This tragedy is a specific parental failure, not a general systemic one:
The parents of a 10-year-old boy who took his own life after being bullied at school for his glasses and teeth have filed a lawsuit that includes photos of his injuries. Sammy Teusch’s family moved to Greenfield, Indiana, in November 2022, where he was relentlessly bullied at Weston Elementary and later at Greenfield Intermediate
Sammy repeatedly sought help from teachers, but no action was taken
Sammy took his own life in May. His 13-year-old brother discovered his asphyxiated body at home
The lawsuit includes photos of injuries and a text message from a bully appearing to confess to driving Sammy to suicide. The parents accuse the school district of showing “callous indifference” and failing to protect Sammy despite their repeated pleas for intervention.
It’s bad enough that parents force their children to go to public schools, in which “callous indifference” is designed from the start. But to ignore the suffering of a child who is a square peg in the round hole, and expect the school to eliminate it, or even mitigate it, is a complete dereliction of parental duty. Especially when homeschooling the child is an easy and legal option.
Indiana homeschool families are not required to register with the state and do not have to do any testing or reporting.
If your child is being bullied at school, don’t hesitate to pull him or her out of school immediately and keep him out until the matter is well and truly sorted. And never, ever, rely upon the school authorities to do anything whatsoever to defend your child; even the kindest-hearted schoolteacher or school administrator has responsibilities that do not permit them to do much, if anything, to prevent one or more schoolchildren from bullying or otherwise preying upon another child.
Far too many parents are quite happy to abandon their own responsibilities in the false belief that the schools operate in loco parentis. They never have and they never will.