DIGITAL PREY
This is a video that’s almost too painful to watch.
Fifteen year-old Canadian Amanda Todd stands before a camera and tells her heartbreaking story with phrases written of pieces of paper.
It is a wrenching tale of cyber-bullying, self-harm and suicide attempts. Of how she was harassed and shunned at school after an embarrassing photo of her was circulated. She harmed herself, drank bleach to kill herself, moved schools, went to counselling, and was on medication.
And, the internet being the internet – no geographical boundaries – the cyber bullies followed her.
Four days ago she killed herself in her Port Coquitlam home.
Now Amanda Todd’s mother wants the video to be used as an anti-bullying tool. “That is what my daughter would have wanted,” Carol Todd told the Vancouver Sun.
Despite being told by a coroner last week that watching the video would bring her closure, Carol Todd said she was not able to bring herself to watch it.
The heartbreak would be too much.
In Australia, adolescent psychology expert Michael Carr-Gregg said that Amanda’s story highlighted the urgent need for decent cyber safety laws and their policing.
“When you look at what that little girl went through there are two issues that stand out. Firstly, none of the people involved have been prosecuted. Secondly, clearly she had a pre-existing mental illness,” Mr Carr-Gregg said.
Author of the book Real Wired Child, Mr Carr-Gregg said that 80 percent of kids who commit suicide have a pre-existing mental illness, and that the internet was attractive to those vulnerable children.
“At all ages throughout adolescence, kids’ main desire is to be accepted by their age mates. When you are essentially mentally ill, you are isolated from the real world because kids have low threshold tolerance for those kids who might be a little bit weird or diffferent.
“That leaves those kids with only one avenue. On the internet, you can be whoever you want to be, and what this little girl craved was acceptance, she wanted someone to say, you are beautiful, you are a good person, I love you.
“And what she got was digital misogyny.”
Mr Carr-Gregg believes all children needed to sit a test for internet usage, like a driver’s licence, so they knew how to use it responsibly.
He also emphasised parental responsibility: “Parents really need to step up to the plate and stop taking a laissez-faire approach to their kids’ internet usage.”
Do you worry about your kids online?
Are they spending too much time in cyberspace, and are you strict enough about their internet usage?
Help is always at hand. Contact Lifeline at their site or on 13 11 14
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9 Responses to this article
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DogMaa October 15, 2012
That is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Where was the help for her? You can’t call it bullying, it was assault, first by the boy and then from the other girl. Why didn’t the school look to see if she was alright. PPL shouldnt class this as bullying but stalking and assault. This would never have happened if those pictures were taken from the boy.
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Margot October 15, 2012
Absolutely harrowing. I urge everyone to see the U.S documentary, Bully. Its insights into the world of bullying in classrooms, in playgrounds, in school buses, in cyberspace are chilling. Some children – even younger than Amanda – are driven to suicide from this constant daily torture. And so little seems to be done by schools, parents and the wider community to protect vulnerable kids.
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The Huntress October 15, 2012
I shed tears for this young lady and all those who suffer like her. I can’t imagine her pain or that of her family. Why has no-one been prosecuted? What had happened is deeply sick and the bullies need some kind of intervention before more lives are lost. Cyber bullying is taking the horrors of the schoolyard and following its victims everywhere. Please, no more Amanda Todds…
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Tony W October 16, 2012
Yes, incredibly sad to watch, just like Olivia Penpraze video recently. I fear we may see more of these YouTube suicide notes in future. Hari Thapa was another one in Australia this year, in her case it was a cheating boyfriend, no mention of bullying.
Unfortunately I can see the appeal in these video suicide notes for bullied kids contemplating suicide. They finally get to tell their story and show their “friends” just how much they’ve hurt them, which they could never do in life. These videos go viral and kids in this kind of pain see the sympathy they attract, so the potential for copycat suicides seems enormous to me.
I notice the Canadian govt has responded immediately to this case so at least there’s some recognition of urgency. Hopefully they’ll introduce something like Brodie’s Law to make “serious” bullying punishable, and get some education in schools about the dangers of Facebook, and get some proper supervision happening in schoolyards. In my day we had prefects on a roster basis to keep an eye on things, there’s no way an assault like this could have happened, let alone go unpunished.
Beyond that I’m at a loss for answers, I don’t quite understand this new phenomenon of cyber bullying, or how to escape it without avoiding Facebook completely. This girl tried everything, changed schools repeatedly, even changed cities, but this stalker kept tracking her down, for no other purpose than to keep bullying her.
I’m not sure parents can do much to protect their kids from bullying on Facebook, without being overly intrusive in their lives. Personally I believe it needs to be addressed in schools, because that’s where kids start to socialize with their peers. If bullying is allowed in their schoolyard interactions by day, then it’s obviously going to continue in their Facebook communication at night. Seems to me the teachers turned a blind eye to bullying in this case, so there was no one she felt she could approach about the cause of it, ie. the photo in circulation. Perhaps that’s why we seem to need chaplains these days.
One thing does seem clear though – when it comes to exercising misogyny, females can be as savage as males. This girl was the victim of a male who exploited her for sex, but she herself was blamed by the girlfriend who’d been cheated on. Far from blaming her boyfriend, she beat up the girl while a gang of boys and girls egged her on, then left her lying in a ditch. It’s not so far removed from that riverside execution scene of the alleged adulteress in Afghanistan. I find it scary to see this in Canada, which I’ve always considered culturally comparable to Australia.
Anyway I don’t want to see any more of these suicide note videos, they’re just too heartbreaking. Hopefully we’ve all seen enough now and something will be done to tackle bullying seriously, especially in schools.
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debbiep October 16, 2012
I cant watch it.
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wild colonial girl October 16, 2012
That is devastating. It is such a brave step of her mother’s to release it to the world. Every parent should watch it, and show it to their daughters in high school…because it’s all about the vulnerabilities, those things girls often can’t express.
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Jenny October 16, 2012
That is such an awful thing to watch. Why must teenagers seek to bring others down, just to make themselves feel good, powerful? And where were the teachers, and the parents in all this? It appears that maybe the parents were separated, so they would have been having their own issues. It’s all just so unbearably sad. Using Facebook can be so risky, especially so if you put something dodgy on your wall, but just try to tell a teenager that!
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knowerzark October 26, 2012
parents and children should be made aware of a practice called “capping” where paedophiles stalk children on teenage chat sites and cajole, coerce or just plain blackmail them into revealing themselves online, as happened here. there’s a channel on youtube called ‘the daily capper’ which celebrates this practice. it treads the line of legality but it is sexual extortion, no less. the only thing we can do as parents is be aware of the depravity out there and monitor what our children do and who they do it with on line, to the best of your ability.
