http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/news/050..._bullying.html
Cyber bullying on the rise
Schools work to help students
Heather Simpson was harrassed by cyber bullies.
By Dawn Jones
Mid Michigan — (05/06/05)--In the past decade, the Internet has become a powerful communications tool with e-mail, instant messaging and chat rooms.
And while most interactions via the World Wide Web are positive, an increasing number of young people are using the power of the Internet to intimidate and antagonize their peers.
Dawn Jones took a look at how years of vicious cyber attacks impacted the life of a local teen.
What happened to Heather Simpson of Cass City is part of a growing culture known as "cyber bullying."
Simpson became a target after she came to the defense of some friends who had become victims of bullying. That was three years ago and her life has not been the same since.
By all accounts, Simpson is a normal, happy teenager. She sings, plays guitar, writes her own songs and has dreams of being on Broadway one day.
Simpson also spends a lot time on the Internet instant messaging and chatting with her friends. She never imagined that it would one day become the source of her pain.
"It started out really bad, actually," she said. "One of the girls, she e-mailed me and it was over a boy that had a crush on me and that she liked.
"So basically it was, 'I had him first and you can't have him,' and then she started writing me these really disgusting names."
Simpson was 10 years old and a fifth grader at Cass City Middle School when she says the nasty attacks began. She had become a victim of cyber bullying.
The bullies were a group of girls who at one time had been her friends. For months she didn't tell a soul about the torment she was experiencing until one particular incident that forced her to reach out for help.
"When all of the girls got together at one of their houses and e-mailed me and told me that everyone hates me, 'Why don't you just go kill yourself?'" Simpson said. "'Nobody likes you anyway ... '"
Simpson's mom remembers how she felt when she first learned of the viscous attacks on her daughter.
"I was afraid for her life to be honest with you because you never know when a child is going to do something like that," said mother Sue Simpson.
"In the society like it is today, you never know if they are going to do what they say, what their threats are."
Sue Simpson immediately went in search of some answers, talking to school officials and reaching out to the parents of the bullies.
"But the parents, they basically were not receptive at all," Sue Simpson said. "Heather never received any apologies; they were just written up in the school and that was it."
But it wasn't over; the attacks intensified.
"I would get it on the Internet when I was at home, I'd go to school, I would still get it no matter where I went," Heather Simpson said. "There was no escape from it."
Simpson eventually left Cass City Middle School and is now in a private Christian school and she could not be happier.
"I love my new school," she said. "Everyone is so nice. It is such a relief after every thing that's gone on. I go there and its like I actually want to go to school now."
The superintendent of Cass City schools says the district is in the process of implementing -- with the help of Simpson's mom -- a bullying-prevention program.
Sue Simpson is also a member of Bully Police, an Internet organization that is working to get anti-bullying laws passed in all 50 states.
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