Queens girl, 12, hangs herself as it's revealed school cyberbullies called 'her a slut and a whore'

[redqueen]

Gabrielle Molina of Queens Village was found hanged at home. She left a note saying she was being harassed by students at her school, Jean Nuzzi Intermediate School 109.

The devastated parents of Gabrielle Molina said the 12-year-old girl had been tormented by schoolyard bullies for months — and the abuse may be the reason she hanged herself in her Queens home.

The tragic tween’s older sister Georgia, 15, found the girl’s body about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday in their shared bedroom at their Queens Village house, their sobbing mother Glenda Molina said Thursday.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed Thursday that Gabby left a suicide note that talked about being bullied.

Cops are investigating whether Gabrielle was a victim of online harassment as well as face-to-face abuse.

...

http://www.nydailynews.com/queens-girl-12-hangs-citing-harassment-article-1.1352387#bmb=1

So tragic.

[DesertFlower]

1. how sad. nt

[defacto7]

2. so, so, sad..

and completely .... can't think of a word.

[seabeyond]

3. people have got to think thru that our GIRLS are KILLING themselves because of the mentality of

pornifying them.

this is not little. ONE girl is too many. but we are reading about too many that are being pornified, too young, and they are DYING

[ismnotwasm]

4. I'm sure she was harassed on-line

This is yet another death. Jesus.



Kids try to protect their humiliation from parents or hide their activities from them, or have parents whose values are fucked up. It can be so hard to know what's going on with them.

My daughter keeps a close eye on her 14 year old; he's a great kid, but there's so many ways to go wrong. Being strongly influenced by feminism (I'm his Nana, dammit) hasn't hurt him, in fact he thinks through all things gender pretty well for his age.

[Downwinder]

5. Have we protected our children so much that they haven't

developed any defense mechanisms? I don't remember any suicides from my school years, yet I can't say we were any less cruel than present day students.

[femmocrat]

6. That is a very good point.

I have been a teacher for many years. One of my principals (about my age) recently remarked that all this emphasis on
"bullying" has led to a lot of frivolous claims. I am not minimizing the torment of the girl in the OP, of course!

Of course, we didn't have cyber-bullying years ago. I can't even imagine what that is like. We had playground ruffians and junior high "cliques". We didn't have term for it, and learned coping skills to deal with it.

We have an anti-bullying policy and must post it prominently in our classroom. I don't think it has made any difference in kids' behaviors and is more for the district to cover its behind if anyone threatens to sue them. I believe that teaching about bullying begins in the home with pre-schoolers.

[ismnotwasm]

9. I think it begins with parents

Parents living through their children, or ignoring their children--or at perhaps working so hard to make a living they can't pay attention; or teaching their children by example to be as clueless as themselves.

If we paid teachers what they are worth; it we had decently staffed social workers, if we had safe mediation-- a place where kids could always go, and I mean a safe place were kids could always go, we could catch some of this.


Shaming young girls as sluts and whores is part of a sexist culture, the culture is already in place from any females birth. Raising awareness is a slow and painful process that receives a lot of pushback, but as young women grow, so does awareness. Some day, children won't kill themselves over gendered or sexual identity issues. I do have hope.

[redqueen]

13. Fortunately there are lots of awareness campaigns going on.

No longer is 'it builds character to learn to deal with it' considered a rational response to bullying.

Awareness campaigns do not teach kids to tell victims of bullying that they just need to get a thicker skin, and then things will be okie-dokie. That whole 'definition of insanity' thing, and all.

[redqueen]

11. Do you recall any of your peers having videos of them posted online during your school years?

Pages of hateful comments posted online for all to see?

Anything like that? At all?

Adults need to realize that the world has changed.

Some may disagree, but I don't think the focus should be on adapting the bullied to cope with the bullying.

And I sincerely doubt that kind of comment would be made about some other forms of bullying.

[Downwinder]

14. No. But notes were passed around freely,

posted on bulletin boards. Comments were on blackboards and lavatory walls.

The thing is, bullying does not stop with school it is carried to the workplace and everyday life. At some point you have to learn to counter or defuse it. I am not condoning bullying, but you have to develop some defenses. Perhaps Johnny Cash had the right idea with, "A Boy named Sue." I think you will find that people with names like Peter, Dick, or John have a little bit thicker skin.

[jeff47]

16. There's a very large difference

Back in our day, the victims escaped bullying every day when they went home. Leaving school meant the bullies couldn't get them anymore.

That's not the case anymore. Bullying is now 24/7.

[LanternWaste]

18. No. I do however, think that many parents are unaware of the complete and almost total immersion...

No. Without substantiating evidence, it appears to be a post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy.

I do however, think that many parents are unaware of the complete and almost total immersion into social media students today are part and parcel of. Every waking hour of a students life may be observed and tracked by others, and the smallest misstep used as ammunition for further ridicule. It takes more savvy than most twelve year olds have to compartmentalize different peer groups... all the more so when those groups come at the student from many more directions than we adults were ever subjected to.


Additionally, like rape, it may be that suicides were simply under-reported in our youths. My senior year (1984), my best friends little sister committed suicide due to the abuse at the hands of her father. It was not reported as a suicide, but rather an "accident" by local news.

Honestly, my own observations tell me that parents today are less protective of their children. Not through malice or negligence, but simply because both parents are forced to work to earn what one parent would have made so many years ago. Helicopter parenting is a concept I've seen nowhere but in the media via the isolated yet dramatic story. For the most part, and in my neighborhood, I see my neighbor's children coming home from school to an empty apartment/house.

[Trillo]

7. Was she on pharmaceuticals? NT

[ismnotwasm]

8. Why? n/t

[Trillo]

17. drug use not mentioned in article!

http://m.jsonline.com/more/news/blogs/dogged/201471491.htm
"This remarkable increase is simply the result of marketing by Big Pharma, of mutual back-scratching within the medical-industrial complex and of parental fears over behaviors that might affect their kids' chances of success," Dean writes...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/children-antipsychotics_b_1771152.html

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/9700
"The Australian medicine watchdog has received 58 reports of adverse psychiatric events in children and teenagers taking Singulair


With all the many reports over the years of the association between death, suicide and pharmaceuticals, a suicide that occurs that doesn't mention whether drugs were being taken or not suggests a skewed or biased article.

[Shivering Jemmy]

19. Some implication of SSRIs in suicide

No reason to think that here from data posted

[redqueen]

23. Because derailing. As if the *possible* influence of anti depressants makes the misogyny didappear.

If she was on SSRIs, that means the misogynist bullying isn't so bad, see?

It means we can keep pretending that misogynist bullying is something girls should just deal with.

Next up: nerds are bullied too. (Because whoever heard of a history of institutionalized oppression? What does that even mean? Homophobic and racist bullying is just different! Shut up about a pandemic of violence! That's a separate issue!)

[redqueen]

12. A lot of things about these many, many bullied girls make me want to weep. nt

[whathehell]

15. A "slut" and a "whore" at 12 years old? -- Sickening -- Ugly misogyny at it's root.

I didn't even know what those words meant at that age.

[gollygee]

20. A 12-year-old neighbor of mine is going through this too

She's never so much as dated or kissed, but she's being called a "slut." And honestly, who cares if she had? Boys don't get these labels. The word "slut" is meaningless. It just means "female person I wish to make feel bad." I wish the word would be erased from existence.

[redqueen]

21. It baffles me that so many people seem not to have noticed

that the level of hatred directed at girls and women has increased and is still increasing.

Ignoring it, downplaying it, or just pretending it's the same as it ever was (as if somehow that makes it ok?) is not going to improve things.

[gollygee]

22. My older daughter is 11

and I worry about my daughters navigating this new era of bullying. People can get you in your home, any time of the day, on weekends. It's constant and gossip and false rumors spread more quickly and are more believed when people have seen them in print. It's definitely worse than it was.