School Bullying, Harassment, Or Stalking?
Warning--long post.
My teen daughter is being served a smorgasbord of unwanted behavior, and the laws and protections overlap in weird ways. I'm meeting with a lawyer this week but am trying to prepare.
After months, my daughter just wants peace of mind that she will be left alone and I'm trying to find some way to give her assurance that she will. If you've never been harassed, it's hard to describe the mental toll that it takes on you. Even if no single act is that earth-shatteringly horrible, the repetition over time is like water torture. I was thinking that a peace order is the way to go, but the look back is only 30 days. What has happened in the last 30 days won't seem significant if taken out of context of the last six months. And frustratingly, even though the sum total of what has happened is bad, since it has changed over time, it's like the score keeps getting reset depending upon the type of unwanted behavior or the setting.
The most slam-dunk harassment occurred when school was not in session (repeated, unwanted, scary, paranoid messages and an online boast about the harasser's effectiveness). We have screenshots of everything. But that was not when school was in session so the school doesn't care. It could be harassment under the law, but the messages did stop after a written, legal warning, so maybe not?
At the same time, although the messages stopped, there was an incident in which the person in question failed to intervene when my daughter's life was in danger. My daughter reported it to her workplace at the time but we have no photos or proof. There were also several weeks of persistent glaring, following around the workplace, spreading of false information to co-workers. Hard to have proof of following and glaring, but we do have proof of the rumors. So possible stalking because of the fear element?
Since school started there has been physical intimidation (but no violence), rumors spread, enlisting of others to help shun and exclude, while this person was temporarily put in a position of authority and this caused my daughter to miss out on some important school activities. I think this meets the standard for school bullying pretty closely and we have proof, but the three bullying reports pertaining to this are just collecting dust (no formal response from the school after months).
The person in question showed up to an activity where my daughter would be known to be, and tried to assume a position there where she could potentially again, fail to intervene if my daughter's life was in danger. I would think this could be stalking because of the fear element, but bullying does not cover stalking? I think I read that at the stopbullying.gov website.
Most recently, after being told by my daughter, in writing, to stop all forms of contact, and being told by the school repeated to stop following my daughter online, stop creating fake accounts to follow her, and we blocked her on everything, in every way we could, we just discovered that the person in question created a new account and has been following a member of our family, which can only be motivated out of a desire to keep tabs on my daughter. This is why we wanted the peace order, but I think judge will say, as the school did, big deal, just block her. But she has been blocked and she just keeps at it. Is this harassment? Bullying? Stalking? Nothing?
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