How a cell phone picture led to girl's suicide

Hope Witsell, age 13, struggled in middle school by being bullied. Her school in Ruskin, Florida, was challenging for Hope because fellow students would walk up to her and call her “slut”, “whore”, and would sometimes call her a “skank” just to be really cruel to her. Other times her friends would have to surround her because people would come by and try to hit or push her into lockers. Hope had a sexted picture of her breasts to her boyfriend and another girl from the same school got her hands on the photo and had sent it to students at six different schools in the area. Because of the photo Hope had become a target for 11, 12, and 13 years old bullies. Bullies also started a “Hope Hater Page” on MySpace and wrote horrible things, the taunting became worse. On Saturday, September 12, 2009, after spending the day with her family, that night her mother found Hope dead and tried to start CPR immediately, but it was too late. She had used her favorite scarves to hang herself from her canopy bed. After hopes death, her mother learned that her daughter was summoned to meet with a school social worker because there was a concern that Hope was trying to hurt herself. The school never cared to contact the parents to warn them about Hope and about her possibly harming herself.

I think it’s terrible that this happened to this girl and how students picked on her just to be mean. I can’t believe kids would just write horrible things about her on a MySpace hater page, the school should have looked more into this and should have done something about it sooner than let it go on for a long time. Hope suffered throughout school for no reason and she sounds like she was a very good girl that made some mistakes like any other teenager would do. I think the kids that picked on her should be definitely punished for what they did to this poor girl. She can’t live her life no more because of mean kids that think it’s funny to bully someone; I hope that these kids feel terrible for what they did by driving someone to kill themselve. I also think the parents should sue the school for not calling the parents about the problems Hope had to face.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/07/hope.witsells.story/index.html