From the Houston Chronicle:
Asher Brown's worn-out tennis shoes still sit in the living room of his Cypress-area home while his student progress report — filled with straight A's — rests on the coffee table.
The eighth-grader killed himself last week. He shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at Hamilton Middle School in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District.
Brown, his family said, was "bullied to death" — picked on for his small size, his religion and because he did not wear designer clothes and shoes. Kids also accused him of being gay, some of them performing mock gay acts on him in his physical education class, his mother and stepfather said.
The 13-year-old's parents said they had complained about the bullying to Hamilton Middle School officials during the past 18 months, but claimed their concerns fell on deaf ears.
When will school authorities begin to take the bullying and abuse seriously? How many kids will have to die before the members of our communities take note and force those authorities to implement policies to prevent such tragedies from happening?
Cy Fair ISD officials said Monday that they never received any complaints from Brown's parents before the suicide about the way the boy was being treated at school.
School district spokeswoman Kelli Durham said no students, school employees or the boy's parents ever reported that he was being bullied.
That statement infuriated the Truongs, who accused the school district of protecting the bullies and their parents.
In an opinion piece in the Chronicle, gay dad, Barry Baxter, writes:
There’s a great deal of outrage directed at the students who bullied Asher consistently during his two years at Hamilton, and rightly so. There’s additional focus on a school administration that Asher’s parents and others say looks the other way when students suffer abuse at the hands of their peers. That scrutiny must continue.
But there’s an even broader and more insidious force at work in our country when it comes to gay teen suicide. Granted, gay rights may be inching slowly forward in the court system, but that progress has contributed greatly to unprecedented levels of self-esteem battering rhetoric in the media and from the pulpit.
....
Yes, the bullies and their despicable behavior are responsible for Asher’s death. But so is the toxic, virulently anti-gay environment that continues to swirl around all of our children.
And when will the rest of the people in the country take responsibility for contributing to the toxic environment in which LGTB persons are forced to live and that drives so many young people to take their lives?
May Asher Brown rest in peace and rise in glory.
May God give comfort, consolation, and peace to Asher's parents and to all who love him.
May God have mercy on us all!
H/T to Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin.
