Those poor girls...

[MrsMo]

Three teen girls - one 17 year old and two 18 year olds - plead guilty to bullying a 15 year old girl for months, until the 15 year old committed suicide. The three girls object to being called "mean girls" by the prosecutor (according to one of the girl's lawyer, the girls were "unfairly demonized as"mean girls.") I mean, all they did was make the 15 year old's life a living hell.

While I don't have much sympathy for kids who commit suicide because they've been bullied (grow a pair, regardless of what sex you are) I have seen the hell unrelenting bullying can create. To have the three teen girls get off with nothing much more than a slap on the wrist and then have them complaining publicly about being called mean leaves me stunned. They should have "mean" tattooed to on their foreheads!

Instead of sputtering on about the idiocy of the three girls, here's the link to the whole story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110506/ap_on_re_us/us_school_bullying_17

[Kitz E Kat]

An interesting aspect to that story is the fact that Phoebe had tried AFAIK tried to commit suicide before, she lived in Ireland and she along with her family moved to the US. Something which did not seem to surface during the whole trail etc.
All very sad regardless, children can be real mean.

[Spoofed Existence]

Hmmm I think you're being quite harsh here.

The first and probably most important point of this is: did she kill herself because she was bullied or was she bullied because she was depressed? People usually bully the weak, and who can be weaker than the depressed? Are they guilty for her suicide? Basically, nobody can tell...
I used to be quite unhappy, a long time ago. I didn't have many friends and I was bullied a bit. Nothing extreme, luckily, though back then I did pick up the nasty habbit to insult myself whenever possible so that others would at least laugh at my jokes and wouldn't have the chance to make the insult. Obviously it wasn't very clever of me, but I didn't know back then. But I don't think I got unhappy because I didn't have many friends. I think I got so few friends because I was unhappy. In fact, I got better in a summer holiday and the next year, all of a sudden, I was relatively "liked". I was - and am still - the "strange" guy, but still friendly.

Now you say "while I don't have much sympathy for kids who commit suicide because they've been bullied". Again the question is, did she kill herself because she has been bullied? I doubt it to be honest. She must have been depressed. And don't you have sympathy for the depressed? Note that it's a chemical flaw, making one extremely unhappy, feeling completely unloved by anyone. Live becomes invaluable to yourself and, according to you, to everyone else. There is barely any reason not to kill yourself. But it's not as though you can think sanely.

Though, yes, the only thing that is certain is that the bullies are "mean girls".

[MrsMo]

I'm not entirely unsympathetic towards kids who commit suicide - I understand that they're depressed and it can feel like a bottomless pit with no way out - it's just that I don't have as much sympathy as I would for someone who committed suicide because of a physically painful and/or terminal condition. Depression can be helped through both counseling and medication as well as a bit of self-help.

However; the article was primarily about those three girls who were bullying the teen and thought it was awful for anyone to refer to them as mean, and that was my gripe. The bullies feel so entitled that they were incensed that someone should call them mean when their actual behavior went far beyond what I would call mean. Those three were terrorists and horrible human beings for making someone else's life a living hell. The girl who committed suicide may have had problems before she came to the US, she was probably already depressed, but the three bullies added to her burden. But whatever you do, don't call them "mean."