I'd tell all the bullied gay kids to learn martial arts or any self defense lessons. The fastest way to stop the bullies is to fight back. Yeah yeah violence is not the solution; it's only good in theory but it's only way they respect.

Yep these guys need to get their asses sued.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: most kids are capable of being sociopathic little monsters under the right circumstances. They haven't yet developed the mental capacity to really understand consequences, empathy or even just basic good manners. I am NOT absolving the kids who were involved in tormenting this poor boy to death, but it is imperative that the adults in this situation face consequences for this. The parents of the bullies, the school admin, hell maybe even the cops if they knew about this and kept ignoring it. We as adults are the ones who are supposed to provide a reasonable level of safety for the children in our communities. If the kids act badly it's because we have failed to act. So if the only way to make people take this kind of shit seriously is by making them face charges and/or lawsuits, then do it. Before some other parent somewhere finds their kid's body.

Uh, sure. Because if there's one thing preteen gay kids and sissies are good at, it's physical confrontation.

Look, I was a sissy kid. I took martial arts for ten years. It never helped. You have to want to actively beat the snot out of someone to win in a fight, and that's not something you can teach people. I might have wanted some people dead, but I never wanted to beat them up. I just wanted them to go away, and that's piss-poor motivation for a fight.

Oh, god.

The Jacobsen Middle School PTO has a Facebook page at:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tehacha…

If you're on Facebook, it might be worth politely but pointedly engaging the parents at this school to see what they're going to do to make sure something like this never happens again.

Without letting the school and its dysfunction off the hook, where the hell are these bullies' parents? 13-year-olds are generally the most awful creatures on the planet; curbing their more vile behaviors is one of the many thankless jobs of parenting. Just because the kid is 13 doesn't mean your work is done.

I'd like to see someone sue these families for not supervising their little assholes. Maybe if these neglectful fuckwit parents realized that ignoring their precious darlings' wanton cruelty had a material downside, they would participate in supervising and curbing their behavior a little.

In other words, if the social contract isn't enough to force these idiot parents into actually parenting, perhaps a court-ordered asshole tax will do the trick.

As I write here, I'm snuggling my sweet and perfect newborn. His father and I don't care who he someday loves, and we intend him to share that attitude about others when later he gets out into the world. That said, should peer-pressure or teenaged stupidity or whatever someday drive this kid to act like a total fucker to his schoolmates, hand-to-god I will make his life hell. Children make mistakes; parents correct them; and children grow and improve. That's how it works.

It's my job as a parent to do my damnedest to raise a good person, and abdicating that responsibility is one of the biggest failures I can imagine.

What I always wonder is: Why aren't more kids being charged with assault when the beat up, or even break the arm/leg of another kid? If this happened with adults on the street, someone would be going to jail. It's a crime. Same for the malicious harassment - if it happened to an adult, someone would be arrested.

They clearly don't care about human life, so it looks like the only way to get their attention is to go after their money.

I am totally ignorant about law, but is it not possible to file a wrongful death lawsuit in a case like this?

My heart breaks for you too, Seth Walsh.

Rest in Peace kiddo.

jesus that poor kid. what was he supposed to do? hide in his basement for the rest of his life? he already dropped out and they basically followed home and around town to bully him? wtf...

I'm all in favor of holding administrators accountable. I get a little queasy, though, when we talk about punishing the kids or their parents. What about bullies who are themselves at the mercy of abusive parents at home, who are never in a million years going to teach them better alternatives? What about genuinely good parents of a kid with a sub-clinical disorder who simply can't learn self-control?

Instead, I favor removing bullies from the school, not to be punitive but because if you can't behave appropriately you don't get to be in the community. In these days of distance learning it's not a violation of educational rights to keep a kid out of school. Stick the kid at home with some on-line courses for a semester. Tell them they can't come back until they 1) pass their on-line courses and 2) demonstrate that they've learned better social skills. Make it a privilege, not a right, to be on campus and do your learning in the company of other kids.

You know, I sincerely hope someone kills those kids. Painfully.

@13 - I sort of wish I felt more like a bad person for agreeing with you, but I don't.

It's amazing that the families of these dead kids don't flip on the bullies and their school enablers. If my kid were bullied to the point of suicide, I'd be going total Death Wish on their asses.

Not sure if those kids will face prosecution, but the kids in this story certainly will. Unfortunately it didn't get better for this kid when he graduated from high school. Apparently college students are horrible too.

Sorry - (hopefully) working link: http://www.wpix.com/wpix-rutgers-student…

"Hello, Lambda Legal? NCLR? It's time to start suing these school districts, and the school administrators, and the families of the bullies."

Fucking eh! It's way past time. Just how long are we going to stand by and let our most vulnerable be attacked? Can you imagine what would be happening if these kids were being driven to suicide because of their skin color or their (gasp) religion? Why isn't the federal government's civil rights department on the case? Oh, that's right, I forgot. With this administration we can't do anything because "God's in the mix". That's their God, not ours, of course.

I can't imagine that a gay organization will take these cases to court. Maybe the ACLU will do it. Sue the school administrators -- they are responsible.

How do the parents of the bullies let this happen? In the worst case scenario, they were once just like their kids, in the better (teachable) case scenario, they find it acceptable to use words like "gay" and "faggot" as insults because they see homosexuality as something that should be hidden, and that being openly accepting is part of some weird liberal agenda. I have seen this time and again at my kids' school: Parents who make little "comments" suggesting that certain administrators at the school are lesbians, and these are people who wouldn't be caught dead saying something racist. Don't play their game, and they just find someone else to talk to.

And I agree, this has to start with a "top down" approach: Make school administrators liable, full stop. It has been said many times on other threads, but why do we deny the weakest among us--our children--the same basic rights that we have in the workplace?

@8,

Not only that, but let's say the bullying was simply verbal harassment. That shit would not be tolerated in a workplace and would ideally end with the harasser getting fired (assuming the company doesn't want to risk a lawsuit from the victim). Why are schoolkids allowed to behave in a way that would not be tolerated in the adult world? Isn't the point of school to prepare those little shits for gainful employment?

I'm with #12. Remove the bullies from school the same as you would remove a harassing employee from his/her job. Move them to a different school, and separate them since so many bullies travel in packs. If they can't behave, suspend them until they can prove they're worthy of rejoining civilized society.

I am all for suing. If that is what it takes to get the message across, I'm for it.

Today on the way to work I was behind a car full of kids being taken to school by an adult that I assume was one of the kids parents. On the rear bumper was a sticker:

My Kid BEAT UP your Honor Student

What the HELL is wrong with these adults? This is very clearly part of the problem. What kind of adult would put or allow that kind of message on their car? Sick, twisted, demented. Really disgusting.

This is the first time that something on Slog has driven me to tears.

I used to be that kid, in middle school. Kids picked on me for not being girly enough and not fitting in enough, among other things, and I too contemplated suicide at 13. Luckily, the right friend had just come into my life.

But almost every member of my family experienced some facet of bullying. It got to a point where we went home for lunch to escape the humiliation and the loneliness. One of the younger kids almost got home-schooled, in response to what we feared would come from the sometimes harsh exposure to our local school's particular environment.

All of the people responsible for this crime have got to pay. The administrators, bullies AND the parents. I don't know what it's like to grieve for a dead child, but I do feel that it should be this family's priority to see that everyone at this school that could have prevented this tragedy is legally punished.

I wish more kids knew that leaving school was an option.

http://www.amazon.com/Teenage-Liberation…

Obviously, kids who enjoy school shouldn't be forced to leave it. But for the bullied, it's important for them to know that they can have a perfectly happy and productive life before college without going to high school.

When is "having an anti-bullying stance" going to be seen as what it is: a piece of paper for cowardly school administrators to hide behind, and nothing more. How many more kids have to die?!

And now CBS news is questioning whether Seth was even ever bullied. What is wrong with the news media? The boy killed himself because he couldn't take anymore, the other kids admit that it was happening, and they try to call the whole thing into question as if it never happened?

http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-504083_162-1…

Email the school principal at jkermode@tehachapipd.com and the chief of police at jkermode@tehachapipd.com to demand justice for Seth Walsh.

Um, the guy is school principal *and* chief of police?

Rest in peace, Seth Walsh.

Sorry, the principal is sortega@teh.k12.ca.us

Fuck those bullies and their tears. Were they crying when they mercilessly bullied Seth about his orientation? Then they don;t get to cry now...

I bet Seth was crying too, when he put that rope around his neck.

"They had never expected an outcome such as this." Yeah, that's because bullies think the bullied are just going to take it and take it and take it. They never think about the bullied fighting back or just giving up. Not even when stories that say otherwise start popping up in paper after paper after paper.

Maybe some of them will quell their guilty consciences by advocating against bullying and for gay rights? Maybe?

@34 "They had never expected an outcome such as this."

Second you on that. What outcome did the bullies expect?

One reason the gay orgs aren't jumping to press charges is that, while I'm not a lawyer, I was under the impression it's not their place. Pretty sure the grieving parents are the only folks lefft who can do that (and, oh yes, should be offered full support from all orgs mentioned), and right now they're kind of busy, y'know, grieving.

@27 this.kid.was.home.schooled...
BECAUSE of the bullying. Instead of the bullies at school being punished/kicked out, Seth had to leave.
Too many of these tragic stories lately. RIP, Seth.

The fine folks at Jacobsen Middle School PTO deleted my post about Seth Walsh from their Facebook page. I guess they're not comfortable having anything about a dead gay kid in their faces.