Breaking News Events - Page 34

Greyson · 10-04-2010, 01:18 PM

Currently the awareness of the LGBTQI youth suicides is on the radar so to speak. If any of you are active in youth and/or LGBTQI community service, please ask your organization how are they addressing this issue? I am sure that at Butch Voices, Los Angeles, this will be brought up by participants at the conference. Thanks.

Kobi · 10-04-2010, 01:19 PM

From People Magazine -

On Sept. 21, the day before he committed suicide, Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi was apparently angry that his roommate, Dharun Ravi, had allegedly recorded him kissing another man in his dorm room – and broadcast the encounter online.

Postings on the Web site Justusboys.com's message board, which appear to have been written by Clementi under the alias "cit2mo," document his feelings and actions in the hours leading up to his Sept. 22 suicide.

"I'm kinda pissed at him," Clementi apparently wrote about his roommate on Sept. 21. "It would be nice to get him into trouble ... I feel like the only thing the school might do is find me another roommate ... and I'd probably just end up with somebody worse than him."

"I mean aside from being an a–––e from time to time, he's a pretty decent roommate."

While many questions remain, Clementi's apparent online postings, which seem to follow a realistic timeline of events, reveal a young man who was struggling with what actions to take next.

In a Sept. 21 post, Clementi, 18, expressed his anger, writing on the message board, "the fact that the people he was with saw my making out with a guy as the scandal, whereas I mean come on...he was SPYING ON ME...do they see something wrong with this?"

But later that evening, he wrote, "Revenge never ends well for me. As much as I would love to pour pink paint all over his stuff … that would just let him win."

Final Hours

On Sept. 22, Clementi logged back on to the site at 4:38 a.m. with an update.

"So I wanted to have the guy over again. I texted roomie around 7 asking for the room later tonite and he said it was fine," he wrote. "When I got back to the room, I instantly noticed he had turned the webcam toward my bed and he had posted online again … saying...'Anyone want a free show just video chat with me tonight.' "

Then, Clementi apparently decided to get help.

"I ran to the nearest R.A. and set this thing in motion," he wrote. "We'll see what happens."

In a post two hours later, he wrote that his residence assistant took his concerns seriously. "He asked me to email him a written paragraph about exactly what happened," Clementi wrote. "I emailed it to him and to two people above him."

Later that night, though, Clementi drove onto the George Washington Bridge, parked his car and posted his final message on Facebook: "Jumping off the gw bridge. Sorry."

He then walked a mile onto the span and jumped to his death at approximately 8:50 p.m.

Clementi's body was found in the Hudson River and identified on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the two Rutgers freshman, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have each been charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy for "using the camera to view and transmit a live image."
------------------------------------------------------------------
This has been eating at me since I read it. Anyone else wondering if there is more to this than meets the eye? Or are my jaundiced social worker instincts on overload?

AtLast · 10-04-2010, 01:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gemme

WTF is wrong with people? And why was he on one of the nearby floats?

Blood = boiling.

Unfortunately.... there are "plants" out there, people posing as pat of a particular group... It's a great way to ruin things for the true participants.

Between this and the numbers of suicides/bullying cases/hate crimes, why arn't we organizing nationwide (Canada too) and stoping this! It is time we all broke through the barriers that keep all of the factions within the entire LGBTIQ umbrella splintered, raised money as a whole and joined forces to combat this stuff. Our divisions and inability to recognize, respect and honor each other combine as our worst enemy And this division is just what the hate mongers want- "divide and conquer."queer sexualities of ever persuasion, religious queers, conservatives, libertarians, moderates, liberals, progressives.... all of us!!

Every sub-grouping among us needs to deal with this as one. Gay men, lesbians, lesbian-feminists, the transgendered, intergendered people, all of we making-up the B -F spectrum... (add any other group you like) ALL of us need to stop going at each other and organize as one, unified Queer Nation!!

United we stand, Divided, we fall.. and fall, and fall, and some of us die.

I just know if we thought about the petty BS that keeps scattered, we could let go of it and get something done... like saves lives for one!

SuperFemme · 10-04-2010, 02:11 PM

Bullied Tehachapi gay teen Seth Walsh dies after suicide attempt

Seth Walsh was an ordinary everyday kid who just wanted to live his life except there were cruel kids around him who won't let him. Why you ask? Walsh was a young gay kid and there were kids that would not stop tormenting him while school officials ignored the problem despite being aware of the bullying.

Walsh as s 13-year-old student at the Jacobsen Middle School in Tehachapi, Kern County, California. On September 19, Walsh hanged himself from a tree in his backyard. Walsh did not die immediately and was discovered and taken to a hospital where he was placed in life support critical care.

Seth Walsh from Tehachapi, California finally died Tuesday afternoon after clinging on life support for nine days.

During the investigation many students acknowledged that Seth Walsh was in distress due to bullying over a long period of time because Walsh was gay. In spite of an anti-bullying program mentioned by school, the school officials nor the school board (more on the politically inept school board later) didn't intervene to stop the bullying and mental torture of Seth Walsh. It's ironic that the principal of the Jacobsen Middle School Susan Ortega proudly claims that she has a B.A. in Child and Family Crisis. Apparently Seth Walsh was a crisis Ortega did not see.

Police investigated and interviewed Jacobsen Middle School staff and students regarding the death of Seth Walsh but found that the no crime was committed and there would be no charges in the death of Seth Walsh.

Walsh's friends did a video for him while he was on life support.

Seth Walsh, may you rest in peace. As far as the principal and staff in Tehachapi Jocobsen Middle School are concerned, I hope everyone there has learned a lesson to listen for cries of help. Listening and acting on bullying could be a matter of life or death.

The death of Seth Walsh is the third recent incident of suicide due to anti-gay bullying in schools. Asher Brown, 13, of Texas and Billy Lucas, 15 of Indiana also committed suicide due to bullying.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/...#ixzz11QEHMXQJ

Nat · 10-04-2010, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kobi

In a post two hours later, he wrote that his residence assistant took his concerns seriously. "He asked me to email him a written paragraph about exactly what happened," Clementi wrote. "I emailed it to him and to two people above him."

Later that night, though, Clementi drove onto the George Washington Bridge, parked his car and posted his final message on Facebook: "Jumping off the gw bridge. Sorry."

He then walked a mile onto the span and jumped to his death at approximately 8:50 p.m.

Clementi's body was found in the Hudson River and identified on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the two Rutgers freshman, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have each been charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy for "using the camera to view and transmit a live image."
------------------------------------------------------------------
This has been eating at me since I read it. Anyone else wondering if there is more to this than meets the eye? Or are my jaundiced social worker instincts on overload?

Think they killed him?

Kobi · 10-04-2010, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nat

Think they killed him?

I'm thinking there is a big piece missing here without jumping to any conclusions. IF the article is correct, I see an intelligent young man who knew what his roommate was doing and was proactively taking steps to deal with the issue. He was also documenting it in a very public way as he went along. So what happened from then, to the GW bridge.

dark_crystal · 10-05-2010, 08:23 AM

America: the National Catholic Weekly- group blog "What is a Catholic response to Gay Suicide"

It's impossible not to be moved by the terrible stories of the five youths who recently took their own lives because they were being harassed as gays and lesbians. In New York the story of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman who was filmed having a romantic encounter with another man, which was them live-streamed by his "friends," seemed particularly harrowing. A despairing Clementi, age 18, ended his life by jumping off of the George Washington Bridge. Any suicide is an unspeakable tragedy, just as any murder of any kind is a tragedy, but there is something especially sad about a young person believing that their life will never be, or can never be, better. The Christian heart is, as Jesus's heart was, "moved with pity."

This rash of deaths has prompted a response, especially on college campuses, and the "It Gets Better" project, which has adult gays and lesbians reminding youth that as one matures "it gets better." Essentially, it is an argument against despair and suicide. Sadly, many of the people interviewed speak of overcoming the hatred that they felt in Christian churches, schools and other organizations.

[...]

It's a sad irony, because there is one life-changing resource in the Christian tradition that can transform those who feel unloved--that is, Jesus. The Son of God reached out specifically to those on the margins, specifically to those who felt rejected, specifically to those who felt excluded from the community. For Jesus, as the theologian James Alison has written, there was no "other." And there is much in the Catholic tradition in particular that can help gays and lesbians as well.

[...]

Those places in our tradition might all be good places to start when it comes to outreach, especially with youth (and not just with gay and lesbian youth, but with all who feel excluded). And if pro-life means trying to avoid anything that will threaten any life, from natural conception to natural death, then we should be finding ways to protect all life, which also means preventing suicides, and preventing gay suicides. In any event, there is much for us, the church, still to do.

Mitmo01 · 10-05-2010, 08:39 AM

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...a_Gay_Senator/

AtLast · 10-05-2010, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kobi

I'm thinking there is a big piece missing here without jumping to any conclusions. IF the article is correct, I see an intelligent young man who knew what his roommate was doing and was proactively taking steps to deal with the issue. He was also documenting it in a very public way as he went along. So what happened from then, to the GW bridge.

I agree. There is so much to consider.

Something that keeps coming up for me about all of the youth sucides relating to queerdom, is just thinking about the very big difference public humiliation as it is experienced by young people as oppossed to older people.

There have many things in my life that when a teen or young adult that I would have been mortified about if made public. As an adult with more life's experience and just a better sense of self, these kinds of things took on different perspectives and I couldn't care less about public opinion. My ego-strength developed along the way like it does with we humans. These kids are just not there yet which is totally "normal." Yet, something else is going on at the moment they feel killing themselves is the answer.

My heart is just deeply disturbed by all of this and the lack of getting at all of what these kids experienced to push them over the edge. It isn't a single event, they have been suffering for awhile. What other things have failed them? And what can we all do to stop the harrassment and hatred?

I keep thinking about my early years in secondary education and a counselor I knew. She had been and English teacher before and had students write in journals. This would have been in the late 60's and she was a new teacher in her mid-20's. One male student wrote about his sexuality as being gay in his journal along with info about his torment. Later, he hung himself. This teacher turned counselor lived with this- she didn't attempt to talk to this kid about his journal entries at all. She had her own homophobia keeping her from this. Later, she herself, took her own life years after this all happened. I had left the district but remembered talking to her about depression and getting some help. She did do this, but...... Oh, and menopause was blammed for her suicide...... ARGH!!!

rlin · 10-05-2010, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

America: the National Catholic Weekly- group blog "What is a Catholic response to Gay Suicide"

It's impossible not to be moved by the terrible stories of the five youths who recently took their own lives because they were being harassed as gays and lesbians. In New York the story of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman who was filmed having a romantic encounter with another man, which was them live-streamed by his "friends," seemed particularly harrowing. A despairing Clementi, age 18, ended his life by jumping off of the George Washington Bridge. Any suicide is an unspeakable tragedy, just as any murder of any kind is a tragedy, but there is something especially sad about a young person believing that their life will never be, or can never be, better. The Christian heart is, as Jesus's heart was, "moved with pity."

This rash of deaths has prompted a response, especially on college campuses, and the "It Gets Better" project, which has adult gays and lesbians reminding youth that as one matures "it gets better." Essentially, it is an argument against despair and suicide. Sadly, many of the people interviewed speak of overcoming the hatred that they felt in Christian churches, schools and other organizations.

[...]

It's a sad irony, because there is one life-changing resource in the Christian tradition that can transform those who feel unloved--that is, Jesus. The Son of God reached out specifically to those on the margins, specifically to those who felt rejected, specifically to those who felt excluded from the community. For Jesus, as the theologian James Alison has written, there was no "other." And there is much in the Catholic tradition in particular that can help gays and lesbians as well.

[...]

Those places in our tradition might all be good places to start when it comes to outreach, especially with youth (and not just with gay and lesbian youth, but with all who feel excluded). And if pro-life means trying to avoid anything that will threaten any life, from natural conception to natural death, then we should be finding ways to protect all life, which also means preventing suicides, and preventing gay suicides. In any event, there is much for us, the church, still to do.

i dont know where to put this...
i hope folks keep turning up the volume until maybe these folks realize the part they have in this...
in kathy griffins video she spoke about the blood of these kids being on [their] hands...
it is so true... and they pass out platitudes like... *oh... dang... we gotta show them what jesus thought so they will stop doing this...
its a shame for any life to be lost... even fukd up ones...*
and yeah... i know that isnt what they said... but goddammit i am mad... i am so tired of this happening to kids... other kids are so cruel... and the most sensitive have to deal with the cruelty... and.. then... they cant even turn to adults to reassure themselves...
i am beside myself on this one...

dark_crystal · 10-05-2010, 07:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rlin

i dont know where to put this...
i hope folks keep turning up the volume until maybe these folks realize the part they have in this...
in kathy griffins video she spoke about the blood of these kids being on [their] hands...
it is so true... and they pass out platitudes like... *oh... dang... we gotta show them what jesus thought so they will stop doing this...
its a shame for any life to be lost... even fukd up ones...*
and yeah... i know that isnt what they said... but goddammit i am mad... i am so tired of this happening to kids... other kids are so cruel... and the most sensitive have to deal with the cruelty... and.. then... they cant even turn to adults to reassure themselves...
i am beside myself on this one...

i only posted this because the Catholic church, although it has miles to go, is actually miles ahead of the Baptist church in terms of teaching respect for GLBT people and teaching against prejudice or discrimination. They just need to get over that little birth control hurdle and that oppresses way more straight people than us....

(of course our current pope would cause one to assume the opposite, and i would never defend the catholic hierarchy as a whole, but the academics who wrote the catechism paint a vastly different picture of the faith than its public face does- it is universally the case that academic theology and popular practice bear little resemblance to each other, even in the Baptist church)

i did a news search looking for Christian responses to the issue and the Catholic church was the only one of the mainline churches that has said anything at all

on an unrelated note- i am in Houston and Cypress, where Asher Brown lived and died, is part of our metroplex. The media here have been overwhelmingly sympathetic to Asher and his family and aggressively pushing the school district for action. It has been the top news story every night. It is heartening, but tragic that it took something like this

and yesterday, my super-Christian, tea party lovin, Obama hatin aunt shared ellen's link on facebook. i almost cried.

Greyson · 10-06-2010, 10:57 AM

Woodward: VP Hillary 'on the table'
By: Carol E. Lee
October 6, 2010 12:57 AM EDT

Speculating that President Barack Obama will replace Vice President Joe Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the 2012 ticket has been a private pastime among some Democrats over the past few months, and it broke into the open Tuesday night when investigative reporter Bob Woodward said in an interview on CNN it was a possibility.

Appearing on "John King, USA" to promote his book “Obama’s Wars,” Woodward was asked by King about possible “political asides” that cropped up while he was doing research.

“A lot of people think if the president's a little weak going into 2012, he'll have to do a switch there and run with Hillary Clinton as his running mate,” King said, repeating gossip that’s swirled for several months and appeared from time to time on blogs.

“It's on the table,” Woodward replied. “And some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012. President Obama needs some of the women, Latinos, retirees that she did so well with during the 2008 primaries. So they switch jobs and [it's] not out of the question. The other interesting question is, Hillary Clinton could run in her own right in 2016 and be younger than Ronald Reagan when he was elected president.”

Woodward did not offer any evidence that the idea is under consideration by either Obama or Clinton. A senior administration official said that any suggestion of replacing Biden with the secretary of state is totally off base.

Obama is happy with Biden as his vice president and Clinton as his secretary of state, the official told POLITICO, “and he wants them to keep on doing what they’re doing.”

One Democratic source said that the rumor has been circulating among some of Clinton’s longtime supporters. Another Democratic Party source with ties to the Clintons said, “There's so many rumors going around. But I don't believe this is true.”

In addition to being talked about as Obama’s running mate in 2012, POLITICO reported in May that some of Clinton’s allies have floated the notion that she should replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon when he makes his long-planned exit from the administration.

Maggie Haberman contributed to this report.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43192.html

Nat · 10-06-2010, 11:17 AM

Puerto Rico - FBI charges 133 in its biggest crackdown ever on corrupt cops
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/06/...rrests/?hpt=T1

Nat · 10-06-2010, 11:37 AM

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10...ild.samaritan/

Quick-thinking Good Samaritan saved a kid from her abductor in Fresno

A construction carpenter by trade until work slowed down, Perez has been recently cutting wine grapes, earning minimum wage.
Early Tuesday, there was a light rain, making that task unlikely.
Perez, 29, tuned in to television news coverage of the abduction, paying attention to the description and video of the suspect's pickup truck.
At about 6:45 a.m., Perez was outside his house talking with his cousin about the abduction when they saw a vehicle matching that description: an older-model, reddish-brown Chevrolet with a white stripe on the side.
"I thought, that could be the truck," Perez, a father of two boys, told CNN Tuesday night.
That's when he sprang into action. He jumped into his 1988 white Ford pickup and followed the vehicle.
Perez tried to cut off the vehicle several times to question the driver. One time, the driver told him, "I don't have no time [to talk]. My battery is dying."
The second time Perez pulled up to the Chevy, he saw the little girl, her head popping up from below view, and knew something was wrong.
"I kept telling him, 'That's not your little girl,'" said Perez. "We argued. We exchanged words."
Perez -- who admitted he did wonder at some point whether the motorist had a gun -- pulled up to the truck a third, and then a fourth time, when he blocked the pickup truck.
Immediately after the truck stopped, the girl was out. Perez said he believes the driver pushed her out.
"I was beyond scared," he said.
Perez got out of his vehicle and stayed with the girl. She was wearing a Winnie the Pooh sweater, he said.
The chase had taken him about a mile from his house and into another neighborhood. He yelled for residents to get the girl a blanket.
The Chevy drove off. By then, Perez had a partial license plate number, which he gave to dispatchers, Police Chief Jerry Dyer said.
About 40 minutes later, police caught up with the truck, now parked, and arrested Gregorio Gonzalez, 24, of Fresno. Charges against him will include kidnapping, false imprisonment and sexual assault, Dyer said. The suspect was not armed.
Police, officials and the parents of the girl praised Perez and other good Samaritans and citizens who aided the search and took action to find the girl.
"This is a remarkable accomplishment for an entire community," Mayor Ashley Swearengin said.
Perez said the incident was beginning to sink in Tuesday night. "I probably saved a little girl's life."
The question arises: What would have happened if Perez had gone to work this day?
He quoted a relative who said divine providence might have stepped in.
"God works in mysterious ways."

Nat · 10-06-2010, 04:12 PM

A noisy workplace doubles the risk of heart disease
http://www.latimes.com/health/booste...,1476439.story

Years spent in a noisy workplace may take a toll on both hearing and heart health. A study published Wednesday found that persistent noise in the workplace doubled the chances of an employee developing serious heart disease.

Previous studies that have looked at the effect of loud noise on the heart have produced mixed results. For the new study, researchers examined a database of more than 6,000 employees ages 20 and older who were surveyed about lifestyle, occupation and*health. The participants were grouped according to those who endured loud noise at work (meaning it was difficult to talk at a normal volume) for at least three months and those who did not experience loud noise. The study found 21% of workers, mostly men, endured noisy workplaces. They were two to three times more likely to have heart disease compared with workers who did not experience noise.

The workers who endured loud noise also were more likely to smoke and weigh more than workers who experienced quieter environments. But noise emerged as a risk factor for heart disease even when controlling for those other risk factors.

The authors of the study, published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, speculate that noise exerts the same kind of stress on the body as sudden strong emotion or physical exertion. These kinds of stress trigger the release of chemicals that constrict blood flow through the arteries.

The study has some flaws. For example, the researchers couldn't rule out that the increased risk of heart disease in an noisy workplace wasn't also due to other factors, such as air pollution, shift work or workload. But the research does suggest persistent loud noise can effect health and "deserves special attention," the authors said. It's also a risk factor that would seem fairly easy to remedy with a good pair of ear plugs or a protective head set.

-- Shari Roan / Los Angeles Times

miss entycing · 10-06-2010, 08:17 PM

Students Lie Down To Stand Up Against Homophobia
Furman University Event Supports Gay Community

Mandy Gaither, WYFF News 4 Reporter
POSTED: 9:00 pm EDT October 6, 2010
UPDATED: 9:22 pm EDT October 6, 2010

GREENVILLE COUNTY, S.C. -- In light of recent suicides of young men bullied because of their sexual orientation, some Furman University students and staff sent out a message of support to the gay community.

Around 50 of them laid down outside the campus library Wednesday to stand up for those who have killed themselves.

Signs with pictures of Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown and Raymond Chase were held during the event. All of the young male students have killed themselves since early September after reportedly being bullied or harassed because of their sexual orientation.

While Furman hasn’t had the tragedies other schools have felt recently, Dusty Roether, the president of the campus organization EROS, which stands for Encouraging Respect of Sexualities, said some students have transferred in the past after feeling harassed at the school.

"If something like this can happen at Rutgers then something like this can certainly happen at Furman," said Roether. "If we can't even feel comfortable on our own campus, then something needs to be done."

Flyers were also passed out during the event to tell people who passed by what was going on and how each person can help achieve acceptance for the gay community.

“Everyone needs to show their support for diversity and for everyone else so that these tragedies don't happen again," said Rene Travis, a student who participated in the event.

Roether said EROS is holding other events on campus like Safe Zone, where students of all sexualities come together to talk about how prejudice can be reduced.

Copyright 2010 by WYFF4.com.

Soon · 10-07-2010, 06:23 PM

Investigation Discovers Lou Dobbs Hired At Least Five Undocumented Immigrants To Work At His Estates

AtLast · 10-08-2010, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

Investigation Discovers Lou Dobbs Hired At Least Five Undocumented Immigrants To Work At His Estates

Well, imagine that! As the hypocracy turns!!

Kobi · 10-08-2010, 03:09 PM

1 Ohio school, 4 bullied teens dead by own hand
By MEGHAN BARR (AP) – 59 minutes ago

MENTOR, Ohio — Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.

The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.

It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died by his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.

Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.

If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.

Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket — and laughed.

"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."

___

Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room.

"Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English.

At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.

Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic.

"Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."

Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her.

She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself.

When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.

Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana.

"Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile."

___

Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says.

He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class.

"It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges."

Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.

"They called him fag, homo, queer," says his mother, Jan. "He told us that."

Bullies once knocked a pile of books out of his hands on the stairs, saying, "'Pick up your books, faggot,'" says Dan Hughes, a friend of Eric's.

Kids would flick him in the head or call him names, says 20-year-old Drew Juratovac, a former student. One time, a boy called Mohat a "homo," and Juratovac told him to leave Mohat alone.

"I got up and said, 'Listen, you better leave this kid alone. Just walk away,'" he says. "And I just hit him in the face. And I got suspended for it."

Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007, two weeks before a choir trip to Hawaii.

His parents asked the coroner to call it "bullicide." At Eric's funeral and after his death, other kids told the Mohats that they had seen the teen relentlessly bullied in math class. The Mohats demanded that police investigate, but no criminal activity was found.

Two years later, in April 2009, the Mohats sued the school district, the principal, the superintendent and Eric's math teacher. The federal lawsuit is on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court considers a question of state law regarding the case.

"Did we raise him to be too polite?" Bill Mohat wonders. "Did we leave him defenseless in this school?"

___

Meredith Rezak, 16, shot herself in the head three weeks after the death of Mohat, a good friend of hers. Her cell phone, found next to her body, contained a photograph of Mohat with the caption "R.I.P. Eric a.k.a. Twiggy."

Rezak was bright, outgoing and a well-liked player on the volleyball team. Shortly before her suicide, she had joined the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and told friends and family she thought she might be gay.

Juratovac says Rezak endured her own share of bullying — "name-calling, just stupid trivial stuff" — but nobody ever knew it was getting to her.

"Meredith ended up coming out that she was a lesbian," he says. "I think much of that sparked a lot of the bullying from a lot of the other girls in school, 'cause she didn't fit in."

Her best friend, Kevin Simon, doesn't believe that bullying played a role in Rezak's death. She had serious issues at home that were unrelated to school, he says.

After Mohat's death, people saw Rezak crying at school, and friends heard her talk of suicide herself.

A year after Rezak's death, the older of her two brothers, 22-year-old Justin, also shot and killed himself. His death certificate mentioned "chronic depressive reaction."

This March, her only other sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose at age 21.

Their mother, Nancy Merritt, lives in Colorado now. She doesn't think Meredith was bullied to death but doesn't really know what happened. On the phone, her voice drifts off, sounding disconnected, confused.

"So all three of mine are gone," she says. "I have to keep breathing."

___

Most mornings before school, Jennifer Eyring would take Pepto-Bismol to calm her stomach and plead with her mother to let her stay home.

"She used to sob to me in the morning that she did not want to go," says her mother, Janet. "And this is going to bring tears to my eyes. Because I made her go to school."

Eyring, 16, was an accomplished equestrian who had a learning disability. She was developmentally delayed and had a hearing problem, so she received tutoring during the school day. For that, her mother says, she was bullied constantly.

By the end of her sophomore year in 2006, Eyring's mother had decided to pull her out of Mentor High School and enroll her in an online school the following autumn. But one night that summer, Jennifer walked into her parents' bedroom and told them she had taken some of her mother's antidepressant pills to make herself feel better. Hours later, she died of an overdose.

The Eyrings do not hold Mentor High accountable, but they believe she would be alive today had she not been bullied. Her parents are speaking out in hopes of preventing more tragedies.

"It's too late for my daughter," Janet Eyring says, "but it may not be too late for someone else."

___

No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program.

Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies.

But that's not so different from most high schools. Senior Matt Super, who's 17, says the suicides unfairly paint his school in a bad light.

"Not everybody's a good person," he says. "And in a group of 3,000 people, there are going to be bad people."

StopCyberbulling.org founder Parry Aftab says this is the first time she's heard of two sets of parents suing a school at the same time for two independent cases of bullying or cyberbullying. No one has been accused of bullying more than one of the teens who died.

Barbara Coloroso, a national anti-bullying expert, says the school is allowing a "culture of mean" to thrive, and school officials should be held responsible for the suicides — along with the bullies.

"Bullying doesn't start as criminal. They need to be held accountable the very first time they call somebody a gross term," Coloroso says. "That is the beginning of dehumanization."

Associated Press writer Jeannie Nuss in Columbus contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

dreadgeek · 10-08-2010, 04:20 PM

We have become a Lord of the Flies society.

Cheers
Aj

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kobi

1 Ohio school, 4 bullied teens dead by own hand
By MEGHAN BARR (AP) – 59 minutes ago

MENTOR, Ohio — Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.

The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.

It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died by his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink.

Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it.

If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.

Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket — and laughed.

"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."

___

Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room.

"Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English.

At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.

Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic.

"Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength."

Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her.

She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself.

When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.

Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana.

"Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile."

___

Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says.

He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class.

"It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges."

Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.

"They called him fag, homo, queer," says his mother, Jan. "He told us that."

Bullies once knocked a pile of books out of his hands on the stairs, saying, "'Pick up your books, faggot,'" says Dan Hughes, a friend of Eric's.

Kids would flick him in the head or call him names, says 20-year-old Drew Juratovac, a former student. One time, a boy called Mohat a "homo," and Juratovac told him to leave Mohat alone.

"I got up and said, 'Listen, you better leave this kid alone. Just walk away,'" he says. "And I just hit him in the face. And I got suspended for it."

Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007, two weeks before a choir trip to Hawaii.

His parents asked the coroner to call it "bullicide." At Eric's funeral and after his death, other kids told the Mohats that they had seen the teen relentlessly bullied in math class. The Mohats demanded that police investigate, but no criminal activity was found.

Two years later, in April 2009, the Mohats sued the school district, the principal, the superintendent and Eric's math teacher. The federal lawsuit is on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court considers a question of state law regarding the case.

"Did we raise him to be too polite?" Bill Mohat wonders. "Did we leave him defenseless in this school?"

___

Meredith Rezak, 16, shot herself in the head three weeks after the death of Mohat, a good friend of hers. Her cell phone, found next to her body, contained a photograph of Mohat with the caption "R.I.P. Eric a.k.a. Twiggy."

Rezak was bright, outgoing and a well-liked player on the volleyball team. Shortly before her suicide, she had joined the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and told friends and family she thought she might be gay.

Juratovac says Rezak endured her own share of bullying — "name-calling, just stupid trivial stuff" — but nobody ever knew it was getting to her.

"Meredith ended up coming out that she was a lesbian," he says. "I think much of that sparked a lot of the bullying from a lot of the other girls in school, 'cause she didn't fit in."

Her best friend, Kevin Simon, doesn't believe that bullying played a role in Rezak's death. She had serious issues at home that were unrelated to school, he says.

After Mohat's death, people saw Rezak crying at school, and friends heard her talk of suicide herself.

A year after Rezak's death, the older of her two brothers, 22-year-old Justin, also shot and killed himself. His death certificate mentioned "chronic depressive reaction."

This March, her only other sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose at age 21.

Their mother, Nancy Merritt, lives in Colorado now. She doesn't think Meredith was bullied to death but doesn't really know what happened. On the phone, her voice drifts off, sounding disconnected, confused.

"So all three of mine are gone," she says. "I have to keep breathing."

___

Most mornings before school, Jennifer Eyring would take Pepto-Bismol to calm her stomach and plead with her mother to let her stay home.

"She used to sob to me in the morning that she did not want to go," says her mother, Janet. "And this is going to bring tears to my eyes. Because I made her go to school."

Eyring, 16, was an accomplished equestrian who had a learning disability. She was developmentally delayed and had a hearing problem, so she received tutoring during the school day. For that, her mother says, she was bullied constantly.

By the end of her sophomore year in 2006, Eyring's mother had decided to pull her out of Mentor High School and enroll her in an online school the following autumn. But one night that summer, Jennifer walked into her parents' bedroom and told them she had taken some of her mother's antidepressant pills to make herself feel better. Hours later, she died of an overdose.

The Eyrings do not hold Mentor High accountable, but they believe she would be alive today had she not been bullied. Her parents are speaking out in hopes of preventing more tragedies.

"It's too late for my daughter," Janet Eyring says, "but it may not be too late for someone else."

___

No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program.

Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies.

But that's not so different from most high schools. Senior Matt Super, who's 17, says the suicides unfairly paint his school in a bad light.

"Not everybody's a good person," he says. "And in a group of 3,000 people, there are going to be bad people."

StopCyberbulling.org founder Parry Aftab says this is the first time she's heard of two sets of parents suing a school at the same time for two independent cases of bullying or cyberbullying. No one has been accused of bullying more than one of the teens who died.

Barbara Coloroso, a national anti-bullying expert, says the school is allowing a "culture of mean" to thrive, and school officials should be held responsible for the suicides — along with the bullies.

"Bullying doesn't start as criminal. They need to be held accountable the very first time they call somebody a gross term," Coloroso says. "That is the beginning of dehumanization."

Associated Press writer Jeannie Nuss in Columbus contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

10-04-2010, 01:18 PM	#661
Greyson Infamous Member How Do You Identify?: Transmasculine/Non-Binary Preferred Pronoun?: Hy (Pronounced He) Relationship Status: Married Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: SF Bay Area Posts: 6,589 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 21,132 Thanked 8,154 Times in 2,006 Posts Rep Power: 21474858	Currently the awareness of the LGBTQI youth suicides is on the radar so to speak. If any of you are active in youth and/or LGBTQI community service, please ask your organization how are they addressing this issue? I am sure that at Butch Voices, Los Angeles, this will be brought up by participants at the conference. Thanks. __________________ Sometimes you don't realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness. - Susan Gale

10-04-2010, 01:19 PM	#662
Kobi Infamous Member How Do You Identify?: Biological female. Lesbian. Relationship Status: Happy Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Hanging out in the Atlantic. Posts: 9,234 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 9,840 Thanked 34,654 Times in 7,652 Posts Rep Power: 21474861	Rutgers suicide or something else? From People Magazine - On Sept. 21, the day before he committed suicide, Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi was apparently angry that his roommate, Dharun Ravi, had allegedly recorded him kissing another man in his dorm room – and broadcast the encounter online. Postings on the Web site Justusboys.com's message board, which appear to have been written by Clementi under the alias "cit2mo," document his feelings and actions in the hours leading up to his Sept. 22 suicide. "I'm kinda pissed at him," Clementi apparently wrote about his roommate on Sept. 21. "It would be nice to get him into trouble ... I feel like the only thing the school might do is find me another roommate ... and I'd probably just end up with somebody worse than him." "I mean aside from being an a–––e from time to time, he's a pretty decent roommate." While many questions remain, Clementi's apparent online postings, which seem to follow a realistic timeline of events, reveal a young man who was struggling with what actions to take next. In a Sept. 21 post, Clementi, 18, expressed his anger, writing on the message board, "the fact that the people he was with saw my making out with a guy as the scandal, whereas I mean come on...he was SPYING ON ME...do they see something wrong with this?" But later that evening, he wrote, "Revenge never ends well for me. As much as I would love to pour pink paint all over his stuff … that would just let him win." Final Hours On Sept. 22, Clementi logged back on to the site at 4:38 a.m. with an update. "So I wanted to have the guy over again. I texted roomie around 7 asking for the room later tonite and he said it was fine," he wrote. "When I got back to the room, I instantly noticed he had turned the webcam toward my bed and he had posted online again … saying...'Anyone want a free show just video chat with me tonight.' " Then, Clementi apparently decided to get help. "I ran to the nearest R.A. and set this thing in motion," he wrote. "We'll see what happens." In a post two hours later, he wrote that his residence assistant took his concerns seriously. "He asked me to email him a written paragraph about exactly what happened," Clementi wrote. "I emailed it to him and to two people above him." Later that night, though, Clementi drove onto the George Washington Bridge, parked his car and posted his final message on Facebook: "Jumping off the gw bridge. Sorry." He then walked a mile onto the span and jumped to his death at approximately 8:50 p.m. Clementi's body was found in the Hudson River and identified on Thursday. Meanwhile, the two Rutgers freshman, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have each been charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy for "using the camera to view and transmit a live image." ------------------------------------------------------------------ This has been eating at me since I read it. Anyone else wondering if there is more to this than meets the eye? Or are my jaundiced social worker instincts on overload?

10-05-2010, 08:23 AM	#667
dark_crystal Infamous Member How Do You Identify?: jenny Preferred Pronoun?: babygirl Relationship Status: First Lady of the United SMH Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 5,445 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 1,532 Thanked 26,550 Times in 4,688 Posts Rep Power: 21474856	America: the National Catholic Weekly- group blog "What is a Catholic response to Gay Suicide" It's impossible not to be moved by the terrible stories of the five youths who recently took their own lives because they were being harassed as gays and lesbians. In New York the story of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman who was filmed having a romantic encounter with another man, which was them live-streamed by his "friends," seemed particularly harrowing. A despairing Clementi, age 18, ended his life by jumping off of the George Washington Bridge. Any suicide is an unspeakable tragedy, just as any murder of any kind is a tragedy, but there is something especially sad about a young person believing that their life will never be, or can never be, better. The Christian heart is, as Jesus's heart was, "moved with pity." This rash of deaths has prompted a response, especially on college campuses, and the "It Gets Better" project, which has adult gays and lesbians reminding youth that as one matures "it gets better." Essentially, it is an argument against despair and suicide. Sadly, many of the people interviewed speak of overcoming the hatred that they felt in Christian churches, schools and other organizations. [...] It's a sad irony, because there is one life-changing resource in the Christian tradition that can transform those who feel unloved--that is, Jesus. The Son of God reached out specifically to those on the margins, specifically to those who felt rejected, specifically to those who felt excluded from the community. For Jesus, as the theologian James Alison has written, there was no "other." And there is much in the Catholic tradition in particular that can help gays and lesbians as well. [...] Those places in our tradition might all be good places to start when it comes to outreach, especially with youth (and not just with gay and lesbian youth, but with all who feel excluded). And if pro-life means trying to avoid anything that will threaten any life, from natural conception to natural death, then we should be finding ways to protect all life, which also means preventing suicides, and preventing gay suicides. In any event, there is much for us, the church, still to do. __________________

10-05-2010, 08:39 AM	#668
Mitmo01 Member How Do You Identify?: Disobedient Thing... Preferred Pronoun?: Rebel Soul in the blood..Heathen as well Relationship Status: Marked and Loved....I Belong to Her.... Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Omaha Posts: 984 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 1,523 Thanked 1,354 Times in 579 Posts Rep Power: 927728	very interesting http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...a_Gay_Senator/

10-06-2010, 10:57 AM	#672
Greyson Infamous Member How Do You Identify?: Transmasculine/Non-Binary Preferred Pronoun?: Hy (Pronounced He) Relationship Status: Married Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: SF Bay Area Posts: 6,589 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 21,132 Thanked 8,154 Times in 2,006 Posts Rep Power: 21474858	"Never Leave a Man To Do a Woman's Job" Woodward: VP Hillary 'on the table' By: Carol E. Lee October 6, 2010 12:57 AM EDT Speculating that President Barack Obama will replace Vice President Joe Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the 2012 ticket has been a private pastime among some Democrats over the past few months, and it broke into the open Tuesday night when investigative reporter Bob Woodward said in an interview on CNN it was a possibility. Appearing on "John King, USA" to promote his book “Obama’s Wars,” Woodward was asked by King about possible “political asides” that cropped up while he was doing research. “A lot of people think if the president's a little weak going into 2012, he'll have to do a switch there and run with Hillary Clinton as his running mate,” King said, repeating gossip that’s swirled for several months and appeared from time to time on blogs. “It's on the table,” Woodward replied. “And some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012. President Obama needs some of the women, Latinos, retirees that she did so well with during the 2008 primaries. So they switch jobs and [it's] not out of the question. The other interesting question is, Hillary Clinton could run in her own right in 2016 and be younger than Ronald Reagan when he was elected president.” Woodward did not offer any evidence that the idea is under consideration by either Obama or Clinton. A senior administration official said that any suggestion of replacing Biden with the secretary of state is totally off base. Obama is happy with Biden as his vice president and Clinton as his secretary of state, the official told POLITICO, “and he wants them to keep on doing what they’re doing.” One Democratic source said that the rumor has been circulating among some of Clinton’s longtime supporters. Another Democratic Party source with ties to the Clintons said, “There's so many rumors going around. But I don't believe this is true.” In addition to being talked about as Obama’s running mate in 2012, POLITICO reported in May that some of Clinton’s allies have floated the notion that she should replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon when he makes his long-planned exit from the administration. Maggie Haberman contributed to this report. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43192.html __________________ Sometimes you don't realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness. - Susan Gale

10-04-2010, 02:11 PM	#664
SuperFemme Timed Out How Do You Identify?: Permanently Banned 10/24/2010 Preferred Pronoun?: She. Relationship Status: Married (one of 18,000) Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Atascadero, CA Posts: 4,933 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 2,309 Thanked 7,108 Times in 2,327 Posts Rep Power: 0	Bullied Tehachapi gay teen Seth Walsh dies after suicide attempt Seth Walsh was an ordinary everyday kid who just wanted to live his life except there were cruel kids around him who won't let him. Why you ask? Walsh was a young gay kid and there were kids that would not stop tormenting him while school officials ignored the problem despite being aware of the bullying. Walsh as s 13-year-old student at the Jacobsen Middle School in Tehachapi, Kern County, California. On September 19, Walsh hanged himself from a tree in his backyard. Walsh did not die immediately and was discovered and taken to a hospital where he was placed in life support critical care. Seth Walsh from Tehachapi, California finally died Tuesday afternoon after clinging on life support for nine days. During the investigation many students acknowledged that Seth Walsh was in distress due to bullying over a long period of time because Walsh was gay. In spite of an anti-bullying program mentioned by school, the school officials nor the school board (more on the politically inept school board later) didn't intervene to stop the bullying and mental torture of Seth Walsh. It's ironic that the principal of the Jacobsen Middle School Susan Ortega proudly claims that she has a B.A. in Child and Family Crisis. Apparently Seth Walsh was a crisis Ortega did not see. Police investigated and interviewed Jacobsen Middle School staff and students regarding the death of Seth Walsh but found that the no crime was committed and there would be no charges in the death of Seth Walsh. Walsh's friends did a video for him while he was on life support. Seth Walsh, may you rest in peace. As far as the principal and staff in Tehachapi Jocobsen Middle School are concerned, I hope everyone there has learned a lesson to listen for cries of help. Listening and acting on bullying could be a matter of life or death. The death of Seth Walsh is the third recent incident of suicide due to anti-gay bullying in schools. Asher Brown, 13, of Texas and Billy Lucas, 15 of Indiana also committed suicide due to bullying. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/...#ixzz11QEHMXQJ

10-06-2010, 11:17 AM	#673
Nat Senior Member How Do You Identify?: bigender Preferred Pronoun?: whatevs Relationship Status: in a relationship Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tx Posts: 3,535 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 11,042 Thanked 13,965 Times in 2,589 Posts Rep Power: 21474855	Puerto Rico - FBI charges 133 in its biggest crackdown ever on corrupt cops http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/06/...rrests/?hpt=T1 __________________ I'm a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl. - Bjork What is to give light must endure burning. -Viktor Frankl

10-06-2010, 11:37 AM	#674
Nat Senior Member How Do You Identify?: bigender Preferred Pronoun?: whatevs Relationship Status: in a relationship Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tx Posts: 3,535 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 11,042 Thanked 13,965 Times in 2,589 Posts Rep Power: 21474855	http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10...ild.samaritan/ Quick-thinking Good Samaritan saved a kid from her abductor in Fresno A construction carpenter by trade until work slowed down, Perez has been recently cutting wine grapes, earning minimum wage. Early Tuesday, there was a light rain, making that task unlikely. Perez, 29, tuned in to television news coverage of the abduction, paying attention to the description and video of the suspect's pickup truck. At about 6:45 a.m., Perez was outside his house talking with his cousin about the abduction when they saw a vehicle matching that description: an older-model, reddish-brown Chevrolet with a white stripe on the side. "I thought, that could be the truck," Perez, a father of two boys, told CNN Tuesday night. That's when he sprang into action. He jumped into his 1988 white Ford pickup and followed the vehicle. Perez tried to cut off the vehicle several times to question the driver. One time, the driver told him, "I don't have no time [to talk]. My battery is dying." The second time Perez pulled up to the Chevy, he saw the little girl, her head popping up from below view, and knew something was wrong. "I kept telling him, 'That's not your little girl,'" said Perez. "We argued. We exchanged words." Perez -- who admitted he did wonder at some point whether the motorist had a gun -- pulled up to the truck a third, and then a fourth time, when he blocked the pickup truck. Immediately after the truck stopped, the girl was out. Perez said he believes the driver pushed her out. "I was beyond scared," he said. Perez got out of his vehicle and stayed with the girl. She was wearing a Winnie the Pooh sweater, he said. The chase had taken him about a mile from his house and into another neighborhood. He yelled for residents to get the girl a blanket. The Chevy drove off. By then, Perez had a partial license plate number, which he gave to dispatchers, Police Chief Jerry Dyer said. About 40 minutes later, police caught up with the truck, now parked, and arrested Gregorio Gonzalez, 24, of Fresno. Charges against him will include kidnapping, false imprisonment and sexual assault, Dyer said. The suspect was not armed. Police, officials and the parents of the girl praised Perez and other good Samaritans and citizens who aided the search and took action to find the girl. "This is a remarkable accomplishment for an entire community," Mayor Ashley Swearengin said. Perez said the incident was beginning to sink in Tuesday night. "I probably saved a little girl's life." The question arises: What would have happened if Perez had gone to work this day? He quoted a relative who said divine providence might have stepped in. "God works in mysterious ways." __________________ I'm a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl. - Bjork What is to give light must endure burning. -Viktor Frankl

10-06-2010, 04:12 PM	#675
Nat Senior Member How Do You Identify?: bigender Preferred Pronoun?: whatevs Relationship Status: in a relationship Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Tx Posts: 3,535 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 11,042 Thanked 13,965 Times in 2,589 Posts Rep Power: 21474855	A noisy workplace doubles the risk of heart disease http://www.latimes.com/health/booste...,1476439.story Years spent in a noisy workplace may take a toll on both hearing and heart health. A study published Wednesday found that persistent noise in the workplace doubled the chances of an employee developing serious heart disease. Previous studies that have looked at the effect of loud noise on the heart have produced mixed results. For the new study, researchers examined a database of more than 6,000 employees ages 20 and older who were surveyed about lifestyle, occupation andhealth. The participants were grouped according to those who endured loud noise at work (meaning it was difficult to talk at a normal volume) for at least three months and those who did not experience loud noise. The study found 21% of workers, mostly men, endured noisy workplaces. They were two to three times more likely to have heart disease compared with workers who did not experience noise. The workers who endured loud noise also were more likely to smoke and weigh more than workers who experienced quieter environments. But noise emerged as a risk factor for heart disease even when controlling for those other risk factors. The authors of the study, published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, speculate that noise exerts the same kind of stress on the body as sudden strong emotion or physical exertion. These kinds of stress trigger the release of chemicals that constrict blood flow through the arteries. The study has some flaws. For example, the researchers couldn't rule out that the increased risk of heart disease in an noisy workplace wasn't also due to other factors, such as air pollution, shift work or workload. But the research does suggest persistent loud noise can effect health and "deserves special attention," the authors said. It's also a risk factor that would seem fairly easy to remedy with a good pair of ear plugs or a protective head set. -- Shari Roan / Los Angeles Times __________________ I'm a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl.* - Bjork What is to give light must endure burning. -Viktor Frankl

10-06-2010, 08:17 PM	#676
miss entycing Senior Member How Do You Identify?: dangerous, but worth the risk. Preferred Pronoun?: just be nice.. it's that easy. Relationship Status: CapitalM's carved upon my skin. Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: on the southern edge of sanity, under a carolina moon. Posts: 3,276 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 8,341 Thanked 8,262 Times in 2,254 Posts Rep Power: 21474855	Students Lie Down To Stand Up Against Homophobia Furman University Event Supports Gay Community Mandy Gaither, WYFF News 4 Reporter POSTED: 9:00 pm EDT October 6, 2010 UPDATED: 9:22 pm EDT October 6, 2010 GREENVILLE COUNTY, S.C. -- In light of recent suicides of young men bullied because of their sexual orientation, some Furman University students and staff sent out a message of support to the gay community. Around 50 of them laid down outside the campus library Wednesday to stand up for those who have killed themselves. Signs with pictures of Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown and Raymond Chase were held during the event. All of the young male students have killed themselves since early September after reportedly being bullied or harassed because of their sexual orientation. While Furman hasn’t had the tragedies other schools have felt recently, Dusty Roether, the president of the campus organization EROS, which stands for Encouraging Respect of Sexualities, said some students have transferred in the past after feeling harassed at the school. "If something like this can happen at Rutgers then something like this can certainly happen at Furman," said Roether. "If we can't even feel comfortable on our own campus, then something needs to be done." Flyers were also passed out during the event to tell people who passed by what was going on and how each person can help achieve acceptance for the gay community. “Everyone needs to show their support for diversity and for everyone else so that these tragedies don't happen again," said Rene Travis, a student who participated in the event. Roether said EROS is holding other events on campus like Safe Zone, where students of all sexualities come together to talk about how prejudice can be reduced. Copyright 2010 by WYFF4.com. __________________ True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate their life, through devotion, to something beyond themselves. Whenever someone awakens fully, it affects human consciousness at a collective level. It is like dropping a stone into a dark murky pond. Ripples of light... Not one word need be spoken.

10-07-2010, 06:23 PM	#677
Soon Infamous Member How Do You Identify?: femme Relationship Status: attached Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: . Posts: 6,896 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 29,046 Thanked 13,098 Times in 3,386 Posts Rep Power: 21474858	Investigation Discovers Lou Dobbs Hired At Least Five Undocumented Immigrants To Work At His Estates

10-08-2010, 03:09 PM	#679
Kobi Infamous Member How Do You Identify?: Biological female. Lesbian. Relationship Status: Happy Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Hanging out in the Atlantic. Posts: 9,234 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 9,840 Thanked 34,654 Times in 7,652 Posts Rep Power: 21474861	Very disturbing 1 Ohio school, 4 bullied teens dead by own hand By MEGHAN BARR (AP) – 59 minutes ago MENTOR, Ohio — Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window. The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her. It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died by his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants. One was bullied for being gay, another for having a learning disability, another for being a boy who happened to like wearing pink. Now two families — including the Vidovics — are suing the school district, claiming their children were bullied to death and the school did nothing to stop it. The lawsuits come after a national spate of high-profile suicides by gay teens and others, and during a time of national soul-searching about what can be done to stop it. If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008. Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket — and laughed. "They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died." ___ Sladjana Vidovic, whose family had moved to northeast Ohio from Bosnia when she was a little girl, was pretty, vivacious and charming. She loved to dance. She would turn on the stereo and drag her father out of his chair, dance him in circles around the living room. "Nonstop smile. Nonstop music," says her father, Dragan, who speaks only a little English. At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle. Phone callers in the dead of night would tell her to go back to Croatia, that she'd be dead in the morning, that they'd find her after school, says Suzana Vidovic. "Sladjana did stand up for herself, but toward the end she just kind of stopped," says her best friend, Jelena Jandric. "Because she couldn't handle it. She didn't have enough strength." Vidovic's parents say they begged the school to intervene many times. They say the school promised to take care of her. She had already withdrawn from Mentor and enrolled in an online school about a week before she killed herself. When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August. Two years after her death, Dragan Vidovic waves his hand over the family living room, where a vase of pink flowers stands next to a photograph of Sladjana. "Today, no music," he says sadly. "No smile." ___ Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says. He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class. "It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges." Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was. "They called him fag, homo, queer," says his mother, Jan. "He told us that." Bullies once knocked a pile of books out of his hands on the stairs, saying, "'Pick up your books, faggot,'" says Dan Hughes, a friend of Eric's. Kids would flick him in the head or call him names, says 20-year-old Drew Juratovac, a former student. One time, a boy called Mohat a "homo," and Juratovac told him to leave Mohat alone. "I got up and said, 'Listen, you better leave this kid alone. Just walk away,'" he says. "And I just hit him in the face. And I got suspended for it." Eric Mohat shot himself on March 29, 2007, two weeks before a choir trip to Hawaii. His parents asked the coroner to call it "bullicide." At Eric's funeral and after his death, other kids told the Mohats that they had seen the teen relentlessly bullied in math class. The Mohats demanded that police investigate, but no criminal activity was found. Two years later, in April 2009, the Mohats sued the school district, the principal, the superintendent and Eric's math teacher. The federal lawsuit is on hold while the Ohio Supreme Court considers a question of state law regarding the case. "Did we raise him to be too polite?" Bill Mohat wonders. "Did we leave him defenseless in this school?" ___ Meredith Rezak, 16, shot herself in the head three weeks after the death of Mohat, a good friend of hers. Her cell phone, found next to her body, contained a photograph of Mohat with the caption "R.I.P. Eric a.k.a. Twiggy." Rezak was bright, outgoing and a well-liked player on the volleyball team. Shortly before her suicide, she had joined the school's Gay-Straight Alliance and told friends and family she thought she might be gay. Juratovac says Rezak endured her own share of bullying — "name-calling, just stupid trivial stuff" — but nobody ever knew it was getting to her. "Meredith ended up coming out that she was a lesbian," he says. "I think much of that sparked a lot of the bullying from a lot of the other girls in school, 'cause she didn't fit in." Her best friend, Kevin Simon, doesn't believe that bullying played a role in Rezak's death. She had serious issues at home that were unrelated to school, he says. After Mohat's death, people saw Rezak crying at school, and friends heard her talk of suicide herself. A year after Rezak's death, the older of her two brothers, 22-year-old Justin, also shot and killed himself. His death certificate mentioned "chronic depressive reaction." This March, her only other sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose at age 21. Their mother, Nancy Merritt, lives in Colorado now. She doesn't think Meredith was bullied to death but doesn't really know what happened. On the phone, her voice drifts off, sounding disconnected, confused. "So all three of mine are gone," she says. "I have to keep breathing." ___ Most mornings before school, Jennifer Eyring would take Pepto-Bismol to calm her stomach and plead with her mother to let her stay home. "She used to sob to me in the morning that she did not want to go," says her mother, Janet. "And this is going to bring tears to my eyes. Because I made her go to school." Eyring, 16, was an accomplished equestrian who had a learning disability. She was developmentally delayed and had a hearing problem, so she received tutoring during the school day. For that, her mother says, she was bullied constantly. By the end of her sophomore year in 2006, Eyring's mother had decided to pull her out of Mentor High School and enroll her in an online school the following autumn. But one night that summer, Jennifer walked into her parents' bedroom and told them she had taken some of her mother's antidepressant pills to make herself feel better. Hours later, she died of an overdose. The Eyrings do not hold Mentor High accountable, but they believe she would be alive today had she not been bullied. Her parents are speaking out in hopes of preventing more tragedies. "It's too late for my daughter," Janet Eyring says, "but it may not be too late for someone else." ___ No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program. Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies. But that's not so different from most high schools. Senior Matt Super, who's 17, says the suicides unfairly paint his school in a bad light. "Not everybody's a good person," he says. "And in a group of 3,000 people, there are going to be bad people." StopCyberbulling.org founder Parry Aftab says this is the first time she's heard of two sets of parents suing a school at the same time for two independent cases of bullying or cyberbullying. No one has been accused of bullying more than one of the teens who died. Barbara Coloroso, a national anti-bullying expert, says the school is allowing a "culture of mean" to thrive, and school officials should be held responsible for the suicides — along with the bullies. "Bullying doesn't start as criminal. They need to be held accountable the very first time they call somebody a gross term," Coloroso says. "That is the beginning of dehumanization." Associated Press writer Jeannie Nuss in Columbus contributed to this report. Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.