Has anyone been following the Amanda Todd story? A 15 year old Vancouver teenage girl killed herself basically because of blackmailing and bullying due to her flashing of breasts on the internet in the seventh grade.

Taken from Wikipedia:

While in seventh grade, Todd met with friends over video chat to meet new people over the internet. She was complimented with such terms as "stunning", "beautiful", and "perfect". During one of these sessions, someone wanted her to show her breasts, and she complied.

A year later, an anonymous user left a message on her Facebook profile. A user who had her personal details blackmailed her, threatening to send topless pictures of Todd to others if she did not give them a "show". At 4 am during Christmas break, police arrived at Todd's door, possibly to inform her that photos of her breasts were circulating on the Internet. She became sick, started to experience anxiety, major depression and panic disorder.

After moving to a different home, she began to take drugs and alcohol. Her anxiety worsened, and she couldn't go out of the house.
A year later, the person who had blackmailed her re-entered her life, posting a list of her friends and school. He used an image of her breasts as his profile picture. Subsequently, she was ostracized by her peers. She began self-mutilation by cutting herself. She changed schools again. Within the month, her situation had improved, despite her isolation.
A month after that, she began communicating with an "old guy friend". They exchanged text messages. He told her that he liked her. She knew he had a girlfriend. He invited her to his home while his girlfriend was on vacation, and they engaged in some form of sex.

After a week, she received a text message warning her to get out of school. The girlfriend and the "old guy friend" with fifteen others came to find her. During the confrontation, the girlfriend stated "look around nobody likes you", in the presence of approximately 50 other students. One of the students yelled out for the girl to punch Todd. The girlfriend then threw Todd to the ground and struck her several times while students filmed it. Teachers ran to her aid, but she remained in the "ditch", where her father eventually recovered her. After arriving home, she drank bleach, and was taken to hospital by ambulance for treatment. Upon returning home, she discovered that the incident was reported on Facebook, with such remarks as "she deserved it", "did you wash the mud out of your hair?", and "I hope shes dead."

Todd then moved again to live in another city with her mother. Six months after the incident, people were still posting images of bleach, Clorox, and ditches, and tagging her in them with comments such as "She should try a different bleach", "I hope she dies this time and isn't so stupid.", and "They said I hope she sees this and kills herself".
She began constantly cutting herself and taking anti-depressants, and was receiving counseling. Around that time[when?], she had overdosed, and spent two days in hospital.[14]
On October 10 at about 6:00 PM local time, she was found dead.[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd

Sad story. Reading it, it reminds me of how vulnerable troubled young women are to being misused/abused by men and a "moral" society in general.

RIP Amanda.

video can be found all over youtube, but here is one link.



The story goes far beyond simple bullying - very sad statement on so many layers of failure by people.

It's something very sad. I've been surprised to hear about her death, I thought she would get a serious help from people around her....

She isn't the only one, sadly.... A boy killed himself after being victim of intensive bullying for being openly gay. An other one for being disable.

In shock me deeply to hear people saying she bring it to herself, she was a bitch to start with, etc.

Being bullied isn't because one is playing the victim, it isn't because one pays attention to what other say, it is not about giving them munitions to bully more.

Deleting her account wouldn't have stop that.

RIP Amanda, I hope people will wake up and understand what bullying is truly.

what happened to that poor girl wasn't "bullying", it was sexual harassment, peddling of child pornography, assault and any number of additional crimes. what the police in those communities could have possibly been thinking is way beyond my comprehension.

we, as parents and just generally as adults, need to do a considerably better job of empowering our children to handle bullying, just as we need to also do a considerably better job of addressing the kids and enablers who engage in bullying head-on.

The modern witch hunt. To connect with it, sign up for Facebook today.
R.I.P. Amanda.

Wow, how incredibly sad.

I couldn't imagine experiencing all that she did on top of all the normal emotional hardships of being a teenager. I think those are some very rough years, particularly for girls. I wish parents and schools would address bullying problems by somehow doing more to instill morality in kids. Unfortunately, morality is something that needs to be learned because we are (obviously) not inherently moral creatures.

I also think that cyber-bullying and harassment needs to be taken more seriously by the police. About eight years ago, while I was still in the U.S. and before I met my husband, I was stalked and harassed by a guy on myspace. He begin to send messages about me to people in my friends' list, etc. Finally, I called the police because I didn't know what else to do. So an officer came over. I told him what was happening. He basically laughed at me and told me I shouldn't take it seriously because it was all over the internet and not happening in "the real world." I was dumbfounded and was left feeling all the more helpless.

My heart feels heavy for this girl.

That's like blaming the printing press for all bad things ever printed... facebook just happens to be the tool kids use today - back when I was at school similar things would happen with graffity on walls or the like. The medium has changed, but bullying is neither new nor special. Always happened, always will. What is special in this case is the severity and the perseverance. When a kid got bullied at my school did not he have to run away, but the teachers would rather move the bully to another class... here the victim did not get the back up she needed.

That is precisely what I meant. I do not blame Facebook. I just notice the witch-hunt pattern that continues to reappear throughout the ages.

Personally, I think the problem that these social sites (like facebook) present is that they allow people to be in consistent contact with a much larger group of people (hence, more complex dynamics), and many of the people in their friends' list are really more like acquaintances than actual friends. These sites also often leave people overly exposed due to a lack of privacy. Sure, you can set your profile to private, but there will probably still remain people in your friends list that you don't really know.

And sadly, teenagers in particular have not yet learned how to properly filter what they reveal to others. They can also be naive in not realizing that they shouldn't just automatically trust everyone.

I deleted my facebook and myspace accounts because, despite the fact that I tried to use caution about what I posted, I didn't like feeling that my life was being so exposed. Also, I found that the more people I had in my little "virtual world," the more complex my social life became... albeit a virtual one.

Really really sad. Something I cannot I imagine happening. It does seem like she was finally getting help but it was too late? If Facebook threats kept coming for months and months, something went massively wrong there. not sure if that is on FB side, her side or her parents/guardians. A life has been snubbed out for nothing. Truly tragic.