Phoebe Prince Suicide: Article in Slate Magazine: 'Untold Story'

by Amy Judd | July 21, 2010 at 12:00 pm

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An Article in Slate Magazine By Emily Bazelon Examines the 'Untold Story of Phoebe Prince's Suicide and the Role of the Six Teenagers Charged For It'

Emily Bazelon has been reporting in South Hadely since February 2010 and has written about the case of Phoebe Prince, the young girl who came to the United States from Ireland, but who committed suicide on January 14 2010 after she was bullied both online and at school.

In this new article in Slate Magazine, Bazelon examines what really happened to Phoebe Prince, and if the six teenagers facing charges for her murder really should be going to trial this September.

Who is to Blame for Phoebe Prince's Death?

Sean Mulveyhill, Austin Renaud, Kayla Narey, Ashley Longe, Sharon Chanon Velazquez and Flannery Mullins are all facing charges in connection with Phoebe Prince's death.

As Bazelon reports, the six students became 'international symbols of callow teenage evil'. They were kicked out of South Hadley High and Sean Mulveyhill lost a football scholarship. They all face the possibility of time in prison if they are convicted.

Bazelon asks her readers to think about this:

There is no question that some of the teenagers facing criminal charges treated Phoebe cruelly. But not all of them did. And it's hard to see how any of the kids going to trial this fall ever could have anticipated the consequences of their actions, for Phoebe or for themselves. Should we send teenagers to prison for being nasty to one another? Is it really fair to lay the burden of Phoebe's suicide on these kids?

All six have pleaded not guilty, but everyone except Austin Renaud are facing charges of civil rights violation with bodily injury, and that could mean 10 years in prison.

Bazelon says that her research:

reveals the uncomfortable fact that Phoebe helped set in motion the conflicts with other students that ended in them turning on her. Her death was tragic, and she shouldn't have been bullied. But she was deeply troubled long before she ever met the six defendants. And her own behavior made other students understandably upset.

She says that Phoebe's story is an example of how difficult it can be for everyone, the school, parents, kids to cope with bullying and address the situation before it is too late.

Phoebe Prince's Journey to South Hadley High School

In Bazelon's article she reveals that Phoebe had started cutting herself in 2008 while still in Ireland and how she had wrestled with the discussion of emotional pain in an essay she wrote. She also reportedly had some trouble with other girls while at the Irish boarding school. When her parents pulled her out of that school she had a falling out with a girl over a boy.

When she first came to South Hadley she made friends easily and was very sociable according to the article. Bazelon says that the story of the 'mean girls' at South Hadley who started to torment Phoebe because she was getting very popular with the boys is not the same story that the police interviews tell.

"I'm upset and angry that bullying wasn't taken more seriously here before this," says Nina, almost 16, who was taunted for being a "poser" by a group of girls in middle school. (I have changed the names of kids who talked to me but have not already been identified in the press.) But Phoebe's death "has been turned into this Lifetime movie plot. It's so unlike what actually happened."

Bazelon says that the other students she spoke to say that Phoebe got into conflicts with other students separately, and although that does not excuse any bullying that took place, Phoebe was seen as someone who was 'attracting guys away from relationships'.

The Bullying Begins

In November 2009 Phoebe's prescription for Prozac was renewed and she was placed on Seroquel, which is used to treat mood disorders. It was that following Friday that Sean Mulveyhill tried to break off the relationship he was having with Phoebe and her mother then says she swallowed the entire bottle of Seroquel. She spent the next week in hospital due to organ failure. After Sean and Kayla got back together, Sean stopped talking to Phoebe as she had told Kayla she and Sean had had sex, but Kayla said she was not mad at Phoebe at that point.

After that she became interested in Austin Renaud, but he was dating Flannery Mullins and some comments about Phoebe were made on Flannery's Facebook page. It was known that the girls did not like each other and police reports suggest that Flannery stayed clear of Phoebe so there was very little direct contact. Austin is not accused of bullying Phoebe, but is accused of statutory rape, but he says he never had sex with her.

Sharon Chanon Velazquez had a few direct verbal altercations with Phoebe and was suspended for her behavior and then in early January Flannery, Sean and Ashley Longe were writing about Phoebe on Facebook and then on January 14 she was sent to the school nurse for having some kind of scar on her chest and was subjected to a 'series of taunts' from Sean, Kayla and Ashley after school. That is the day she went home and hung herself.

About two hours before she died, Phoebe texted with the boy she'd sat with that day in the library. In one of several messages that speak to her feelings of desperation, she wrote: "I cant do it anymore … im literally hme cryn, my scar on my chest is potentially permanent, my bodies fukd up wht mre du they want frm me? Du I hav to fukn od!" The boy wrote back, reassuring her that he would talk to Sean and Ashley and make them stop. "Who cares what other people think phoebe I know you're a good person," he wrote.

Part 2 and 3

In Part 2 Emily Bazelon Examines the record of District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, and in Part 3 she looks at whether the South Hadley schoosl could have done more to help Phoebe Prince.

No amount of justification can forgive bullying and Phoebe Prince's suicide is a tragic and unforgiving story of a life cut too short.

Bazelon's articles ask a lot of questions about the nature of the Phoebe Prince case, about whether six teenagers should be faced with paying for her death when they were not the only factors that may have contributed to it and if they school did all they could to address the bullying, not just of Phoebe, but of other students too.