ANOTHER female rape victim suicides . . .

[ConsƦcons]

The Globe and Mial - April 9, 2013


Nova Scotia teen kills herself after rape, bullying, mother says


A Nova Scotia teenager has killed herself after she was raped by four
boys, who distributed a photo of the assault and bullied her, her family
says.

They said Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17-year-old high-school student from Cole
Harbour, near Halifax, struggled emotionally for more than a year after
she was sexually assaulted and a police investigation ended without
criminal charges.

"She would not be gone today if that didn't happen, not just the rape
... I think, what made it so much worse is the people who turned their
back on her, the name-calling ... she just wanted people to believe her
and they didn't," said her mother, Leah.

"She was not ashamed of what happened to her. We made sure that she knew
it was not her fault. But the thing that happened hurt her so deeply,
the only way she could deal with that was to turn that hurt into anger.
And that anger consumed and took her," her uncle Michael said.

He said that his niece was raped in November, 2011, after she and and
another teenaged girl were visiting the house of a family friend. She
was 15 at the time.

A picture of the incident, taken on a cell phone, was circulated and
went viral in the community, making her a target at Cole Harbour
District High School.

"Everybody had it. She came home and had a breakdown," Leah Parsons said.

She said her daughter, a straight-A student, never returned to her high
school after the picture surfaced, just days after the alleged rape,
because she was relentlessly teased and bullied by students, some of
whom had been her friends.

"I couldn't believe that everyone turned their backs on her," her mother
told The Globe Tuesday. The family tried to put her in another school –
she went to live with her father in Halifax after spending about six
weeks in hospital.

But she wanted to come back home. Her mother thought that things were
going well. The day before she committed suicide, Rehtaeh had just been
to see a new therapist and they had seemed to click. Her mother thought
that her daughter's life was improving.

But her mother said that on the night she died, her daughter, who
angered easily, had a difficult conversation with a friend.

"Little things set her off," said Ms. Parsons.

On Thursday, her daughter locked herself in the bathroom. Her mother had
to break in, and found her hanging. She and her boyfriend tried to
revive her as did the paramedics. She was taken off life-support on Sunday.

On her Facebook page, Rehtaeh posted self-portraits accompanied by grim
captions about death and dulling her pain with drugs.

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the
silence of our friends," one post said.

Mr. Parsons said individual teachers tried to help her but police and
the school authorities did little to deal with the harassment, even
though the family complained that the photo constituted child pornography.

"They said it was out of their control," he said.

He said the RCMP told the family that that they had retraced the picture
to one of the boys' mobile phones but could not prove who had snapped
the photo.

An RCMP spokesman, Corporal Scott MacRae, confirmed that the force has
an on-going probe into the sudden death of a young person and had
previously completed an investigation into a sexual-assault complaint.

"In consultation with the Crown, there was insufficient evidence to lay
charges," Cpl. MacRae said.

He offered sympathies to the family "in their difficult times" but said
he could not get into specific details because of privacy rules and
because minors were involved.

Barrett Khan, a vice-principal at Cole Harbour District High School,
said he couldn't comment because Ms. Parsons had not been a student
there in more than a year. He referred media inquiries to the school board.