Nine charged with irish teenagers death

This shocking TV3 documentary will look at the tragedy of Phoebe Prince, a 15 year old girl from Co. Clare who moved to America last September with her family. By January 14th this year, after months of bullying at the hands of schoolmates, Phoebe was found hanging in her new home. The film examines the continuous harassment that led to her death and the authorities that stood by as she was harassed. Her suicide has caused widespread grief, anger, changes in the law and has led to the biggest bullying case in American history. TV3 speak to Boston Globe Journalist Kevin Cullen, who raised the issue of the bullies going unpunished and New York based court correspondent Jean Caseraz, as she follows the trail of 'The untouchable mean girls'. This frank film precedes the new series of the not-so-frank Tudors at 10.00pm.

The untouchable Mean Girls

By Kevin Cullen, Globe Columnist | January 24, 2010

Like a lot of kids her age, Phoebe Prince was a swan, always beautiful and sometimes awkward.

Last fall, she moved from Ireland into western Massachusetts, a new town, a new high school, a new country, a new culture. She was 15, when all that matters is being liked and wearing the right clothes and just fitting in.

She was a freshman and she had a brief fling with a senior, a football player, and for this she became the target of the Mean Girls, who decided then and there that Phoebe didn’t know her place and that Phoebe would pay.

Kids can be mean, but the Mean Girls took it to another level, according to students and parents. They followed Phoebe around, calling her a slut. When they wanted to be more specific, they called her an Irish slut.

The name-calling, the stalking, the intimidation was relentless.

Ten days ago, Phoebe was walking home from school when one of the Mean Girls drove by in a car. An insult and an energy drink can came flying out the car window in Phoebe’s direction.

Phoebe kept walking, past the abuse, past the can, past the white picket fence, into her house. Then she walked into a closet and hanged herself. Her 12-year-old sister found her.

You would think this would give the bullies who hounded Phoebe some pause. Instead, they went on Facebook and mocked her in death.

They told State Police detectives they did nothing wrong, had nothing to do with Phoebe killing herself.

And then they went right back to school and started badmouthing Phoebe.

They had a dance, a cotillion, at the Log Cabin in Holyoke two days after Phoebe’s sister found her in the closet, and some who were there say one of the Mean Girls bragged about how she played dumb with the detectives who questioned her.

Last week, one of the Springfield TV stations sent a crew to South Hadley High to talk to the kids.

One girl was interviewed on camera, and she said what was common knowledge: that bullies were stalking the corridors of South Hadley High.

As soon as the TV crew was out of sight, one of the Mean Girls came up and slammed the girl who had been interviewed against a locker and punched her in the head.

The Mean Girls are pretty, and popular, and play sports.

So far, they appear to be untouchable, too.

South Hadley is a nice, comfortable middle-class suburb that hugs the Connecticut River nearby and a certain attitude.

“Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in South Hadley,’’ said Darby O’Brien, a high school parent, wondering why the bullies who tormented Phoebe are still in school. “And so instead of confronting the evil among us, the reality that there are bullies roaming the corridors at South Hadley High, people are blaming the victim, looking for excuses why a 15-year-old girl would do this. People are in denial.’’

School officials say there are three investigations going on. They say these things take time.

That doesn’t explain why the Mean Girls who tortured Phoebe remain in school, defiant, unscathed.

“What kind of message does this send to the good kids?’’ O’Brien asked. “How many kids haven’t come forward to tell what they know because they see the bullies walking around untouched?’’

They were supposed to hold a big meeting on Tuesday to talk about all this, but now that’s off for a couple of weeks.

O’Brien is thinking about going to that meeting and suggesting that they have the kids who bullied Phoebe look at the autopsy photos.

“Let them see what a kid who hung herself looks like,’’ he said.

Last week, Phoebe was supposed to visit Ireland, where she grew up, and she was excited because she was going to see her father for the first time in months.

She did end up going back to Ireland after all, and when her father saw her she was in a casket.

Phoebe’s family decided to bury her in County Clare. They wanted an ocean between her and the people who hounded her to the grave.

jackiebaron wrote: »

What you have to understand is empathy and regret. I can't speak for these girls but 19 times out of 20 a pack are stronger and more vicious than the individual they are targeting. As a young boy in school, at the tender age of 13, I attached myself to a clique and that often involved tormenting the "outsider" or weakling. Once I was challenged by a 15 year old. I (when I was on my own) tried to talk my way out of the fight until it came to a head and there was no escape. After a mob of local kids had surrounded the scene and I was too paralysed by fear as a result of the chants of "chicken" or "take him, Johnny", I received two, maybe, three punches to the face. They were nothing that any kid who had fallen off a bicycle hadn't experienced before......then I just launched at this lad and within maybe four seconds his blood was all over my knuckles. I had hospitalised him in 20 seconds.....just concussion. My father, ran through the front garden and swore like a trooper but the fight was over as quick as it started.
He looked at me like I was not only an animal. but an animal infected with some disease.

I've never been in a fight since. But I regret every moment of those moments when I battered someone. It was horrible. You can say "ah, well, you did the the right thing.....he would have picked on you for a few more years".....don't care....I became a savage in seconds and had to look his Ma in the eye for the next decade.

These girls who picked on and bullyed this girl don't have that luxury but their actions are as savage as mine were.

A day doesn't go by that I don't think about when I humiliated that kid by beating the crap of him in seconds in front of his "friends" .... friends who would abandon him in the coming months and years.

The sickest thing was that I was being patted on the back by his classmates as he lay in hospital with broken teeth and a shattered nose.

He started the fight but people revelled in his pain, long after his defeat.


And that is what empathy is.
I really hurt someone, years ago and I wish I didn't. These girls should at least recognise their power over someone whose life they can destroy.