Girl’s Emotional Bullying Video Should Be Cue To Parents: Dad

SCRANTON, PA — Just as the internet can make it harder for kids to deal with bullying, it can provide a forum for them to share how much it hurts to be singled out, picked on and excluded. One of those kids, 10-year-old Cassidy Warner, let it be known in a video that it’s not OK.

What’s happened to the John Adams Elementary School fourth grader in Scranton is an all too familiar story. Using cue cards, she details without speaking what bullies have said and done to her since she was in first grade: They threatened to kill her and said she should kill herself. They beat up on her, spit on her and stepped on her. When she sat down at a lunch table, the other kids got up and moved. She felt completely alone.

“Stop bullying,” she wrote on the final card. “Not just for me, but for other kids, too. Please share my story.”
The video, which has been picked up by ABC News and other news organizations, has been shared and viewed thousands of times. Among those who noticed it was Australian actor, singer and producer Hugh Jackman, who shared the video on his own page.

“I want you to know you’re loved, special & smart,” he wrote on ABC’s social media post of the video. “You’re strong, funny & beautiful inside and out. BULLYING IS NOT OK. Please never stop asking for help. You’ll find it from people and places you never thought possible. I’m your friend.”

Cassidy posted the video on her own Facebook page, but the account was suspended, likely after someone reported it because she is not 13, which violates Facebook rules. Her mother, Jenn Slater, of Duryea, Pennsylvania, reposted the video on her own page, saying she would be her daughter’s voice and urging her followers to share it.

Cassidy lives with her father, James Michael Warner, who told The Times-Tribune his heart broke when he saw the video. His first thought was “I was failing (in) my job as a parent,” he said.

“It just devastated me,” Warner, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, told ABC News of his daughter’s emotional video about bullying. “I don’t know how to explain how it made me feel … even talking about it I get choked up.”

The bullying started when Cassidy was in first grade with name-calling and escalated over the years. Warner initially dismissed it as “kids being kids.” He didn’t know how bad it had gotten until he saw his daughter’s video.

Warner met with the John Adams Elementary School Principal Mario Emiliani earlier this month and he agreed to change Cassidy’s lunch and recess periods and switch her to a different fourth-grade class, a change she didn’t want, The Times-Tribune said. But if the bullying continues, Warner said the family may look at that option.

“ ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. Why am I the one who has to change everything’?” Cassidy asked her parents when they discussed the option of changing classes.

“The principal has taken this very seriously,” Scranton School District Superintendent Alexis Kirijan told the newspaper. “He’s conducted an investigation, looked into everything and talked to the parents.”

Warner told ABC he wasn’t trying to blame the school. “The whole purpose was to let everybody see that these kids are not supposed to be feeling like this,” he said.

In another post on her Facebook page, Cassidy's mother wrote to the Scranton School District and other school districts:

"Your job is not only to teach our children academics, when our children walk through that door and their in your care for the next 6-7 hours it's your turn to be our voice when we're not there to guide them. It's your job to remind them of what we teach them at home, if we teach them not to bully you teach them the same, if their getting away with it at school [you're] contradicting what we teach them at home, we need to be on the same page. You take a big part in molding our children into the bright smart young [ladies] and gentleman they will become, and prepare them for their future, remember it starts at home but it's carried over to school, step up, take part, teach them, discipline them, protect them, acknowledge the good and the bad in them, love them like we do."

THE MENACE OF BULLIES: PATCH SERIES

Over the coming year, Patch will look at the roles society plays in bullying and a child's unthinkable decision to end their own life in hopes that we might offer solutions that save lives.
Do you have a story to tell? Email us at bullies@patch.com.

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• Bullied To Death: When Kids Kill With Words
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• Teen Tells Bullies In Video: 'Every Day, I Wear Your Words'
• Poetry Teacher Helps Bullied Kids Open Tortured Minds
• Bullies And Their Targets The Same In Surprising Number of Cases

The Scranton school board has an anti-bullying policy, and each school in the district has a separate policy to combat bullying and cyberbullying, Kirijan said. Different speakers discuss the dangers of bullying in a district-wide positive behavior program, she said.

Kids who bully face a variety of consequences “unique to the individual incident,” according to the policy. Factors include the nature of the bullying, the student’s developmental age, and the student’s history of problem behaviors and performance. Consequences range from admonishment and temporary removal from the classroom to loss of privileges to detention, in-school and out-of-school suspensions to expulsion.

Warner told ABC response to his daughter’s video has been “overwhelming,” and that his daughter has received supportive comments from around the world. He hopes the video provides visual cues to parents to talk to their kids about bullying.

“I hope parents will just sit down with their kids and talk to them,” he told ABC “I didn’t know it was that bad and that Cassidy was feeling how she was. Make sure they’re [children] not being bullied or not bullying someone else.”

Watch the video below:

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