses LGBT Bullying and Suicide on May 1, 6:30 p.m., at the Ogden Amphitheater, 343 E. 25th St., Ogden. The purpose of the event is for the community to stand in solidarity with queer youth, to speak out and express grief and outrage at yet another loss of life in Northern Utah, and to witness for the need for immediate change in schools, churches and society.

Until all youth are loved and accepted in their homes, able to attend school without fear of bullying, and know that their lives are worth living, this community will continue to demand change,

 

A slumber party in Minnesota ended in tragedy when two eighth grade girls fulfilled a suicide pact, killing themselves and leaving behind suicide notes telling their families that they loved them.

The bodies of best friends Haylee Fentress and Paige Moravetz, both 14, were discovered Saturday by Fentress' mother, Tracy Morrison.

Haylee's aunt, Robin Settle, said the girl had recently moved to the rural town of Lynd, Minn., and had complained to her family that she feltostracized and bullied. Settle also said there are indications that the girls had planned their deaths for a long time, even including funeral details in a good-bye note.

"I'm shocked and I'm mad and I'm sad...I don't understand the mentality of kids torturing other kids, kids having to go through this. They don't think they have anywhere to go to,

She was made fun of for being overweight, her red hair," Settle said. "She posted on my [Facebook] wall that she really wanted to come back...that the people were mean and cruel and she didn't fit in."

Even though Haylee wasn't severely overweight, she was so uncomfortable about her size that she rarely ate in public at school

She was actually one of the most giving loving girls you would ever meet... She just loved everyone unconditionally...She couldn't stand people to be made fun of, tortured, teased. She stood up for the underdogs and she was one herself," Settle said.

 

" He encouraged anyone suffering from bullying to document it as he had, believing it was a key factor in making his case. Though he was constantly bullied and remembered how much he wanted it to stop, he wanted others to know that it does end."

The White House today announced that President Obama is endorsing the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA) and Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA), two bills pending in Congress to address bullying and discrimination faced by students across the nation.

White House spokesman Shin Inouye tells Metro Weekly, "The President and his Administration have taken many steps to address the issue of bullying. He is proud to support the Student Non-Discrimination Act, introduced by Senator Franken and Congressman Polis, and the Safe Schools Improvement Act, introduced by Senator Casey and Congresswoman Linda Sanchez.  These bills will help ensure that all students are safe and healthy and can learn in environments free from discrimination, bullying and harassment."

The SSIA would amend the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act to include bullying- and harassment-prevention programs, including ones based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The SNDA, modeled after Title IX, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal education nondiscrimination law.

The news comes, Inouye wrote, as "the White House Office of Public Engagement is holding a screening of the documentary Bully at the White House with bullying prevention advocates from a wide range of communities."

More than a year ago, the president held the first White House conference dedicated to discussing bullying prevention and sharing ideas and strategies for combating the problem.

A Colorado child was kicked out class after he finally fought back against a colorbully who tormented him for months.

Nathan Pemberton, nine, was removed from his third grade classroom on Tuesday after a tussle with another child at West Elementary School in Colorado Springs.

The school decided to punish both the bully and Nathan, a move that Nathan's parents think is unjust

After weeks of controversy over its MPAA rating, the documentary Bully is in theaters now. We asked two educators who have already seen the film to write about their reactions and the lessons they'll take back to their own schools.

'I Won't Be a Bystander': One Principal's Reaction to Seeing Bully, by Margarita Florez

Not everyone has been a victim or a bully, but we've all been bystanders.  If you doubt this, watch Bully.

The film opened in Los Angeles last weekend, and as I watched it, I saw footage of students being stabbed, punched, and yelled at. I saw a student grasping his head because it had been smashed into a nail, and heard another student recount being run over by a minivan full of schoolmates. The thread holding these events together was the adults standing by, believing kids are just being kids and wondering why the victims can't just make the bullying stop.

As a sister and friend to victims, as a former bystander, and as a school administrator at KIPP Comienza Community Prep in Los Angeles, I felt anger, frustration, sadness, and shame.

'I Need to Do More': One Teacher's Reaction to Seeing Bully by Randell Erving

Although the film includes language and situations that most would probably consider adult or offensive, as a teacher at a Los Angeles school, I can tell you that the content is what thousands of bullied kids go through daily in schools across the country.

The film begins with the story of 17-year-old Tyler Lee Long, who ended his life as a result of ongoing bullying. His parents and family share details about his life, talk about the day they found him hanging in his closet, and explain how they're working to make sure his voice is heard. Throughout the film, the audience is introduced to the stories of other bullied youth, some of whom made national headlines for similarly horrific reasons.

Bully also puts the spotlight on the reactions of school administrators and city officials in towns where students and parents reported unsafe situations and instances of bullying. A middle school assistant principal is the administrator featured most prominently in the film. When students told her they'd been bullied, her responses ran the gamut. Sometimes she facilitated discussions in which they could share the problem, how they felt, and their proposed consequences; at other points she resorted to the ineffective response I've seen too many educators fall back on: asking kids to shake hands.

Korean nursing student who went on a shooting rampage at his former college, killing seven people and wounding three others, was often teased about his poor English speaking skills, it was revealed today

"New Jersey police are investigating whether the apparent suicide of a 15-year-old boy is linked to reports that he was bullied at school, according to two sources close to law enforcement."

according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 1995, 12 percent of students said they feared "attack or harm at school" That declined to 4 percent in 2009.

Twenty-eight percent of children said they were bullied in 2005, according to NCES. That rose to 32 percent in 2007, then returned to 28 percent in 2009.

By Ron Kemp - On the day the movie Bully is released for the public to view comes the sad news out of Princeton, West Virginia of 12-year-old Dalton Lee Walker. Dalton ended his life Wednesday, March 28th, because of being bullied.

Dalton's mother says that she had met with school officials on several occasions to discuss the problem of bullying as it pertained to her son. According to his half-sister, Dalton had been teased regularly at school, and it just became too much for him to handle.

The issue of bullying has caught national, and even international, attention. That's a good thing. However, the problem isn't going away. It's not as if I'm foolish enough to think that it will disappear overnight. Of course it won't. At the same time, I still don't see where it's being taken seriously enough by the people who can really make a difference for it to truly start making a difference.

The verdict is in: Rutgers University former student Dharun Ravi has been found guilty in a webcam case involving a gay man. A difficult lesson has been learned and a life has been lost.

This tragic case is sending a resounding message and setting an example for others that there are consequences for bad behavior, and that it can’t be passed off as an innocent college prank.

In September 2010, Ravi used a spycam to watch his roommate, Tyler Clementi, during a sexual encounter Clementi had with another man. Clementi, overcome with humiliation, committed suicide days after learning he’d been spied on and that Ravi was planning to spy on him again.

The case has become a point of contention in the movement to combat gay bullying. Clementi was one in a recent series of gay-teen suicides brought on by bullying and intimidation.

But it’s not only a gay issue; it’s a privacy one as well.

The New Jersey jury that tried Ravi returned a guilty verdict today for invasion of privacy. Ravi was charged on a total of 15 counts, and he was convicted of them all.

In addition to invasion of privacy, Ravi was found guilty of tampering with evidence, which included seven charges that he tried to cover his tracks by changing Twitter posts, deleting text messages, and telling a witness what she should say to the jury. But the most serious charge was that of bias intimidation — a hate crime that was based on Clementi’s sexual orientation.

Photo of Tyler Clementi via Wikipedia

Despite the tearful testimony of parents whose children committed suicide because of constant bullying and harassment, House Republicans nixed what would perhaps be the strongest anti-bullying legislation in Kentucky on Tuesday. They couldn’t even be bothered to let it go to a vote before the entire House. They killed it in committee.

Defeated largely along party lines by a vote of 13-10, Republicans successfully killed House Bill 336, which according to The Courier-Journal, “called for a prohibition on bullying and harassment in schools, including acts motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disabilities and other distinguishing characteristics.

Sadly, we are turning into a society where only the white, the wealthy, the heterosexual and the male are respected. Republican politicians campaign against LGBT people, women, the poor, minorities and the disabled. In short, they make bullying socially acceptable. How many more kids will we have to lose before even the Republicans say “enough is enough?”

Too often, I make my way through my high school hallway and hear the words “homo” and “fa**ot” uttered when no teachers are around. I am not gay, but I find the words deeply offensive; I can only imagine what it must be like to be gay and hear slurs like these.

School and religious center forums on the web from around the country quickly confirm that slurs like this and far worse are typical. 

 

Religious figures continue to harshly speak out on homosexuality, while presidential candidates such as Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman have inferred that being gay is a disease or akin to bestiality. 

When television programs, athletes such as Kobe Bryant and rappers like Eminem use homophobic words openly, kids follow suit. 

Marshawn Pitts, who attends the Academy for Learning in the south suburb of Dolton, was slammed into a locker and thrown to the ground by an unidentified police officer as he was taking Pitts to the principals office for an untucked shirt.

This week there is a conference that will bear our governor’s name and title [...] This conference comes complete with the distribution of condoms and “safe sex” kits to our 14- to 18-year-old students and provides “transgender friendly restrooms.” To anchor this conference and its instruction to our youth is a keynote address by the star of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”

I urge you to take a deep breath and reread the previous paragraph. Our leaders, led by our governor, are handing out sex devices, which undoubtedly promote promiscuity among our teens. They are allowing boys to use the girls’ restroom and vice versa. And the keynote speaker is clearly about agenda acceleration rather than safe schools for academic achievement.

Ever have deja vu? Ever have it so hard it made your head explode? Well, I’m still scraping my skull off the floor. Two months ago (almost to the day) I posted an article about Michigan’s Anti-Gay Bullying Law that literally made it OK to bully gay kids if you’re a Christian. Well, never one to be outdone on religiously inspired bigotry and hate, Tennessee has seen fit to introduce the same kind of “exemption” but take it so much further.

he proposed bill would amend the state’s current anti-bullying laws to specify that the anti-bully policy should “not be construed or interpreted to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of students and shall not prohibit their expression of religious, philosophical, or political views” as long as there’s no physical threat or threat to another student’s property.

So not only can you verbally abuse gay kids if you’re a Christian but you’ll be able to do it if you’re a Republican or even just “philosophically opposed.” This means you can come up with any reason at all to abuse homosexuals and the state will give you carte blanche to do it. Tennessee is the same state that tried to pass the “Don’t Say Gay” law that would have prohibited teachers from speaking about homosexuals in the classroom, so they’re no stranger to unreasoning hatred.

Tyler Clementi killed himself in 2010 after his roommate at Rutgers University filmed him kissing another man. Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old girl who moved to the U.S. from Ireland, killed herself the same year after being bullied by high school classmates in Massachusetts. Fifteen-year-old Amanda Cummings from Staten Island made headlines early this January when her family said that relentless bullying was to blame for her suicide

Katherine Bindley

Opponents believe the campaign to be a horrifying exercise in the fat-shaming of overweight and obese children, one that essentially reinforces the idea that fat kids should be singled out and made examples of. Curiously, in some cases even people who otherwise agree with the idea that childhood obesity is a dangerous epidemic have stated that depicting these kids in miserable, stark, literally black-and-white tones is not the way to go about it.

Body-shaming is ubiquitous and abhorrent; it happens everywhere, to pretty much everyone, at one time or another. It is especially levied against women, who are shamed for being skinny, for being tall, for being short, for having big boobs, for having small boobs, for having body hair, for being unfeminine, for being too sexy, for being too prudish, for being smart -- shamed at some point for being pretty much anything while also being female, including for being ugly (and failing to serve a purpose as a beauty object) and for being pretty (which must mean they are vapid or dumb).

"A 15-year-old Wisconsin boy who wrote an op-ed opposing gay adoptions was censored, threatened with suspension and called ignorant by the superintend ant of the Shawano School District, according to an attorney representing the child."

A Tennessee teen's parents claim that constant anti-gay bullying led their son to take his own life.

As WSMV is reporting, parents and grandparents found 14-year-old Phillip Parker's body last Friday, along with a handwritten note in his trash can reading, "Please help me mom." Family members say they had previously reported concerns about their son's treatment to Gordonsville High School but to no avail.

"I should have knew something was wrong, but he seemed happy," Philip's mother Gena Parker told News Channel 5. "After he did what he did, we found out a lot that we didn't know and there is a lot of bullying that goes on at the school."

A small group of parents in Minnesota’s bullying-riddled Anoka-Hennepin School District not only want to prevent the school from offering any support for LGBT students, but have resolved to reverse decades of history and promote an explicitly anti-gay agenda.

Conclusion

Whether by traditional means or via cyberspace, bullying and peer victimization puts adolescents at increased risk for suicide, especially when comorbid psychopathology is present. Longitudinal studies have just started to be published, and this research field needs to be further developed. In the meantime, findings from cross-sectional studies suggest differential risk profiles by sex as well as by the frequency and severity of the bullying. Female bullies are at increased risk for suicide, even when their bullying is infrequent. Males appear to be at increased risk for suicidal ideation, but only when they are bullied frequently.

Bullying and peer victimization lead to suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, but this association varies by sex and may be mediated by depression or conduct problems. Future research should continue to identify specific causal paths between bullying and suicide. Population-based longitudinal studies that include severe suicide attempts and suicide deaths are needed to support these findings.

"A fifteen-year-old who a witness says jumped in front of a  Staten Island bus carrying a suicide note when she was struck, distraught because she was the target of bullying at her school, according to a relative."

Abstinence-only education creates a petri dish for bullying in schools. There is always a lot of back and forth about the efficacy of these programs, and I fall on the side that they demonstrably fail to reduce teen pregnancy, the rate of incidence of teen sex, or the transmission of sexutally transmitted infections (STIs) (all you have to do is look at Texas). In addition, however, I believe that the heyday of our federal investment in abstinence-only programs had a terrible collateral effect -- namely, kids who were "educated" in this way were more likely to bully and harass because they learned, in ways integral to abstinence provisions, outdated "traditional" ideas about gender and sexuality. Even kids whose parents talked to them at home, about contraception or healthy sex, were taught gendered rules and more and more of them appear to have enforced those rules to great harm.

He tells how it started in first grade and that he still gets bullied every day (when he made this video, he was getting ready to enter eighth grade). From "fag" to "homo," he is taunted because he's gay. He talks about hiscutting habit and shows his scars. Then he states: "Suicide has been an option ... many times." And my heart breaks into a million pieces.

...Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District is considering a new curriculum policy that would allow staff to discuss sexual orientation as a “controversial topic.” At last night’s school board meeting, pro-bullying conservatives opposed any change to the school’s “neutrality policy,” which prohibits teachers from discussing issues of sexual orientation.

I'm very proud to be able to present this video, compiled and starring many of the kids from our local middle school including the child of a family friend.

Nice to see they are carrying this message forward-no one needs to be bullied. 

In a move not widely reported outside of Michigan, the Michigan state Senate passed the country’s first pro-bullying bill on November 2. At first, it was an anti-bullying measure not unlike the laws passed in many other states. But under the perverse influence of a few far-right opportunists, legislators led by State Senator Rick Jones (R, of course) became convinced that the law would somehow persecute those noble enforcers of Christian — I’m sorry, “Judeo-Christian”— values in our nation’s high schools: bullies.

Thus, at the eleventh hour, additional language was added to the bill exempting any bullying if it was done on the basis of “a sincerely-held religious belief or moral conviction.” In other words, you can bully the faggot if the Bible tells you so.

The pro-bullying position did not make it into the final version of the law; the Michigan House version lacked the provision, and following the outcry over the Senate’s, the pro-bullying exemption has been dropped. However, that the Senate passed it at all points to the blasphemy of the so-called Religious Right, and its outrageous misuse of Scriptural teaching. All religious people should condemn it in the harshest possible terms, and oppose it when it is introduced, as it inevitably will be, in state legislatures around the country.

Let us suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that some forms of homosexuality are indeed prohibited by the Bible. I vigorously dispute this point in my book [God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality], where I argue that religious values compel us to read the few Biblical verses that speak about some forms of same-sex intimacy so narrowly that they apply to no one today. But suppose there is some Biblical prohibition. Is bullying an appropriate response?

The alleged victim who sparked the child molestation case against Jerry Sandusky has been forced to leave school due to bullying, the Harrisburg Patriot-News reported Monday.

The alleged victim -- referred to as Victim One in the 23-page grand jury presentment -- was forced to leave school midway through this senior year after fellow students at Central Mountain High School, about 30 miles northeast of Penn State University, reacted harshly to the firing of head football coach Joe Paterno.

The now 17-year-old's family psychologist, Mike Gillum, told the Patriot-News that the name-calling and verbal threats became too much.

 

No wonder you don't have friends."

"No wonder nobody likes you."

Most would assume comments like those were the result of your typical playground bullying between children. Awful, but almost unavoidable. In the case of a 14-year-old special needs student at Miami Trace Middle School in Ohio, however, the abuse actually came from a teacher, and a former teacher's aide last spring, WBNS reported.

After continuous complaints from the girl, her parents decided that before they took action, they needed proof ... and hid a tape recorder in their daughter's clothing. What they picked up has sparked shock and outrage -- the educators were calling the child lazy and dumb.

"Don't you want to do something about that belly," the recording obtained by WBNS reveals former teaching aide Kelly Chaffins saying to the student.

A proposed policy change that protects West Virginia’s gay and lesbian students from school harassment has drawn criticism from some conservative groups.

Groups like the Family Policy Council of West Virginia have lambasted the policy for threatening religious freedom and free speech, while civil rights groups say the rule will finally give LGBT students much-needed help.

Jeremy Dys, president of the Family Policy Council, told State Board of Education members Wednesday that anti-bullying laws that target homosexuality can take schools down a slippery slope.

But the president of the state school board said Dys doesn’t understand the policy.

“If a student makes a comment in opposition to homosexuality and what Scripture teaches about homosexuality, they could be in violation of the proposed bullying policy,” said Dys. “Bullying policies need to make sure they apply categorically across the board, but in reality, we have an infringement upon religious liberty.”

I Got A Right

This is the core idea at the heart of much of the above argumentation.  “I’ve got a right” to be a bigot, “I’ve got a right” to not work for a woman, “I’ve got a right” to not rent my apartment to a homosexual.

In the purest sense of the phrase, you actually do have a right to all of these things.  You have the right to not work for a woman – you can stay home.  You have the right to not rent property to a homosexual – you can not rent property to anyone at all.  You have the right to not hire a black person – you can not operate a business.

But in the more practical sense, you don’t have those rights –  Not if you want to work, or be a landlord, or be an employer.  Not only don’t you have them, you shouldn’t have them – they are in fact not rights at all, but impositions of privilege.

In the wake of HB 56, Alabama’s extreme immigration law, students have been bullied by their peers simply for looking Hispanic, and now even one teacher has singled out a student because she looked foreign — even though she is an American citizen.

The ACLU reports that a teacher gave Cineo Gonzales’ young daughter a pamphlet in Spanish about HB 56. When Gonzales, a Birmingham taxi driver, went to the school’s principal to ask why it was given to his daughter specifically, the principal told him that the school handed out the pamphlets to students “who looked like they weren’t from there”:

GONZALES: I asked her why they give this paper to my daughter. What was the reason they give this paper to my daughter, and her answer was that they give this paper to all the children that appear like they are not from here. [...]

Far as I can see and far as I can feel, my daughter is being singled out and racial profiled and discriminated because of her color and race and origin from where they think she is from.

Watch Gonzales’ interview with the ACLU:

Alabama’s anti-immigrant law, the most harmful in the nation, has opened the door for racial profiling like this by targeting those who look like undocumented immigrants. And the issue pushed its way into schools because the law required schools to ask the citizenship status of newly enrolled students...

In their infinite desire to protect the rights of their hate-filled children to spew anti-gay nonsense, bully other children, and drive gay kids to suicide (or at least a childhood of self-loathing), Republicans added language to the bill that allows religious people to continue bullying.

The bill now says that the anti-bullying requirements don't "prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil's parent or guardian."

 

The GOP pushed through an amended bill, SB 137, which does nothing advocates have pushed for — including reporting requirements and enumeration, or listing, of protected classes. In addition, the legislation provides an exception which allows bullying based on “moral convictions.”

The full language of the insert is: “This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil and parent or guardian.”

Michigan Senate Republicans have passed a bullying bill — not an anti-​bullying bill — that actually gives license to bully. In an Orwellian twist, the bill, which passed 26 – 11, with zero Democratic votes, allows kids to be bullied by anyone: teachers, fellow students, school employees, volunteers and parents, if they can provide a so-​called religious or moral reason for their actions, giving the phrase, “the devil made me do it” sufficient validity.
The bill itself amounts to a white collar hate crime against all victims of anti-​gay bullying motivated suicide, as it’s named for a Michigan teen who died by suicide as a result of anti-​gay bullying. As one lawmaker, Michigan State Senator Gretchen Whitmer said in an impassioned speech (video below), “the saddest and sickest irony of this whole thing is that it’s called ‘Matt’s Safe School Law’. And after the way that you’ve gutted it, it wouldn’t have done a damn thing to save Matt!”

If you and I were together on the middle-school playground and you could poke me in the gut while calling me a stupid cripple and nobody would see us except seven passive cowards and three of your suck-up toadies, would you? Sure you would.

But what if I could film you on my iPhone? Better yet, what if with one click I could send this footage instantly to school administrators, your parents and mine and the police?

Suicide of Kentucky Youth Leads To Push For Anti-Bullying Legislation - LezGetReal.com

The suicide of thirteen year old Woodland Middle School eith-grader Sam Denham has sent shockwaves through the community and has drawn greater attention to the need for a more comprehensive anti-bullying legislation in Kentucky

Commissioners want anti-bully laws passed - NKY.com

Friday's suicide by Woodland Middle School eighth-grader Sam Denham prompted city commissioners Shawn Masters and Sherry Carran to urge passage of Kentucky anti-bullying legislation.

"We need to take a stand on this," Masters told his commission colleagues at Tuesday's meeting. "It wasn't that long ago that our state legislators actually had before them anti-bullying legislation,... and they didn't feel that it was necessary.... And it is."

The 13-year-old's parents, Carol and Darryl Denham, have said he was bullied to an extent that he could not bear. They believe their son's kindness toward others made him a target.

...

Carran and Masters called on city staff to prepare a resolution for the commission's approval supporting state legislation similar to this year's House Bill 370, sponsored by state Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, D-Louisville. Her bill proposed to prohibit harassment, intimidation, bullying, or cyberbullying against students in ways that disrupt their education. Included in the bill would have been a ban on bullying based on race, color, religion, disabilities, sex, gender identity and other "distinguishing characteristics."

Masters said he is proud Covington is a progressive city that has created its own human rights ordinance and taken repeated stands against hatred.

Jamie Hubley, a gay 15-year-old from Ottawa, Canada, committed suicide on Friday.

The 10th grade student documented his life, including his depression and the hardships of being a gay teen, in a blog, reports the Ottawa Citizen.

The blog, called "You Can't Break... When You're Already Broken" featured posts with numerous references to and photos of self harm and cutting, pictures of guys kissing and mentions of wanting a boyfriend, and bleak, ominous messages like "Sometimes I wish the breeze would just take me with it,...." Read more;

Senior Nick Machuca, 17, brought in the project, which has been pioneered at colleges around the nation, to [Panama City, Florida's] Rutherford High School last Tuesday.

“I’m president of the Secular Student Alliance and I thought it would be a great project we could do to support other students,” Machuca said Friday. “I think it helps more when the support against bullying comes from a fellow peer.”

The You-Are-Loved Chalk Message Project is to show support for students who are being bullied. Machuca and the Secular Student Alliance teamed up with another student club, Avatar, and its president, 17-year-old Hedda Cooper, to put it on.

“It shows the students who have been suffering from bullying that they are not alone,” Cooper said. “It also gives us a chance to give back.”

Across the courtyard messages of support vary from “Gay is OK” to “It’s OK to be weird.” Principal Michael Kennedy thought the chalk campaign was an ingenious idea.

“When Nick first came to me, I thought it was a great idea,” Kennedy said. “It goes hand in hand with our anti-bullying campaign and overall the response has been great. The students have taken it and done a great job.”

Image: Hedda Cooper, 17, and Nick Machuca, 17, organized the four-day You Are Loved chalk event at Rutherford High School. The last day was Friday. The event was co-sponsored by the Secular Students Alliance and the Avatar club.

ROBERT COOPER | The News Herald

Includes video of Jamie's message on YouTube (part of the  "Its Get Better Project".

n Buffalo, meanwhile, a painful reminder that little has changed came last week when a student at the school Rodemeyer attended was suspended for continued taunting of the teen even after his death.

This time the target was his 16-year-old sister at a school dance just hours after she attended a wake for her younger brother on September 22.

"It sickens me," their father said of reports that some students chanted "better off dead" when dance organizers played a song in Rodemeyer's honor by his favorite singer, Lady Gaga, who has memorialized him in her anti-bullying comments.

Extraordinary exchanges between senior members of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in the run-up to last week’s crucial vote on the euro bail-out fund have come to light, prompting claims of anti-democratic bullying.

While most anti-bullying programs involve important lessons on conflict resolution and compassion, they also often involve reporting systems that mean children must relinquish control of the situation to an adult. Karin Frey, a research associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington who helped develop the anti-bullying curriculum Steps to Respect echoes a great number of researchers when she says children are hesitant to report bullying because they anticipate a dysfunctional response from authority figures that vacillates between overreaction and inaction.

Part of the reason adults vary in their reaction is that there is no set definition of what constitutes bullying. To that end, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has convened a task force to create a standardized definition of bullying for use in research and policy work. Meanwhile, researchers are calling for a more broad-based mental-health curriculum instead of a targeted anti-bullying program.

Clayton Cook, who is part of that CDC task force, hopes for a curriculum, concurrent with other subjects, that helps teach social skills, impulse control and coping mechanisms for a wide range of problematic situations — divorces, deaths in the family, illnesses and financial problems. Such a holistic approach could help children who are not bullied as well as help defuse some of bullying's power. "Bullying is just one of many life stressors that can affect kids," Cook says.

Mitchell Wilson, an 11-year-old with muscular dystrophy was bullied and assaulted. He committed suicide last week.

Muscular dystrophy left Mitchell Wilson struggling to do simple things like walking around the block or climbing stairs. He also had to use a walker at school. Doctors had urged him to exercise regularly to stave off the disease's effects, something that was growing increasingly difficult for the boy.

Wilson was mugged last November by a 12-year-old boy from his school. The assailant was after the iPhone Wilson borrowed from his dad. The bully was arrested and removed from the Pickering, Ont. school they both attended.

Things didn't get any better for the young Mitchell as the court date loomed. And the bullying didn't stop.

"Subsequent to the beating that he took, he just lost that spark you see in a kid's eye. He had huge anxiety attacks about going outside and going for his walks and going to school by himself,

 

Jamey Rodemeyer needed help. At 14, he was grappling with adolescent demons that could torment grown men.

And when he was online, he wrote about it.

"I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens," he wrote Sept. 9. "What do I have to do so people will listen to me?"

Just over one week later, Jamey was found dead outside his home of an apparent suicide.

In the months prior, he routinely blogged about school bullying and thoughts of suicide in between upbeat posts about his pop star idol Lady Gaga and the ordinary types of teen rants typical for kids his age.

On Sept. 8, he wrote: "No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you're the ones calling me [gay slur] and tearing me down."

He put up a separate post that day letting everyone know it was National Suicide Prevention Week.

Then he posted the lyrics to a song by Hollywood Undead:

I just wanna say good bye, disappear with no one knowing

I don't wanna live this lie, smiling to the world unknowing

I dont want you to try, you've done enough to keep me going

I'll be fine, I'll be fine, I'll be fine for the very last time

On Saturday night, he posted a lyric from Lady Gaga's song "The Queen" on his Facebook page: "Don't forget me when I come crying to heaven's door."

Then around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, Jamey posted two final messages to his main public Tumblr blog. One said he really wanted to see his great-grandmother, who had recently died, and one offered thanks to Lady Gaga.

That was his last entry.

Related links

• YouTube video: Jamey Rodemeyer posting -- "It Gets Better, I promise!"

A teenager was sentenced to nearly three years in prison on Monday for attempted manslaughter after his vicious attack on a man in a Berlin metro station last spring.

related video:

http://www.bild.de/regional/berlin/schlaegerei/schlaeger-wieder-auf-freiem-fuss-17571316.bild.html

CBS News)  If you have any doubt that bullying is taking a deadly toll...buy a ticket to a play called "The Bullycide Project." It tells the stories of 10 of the more than 150 children estimated to have taken their lives since 1983, rather than face another day of bullying....

Produced by Deborah Grau and Judy Rybak

This sprawling suburban school system, much of it within Michele Bachmann’s Congressional district, is caught in the eye of one of the country’s hottest culture wars — how homosexuality should be discussed in the schools.

 six students brought a lawsuit contending that school officials have failed to stop relentless antigay bullying and that a district policy requiring teachers to remain “neutral” on issues of sexual orientation has fostered oppressive silence and a corrosive stigma.

Adding an extra incendiary element, the school district has suffered eight student suicides in the last two years, leading state officials to declare a “suicide contagion.” Whether antigay bullying contributed to any of these deaths is sharply disputed; some friends and teachers say four of the students were struggling with issues of sexual identity.

A teenager who allegedly raped a 14-year-old boy and kept him as his personal slave has shown no remorse for his actions, a children's court has heard.

The 15-year-old yesterday faced charges of rape, indecent assault of a person under 16, making threats to kill, making threats to inflict serious injury, false imprisonment and assault.

Police opposed bail for the teen, who can't be named for legal reasons, telling the court he was a bully who had no remorse for his actions.

In denying bail, a magistrate described the allegations as one of the most disturbing scenarios he had heard.

I remember watching my daughter and her friends interact on the playground when she was two, three and four years old. Boys or girls, quiet or rambunctious, it didn't matter; everyone was a possible new friend. Everyone had potential.

After she started school, a shift began to evolve that was so subtle, it could have been missed. It was a power shift, of sorts. When I subbed in the elementary schools during those years, I saw it almost everywhere, the divisions forming. The playground cliques. The pitting of one child against another -- if you include her, I won't play.

Why are we like that? Why do we need to hurt, put down, insult, and otherwise belittle others to make ourselves feel good? I'm sure there are many, many answers and reasons to the broad societal issue of bullying, but with girls, there seems to be an additional impetus. As Mary Pipher, Ph.D., suggested in "Reviving Ophelia," the adolescent years are when girls' self-esteem nosedives. 

My daughter came home one day in third grade and told me that a friend had created a club during recess; my daughter was invited to join, but her best friend was not. Read more;

Learning how to control a bully situation comes by learning how to control yourself first. Techniques and practice for the classic jiu-jitsu combination -- decisive and effective without causing trauma or blood. It’s a gift of self-confidence and discipline for a lifetime.

Got courage?  Willing to fight for what is right?  

The kids in the Contract for the American Dream video aren't afraid to stand up for what they believe and to endure personal attacks by a major media network.  Perhaps we could follow their courageous example rather than losing ourselves in meta wars here.  

Last week I did a diary about FoxNews attacks on the children who appeared in a video supporting the Contract for the American Dream.  Here's a link to the diary: Fox News calls children in MoveOn.org video "bastards" and "dorks"

 

First it was the San Francisco Giants who delivered a pitch for the 'It Gets Better Project' and 'The Trevor Project' in order to help tell gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered youth, and all young people who are bullied for whatever reason, that things can get better as they grow up, and how important it is therefore not to give up, but to stay true to themselves:

Next up to bat were the Chicago Cubs:

Then the Boston Red Sox got on the ball:

And now the the Baltimore Orioles have gone to bat for the cause, too:

The Philadelphia Phillies and Seattle Mariners are reportedly stepping up to the plate to do the same soon.

The petition site at Change.org has several petitions calling on various sports organizations to make 'It gets better' videos, as well as petitions to thank some of the teams that have already done so.

The Rutgers University student accused of causing his roommate to leap from a bridge and kill himself never bullied the gay teen, his lawyers said today.

Dharun Ravi, 19, is charged with 15 criminal counts in connection with Tyler Clementi's widely-publicised suicide in September 2010.

Prosecutors say Ravi secretly recorded a romantic encounter between Clementi and another man and broadcast the video on the internet after promoting it on Twitter.

PHOENIX - A valley woman knows all too well the issues you can encounter with social media. An ex-boyfriend posted her naked pictures on Facebook.

The question is -- was he breaking the law or simply violating her privacy?

Believe it or not, Tatum Bennett's ex-boyfriend didn't break the law because she let him take the pictures. Technically, they were his to post. But -- that doesn't mean it was any less embarrassing.

Casey Anthony was found Not Guilty

Anger, Hate, Rage, and Death Threats Erupt

I have compiled some of my previous responses & thoughts to hopefully ease the pain or at least, offer a soothing balm to counteract this mob-mentality that seems to be taking over as a result of this 'Not Guilty' verdict.

Facebooked

Say No to Bullies & Bullying Facebook Status:

If you want justice, appeal to conscience. If you want punishment, go to court. In both cases, public opinion does not make the Truth any less true; Nor does it makes the False any less false. Divine Wisdom is the final authority. This is what I seek.

Say No to Bullies & Bullying Facebook Status:

Dr. Drew HLN is expressing fright over peoples' outrage on Casey Anthony. My thoughts: Hate & resentment is like drinking poison but waiting for someone else to die. And as you wait, you're poisoning the beauty and love in your life while the person/thing/event you hate is carrying on.

Newsvined

[Comment on Newsvine on Article: Casey Anthony's Parents Cindy and George Receive Death Threats ]

"This is what extreme bullying looks like. Televised court cases means 'everyone' [not really - hyperbole] has a belief and so much so, that some clutch so strong they are unwilling to travel on the Sane-Train."

[Comment on Newsvine on Article: "In the Best Interest of Casey Anthony"]

Unstable minds - like the minds of these outraged-to-the-point-of-violence people - don't need a reason; They just need a belief. Then add some media frenzy + Web 2.0 for fuel. Voila.

I am a stable mind but I can attach to a belief also. Difference between me and Ms. Instability is that when my belief hurts me, I recognize I am causing my own pain. (And I can take steps to detach from the belief.)

These folks really think the Anthony verdict is causing their pain. And it's serving them. For most people, when it quits serving them I see them as moving along in their life to other focus that serves them. In the deranged, I see them as getting stuck on the belief and then - instead of discarding the belief, questioning it, or moving past it - they think they need to annihilate their perceived 'external cause' of the belief. I am seeing a lot of deranged language.

I'll even go so far as to say it's hardly their fault; they're innocent. Our society teaches us that others do cause our pain. And welcome folks. This is what it looks like. This is what a non-reality based codependently enmeshed society produces.

Glad I became disillusioned.

[Comment on Newsvine on Article "Juror: It made us sick to our stomachs to acquit her."]

"Not Guilty" never means "Innocent" - Court is not in the business of proving innocence; it is in the business of proving guilt. So that when a person is acquitted, it means not that the jury necessarily thinks the defendant is innocent but that there was not enough evidence to find "Guilty."

Perhaps Some Relevant Quotes

“This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.” ~ Oliver W. Holmes, Jr.

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people." ~ Carl G. Jung

"In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves." ~ Buddha

"It is impossible for you to judge me or anyone else. You have only your thoughts and that's what you judge. " ~ Me

"What we see with our eyes closed is what counts." ~ Lame Deer, Lakota Sage

"He who is without sin, cast the first stone." ~ Biblical Jesus  (John 8:7)

"Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics." ~ Carl G. Jung

"Do not seek the truth. Drop an illusion instead." ~ A Zen Master

"To be uncertain, uncomfortable. But to be certain, ridiculous." ~ Chinese Proverb

Watch this Video: Our Innocence ~ Byron Katie

I am sorry for anyone's pain over this verdict, but there is a solution and resources are here for you to cleave to if you want to not feel the outrage many of you apparently feel. I'm not even saying don't feel your anger cause good luck with that right? ;) I am saying, if and when you are ready for a different solution in all circumstances that enrage or disturb you that there is a solution. Mine began in the form of recovery from alcoholism. Once dealt with and I was abstinent, I was able to go further into the rabbit hole of myself. Since then, I notice I find solutions to every problem every time I want one. Namaste.

Casey Anthony's parents have received several death threats in the days since she was found not guilty of first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, a report says.

Civil rights activist Najee Ali said Wednesday that an alleged racial incident at Santa Monica High School last month involving an African American student and other members of the school’s wrestling team constituted a hate crime and is calling on authorities to prosecute it as such.

Ali, executive director of Project Islamic H.O.P.E., told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday that the nature of the incident was “disturbing and chilling.”

According to the student’s account given to authorities, the boy walked into the wrestling room at the school on May 4 to see a brown wrestling mannequin with a noose around its neck. He was then restrained by two boys who chained his pants to a locker and classmates also made racially charged remarks.

“This wasn’t just a prank,” Ali said. “This was a hate crime, and it needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

An African American student at Santa Monica High School says fellow members of the wrestling team chained him to a locker and hung a noose around a brown wrestling dummy.

The alleged racial incident is being investigated by Santa Monica police and school officials, who sent an email to parents earlier this month calling it a "serious matter that warranted a swift and appropriate response." The students accused were given "appropriate disciplinary consequences, including suspension," Principal Hugo A. Pedroza said in the email to parents.

I was 15 yrs old when a psychologically abusive cult called Straight, Inc. imprisoned me from my family, friends, school, and society...

They kept me imprisoned for over 4 months. They denied me contact with my parents, medical professionals, education, sunlight, and nutrition; They belt-looped me everywhere I needed to go, did not let me outside except to transfer me from building to car - car to host home - host home to car - and car to building; They watched me shower, use the toilet, and I had to ask permission to use the bathroom, for over 100 days of my imprisonment.

During this time, I was locked into a room at night where windows were nailed shut or alarmed [after Florida HRS was notified] to prevent escape . We were not allowed to talk, read, look, make eye contact with other victims or speak to our parents but for 10 minutes a week - IF we 'earned it' and even then, we were strictly supervised lest we speak of the unspeakable that went on. No private contact with parents allowed while you were on 1st phase. And I was on 1st phase for over 100 days.

1st Phase

Straight Inc.'s 'schedule' for Phase 1 was 14 days, but gosh darn it, my brainwashing wasn't taking. I wouldn't confess to the lies they wanted me to confess to. I would not believe their illusions  that I was bad. I wouldn't share under confrontation with tears streaming down my face. I wouldn't break like this and make no mistake this was their goal. Of course, I did break, psychologically speaking. I cracked wide open. [An episode of ripping my hair from its roots, preferring that pain over this lie of a place. Once I let out a scream in group that I still don't know where it came from and then began the hyperventilating.] But I wouldn't Spiritually break for them. Psychologically, they had me by the balls. I was a mess. I had no defense.

The Blue Chairs

I had to sit in a blue chair for 12 hrs or more a day where other kids would yell at me, point at me or otherwise intentionally humiliate me (with adult permission and encouragement as this was the design and entire point of Straight, Inc.). And when you were called on for your confrontation, you better stand. And be quiet unless asked a question. You may or may not have an idea of why you are in trouble. It will not matter. You will not sit until you have been given permission. You will not obtain permission until you have given them the answers they are seeking.  The same kids who just violently screamed at you and called you a worthless piece  of @!$%# will then, along with the others who threatened to, will sing-songily chant, "Love ya Digits!" Wow.

And for this thrill of torture we had to motivate!

Motivating was the spastic flailing about every kid had to do everyday while in the unholier than hell blue chairs. Why did we have to do it? I don't know. But if we did not do it we were in trouble. Trouble meant restraint. Trouble meant round robin yelling of how worthless you were. How you're a liar and how society or your parents does/do not care about you. Or if you're a girl, how you're a slut, a whore... How you're lazy or you're a snob or you think you're better than everyone else who is motivating. "What's wrong with you, Digits? You think you're better than all of us? Group, Digits thinks she is better than you. How do you feel about that?" [Mad motivating not unlike the sound of a stampede reverberates the otherwise cold & sterile, windowless, carpetless, multipurpose room.] "You better get with the program, druggie!"

As I write this I am irritated at how words cannot possibly convey how insane this was. I am even more frustrated I cannot get it right at sharing how scary and torturous this place really was. Words like humiliating, demeaning, embarrassing, insulting, torture, abusive seem to have lost their swag in 2011 where every kid seems to think if their parents put them in time out it's 'abusive'... So when I say 'abusive' or 'torture' I mean like North Koreans have captured you and are using psychological operations on you designed to break people trained for it. And I was not trained for this! I was a scared, introverted 15 year old girl who loved the beach, learning, animals, reading and writing. I did not make friends easily because I was often scared people would not like me. So here I am, facing every nightmare I thought my fear and INFP would protect me from. Let's play the game: "How fast til she breaks?"

Confrontations were an hourly funfest

Motivating was at the core of Straight, Inc. brainwashing. We'd been brainwashed into knowing precisely when it was time to motivate the loudest and hardest and with most fury. We could smell it. And you had to do it. EVEN if you were the one about to get tortured you had to do it. You had three choices: Play the Game, Buy the Game, or Don't Any of the Above.

I eventually would go into what Straight called 'act out' and that meant I was always in trouble and stayed restrained. Kids flanking both sides of me in chairs would wrap their leg closest to me around my leg closest to them and hold my legs to my leg chairs so I couldn't run. [I never tried running so I guess it was to be demeaning. At that point, I didn't care.] The higher phasers who stood at the end of the row at least would finally give up on making me sit up straight. [Yeah, you had to sit up straight or get knuckles in your spine and depending on whether the girl hate you, it could be harder or softer. It hurts and I have scoliosis.] But when my back could no longer take the straight one day - I decided to slouch and let my lumbar rest. It felt so good that when I got knuckled I said "@!$%# you." That was it. I was in act out.

I was confronted so often I got numb. I still stood when I was called on but I didn't motivate. I shut down everything they said. I went into my own world. This is the time - while slouching in the blue chair -  I would begin ripping hair from my head and watch it fall in clumps to the floor.

2nd Phase

The great news is that after my last break [what I call 'The Scream'], I removed power from my brain and put it into my Spirit. It was obvious my brain couldn't take it anymore. Spirit is what saved me; Gave me the idea to 'fake it til ya make it.' So I did. This was when 'play the game' came into my understanding.

This is how I would get to 2nd phase when I would have the opportunity to finally write my Mom a letter about what really went on and then jump out the window to 'cop out.' Yes, 2nd phase allowed you to finally return home. You still were not allowed school. You still had to get locked in your room. Still could not talk to people, go outside, read, watch TV and so forth but I was back home and there was comfort in that; Great comfort.

2nd phase was when Straight Inc felt confident that you were so inculcated and successfully brainwashed that they could trust you to go home and not run away. How I got to 2nd phase was a whole lot of lying, false stories, false emotions, false tears over my false stories that provoked false emotions, and admitting I was the drug addicted mess of a kid they told me I was.

Straight Inc. versus The Truth

The truth is and was that I was not a drug addict. I was not a mess - until Straight, Inc. The truth is I was an alcoholic at 15 years old and could have benefited from real help. But what Straight did was add trauma to my already outwardly manifesting disease. So that when I escaped, I tried to not drink so badly, I reached for not eating and marking my pain on my body in blood. But alcoholism is not my character defect. It's an illness. And that means, for me, that when the trauma and fear got too much to handle, I went back to drinking... DESPITE the terror Straight Inc., had inflicted upon me.

I knew my drinking concerned my parents. I did not know I was an alcoholic. Knowing how my Little 15 year old Digits was, all it would have taken would have been someone - without bull@!$%# or platitudes - explaining to me why it was I needed to drink, what an alcoholic is, and then giving me the tools to use instead of the drinking. You know, kinda like AA has enabled millions into sobriety. To my knowledge AA has never kidnapped, imprisoned, or psychologically tortured one person. As the Big Book of AA says, "No lectures to be endured..." But Straight was no AA, no matter how they loved to spin it.

I am No Longer 15 years old or Indelibly Traumatized

This is the letter to Straight, Inc. Little Digits would write to them had she had Adult Digits as an Advocate...

My sobriety date is January 04, 2003, so Motivate That Straight Inc, Kids Helping Kids, Seed, or whatever the hell you keep morphing your name to. Up yours and screw you, here I stand. Despite your badly run, unholy idea that Lord of the Flies could ever play out differently, @!$%# you.

I want to offer up a big slice of @!$%# YOU pie to Straight Inc. This @!$%# YOU pie does not go to the Kids who were also brainwashed OR to the girl who hit me in my boob when she went into 'acting out'. (Laura, you were desperate and I understand.) This pie cannot be had by my parents, either, who thought they were helping me. And @!$%# you, Straight, for trying to put this on them you slugstains upon humanity. Sorry, Staff Member Kids, who were brainwashed too... You can't have any either. :)

But I do want to also give you some ice cold Thank You Milk to wash down with your @!$%# You Pie.

I got sober despite your torture. I did. I happened to survive my suicide attempts where others did not [and on behalf of them I just have to offer you another slice of @!$%# You pie]. I never did turn to drugs to overcome your trauma onto me. I never turned to psychiatry. I never turned into a fellow kid hater or hated my parents. No, you @!$%# kid haters. I turned to my Self! I turned to the Highest Authority of my Spirit and I healed. And THIS is who I call God. I turned to recognizing needing a healing does not mean needing a psychological beating.

I realized there was something to the 12 Steps that you bastardized and I would find sobriety and the value of myself. I realized that when my brain breaks, my Spirit can catch me. I learned that kids are a wonderful & precious gift and that so-called 'bad kids ' are just the target patients of either real dis-ease, turmoil, or pain or just the scapegoats that parental ineptitude produces.

I learned that I was never 'bad' needing to get 'good', you sick twisted tards of turds. I was sick needing to get healed.

You enabled me to spot bull@!$%# with my eyes closed standing on my head. You enabled me to get into Codependent recovery and forgive the seemingly unforgivable. YOU seem to be the perfect cliche of "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger." But at the risk of the ones you DID kill? I'm not sure that's so awesome cause sometimes what doesn't kill you, keeps you alive and tortures you slowly. There are some former kids still trying to heal but they keep fighting the good fight despite your best efforts you sick twisted control freaks.

And for those kids who chose suicide rather than contend with their painful memories? OH how I love them. I love them fiercely and today I make it my primary mission to affect kids and adults AGAINST this or any other kind of bullying and psychological trauma. For the ones who bullycided because of you, they affect me for the good more than any pain you caused me. The God of my understanding will have Her way with me despite your hateful efforts. So this is for them, for the ones who've yet gotten a voice or lost theirs... I am here standing. Doing my part. Others are with me and we are numerous.

So with all that said, middle fingers right at ya...

"Motivate this, Straight Inc."

© 2011, Digits. Disclaimer Please forgive any factual inaccuracies in my portrayal. I am writing from my memories which did not resurface until a few years ago. For my original and 1st accounting of Straight Inc., please see Cult-Control, Kids, and Straight, Inc. (January 26, 2007) and for a multi-sourced advocacy article - and some powerful photos and images, see Tortured Kids Surviving Straight (March 15, 2011). Check out the video below for an 8 minute visual summary of Straight Inc.

I am passionate about bringing awareness to bullying in all of its manifestations.

One manifestation and most commonly discussed in 2011 is schoolyard bullying. We're hearing more about this type in the media, the tragic teenage suicides or youtube videos of people getting beaten or threatened. The awareness of school bullying is gaining momentum and I cannot help but think it's due to social media bringing awareness to it. Arguably, it could be said that social media [Facebook for instances] is actually contributing to bullying where such terms as cyberbullying are coined in order to differentiate between the so-called "regular" versus "cyber" bullying.

Another manifestation of bullying that pre-dates even school bullying are the subtle nuances of everyday language that very well may be innocently learned and then passed on to younger generations. I am talking about shaming. Shaming, blaming, and shoulding. Language and ways of communicating that offers small children and kids the opportunity to learn to hate themselves or gain insecurity before they even know what those words mean.

Shaming is a mechanism. You tell someone they should be ashamed due to XYZ and then they learn it. Mother threatens to withdraw her love and approval due to XYZ and/or Father will inflict physical harm in the form of a belt. This is how shaming begins. The child knows even greater pain is just around the corner if s/he does not feel appropriate shame. And in the meantime XYZ was done in innocence and though it could have been corrected with compassion, understanding and a talk about responsibility and consequences, child gets none of that, but does remember she "should not" have done it. It becomes more than what it really was as the stage is now set for feelings of low self-worth. Insecurity sets in. And this pattern is repeated throughout the course of the child's life as her context clues move from family of origin to school. From school to the workforce. From work to her own family. And guess what she passes down to her kids? She passes down what she knows. Rinse and repeat.

This is what I seek to stop; This cycle of generational dis-ease.

Ugly rumors and gossip are the unclaimed bastard branch of shame and blame. If none of us knew what shame was it would not matter what horrific rumor circulated about is, what ugly gossip we were now the subject of, it wouldn't bother us. But we're provoked back into those familiar feelings of insecurity, shame and embarrassment. We are, once again, being blamed - in a way - for existing as best we can. We are humiliated. And why not? We're doing our best - any single one of us - at any given time and we're being told we're not worth being who we are; We are not good enough. It is a tragedy of huge significance to be sure.

Then places like Straight, Inc and other cults or harmful "you are bad" camps are born and every sick generational teaching is not just magnified but approved and condoned by the parents who seemed to not have inculcated their kids into shame hard enough. Or so it seems.

This is my message: Bullying attitudes and behaviors are not just for school. This dis-ease is in society.

Addictions, eating disorders, rageaholics, child abuse, suicide, homicide, pharmacology, self-medication, self-help books, cancer... who knows the far reaching and devastating effects of psychic trauma such as the chronic and incessant belief that you are worth only as much money as you make, how pretty you look, how young you stay, how smart you are, where you live? Or whether you have the right hair, right color, right weight, the right gender, the right sexuality, religion, or even thoughts?

This is not sane. This is not sane. This is not sane.

So this my way of introducing the Anti-Bully Apothecary.

Stop by and have a look!

• No Bullies Shop Facebook Page - to keep up with the latest designs supporting your right to be okay in your skin
• Say No to Bullies and Bullying Facebook Page - Awareness, support, news about bullying or its effects on people

30/5/11 - More and more racist and discriminatory images are appearing on the Internet. Last year Belgium's anti racism centre received 600 reports ...

The Consumer Reports survey reveals other troubling facts about Facebook, including almost one in three people have "friends" they are not completely comfortable with and 6 percent admitted to having a friend who makes them uncomfortable about their safety or their family's. In April, Facebook established new ways to report bullying online. You can report the problem to Facebook, block the person who posted it, or contact help.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — The former Rutgers student accused of secretly spying on his roommate's same-sex romantic encounter was expected to be arraigned Monday, Jay Dow reports.

A 17-year-old former Oak Park and River Forest High School student, who police and school officials are not identifying because he is a minor, was arrested at his Oak Park home Monday night and was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct. The charges were levied with cooperation from the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and Oak Park police said there will not be any additional charges.

Oak Park - River Forest High School ------>

Our culture refuses girls access to open conflict, and it forces their aggression into nonphysical, indirect, and covert forms. Girls use backbiting, exclusion, rumors, name-calling, and manipulation to inflict psychological pain on targeted victims. Unlike boys, who tend to bully acquaintances or strangers, girls frequently attack within tightly knit networks of friends, making aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to the victims. Within the hidden culture of aggression, girls fight with body language and relationships instead of fists and knives. In this world, friendship is a weapon, and the sting of a shout pales in comparison to a day of someone's silence. There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning away.

Two men and two women are accused of pinning down a man who has learning disabilities, tattooing the word "RAPEST" on his forehead and shocking his genitals with a stun gun before beating him unconscious with a baseball bat, police said Wednesday.

Two men and two women are accused of pinning down a man who has learning disabilities, tattooing the word "RAPEST" on his forehead and shocking his genitals with a stun gun before beating him unconscious with a baseball bat, police said Wednesday. The accused told police they attacked Stetson Johnson, 18, because he tried to have sex with one of them, according to a police spokesman. Detectives found no evidence to support their claims, he said.

Two teens in a group charged with bullying a newcomer to their school who committed suicide last year, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to lesser charges in a deal expected to erase more serious allegations.

The deal was expected for all five Massachusetts teens criminally charged with bullying Phoebe Prince with insults, physical threats and aggressive use of Facebook and texting.

When President Obama speaks, don't interrupt.

That's what the president told a Texas reporter after a brief but contentious interview in which he was challenged about his unpopularity in the state.

"Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview, all right?"

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - A 5th grade student, who admitted he brought a loaded gun with him on a school bus for protection after getting threatened by two students the day before, was taken into custody Friday morning.

A website enabling teenagers to post insults and racist comments about their peers has prompted an outcry in Germany after 20 youths beat another teen senseless over remarks made on its forums.

A teenager has been sentenced to pay a fine for perpetually threatening another girl on the school bus.

WINNIPEG - A young Winnipeg woman is speaking out about a gossip website that she says continues to post nasty comments, humiliating rumours and blatant lies.

The victim, a 14-year-old female, and her 12-year-old sister were walking along South Center Avenue in Somerset when they were confronted by several other kids. Reportedly, the 14-year-old had a run-in earlier that day with one of the girls and had confronted her about some derogatory statements she had heard, police said.

A 15-year-old female apparently took offense to the earlier accusations and pushed the victim into the street where she was "nearly struck by a vehicle," police said.

The 15-year-old then began pulling the victim's hair, causing her to fall to the sidewalk, where she struck her head and twisted her knee, according to reports. Another girl, a 13-year-old female, kicked the victim while she was on the ground.

[ Read the article | Watch the video on YouTube ]

When 7-year-old Ukailya Lofton saw a picture in a magazine of a fun hairstyle she loved, the second-grader begged her mother, a hairdresser, to create the same look for her.

Her mom agreed, attaching colorful Jolly Rancher candies with elastic bands to the ends of her daughter's braids for picture day at school. The little girl enjoyed her friends' admiring comments, and allowed her computer teacher to take pictures with a cellphone.

But the pictures apparently were posted on the teacher's Facebook page along with comments mocking the girl.

With in-your-face friends' tallies, status updates and photos of happy-looking people having great times, Facebook pages can make some kids feel even worse if they think they don't measure up.

It can be more painful than sitting alone in a crowded school cafeteria or other real-life encounters that can make kids feel down, O'Keeffe said, because Facebook provides a skewed view of what's really going on. Online, there's no way to see facial expressions or read body language that provide context.

The guidelines urge pediatricians to encourage parents to talk with their kids about online use and to be aware of Facebook depression, cyberbullying, sexting and other online risks. They were published online Monday in Pediatrics.

Jackie Humans says she was born into bullying.
She endured it growing up at home and in school, but became motivated to combat it when her own daughter Nikki Lee, who has a form of autism, became a target. Humans volunteered with a child abuse prevention organization near her home in Long Island, N.Y., then researched the subject. She also trained at the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash.

Straight Inc. Tortured Kids

No parents allowed. No professionals. Psychological and Physical Torture. Brainwashing. Encouraged Kid on Kid Abuse. In America.

And I survived it.

Surviving Straight Inc - The Movie is about to be released that showcases what Straight, Inc. was, what it did and how it affected kids. The purpose of this article is to explain a little about Straight, Inc. while also sharing what other resources have been made available.

Surviving Straight Inc is a website dedicated to showcasing the abuses that went on in a claimed drug rehab facility called Straight, Inc.. There is an almost unbelievable but haunting video on the page that would give the most staunch believer (in the "Oh this did not happen; Not in America!" camp) a hard time.

I am a Straight Inc Survivor. And back in 2006 after the memories came flooding back to me, I wrote a Newsvine article on my Straight Story. By my most remedial standard, it was terribly written, hard to follow, and disconnected. But at the time, because I was recovering from a PTSD [by way of an alcoholic invoked amnesia], it was simply important for my healing to just tell on it. Not long after I'd written it and received many positive and supportive messages, I pulled the article.

I pulled it at the time, because a cult-like residential facility that claimed itself under a 'Recovery Model based on the 12 Steps' [like Straight claimed] had opened up in my vicinity and the cult leader came hard and fast after people who were outspoken against him and I had been invoked as one such person.

Still reeling and dealing with my new memories, I was provoked back into my 15 year old self who was again in Straight, Inc. The old fears came back of "spit therapy", "violent confrontation", and psychological torture. I was again that girl who was in Straight Inc and scared (to the point of debilitation) of being confronted by anything or anyone that/who resembled a Straight model. In fact, for all practical purposes, this facility was precisely like Straight in that it employed no doctors, nurses or health-care professionals in any capacity whatsoever yet engaged in group therapy, shaming, blaming, humiliation, and the breaking down of self-esteem as well as welfare fraud. The only notable difference is that these people were adults and willingly went there upon referrals from well-intentioned addiction rehab facilities.

Not to get off track from my primary purpose, my point is that I eventually did put the article back because it was symbolic of my initial catharsis - that began my healing. And secondly, since more time has passed, I now see that the opening of that nothing-more-than-self-professed-recovery-halfway-house [or sober house] in tandem with my few years sobriety was precisely the event that triggered my own Straight, Inc remembrance. Tertiarily: It also may be of benefit to learn a little about Straight Inc. so that the uninitiated public can understand that addiction and alcoholism are real live problems for people and also that these bullying models 'for recovery' STILL exist even today.

Here was my original Straight story: Cult-Control, Kids, and Straight Inc

Validation from Surviving Straight Inc.

My friend, Kris Flannery, founded Surviving Straight Inc. and it's a voice for many. For many of us Straight Inc. Kids, a common issue we've all noticed is that many people - often even our parents - did not believe us. Who could possibly believe this kind of relentless and systematic torture and permissive kid on kid abuse could happen to kids in America? We were just kids. And in some cases, 'just kids' who belonged to sick or addicted parents, themselves. The same parents who put their kids in Straight, Inc. to 'straighten them out'.

Straight, Inc. (1976-1993) publicly claimed to rehabilitate teenage drug users by using tough love and Alcoholics Anonymous principles. Straight, Inc. provided NO professional counseling: Straight, Inc.'s "treatment model" relied exclusively on "positive peer pressure" from unprofessional staff (program graduates) and from the teenage clients. Straight, Inc. claimed to have an astronomically high success rate and was supported by both the Reagan and Bush administrations. However, Straight, Inc. did not publicly reveal what many survivors will tell you. The REAL Straight, Inc. was a facility that used coercive thought reform (aka mind control, brainwashing), public humiliation, sleep & food deprivation, extremely harsh confrontational tactics, kidnapping, isolation and emotional, mental, psychological, verbal and physical abuse to forcibly break us down then remold us in the Straight, Inc. image. Straight, Inc. also operated in secrecy, just like a cult (Straight, Inc. has been classified as a cult by cult experts). No outsiders were ever permitted to know what really went on. Straight's rules and our fear of harsh punishment prevented us from talking to outsiders or from reporting abuses.

Not all kids survived. Some chose suicide.

Of those who did survive or are currently 'surviving', many suffered or are still suffering long-lasting unresolved trauma

As my article said (I will not hold it against you if you do not read it), I attempted suicide quite a few times on the heels of Straight, Inc and in the face of my ever-developing and gaining speed PTSD that held hands quite intimately with my pre-existing alcoholism and post-Straight anorexia and self-mutilation...

Another friend, Kelly Matthews, is in process of making a movie entitled Surviving Straight Inc - The Movie. I have known Kelly for a while and know that her work is tireless and is an amazing person in that her own story - as heartbreaking as it is - is what has enabled healing for so many of us who have survived Straight or who are working still to continue surviving it. She was initiated into this cause, not because she was in Straight, Inc - but because her brother was. And he did not survive. Rest in Peace Steve.

And he is not alone. We have only estimates of deaths or suicides as a direct or indirect result of Straight, Inc. But even then, who knows the far-reaching effects of psychological torture to the already hormonally influxed teenager? Even if we did have records of every Straightling there is simply no practical way to tell.

Again, from Surviving Straight Inc. - Trying to survive Straight, Inc. devastated many of us. Some former clients have committed suicide. Others have serious disorders as a result of their time in Straight, Inc. For example, some of us suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, panic disorders and severe depression. In addition, many of us have experienced other long-term detrimental effects such as inability to function normally in relationships, fear of therapists or any form of counseling, severe distrust of people, paranoia, nightmares, etc. This is certainly not a complete list but does give one an inkling of the serious long-term adverse effects on survivors caused by Straight Inc.

Believe us. It happened. We are the legacy.

[ Visit Surviving Straight Inc ]
[ Also visit the website of Surviving Straight Inc - The Movie ]

© 2011, Digits. If you enjoy this resource, vote it up the Vine, bookmark, or share so others can find it. If you have something to share, leave a comment! To other Survivors, you are not alone and there is help available. See below.

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