Tragic story of Anthony Stubbs, who killed himself after being hounded at school about his sexuality Mum's agony after 16-year-old found hanged in woodland Yet another horrible story, sad to see this crap is going on in so many countries. RIP Anthony Stubbs. Girls obsessively bullying a boy over his sexuality seems a bit bizarre, I hope there are consequences for the bullies.
I agree that we really need to start making this stuff unsafe for people. Homophobia is not going to end until people start dearly paying a price for it.
I don't see why harassment to the point of death shouldn't hold some sort of punishment. Just add another degree of murder...? 4th degree. Harassment to the point of Death. Also... "Mad World" By Gary Jules came on my Pandora as I read this... only added to the heartbreak I felt.
I feel like they should just make it sexual harassment (which is what it is) and make it a sex crime so that those convicted of it find themselves on the sexual offenders registry.
I don't get it either. It's still technically murder in a way, by mentally manipulating a person to drive themselves to their own death. It should be charged as a serious crime.
Couple it with murder, so it carries a sentence with it. I'll be honest, I would rather stop teenagers from dying because of harassment before I get to marry a member of the same sex.
So terribly terribly sad. These girls just don't have a clue. I always see myself as a servivor because I was badly bullied. Not due to my sexuality, as it wasn't obvious. But because I was quiet. And though I didn't event attempt it, I was emotionally scarred. Even now, many years later, I can suffer the lasting effect of what they did. If only Anthony was able to share his pain with someone who understood. Personally, I don't think we'll ever get rid of homophobic or any format of bullying. I just think it's human nature, sadly. ---------- Post added 7th Feb 2013 at 08:17 PM ---------- Unfortunately they could only manage man slaughter because they weren't directly involved. And it would also not be deemed intention.
I feel exactly the same way. There are a lot of things I want before marriage, like the passage of ENDA, queer-affirmative VAWA (which is to say, VAWA), and queer-affirmative immigration reform first. I also want hate-crime legislation with teeth. But honestly, I don't want it to be murder. That is absolutely what's going on, but I don't want it to carry a prison sentence for a couple of reasons. One, I feel like people who do this need to be punished to an extreme degree, but I actually feel that prison time is more destructive to a person's character. I think there's a place for retributive justice, but we don't want to screw people up so badly that they can't reform. Second, I actually feel like it's good to preserve a harasser's freedom as long as she's made to pay a very serious price for it in other ways. Being on a sex offender list is a really big deal.
The only case you could make is 2nd degree manslaughter, but these cases are difficult to withstand any test in a court of law, so they'd probably just get off scot free. How can this be construed as a sex crime?
It's not currently. I am arguing that sexual harassment should be considered a sex crime rather than a kind of aggravated harassment.
It might seem like a good idea to prosecute people who bully people to death for causing the death, but such a law would be near impossible to enforce or create fairly. For example, in this case, there's no hard evidence that the bullying led to suicide. It looks likely, but you have no proof since the guy gave no official reason. How are you going to prove that bullying led to suicides when no reason is listed? Many suicides are caused by multiple factors. Do you prosecute people for murder if they aren't the sole cause? Do you prosecute everyone in the history of the person's life that bullied him, or just the main bullies. If you don't want to prosecute anyone who made fun of him, where do you draw the line? If someone bullied him relentlessly for several years, then moved to a different state a year before the suicide, does that person get arrested? They may have contributed to the emotional spiral, but they had ceased to do anything quite some time before the death. If bullying led to someone doing drugs and they die from a drug overdose, should the bullies be charged the same? If being bullied leads to someone shooting up a school or something, should any surviving bullies be charged for all the deaths and damage?
