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Loading ...Mother calls for state probe following son’s death
04.11.2009 12:35pm EDT
(Springfield, Massachusetts) A Springfield woman is calling for the state to investigate a charter school after her 11-year old son hanged himself following months of anti-gay harassment.
Carl Walker-Hoover was found this week hanging by an extension cord on the second floor of the family home.His mother, Sirdeaner L. Walker, said that the New Leadership Charter School did nothing to stop the bullying despite her repeated complaints to the school.
In an interview with the “Republican” newspaper, Walker said that the grade 6 student suffered taunts and threats from other students who made fun of him, insulted the way he dressed and called him gay.
The 11-year-old did not identify as being gay.
A vigil for Carl was held at the school, but Walker said no one from the publicly funded school contacted her. The media was barred from the vigil.
This is at least the fourth suicide of a middle-school aged child linked to bullying, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network said Friday.
Earlier this month, the parents of a Mentor, Ohio, high school student filed a federal lawsuit in connection with their son’s suicide.
Mohat, 17, went home from school on March 27, 2007, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
In a federal lawsuit, the parents of Eric Mohat allege that he regularly “was called ‘gay,’ ‘fag,’ ‘queer’ and ‘homo’ among other names” and that the school did nothing to prevent it.
The lawsuit names the school district, administrators Jacqueline A. Hoynes and Joseph Spiccia, and math teacher Thomas M. Horvath. All have declined comment in the case.
“You do not have to identify as gay to be attacked with anti-LGBT language,” said GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard.
“From their earliest years on the school playground, students learn to use anti-LGBT language as the ultimate weapon to degrade their peers. In many cases, schools and teachers either ignore the behavior or don’t know how to intervene.”
Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT youth reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half reported being physically harassed and about a quarter reported being physically assaulted, according to GLSEN’s 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students.
Where are the [freaking] adults at these schools?
Oh I forgot…with groups like National Org Of Marriage and Defense Of the Family and others, the adults are just turning the other cheek if not egging these bullies on.
This is disgusting! The school should be shut down.
And the Repugnanticans still ask why we need a bullying bill. They always move to defeat this kind of needed law so the blood is on their hands. I wish they would wakeup and pass the laws!
Funny thing about all of this is the ‘fundie’ christians are fitfully denying they had/have ANYTHING to do with this childs death..
Physical assaults in school should be treated as the crimes they are.
The assaulter should be arrested, jailed and tried. Perhaps not in the “real world” judicial system, but definitely within the school system, but not controlled by the school system.
This should definitely be controlled by the judicial branch of local government, but the sentences should be age and action appropriate.
Someone in another “Comment” suggested suspension, suspension, expulsion.
I would suggest suspension plus community service a few times and then removal to a prison-like magnet school upon the third offense.
As for verbal “insult”.
How about we teach children, gay or straight, that when someone calls them “gay” or “fag” that they don’t take it as an insult?
I don’t.
WHY are these kids getting so upset because someone calls them “fag”?
What’s so inherently wrong about being a “fag”?
Maybe if we taught children that there’s no shame inherent in being identified as queer or gay, it wouldn’t upset them so much.
I’m gay. I’m a fag. I’m queer.
Thank Goddess!
‘Cuz “brain dead delusional christian breeder” is the other choice.
This is a huge sympton of the lack of parenting and the hate mongering taught at home (and yes due to groups like NOM as Gary points out..and FOF etc.)
I was bullied a little in grade school and finally kicked the kid, hard, in the ass. He complained and the school took my side. The teachers looked out for him and always sent him to detention. It was a fairly affluent school and this kid was from the wrong side of the tracks, as they say.
He learned it at home, in his trailer, from his father. Probably abused, the poor little thing.
Anyway, I post this just to point out a diverse, well funded school system can get it right, if the leadership cares.
I even had a swim coach who was a huge homophobe and I put it back in his face big time. He knew not to mess with me or my family. It saddens me that some of these families simply don’t have the tools to protect their kids. Our superintendent certainly knew that there was to be no B.S. or my parents would be right in his office threatening his job.
Unfortunately we leave the schools to raise children in this generation and they are as ill equipped to do that as their parents seem to be.
This is so sad and emblamatic of a much bigger issue in society…lack of good parenting, on either side of the bullying, or both.
Poor kids…its just so sad they are taught hate, and the ones on the receiving ends don’t have the support at home needed to combat it. We need to fix our childrearing, hate mongering and hands off approaches or we’ll have messed up adult generations to come, more than the current one we are dealing with.
Conservative parents learn to teach their kids to hate at church or from one of Gary’s hate groups. Liberal parents do not see how their hands off approach to parenting, be their friends not parents attitude, is hurting the kids development.
The huge polarization of society is creating this sympton. The bullyin is not causative, it is a sympton of our polarized society. I hope with new leadership this will improve, because it has to.
If nothing else our first family is an amazing example of how to raise kids…hope it rubs off!
I was just like Carl. In the sixth grade I was teased everyday, but I was too afraid to tell my parents. They only found out when they finally realized something was really wrong with me. My school did nothing to help me. I hope that Carl’s mother sues the hell out of them. Maybe then anti-bullying legislation will start to protect our children.
when will this anti gay bullying stop???
ALL Kids deserve to go to school in a safe environment free from harassment
i think the ones doing the bullying should be the ones to dig the child’s grave, with spoons, not shovels.
it would be interesting to see how quickly intervention would happen if one of those teens being harassed took a baseball bat to the the people harassing them! how quickly the tables would turn – and maybe take the bat to their parents for teaching them that behavior!
signed – sick of the harassment
This is why groups like the National org of Marriage needs to be shut down. Their campaign is not about Marriage it is about breeding antigay intolerance.
People please start call Sothern Poverty Law Center and report NOM as a hate group. Their #(334) 956-8200. If enough people complain they will list them for who they are a Hate Group, plan and simple. (334)956-8200