A U.S. Department of Education commission handed grieving mom Wendy Walsh the ammunition she needed to slap school officials in Tehachapi, California with a wrongful-death suit in the suicide of her 13-year-old gay son, Seth, who hanged himself after enduring relentless harassment about his sexuality.
Filed on July 5th, Mrs. Walsh’s suit claims, “that ongoing harassment of her son Seth was common knowledge by school staff, they did little to stop it, and because of the negligence, Seth hanged himself,” on September 19, 2010. Sadly, it’s an all-too-familiar story these days.
Thumbs up to Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for seriously investigating Walsh’s claims and providing support to her case. It’s nice to see the DoE doing it’s job instead of, say, attacking PBS for including a gay family in an episode of a kid’s cartoon.
And thumbs down to Superintendent Richard Swanson—named in the suit alongside Jacobsen Middle School Principal Susan Ortega, Vice Principal Paul Kaminski and four teachers— who claimed to doubt Walsh could have been bullied to such an extent without their knowledge.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Oh, you are so toast, Swanson.
Jeremy
I seem to remember the DOJ posting an It Gets Better video, and how gay people in government were doing their best to fight discrimination. I’m glad our government is finally getting on the right side of history.
Daez
@Jeremy: Give it another year. My prediction is that the dwindling support for Obama will get even lower as he cuts entitlement programs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the gays hand even more Republicans power in 2012 just to piss off Obama. When Mitt Romney is president and the House and Senate is controlled by Republicans, this country will definitely move in the “right” direction.
Jeremy
@Daez: Okay. I don’t see how what I said has to do with what you said.
Daez
@Jeremy: Its quite simple. You made a comment about how the government is progressing and I made a comment about how people pissed off at Obama will make sure the Republicans win even more power in 2012 which will then set us back to the 1980s.
Daez
This woman needs to take some of the blame onto herself. It was her bad parenting skills that allowed this child to kill himself in the first place. Countless people have been bullied over many decades. Most did not kill themselves because they were raised better than that. This woman is really just trying to get rich when she couldn’t manage to keep her own child from killing himself.
My mother would have never allowed incidents like this to continue. She would have pulled me out of school. There are so many signs leading up to suicide (irrational depression, irrational anger, etc.) that are just so obvious if you pay attention to your children. Of course, I was also taught that suicide was never an answer and learned to develop a back bone instead of taking the easy way out.
Observer
@Daez: Too bad you didn’t grow a brain along with that back bone. The mother won’t be getting rich from holding the school officials accountable, and as anyone who’s thought about suicide knows, it’s not the “easy way” at all. It might seem that way for a man who doesn’t feel anything deeply, otherwise known as a psychopath. They pull the trigger very quickly and without remorse.
Ren
@Daez:
Many victims don’t tell their parents.
Daez
@Observer: Suicide absolutely is the easy way out. You take a bottle of pills or pull the trigger and you are done. You don’t bother to fight. You just end it.
@Ren: Children hardly tell their parents anything. That is why good parents find out shit on their own. If my child was completely depressed and angry 99.9% of the time, I think I’d do some actual research to find out why.
Tom
Daez, are you really attempting to blame this woman for her child’s death? Do you think she already hasn’t done so herself? I am glad that your Mother was such a great woman that you can be around now to point fingers and make unfounded claims that Seth Walsh’s mom is trying to get rich from this. I am sure that your Mother would be very proud of you for that.
Daez
@Tom: I never said she is solely to blame, but she definitely shoulders part of the blame. Her child also shoulders a great deal of the blame.
Seriously, who here wasn’t bullied all through school? However, I think you pretty much all survived. Suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness.
Jeremy
So as not to cheapen Seth’s memory by talking about the “easy way out”: What disturbs me is that Seth’s mother is clearly being used in the video to make the case seem more serious. But with Seth’s death, the case was already as serious as it could possibly be. I think she could have showed more composure on camera.
Pitou
@Daez: Yea, it’s too bad this yet-fully developed child saw no way out of a terrible situation. Why can’t all yet-fully developed children be as wise as you once were. How dare his mother hold the school district accountable for turning a blind eye to sexual harassment that goes on during their watch. How dare we LGBT’s support such a cause, seeing as we would (or rather should) empathize with a child in such a predicament. How gastly!
May you never have to bury a child under such circumstances.
Vulture
Daez is a big man for making light of a middle schooler’s death. It would be a tragedy if anyone took a hammer to his brave spine.
Daez
@Pitou: Somehow, I and many other people that I was in 7th grade with managed to survive. We managed to survive regardless of having one teacher that outwardly bashed gays in her classroom. She actually came right out one day and said that gays were sick and immoral. She said if one of her children were gay she would want them dead. She said that gays should pay for hijacking a word that meant happy.
On top of that, every other gay kid in school endured constant attacks the entire time they were in school in the forms of emotional, mental and physical violence. I’m sure this is the case for the vast majority of gay kids and adults across the country. Yet, none of us killed ourselves because of it.
I don’t feel for a moment it is solely up to the school board to prevent bullying. Its up to the student and the parents as well. There is a great deal of unhappiness and distress in this life. If you are going to kill yourself because of being bullied, you probably aren’t going to be able to handle your adult years either.
alan Balehead
To the Mom…too little too late…maybe she is partly responsible???
xander
@Daez : Where did you get your information about the causes and prevention of teen suicide? What you say must be based on the “town” where you grew up, FOTF literature, and FOX news, because it’s certainly NOT based on the available, published research.
You should be well ashamed of yourself for spreading misinformation and blaming families. Get an education.
Cam
“Give it another year. My prediction is that the dwindling support for Obama will get even lower as he cuts entitlement programs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the gays hand even more Republicans power in 2012 just to piss off Obama.”
________________________________
Funny how when 90% of Dems are furious about these debt deals, that is the GAYS that are responsible for anything that happens.
walt
don’t feed the daez troll. not worth it.
Brad
@Daez: I agree with you that some of the blame does rest with the mother, but not nearly as much as the blame that rest on the school district. Saying the the mother didn’t catch the signs of suicide that her child expressed is assuming that the child showed those signs. With how easy it is to get on the internet and look up information on suicide signs, its just as easy to assume her child would know how to hid those signs so as not to arise suspicion.
And while yes, you may haven been bullied during school and not killed yourself like many others who also did not ultimately kill themselves. the truth is back when you were getting bullied by someone, another kid who was also being bullied probably killed themselves. In this day and age of 2011 accessing drugs, weapons, and information to kill one self is much easier then it was 20, 30, 40, and even 50+ years ago. People are just now starting to realize that one of the key pieces to ending the suicides of bullied kids that have taken place for decades if not centuries, begin at the root of the problem. IF schools continue to deny the potential impact they can have in a kids life, then suicide rates for bullied teens will sadly continue to rise.
Even if the school does have a “No Bullying policy”, if that policy isn’t enforced then that policy basically doesn’t exist. If schools continue to focus on the majority instead of the minority then there will come a time when the majority starts to lose.
The amount of kids who have been bullied into suicide has been slowly adding up, and there is nothing that can be done about the ones who have taken their lives already, however, something can be done to stop that number from increasing. And i think it starts with the school.
Daez
@Brad: Please explain the DROP in suicide rates since the 1980s and early 1990s. Please explain how only 1 in 10 commit suicide if there is an “epidemic.” Also, most experts note that there are easily recognizable signs of suicide that are caused by depression. YOU CAN NOT CONTROL DEPRESSIVE BEHAVIORS. You can mask them, but anyone paying one little bit of attention should be able to know that you are masking them.
In short, when suicide happens its both everyone’s fault and no one’s fault. If this lawsuit is used to remove those in power without asking for millions then I will quickly change my chastising of this mother. Right now, my guess is she is trying to get rich off of the death of her son though.
xander
Daez wrote: “there are easily recognizable signs of suicide…” True, that: a dead body is the easiest sign of suicide to detect.
Any other bright ideas?
inoits2
While bullying is certainly a contributor to suicide, it’s important not to overlook the inner turmoil that many of us face upon realizing we are not what society expects us to be. Fitting in and having friends are very important to teenagers and rejection can be devastating. The undermining of self-esteem through a constant stream of negative messages about our worth contributes to stress overload. No teen wants to be gay, they just are and it’s very difficult to overcome the atmosphere created by homophobia.
Letting kids be kids (bullies) is never positive because they naturally lack empathy and must be taught what it means to be in other people’s shoes. In my opinion we need to go back to the english Victorian era when children were expected to act like little adults. Children are generally rotten little creatures that need heavy expectations placed on them so they will be contributing members of society.
Also why make a distinction between a job and a school. When we go to work we are expected to behave a certain way. There is no reason that cant be practiced in school environments. If that wont work then great financial losses through litigation ought to do the trick. School need to be like the military.
Shannon1981
The mother is the victim here, Daez, not her son. It is up to school officials to put a stop to shit like this, and they ignored it until a kid killed himself. Furthermore, it is documented that she DID contact school officials, as well as moved around to keep her child safe, to no avail. Learn the facts before you go spouting nonsense. She is absolutely doing the right thing here.
Daez
@Shannon1981: No, she is not the victim, and NO it is not up to schools to keep the student safe once they leave school property. This is a bull shit excuse bad parents use when they fail to do their job. IT IS UP TO THE PARENT TO KEEP THEIR CHILD SAFE. If the kid hung himself on the playground then by all means I’d be behind this suit. He hung himself in her backyard. That means she failed in her responsibility to even provide reasonable supervision to her own child. She is not a victim. She is a failed parent trying to get rich from child neglect.
xander
Daez still blames the mother without any shred of evidence, and assumes, without proof, that her motivations are mostly financial. Conserva-fundie trollery at its finest: blaming the casualities, not the cause.
adam
@Daez: The boy was 13 years old. Supervising a 13 year old appropriately does not mean never leaving them by themselves for any amount of time even in their own backyard. Any properly supervised 13 year old with responsible parents will still have opportunity to hang themselves in their own bedroom or backyard during the day.
It’s not a matter of where he killed himself it’s a matter of where the harm was being done that lead him to kill himself. The harms was being done at school. The schools have a duty of care towards their students and should have been acting to protect him, especially in view of the evidence that has been accumulated by now of bullying putting kids at higher risk of suicide and gay youth being at higher risk of suicide that straight youth.
Observer
@Daez: Your strange encouragement is only good for other psychopaths, since you all have highly resilient brains.
Shannon1981
@Daez: I think its quite sick of you to blame a grieving mother for this. The kid was 13 and had been tormented to death. Literally. The school system needs to be help accountable for the fact that this went on under their noses and they failed to do anything about it.
ewe
Bring the homophobes to task. Expose them in the light for all to see and hear. I want them and their views exploited for all to observe.
Riker
@ewe: I doubt the school officials were homophobic (irrational fear of teh gays), I think they probably just didn’t care or were lazy.
Opinionated
Stuff happens. If he killed himself over some bullies, then I have no sympathy. Straights bully gays; gays bully the rest of their “queer” community. The circle of life. He needed to toughen up.
Sinshol
Daez, you have spat out the most moronic dirge I have read in quite a while. So many flaws in your argument sir!
1. You assume the entirety of society has had a life of an exact replicate of your own.
2. You make wild assumptions on both the process of the investigation and the mother.
3. You don’t even consider the fact that whether the mother profits from this venture that she is perhaps doing a good thing in regards to stopping bullying at schools.
Your just a moron basically.
Daez
@Opinionated: Well said. I couldn’t agree more. If this kid didn’t have the balls to handle bullying, I hate to see what would have happened when life actually got remotely difficult.
Andrew
@Daez: Are you kidding me? The 1980s would look like utopia compared with what the current Republican party would do if they were in control of Congress and the White House. They’d probably make it look more like the 1880s.
Missy
I am 1999 graduate of Jacobsen JR High… the same school that Seth walsh attended years later. I feel so bad for his family because I too was bullied there, for having “big Boobs” I was often teased and threatened by other girls and would cry because I didn’t feel safe there. I was pulled into the principals office once for crying in the bathroom.
NOT once did the woman ask me if I was bullied or feeling threatened at school. She said I was like a two year old who was crying to get my way because I didnt want to go to school… THIS is how our educators think. If I could find that woman and tell her off today, boy I would. Jr high is a HARD HARD HARD time in a youth’s life. Going through changes and hardships. Today though, it still sticks with me, I was 12, being bullied for going through puberty, shy and quiet, and I had NO one to turn to. We’re supposed to feel SAFE at school. Not bullied, let alone bullied by our educators and principals.
Ben
I looked at the School Facebook , They Have Nothing Writen about Seth. This to School Sucks. The Principals need to Be Fired , And The Kids And School Bored Should be Embaressed. I Watched an Interview from Seths Mom , She said that the School Principal said “Remind Me Next Year” . Wowww . -.-