THREE MASSACHUSETTS teenagers accused of bullying 15-year-old Phoebe Prince waived their right to appear in court yesterday to face the charges.
The lawyers and parents of Sean Mulveyhill and Kayla Narey, both 17, and Austin Renaud (18), wanted to avoid the spectacle of the teens appearing in Hampshire Superior Court in Northampton, Massachusetts, in front of a media scrum.
Instead, their lawyers entered pleas of not guilty on their behalf.
The prosecutor, deputy first assistant district attorney Elizabeth Dunphy Farris, said the three teens would be formally booked on charges on Friday at the Massachusetts State Police barracks in Northampton. Judge Judd Carhart continued the case until June 29th, but it is not believed the three defendants will appear in court until a September 15th hearing. The judge said the defendants could remain free on their own recognisance, but cannot approach anyone in the Prince family.
Phoebe Prince, who was born in England but moved to Co Clare with her family when she was two, left Ireland last summer for South Hadley, a middle-class town in western Massachusetts. Her dalliance with Mulveyhill, a star on South Hadley High School’s football team, marked her for abuse by a group of older students, mostly girls, who accused her of not knowing her place.
Northwestern district attorney Elizabeth Scheibel has said the bullies taunted, teased and physically assaulted Phoebe relentlessly for three months before she hanged herself in the stairwell of her family’s apartment January 14th.
Yesterday’s hearing, which lasted just about five minutes, took place before a phalanx of news media, but was just a formality. The case is the biggest school bullying prosecution ever mounted in the US and has attracted national and international attention.
Under Massachusetts law, the accused were entitled to not physically attend their initial hearing. Though that right is rarely invoked in criminal cases, prosecutors were not surprised, given the age of the defendants. They will likely face a media scrum on Friday at the police station.
Phoebe Prince’s family has declined to comment publicly and did not attend yesterday’s hearing.
Mulveyhill and Renaud are charged with statutory rape, while Mulveyhill and Narey are also charged with harassment, disturbing a school assembly, and violating Phoebe’s civil right to attend school.
Six other teens charged in the case are scheduled to appear tomorrow in a juvenile session of court.
At least some, if not all, of those defendants are also expected to invoke their right not to appear in court.