… came up at yesterday’s Philadelphia City Council meeting. When Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds-Brown encouraged teachers, pastors and parents to use the Rutgers suicide story as a “teachable moment,” Councilwoman Marian Tasco reference that there had been a case of online bullying in her district: “Parents need to be more alert, responsible and teach values about self-respect and respect for others.”
Online bullying doesn’t come close to describing what happened, the mother of the victim told me a few hours later …
The 13-year-old Mt. Airy boy’s mother fell to her knees and sobbed uncontrollably when she saw the Facebook video of what her son went through in the Edmunds Elementary School playground July 7. Lured to play with a group of neighborhood kids, they said they’d beat him up if he didn’t strip naked. When he did, they recorded it.
The footage drew hundreds of mocking comments and showed the youth begging for his clothes back as tormenters pulled his legs apart, yelling “Look at his little d—.” He struggled to cover himself up.
“Who does this kind of thing?” asked the mother, who didn’t want her or her son’s name made public. The answer: three 17-year-olds, one of whom sent an email to the mother saying, “I’ll take the video down, b—-, but if I hear any s—, I’m’a put it back up.”
Once charges were filed, packs of children repeatedly showed up outside her home calling her son a snitch, shouting to “Free” the suspects. One suspect sent an “I’ll kill you snitch” email. The victim’s 12-year-old cousin called, saying “you’ll be cool with the guys again if you fight them.”
Charged with child endangerment and child pornography, each was found guilty on Sept. 7 and sentenced to probation, drug testing and monitoring. Other kids responded with rocks that shattered windows at the victim’s home.
“He’s humiliated. He won’t go outside unless it’s with me,” said the mother who got threats instead of apologies. “How secure is Facebook if so many people were able to see it? Other parents need to know this happened.”