In September, there were four gay teen suicides as a result of school bullying:
Tyler ClementiFriends of the Rutgers University freshman who leaped to his death after his roommate allegedly secretly filmed him during a "sexual encounter" in his dorm room and posted it live on the Internet are mourning the loss of Tyler Clementi who they say was an outstanding violinist with a big heart.
Clementi posted a goodbye message on his Facebook page just moments before jumping off the George Washington Bridge last week, an act that left friends such as Christina Guentert in shock and heartbroken.
"I am just devastated that this happened, especially to such an amazing person," Guentert wrote to ABC News in an e-mail. "Tyler was a remarkable person in many ways; he was always kind, generous, sweet, and loyal."
"He always had a smile on his face, and would joke around with me during class even on bad days," wrote Guentert, who went to school with Clementi for seven years in Ridgewood, N.J. "Tyler came off as innocent and sweet; the kind of person that you could rely on and go to for anything."
- Seth Walsh, the Bakersfield, CA 13-year-old who hanged himself from a tree in his back yard after years of being bullied, died Tuesday afternoon after nine days on life support. Police investigators interviewed some of the young people who taunted Seth the day he hanged himself. “Several of the kids that we talked to broke down into tears,” Police Chief Jeff Kermode said. “They had never expected an outcome such as this.”
- Asher Brown, 13, an eighth-grader killed himself last week. He shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at Hamilton Middle School in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District in Houston Texas. Brown, his family said, was “bullied to death” — picked on for his small size, his religion and because he did not wear designer clothes and shoes. Kids also accused him of being gay, some of them performing mock gay acts on him in his physical education class, his mother and stepfather said.
- Billy (William) Lucas, 15, a student at Greensburg Community High School in Greensburg, IN, was found dead in a barn at his grandmother’s home Thursday evening — he had hanged himself. Friends say that he had been tormented for years. “He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him. Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation.
This insanity must stop and all school districts must commit to making school safe for GLBT students.
