Parents of Billy Wolfe File Lawsuit to End Bullying

In recent years, stories of young teens that have taken their own lives after classmates have bullied them have been increasing, such as the story of Megan Meier, a young girl who committed suicide after a bullying ex-friend took her revenge to the internet. Her mother is now seeking legal action.

Now, another parent of a bullied child is taking a stand before it's too late to save her own son. Penney Wolfe of Fayetteville, Arkansas has had enough and is taking legal action against the bullies, who have been tormenting her son for years, and possibly even the school system. The assaults Billy Wolfe has suffered have caused him numerous injuries and extreme psychological stress. Stress that some kids just like him couldn't handle after a while and eventually took their own lives to escape from.

Lucky for Billy, his assaults have been well-documented. There are photos of the multiple injuries he has received as well as videos of his bullies assaulting him. The bullies even took their assault to the internet where they started such Facebook groups as "Everyone Who Hates Billy Wolfe".

In Billy's case, he is also lucky to have parents so involved that they want to stand up for their son, even if it makes them a subject of scrutiny. They are showing their son that the justice system is there for a reason and that bullying is serious. It's about time. Many kids aren't so lucky and suffer in silence from the cruelty aimed at them by their peers.

I know all too well how much it hurts because I've been there. I have also watched fellow classmates being bullied with a mixed sense of sympathy, detachment, and sometimes even relief that at least this time, it wasn't me.

His name was Kevin and I felt bad for him. He was a quiet boy with mousy features, freckles, and glasses. He was smart and a great writer so our English teacher's new idea sounded great. She meant well when she decided to create the "Thought Pot". It was a pot where we all did creative writing and submitted it throughout the week. Every Friday, she would spend class time reading the "creative" writing of students about whatever was on our minds.

It all started when someone wrote a story about a character named "Lou Dog". "Lou Dog" was always coming into some horrible misfortune every story. The boys in our class would laugh hysterically while my teacher read the stories aloud. There were only a few students not laughing - those who didn't get the joke and the one whom the joke was about. It took me weeks before I finally figured it out. "Lou Dog" was a cleverly twisted version of Kevin's last name.

Kevin would sit and stare at his desk, bravely, taking full impact of the insults our teacher wasn't even aware she was reading. Not one of us in the class had enough courage to tell our teacher what was going on. Kevin later attempted suicide and the 'Thought Pot' went away soon after that.

We went to a small school. Most of the kids who went to our school had been going there since elementary grades. If you got targeted as a "nerd" early, you were doomed until the day you graduated. For some reason, it is the nature of the beast at that age, to hate someone, anyone. I was that person for a lot of my classmates. I didn't do anything to deserve it.

In Elementary school, I was punched in the stomach repeatedly, smacked, pushed, and even thrown into a gym locker and left there until a guilty classmate let me out after I had been in there an entire gym class. I also had kidney problems which caused me to have occasional accidents. Kids are unmerciful when it comes to embarrassing medical problems.

Junior High got even worse. Every day I was told how ugly I was. Even my "friends" didn't like admitting they were friends with me because I was so reviled. I was hated because I was ugly, because I was naïve, because of the way I dressed, the way I styled my hair, etc. There were a million reasons, but not a single valid one. I was weak, I was mousy, and it was easy for them to target me.

One girl really enjoyed tormenting me. She demanded money from me and threatened to beat me up if I didn't give it to her on a daily basis. I often just ate a pack of crackers for lunch because she had taken my lunch money. Several times, she shoved me into a wall and berated me inches from my face until I cried. Teachers saw what was going on. Nobody did anything to intervene and I lived in fear.

I tried out for the high school cheerleading squad and made it. A friend who had also made it got an anonymous note from someone warning that she and I had better quit the squad or face the consequences. I wrote for the school newspaper and received threats over articles I wrote. Other people wrote 'Letters to the Editor' calling me names and threatening violence.

By my senior year, I was exhausted from all the torment. I met a boy from a different school and dated him briefly. The relationship ended after he went to a football game with me and some other girls thought he was cute. They told him that I was a nerd at school and he shouldn't date me. He told them I said all kinds of things about them which weren't true, including going so far as to tape record our phone conversations and play them for those girls. They bullied me mercilessly, shoulder-checking me into walls, glaring at me from across the cafeteria, telling me they were going to beat me up after school, and even being so brazen as coming to my house, ringing my doorbell, and telling my mother they wanted to "talk" to me.

There is a difference between the bullying I endured and the bullying Billy Wolfe endured, however. The difference is parenting. When those girls showed up at my doorstep, my mother actually yelled at me to go outside and talk to them and was angry when I didn't go. When I broke down and told her why they were there and how scared I was, she said I needed to "toughen up".

It would have made a world of difference if she would have taken the steps Billy's mom is took by first talking to the school and demanding that appropriate action be taken. There are still parents out there that believe that "this is just what kids do" or that their kids just need to toughen up and learn to defend themselves. What they don't realize is that in today's society, nobody gives respect because you fight back physically. The bullies want you to break down. They want to see how far they can push you.

Teenagers don't yet have the self esteem developed to fight back. They are more inclined to believe their peers and feel worthless if their peers say so. Developing a self-esteem rooted in knowing who you are doesn't even come into play until adults are sometimes in their late twenties or thirties. It's unreasonable to expect a child to have that level of maturity.

It is NEVER okay for a child to be bullied. Bullying is not what makes children tough. In this situation, a better lesson can be learned from watching parents that stand up and fend for their children. Not taking a stand is telling the child that they are not worth taking action over. It's telling the bully they can treat others that way and get away with it and letting the parents of bullies off the hook.

Our children are not trained prize fighters. They shouldn't be expected to prove themselves physically. Now that the internet has come into play, there are even bigger problems. The internet is a great tool for the cowardly to inflict harm even when they can't do it physically. I can only imagine how much worse my situations in the past would have been if my tormentors had had the wide internet access they have today. Imagine having to endure physical bullying, verbal abuse, along with cyber-bullying and a parent who does not seem to think bullying is a problem. It could be a lethal dose. My parents took me to counseling, got me on anti-depressants, etc. but they did not address the root cause of the problem - the bullying. It did not stop until I left high school.

Parents need to realize that it is not wrong to protect your own children. It is not wrong to demand something be done to correct the problem. It does not make your child less of a person because they don't know how to deal with the problem themselves.

The Centers For Disease Control reported that the suicide rate for 10-24 year olds, which had previously dipped 28% had gone up 8% from 2003-2004. Recent years have unearthed even more disturbing trends. The suicide rates for girls ages 10-14 jumped 76%. Suicide rates among 15-19 year-old girls jumped 32% and teen boys in that age group went up 9%.

I'm convinced these rate jumps are due to the popularity of instant messaging, social networking sites, etc. which brings the drama of school life right into everyone's homes and creates a perfect backdrop for duplicitous behavior. In order to prevent your child from being a victim of a bully, you first have to know your child and talk to them beyond, "How was school?" and if they ever admit to problems with bullies, listen up. Your taking action could just save their life.