Last Labor Day weekend, 15-year-old Audrie Pott went to a small party
thrown by one of her classmates at Saratoga High School, a small
suburban public school sandwiched between Apple headquarters and Big
Basin’s redwood forest in Northern California. Audrie and her friends
drank Gatorade and alcohol that evening, but after a while, Audrie began
to feel like she’d had too much, and she went upstairs to sleep in an
empty bedroom.
What happened next has become the subject of countless international headlines and left behind grieving family and friends, and yet it took seven months, thirteen confiscated cell phones, and three arrest warrants for Audrie’s parents to finally conclude why their bubbly, witty teenage daughter who loved art and soccer committed suicide a week after the party by hanging herself in her parents’ bathroom: She was sexually assaulted by her friends, then aggressively cyberbullied by her classmates while an indifferent school administration refused to intervene.
It’s become vogue to decry and denounce cyberbullying — the public persecution of someone via social media. This popular cause not only seems a collective catharsis for those concerned by the expanding digital intrusion into individual privacy, but the issue also couples the hot topics of sexuality and the internet.
The tragic story of Audrie Pott has become the latest to gain traction in this narrative of web bullying pushing young people over the edge. Audrie’s family, after retracing their deceased daughter’s digital footprints, is convinced she was driven to self-destruction by the mass online circulation of sexually explicit photos of her. “With no assault, with no cyberbullying, Audrie is in art class right now,” Larry Pott, Audrie’s father, told reporters shortly after the family decided to go public with Audrie’s story.
Continue reading at BuzzFeed
What happened next has become the subject of countless international headlines and left behind grieving family and friends, and yet it took seven months, thirteen confiscated cell phones, and three arrest warrants for Audrie’s parents to finally conclude why their bubbly, witty teenage daughter who loved art and soccer committed suicide a week after the party by hanging herself in her parents’ bathroom: She was sexually assaulted by her friends, then aggressively cyberbullied by her classmates while an indifferent school administration refused to intervene.
It’s become vogue to decry and denounce cyberbullying — the public persecution of someone via social media. This popular cause not only seems a collective catharsis for those concerned by the expanding digital intrusion into individual privacy, but the issue also couples the hot topics of sexuality and the internet.
The tragic story of Audrie Pott has become the latest to gain traction in this narrative of web bullying pushing young people over the edge. Audrie’s family, after retracing their deceased daughter’s digital footprints, is convinced she was driven to self-destruction by the mass online circulation of sexually explicit photos of her. “With no assault, with no cyberbullying, Audrie is in art class right now,” Larry Pott, Audrie’s father, told reporters shortly after the family decided to go public with Audrie’s story.
Continue reading at BuzzFeed
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