As the parent of a Teen I live in fear of the suicide phenomenon, My daughter was relentless bullied this year by ex friends, in school and online. The school Chaplin told her after a tearful hour in the office recounting her tale ‘Sure girls are like that there all bitches’ needless to say she was of no help to my suffering child. When I was made aware of the bullying my first instinct was to go beat up the girls in question or go tell their parents! My daughter begged me not to do it my way things might settle and the did for a bit only to be replaced by anonymous comments on that ask.fm site.
The site led to a barrage of online abuse some of which is written below and were put up over a single weekend,
- I can’t believe you fit in your front door you’re so fat and ugly
- You should stop going out in public cause when people see your face the get depressed so stay at home where we don’t have to see you
- Why don’t you do the right thing and go kill yourself
- You’re a fat ugly bitch
- The world would be better if you were dead so go on kill yourself and do us all a favor
*My Daughters Page was shut down and blocked the moment I had printed off the comments I organised proper counselling with Jigsaw and we worked as a team to deal with this six months later my child of 15 is still in counselling when she should be out living her life.
Needless to say I brought this to the attention of the school who showed no interest what so ever, in fact I have not had so much as a follow-up call to see how things are going at present!
We the parents have to accept that our kids are using these sites and even the sweetest of children are posting hurtful comments to be part of a gang. If we can accept this then we have crossed the biggest hurdle.
We need to lobby to force the police to identify the author of the abuse, I went to the police and was told to block the account there was nothing they could do as it originated outside the country. As a group the parents need to tell the kids this is our plan and we have sourced a way of getting the ip address where the comment came from; they lie to us often enough and IMHO the only way to stop the online bullies is to let them know we will find them. Ask.fm have a duty to release the ip addresses under police order
We also need to take the glory out of suicide many of these kids believe the send off after they are dead will give them some status, pity they are not around to witness it! We as parents of teens have to get tough and stay two steps ahead of our kids. When we were teens I am sure we all had horrible thoughts about people in school, especially if they had been unkind to us that day; the difference we had the time to get over it and the next day was often a better day. With the age of the internet you can now voice your thoughts towards that person and do it all without getting caught. There is no escape for the victim and if a group has it in for you it can be relentless 24/7.
If any of you parents out there like my Idea then send me an email, we must act fast as the christmas holidays will be a time when boredom can lead to a rise in cyber bullying I would like to get some people together to approach the schools to hold a parents info nights and we can educate; it is the only way I see the recent trend coming to a welcome end.
jenniferbanks.media@gmail.com
grumpyirishwoman 
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