This story struck a nerve with me today, as a friend recently told me of her daughter being bullied on her school bus, and the bullies had posted a video on Facebook to continue their taunts online. She contacted the mother of child with the Facebook account, and asked that she please have the video removed, only to have the woman refuse and say her child deserved it because "she's so fat."
What drives a child to be so cruel to another human being?
Via:
Greece. N.Y. - Karen Klein says she heard students on the school bus call her fat, but she tried to ignore it.
She didn't realize how bad the taunting was until she watched the YouTube video that has sparked outrage.
Cell phone video shot on a school bus Monday shows a small group of Greece Athena middle school students bullying Klein about her weight and threatening to come over to her home and steal from her.
Klein, 68, spoke to 13WHAM's Patrice Walsh at home about how much the comments have hurt her.
"I tried to ignore it...I didn't hear some stuff and tried to shut them out," Klein said.
She was horrified and hurt and she wishes she would have done more to stop the students, but felt helpless.
Klein did tell the bus driver and co-workers about the incident but she didn't think much would come of it.
One comment from a boy on the bus was especially hurtful because he said Klein "didn't have a family because they all killed themselves because they didn't want to be near you."
Klein's oldest son took his own life ten years ago.
The video prompted an outpouring of support and a fundraiser by an international crowd funding site that had gathered more than $100,000 by early Thursday.
"Let's give Karen a vacation of a lifetime. Let's show her the power of the internets and how kind and generous people can be," the fundraiser's organizer said on the website.