(Host) Last week, students from 30 schools traveled to Montpelier to hear the story of a boy who was bullied to the point that he took his own life.
John Halligan’s son, Ryan, died five years ago.
In the years since, the father has called attention to the growing problem of "cyber-bullying" and the circumstances that led to Ryan’s death.
VPR’s John Dillon reports:
(Dillon) John Halligan says Ryan’s story is about many things. It’s about bullying, depression and suicide. But it’s also about those who stay silent.
(Halligan) "One of the important messages I always leave with students is that for the vast majority of them, they are not bullies and they are not being bulled. But tragically, far too many of them are bystanders. And I’ve always believed, and I stress this point to young people, is that the bully would not exist without the audience."
(Dillon) Ryan died in October 2003. Halligan says the anniversaries are always hard, and this year was no exception. The hurt to his heart, he says, feels like it just happened.
But Halligan tells and re-tells Ryan’s story – he figures he’s been to about 150 schools so far – because he says it makes a difference.
He saw this the first time he talked to kids, in June 2005 at Mount Mansfield High School in Jericho.
(Halligan) "The emails I received after that presentation just blew me away. My most favorite one was from a senior who had graduated and had emailed six months later and sent this like at 2 in the morning from the dorm room. She went on to say that the presentation had changed her life forever, that after I left she cried and realized that she had to do something. She went up to the girls she had been tormenting since middle school and apologized to them."
(Dillon) Halligan describes Ryan as a gentle, sensitive kid who was teased often at his Essex Junction middle school. He was awkward physically and his sensitivity made him an easy target. Halligan says he and Ryan’s mother dealt with the situation in the traditional way.
(Halligan) "We had a conversation about him learning how to fight so he could learn how to defend himself. I acquiesced to that request. I got him a Tae Bo kick boxing program for Christmas that year, taught him how to kick box. He ended up using it at one point during the winter of seventh grade, got into a fist fight with the kid, stood his ground. And from that point we kept hearing everything was great, the kid backed off. We thought we had solved the problem in that way."
(Dillon) But what the parents didn’t know was that the boy who was tormenting Ryan had also continued the bullying online, though instant messages. The boy started a rumor that Ryan was gay.
(Halligan) "And the reason I found out is that I got onto his account after his death and it was in that environment that the kids started to tell me what really happened at the end of seventh grade, that the kids spread this rumor, other kids got in on this so-called fun. So at school and online this snowballed."
(Dillon) The bullying that Ryan experienced is not a new phenomenon, his father says. But computer technology made it worse.
(Halligan) "And I think technology has a way of amplifying it and accelerating the impact. I often make this point: that to be embarrassed and humiliated in front of a few kids at school is one thing. But to have that online in front of countless kids has got to be a whole different game and a whole different level of effect."
(Dillon) John Halligan believes that in the end Ryan died from depression, an illness made worse by a series of events going back to the fifth grade. So he tells the story over and over, to prompt kids to no longer be bystanders to bullying.
(Halligan) "The whole aspect of bullying, the whole power of being a bully is to have that group behind you that laughs, that eggs you on or even does nothing at all, that just stands there. The stage is set and if we can take away the stage I believe we can minimize the power for a bully to act."
(Dillon) Halligan says his professional career makes it harder these days to give as many talks as he would like. He says when he is able to tell Ryan’s story, the kids get it. What’s really important, he says, is helping the adult world catch up.
For VPR News, I’m John Dillon in Montpelier.
Photo: Students listen to John Halligan, rear, during a conference in Montpelier, Vt., Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)