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Bully on Campus & Online
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softball, and she was placed on a team of girls that had played for a considerable amount of time.
They teased her relentlessly about her inability to play; she would cry after every practice.”
Although Corinne’s mother talked to the coach, the bullying got worse. She says, “They con-
tinued to
exclude
her at practice which followed through to school. Corinne would periodically
come home from school crying saying ‘No one likes me, I hate it here’… Then they started to tell
Corinne she was fat and her hair was frizzy and make fun of her one day then befriend her the
next.”
One day, the bullying got really bad. “That morning in PE one of the girls slapped her… then
wrote her notes all day telling her that she was fat, ugly, had ratty hair, and they wished she was
dead and that she should just go home and kill herself. These girls decided that this was the ‘Theme
of the Day,’ that Corinne should go home and kill herself.”
Corinne decided she had had enough. She was sad and depressed. She hated school and life. So
after she got home from school one day, Corinne found a gun in her home and committed suicide.
Her family was heartbroken. They hadn’t known the bullying was so bad, so they didn’t know
how much help she needed. The bullies had lied to her. A lot of people loved Corinne and were
deeply upset by her death. Corinne had been a loving, smart, and active person. But because of
bullying, she was gone.
Her mom is a now codirector of Bully Police USA and director of Bully Police Texas. Bully Po-
lice is an organization that speaks up for bullied young people. It also tries to get the government
to make new laws to stop bullying. She hopes to use her experiences to stop more suicides from
happening to families like hers.
BAD FOR THE BULLY
People mostly think about how bad bullying is for the person getting bullied. However, bullying
also hurts the person doing the bullying.
Studies show that people who bully as kids and teens are more likely to get in big trouble as
adults. They steal or hurt people and get arrested. They might get hurt in a fight themselves. They
might get caught with a gun and go to jail.
One scientist in Norway found that more than half the students he studied who were bullies
LGBT Youth and Suicide
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students are more at risk of suicide. Being different
from other young people is hard. Bullies often target LGBT youth because they think they are differ-
ent. Bullies tease LGBT youth about their identity. They make jokes. They might even threaten them
or beat them up. In the United States, nine in ten homosexual youth are treated badly because of
their identity. All that bullying means LGBT teens try to commit suicide more often than other young
people.