SCHOOL OFFICIALS in South Hadley in Massachusetts have attempted to justify their actions in the case of Phoebe Prince (15), an emigrant from Co Clare, who died by suicide in January.
Further details of the girl’s torment emerged this week.
Last Monday, district attorney Elizabeth Scheibel announced grand jury indictments against six named teenagers and three unnamed juveniles for crimes including statutory rape, assault, violation of civil rights and stalking.
The case has provoked outrage across the US. The Christian Science Monitor calls it “this generation’s Columbine moment for school bullying”, after the 1999 school massacre in which 14 people died.
School officials have given a flurry of interviews, amid calls for the resignation of the school superintendent, board chairman and principal of South Hadley High School.
At the conclusion of a 10-week investigation, Ms Scheibel reported that a number of adult staff knew of the persecution of Phoebe and that her mother twice alerted school staff.
In an interview with the Boston Globe, school superintendent Gus Sayer said officials had known only of two incidents, one week before her suicide.
In one, a teacher overheard students threatening Phoebe, who was not present. In the other, a student jeered her as an “Irish slut” then walked out of the classroom. Mr Sayer said the students were disciplined.
“We don’t have knowledge of any bullying or other incidents before that,” he added.
Phoebe was bullied constantly for three months before she hanged herself on January 14th, with a scarf her sister had given her for Christmas.
Mr Sayer questioned whether the threats and insults were the cause of Phoebe’s death. “People have assumed the bullying caused her death,” he said, “but we don’t know why she took her own life.”
The Prince family have not spoken to the press since her death.
Darby O’Brien, a family friend in South Hadley, told the New York Times that Anne O’Brien Prince, Phoebe’s mother, discussed her fears that a “gang of girls” were a threat to her daughter with school officials in November, and again contacted the school in the first week of January.
Mr Sayer acknowledged that Ms O’Brien Prince had met a school nurse and a guidance counsellor, but said she did not bring up the bullying of her daughter.
The district attorney and superintendent clashed publicly over Mr Sayer’s attempts to defend his staff.
“He is under fire and lashing out,” Ms Scheibel said, adding that Mr Sayer knew nothing of the evidence she had collected.
Students and parents interviewed by the New York Times said that in December and January, Phoebe had repeatedly arrived late for classes, in tears. A teacher was seen comforting her while she wept in a corridor.
Two teachers are said to have watched as bullies hurled abuse at her in the school canteen, and did nothing.
On the day of her suicide, Phoebe was seen crying in the school nurse’s office.
Sean Mulveyhill, Austin Renaud and Kayla Narey are to appear in court on April 6th. The two young men are charged with statutory rape. Kayla Narey allegedly initiated the bullying, out of jealousy after Phoebe went out with Sean Mulveyhill.