WE could only pray that what happened to 15-year-old Audrie Pott would never happen to our own children. She was sexually assaulted by three fellow students at Saratoga High School — boys she had been friends with since middle school. Worse, she found out that graphic pictures of her naked and being attacked were taken and shared via text and the internet. Audrey committed suicide.
Audrie was said to have gone to a house party in Saratoga on Labor Day weekend, had too much to drink and fell asleep in a bedroom and woke up to “the worst nightmare imaginable,” according to her family’s lawyer, Robert Allard.
NBC Bay Area News reported that Audrie’s parents didn’t learn why their daughter killed herself up until her memorial service, where some friends told them there was more to the story that they should look into.
That’s when they hired Allard’s law firm to investigate.
Her Facebook page and text messages discovered by her parents only after her memorial service revealed cries of despair and humiliation such as:
“I have a reputation for a night I don’t remember.”
“The whole school is talking about it.”
“My life is ruined.”
“The boys who did this can die in a hole for all I care.”
“I’m in hell.”
The San Jose Mercury News reported that according to authorities, “the audacity of the boys to share the horrifying images in Audrie’s case was the critical piece of evidence that led to their arrests last Thursday — a stunning example of how cyberbullying can lead to tragedy and provide a digital trail for police.”
“What were they thinking?” Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith asked the question many of us have been thinking all along. “I don’t know why they would think it would be OK.”
After eight months, Audrie’s parents revealed their daughter’s identity and the details about her death as a first step in bringing awareness to this kind of violence and cyberbullying, as well as pursuing an “Audrie’s Law” to help curb the problems.
As the Associated Press reported, Audrie’s family also started the Audrie Pott Foundation (audriepottfoundation.com) to provide music and art scholarships and offer youth counseling and support.
The foundation website alludes to Audrie’s struggles: “She was compassionate about life, her friends, her family, and would never do anything to harm anyone…She was in the process of developing the ability to cope with the cruelty of this world but had not quite figured it all out.”
“Ultimately, she had not yet acquired the antibiotics to deal with the challenges present for teens in today’s society,” the website says.
How can our children acquire the “antibiotics” to deal with the these brutal challenges in today’s world, when it seems many adults and parents may also have blood in their hands in the tragic death of Audrie?
This tragedy compels us to ask, “Where are the adults?”
First of all, the party where the sexual assault happened was a private home in Saratoga, California. Who owned the home? How did these minor kids have access to alcohol?
The Pott family’s lawyer said the venue where the kids partied that fateful night was one of Audrie’s friends house.
This friend’s parents were out of town for the weekend, he said, and the teens had access to an unlocked liquor cabinet.
How can something cruel like this happen without the parents/adults’ knowledge? How can they leave their minor kids home alone without responsible adult supervision? Don’t they even check on their kids while they are out of town?
Don’t the parents have house rules about not allowing their minor kids to drink alcohol? Don’t they make sure that their rules are strictly implemented and followed in their home?
How did the parents of the three boys (who were arrested on suspicion of two felonies and one misdemeanor involving sexual assault and the distribution of the images) handle the tragedy?
Instead of personally communicating and sympathizing with the Pott family for the death of Audrie, the friend’s parents chose to hire attorneys, who released a statement saying that much of the reporting about Audrie’s death were “inaccurate.”
NBC Bay Area News reported that these lawyers distanced their clients (the three boys) from the alleged crime and Audrie’s suicide.
“Most disturbing is the attempt to link Audrey’s [sic] suicide to the specific actions of these three boys,” the statement reads.
Were the lawyers and these boys’ families really saying there was no causal relationship between the cruel sexual assault and the humiliation suffered by Audrie (when the pictures of these sexual battery went viral) and her suicide?
The boys’ lawyers released this statement despite all the graphic evidences, including a photograph of the girl with writing on her leg.
Atty. Allard said that one of the boys wrote on Audrie, saying something like: “ – was here.”
NBC Bay Area News further reported that Atty. Allard filed a 9-count wrongful death lawsuit against the boys and the homeowner where the Labor Day party took place, in large part, to compel some of this information to come forward. The complaint includes allegations of negligence, conspiracy, sexual battery, defamation and false imprisonment.
Before Audrie, there were other victims of sexual assault due to alcohol intoxication and of cyberbullying.
In these instances, there were other kids who have witnessed the crime as they were happening but did nothing to stop the assault.
Some even aggravated the situation by sharing the humiliating pictures of the abuse. Many even called the victims names, and blamed them for what happened.
What is going on in today’s world? Are we raising a generation of kids who are increasingly becoming desensitized to violence? Are we raising children who are becoming incapable of empathizing with the pain of other human beings? Are we raising a generation who can no longer discern what is right and wrong?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
