The administration’s response over the course of a year had included asking Mallory to hug the girls who bullied her, and removing her from classes, instead of taking action against the bullies, the family alleges. The school’s response, according to the Grossmans, was devastatingly insufficient, in effect leaving Mallory to believe the only way to escape the harassment was to end her life.Īlthough it was other students, not the administrators, who made Mallory miserable, the school had a responsibility to protect Mallory from the bullying and failed, according to the lawsuit the Grossmans filed last month. On the day of Mallory's suicide, she and her mother met with administrators about the girls who had been taunting Mallory in person and online. While Mallory died at her own hands, her parents believe she wouldn't have killed herself if it wasn't for the incessant bullying she had faced in school for more than a year, and what the Grossmans say was the school district's ineffectual response to their pleas for help. That’s how you’re going to make this stop,” Grossman said. That doesn’t deter Dianne Grossman, Mallory’s mother, who has started a nonprofit to combat bullying in her daughter’s memory, and believes that litigation is one way to combat the nation’s rising suicide rate. Such lawsuits are challenging because of the fundamental fact of suicide: the deceased took his or her own life, which is why, in many religious traditions, suicide was long considered a sin.Īaron Thorup, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Among the people who have filed lawsuits over suicides this year are a widow who is suing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for not better securing the George Washington Bridge, and grieving parents who say the University of Pennsylvania didn’t do enough to help their daughter, who told counselors she was thinking about suicide. The Grossmans are not alone in their quest for accountability. That’s a question now making its way through the judicial system of New Jersey, as Mallory’s parents seek to hold a school district responsible for their daughter’s death, saying administrators didn’t do enough to protect the sixth-grader from merciless bullying. But is anyone else responsible for her death? No one disputes that Mallory Grossman killed herself in June of 2017. SALT LAKE CITY - She was a petite cheerleader with blonde hair and a winsome smile, just 12 years old when she took her own life.
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