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| Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd talks about the events leading up to the arrest over the weekend of two juvenile girls in a Florida bullying case at a press conference in Winter Haven, Fla., Monday, Oct. 15, 2013. Two middle school girls ages 14 and 12 have been arrested and charged with felony aggravated stalking in connection with the suicide earlier this year of 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick in Lakeland. Judd said police arrested the 14-year-old girl after she posted online Saturday that she bullied Rebecca and she didn't care. The 12-year-old girl was Rebecca's former best friend, but Judd said the 14-year-old girl turned her against Rebecca. |
WINTER HAVEN,
Fla. (AP) -- After 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick committed suicide
last month, one of her tormenters continued to make comments about her
online, even bragging about the bullying, a sheriff said Tuesday.
The
especially callous remark hastened the arrest of a 14-year-old girl and
a 12-year-old girl who were primarily responsible for bullying Rebecca,
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said. They were charged with stalking
and released to their parents.
"`Yes, I
bullied Rebecca and she killed herself but I don't give a ...' and you
can add the last word yourself," the sheriff said, quoting a Facebook
post the older girl made Saturday.
Police in
central Florida said Rebecca was tormented online and at school by as
many as 15 girls before she climbed a tower at an abandoned concrete
plant and hurled herself to her death Sept. 9. She is one of at least a
dozen or so suicides in the past three years that were attributed at
least in part to cyberbullying.
The sheriff said they were still investigating the girls, and trying to decide whether the parents should be charged.
"I'm
aggravated that the parents aren't doing what parents should do," the
sheriff said. "Responsible parents take disciplinary action."
About
a year ago, the older girl threatened to fight Rebecca while they were
sixth-graders at Crystal Lake Middle School and told her "to drink
bleach and die," the sheriff said. She also convinced the younger girl
to bully Rebecca, even though they had been best friends.
The
girls repeatedly intimidated Rebecca and called her names, the sheriff
said, and at one point, the younger girl even beat up Rebecca at school.
Both
girls were charged as juveniles with third-degree felony aggravated
stalking. If convicted, it's not clear how much time, if any at all, the
girls would spend in juvenile detention because they did not have any
previous criminal history, the sheriff said.
The sheriff's office identified the two girls, but The Associated Press generally does not name juveniles charged with crimes.
The bullying began after the 14-year-old girl started dating a boy Rebecca had been seeing, the sheriff said.
A
man who answered the phone at the 14-year-old's Lakeland home said he
was her father and told The Associated Press "none of it's true."
"My daughter's a good girl and I'm 100 percent sure that whatever they're saying about my daughter is not true," he said.
At their mobile home, a barking pit bull stood guard and no one came outside despite shouts from reporters for an interview.
Neighbor
George Colom said he had never interacted with the girl but noticed her
playing roughly with other children on the street.
"Kids getting beat up, kids crying," Colom said. "The kids hang loose unsupervised all the time."
A telephone message left at the 12-year-old girl's home was not immediately returned and no one answered the door.
Orlando
attorney David Hill said detectives may be able to pursue contributing
to the delinquency of a minor charge for the parents, if they knew their
daughters were bullying Rebecca yet did nothing about it.
But
it "will be easy to defend since the parents are going to say, `We
didn't know anything about it,'" said Hill, who is not involved in the
case.
Perry Aftab, a New Jersey-based lawyer,
told AP last month that it is difficult to bring charges against someone
accused of driving a person to suicide, in part because of free-speech
laws.
The case has illustrated, once more, the ways in which youngsters are using the Internet to torment others.
In
a review of news articles last month, AP found about a dozen suicides
in the U.S. since October 2010 that were attributed at least in part to
cyberbullying. Aftab said she thought the number was at least twice
that.
Before her death, Rebecca changed one of
her online screen names to "That Dead Girl" and she messaged a boy in
North Carolina: "I'm jumping." Detectives found some of her diaries at
her home, and she talked of how depressed she was about the situation.
Last
December, Rebecca was hospitalized for three days after cutting her
wrists because of what she said was bullying, according to the sheriff.
Later, after Rebecca complained that she had been pushed in the hallway
and that another girl wanted to fight her, Rebecca's mother began
home-schooling her in Lakeland, a city of about 100,000 midway between
Tampa and Orlando, Judd said.
This fall, Rebecca started at a new school, but the bullying continued online, authorities said.
"Rebecca's
mother went above and beyond to create interventions. The one issue
that Rebecca's mom said to us was, `I just didn't want to have her not
like me, so I wanted to give her access to her cellphone so she could
talk to her friends,'" Judd said. "Rebecca's family is absolutely
devastated by this. Quite frankly, we're all devastated by this."
