A 12-year-old girl was sitting at her desk when a handful of her classmates claimed to notice a “smell” coming from between her legs. Their next move put the poor girl in the ER. Now, her mother, Leigh Davey, has shared her story in hopes that it might prevent the same thing from happening to another vulnerable pre-teen.
After going through an unimaginably painful ordeal with her 12-year-old daughter, Leigh Davey was at her wit’s end. With nowhere left to turn, she posted her story on Facebook in hopes that it might resonate with other social media users and ultimately make a difference in the world.
“Our beautiful girl has been subjected to some awful bullying at school,” Leigh wrote on Facebook. “It’s been a very private 7 months for us, dealing with this, immediate family only.”
After trying to deal with the bullying of her daughter privately for months, Leigh Davey ultimately turned to the public. Things weren’t getting any better at her daughter’s school. In fact, they had gotten so bad that the poor girl was now attempting suicide. In a desperate plea to other parents on social media, Leigh explained what her daughter had been made to endure by her cruel classmates and the incompetent administrators who did nothing to put an end to her torture.
“In this age of social media, children (because they are children) think it’s ok to send hateful messages (to me also along with their parents who won’t take responsibility) without consequences,” Leigh wrote on Facebook. “I’ve had calls from these children calling me an old hag because I’ve defended our daughter, approached parents and pleaded with them to talk with their children and ask them to stop. I’ve even approached the children themselves, but been threatened by parents with harassment.”
“The WA department of education doesn’t expel children from schools for bullying, as they say: ‘Every child is entitled to an education.’ What about our child’s entitlement?” she implored. “She’s been sent home numerous times after self harming at school. She’s not allowed a pencil sharpener as she takes the blade out and cuts herself. The WA department of education also told me: ‘You should teach your child how to be resilient against bullies.’ Yes, they said that.”
Leigh went on to share one of the more devastating ordeals her daughter was made to endure at school, and it’s enough to make any parent’s blood boil. The end result was a trip to the emergency room because the little girl was so embarrassed and emotionally tortured that she was trying to kill herself.
“Our girl has had a video taken of her sitting at her desk at school, legs slightly open, with a lovely caption about the smell,” Leigh wrote. “It was posted to Snapchat. I spent 90 mins with the police as they tried to determine if it was photographing and distribution of pornographic material.”
“Yes, a 12 year old can be prosecuted if the content breaches certain criteria,” wrote Leigh Davey. “Sadly our daughter’s didn’t, but she was subjected to weeks of ridicule. Repercussions? The girl who posted the video lost her playtime. The person who took the video? Nothing, because no one would tell who it was,” the frustrated mother added.
Leigh also shared a photo of her daughter in the hospital so that viewers could visualize just how devastating the consequences of bullying can be. The mother said she had spent five hours in the past week with psychiatrists, doctors, and nurses “because our girl ‘had a plan to commit suicide.'”
“Please, in this awful age of social media (or anti-social media as we call it) check your children’s messages,” implored the heartbroken mother. “Their devices are a privilege, nothing more, nothing less, so please make sure they are being polite and respectful in their messages. Teach the children to ‘talk’ not use text or social media to air their differences. Bullying affects the whole family, not just the bullied. It needs to stop and it needs to stop now!”
As painful as it was to post what happened to her daughter online, Leigh Davey implored others to share her little girl’s story as well, in hopes that it might make some progress toward curbing bullying in school. Children should be able to learn without worrying that their classmates are taking pictures or videos of their private parts without their knowledge and posting the images and footage online with nasty captions. Parents, this is unacceptable. We need to do better. It’s time we all had a talk with the young people in our lives about bullying and its devastating effects.
