Family sues school district, blames school bullying for 8-year-old’s suicide

Local mental-health officials have said they do not know the reasons behind the increase in suicide deaths, although bullying, in school and over the Internet, is a risk factor for mental health issues.

The courts are seeing more lawsuits from parents over school bullying. Such cases, though, are hard for parents of the bullied to win, since they must prove that the school district had actual notice of harm to the child and was deliberately indifferent to threats of such harm.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Gabriel Taye’s parents outlines an inventory of at least 14 instances of violence at Carson either from other parents or directly from the school’s “behavior logs” — bullies throwing chairs and pushing, choking and threatening other students in the 2016-17 school year. Yet the school’s official report of bullying for the first half of that school year lists only four incidents.

The suit also says Carson Elementary is suffering academically because of the school’s violent atmosphere. But parents, the lawsuit said, were not informed about the extent of Carson’s problems. If Gabriel’s parents had known that he was under threat, the suit says, they would have moved him to another school. Bullying injuries at Carson were routinely downplayed and minimized, the lawsuit said.

Gabriel’s parents say in the lawsuit they learned only after his death that throughout his third-grade year, Gabriel had been bullied, including three instances in early January alone. The lawsuit said the school system apparently does not have any security-camera videos of those events, though it has 31 cameras installed at Carson, and the suit accuses the district of destroying the evidence.

The lawsuit said “all surveillance recordings involving Gabe has been destroyed except for Exhibit A.”

Exhibit A is the Jan. 24 Carson security-camera video showing what the lawsuit says is a student’s assault on Gabriel in a restroom, which Cincinnati Public Schools released publicly in May. A Cincinnati homicide detective who reviewed the video a week after Gabriel’s death said the incident bordered on criminal assault. The video shows Gabriel offering to shake hands, but the other student instead grabs Gabriel and pulls him to the ground.

In May, Ronan publicly disputed the conclusion that the video showed a bully assaulting Gabriel, and she insisted he had merely fainted.

According to the time stamp on the video, however, Gabriel lost consciousness for at least seven minutes until school officials finally arrived, roused him and walked him to the nurse’s office.

Gabriel’s mother said when the nurse, Margaret McLaughlin, called her to fetch Gabriel, the nurse only said Gabriel had fainted. Reynolds took her son home, but he complained of stomach pains. At Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, he was observed overnight and released as a case of flu. Exhausted, he stayed home Jan. 25 but went to school Jan. 26. That evening, he hung himself.

“This complete failure to respond to the known pattern of aggressive behavior Gabe experienced at Carson, along with defendants Jackson’s and McKenzie’s failure to respond to the bathroom attack, constituted deliberate indifference to Gabe’s safety at Carson and to his ability to learn,” the lawsuit said.

Article Appeared @http://www.freep.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/08/08/8-year-old-boy-suicide-lawsuit/548297001/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *