An Alabama mother says bullying led her 9-year-old daughter to commit suicide, according to CBS News reports.
Mother Jasmine Adams said her daughter, McKenzie Adams, told teachers at U.S. Jones Elementary School in Demopolis and her assistant principal multiple times that she was being bullied. She feels the school system let her family down.
"She told me that this one particular child was writing her nasty notes in class," said Jasmine. "It was just things you wouldn't think a 9-year-old should know. And my baby, to tell me some of the things they had said to her, I was like, 'Where are they learning this from?"
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"Our trust was in them that they would do the right thing," said Jasmine Adams. "And it just feels like to me it wasn't."
Adams said she transferred her daughter to the school from another school due to bullying. She said the issue started again at the new school.
Adams said race was a factor in the bullying. A white family friend drove the African-American fourth-grader to school every day.
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Her aunt, Eddwina Harris, said the group of students taunted McKenzie by telling her to commit suicide.
“She was being bullied the entire school year, with words such as ‘kill yourself,’ ‘you think you’re white because youride with that white boy,’ ‘you ugly,’ ‘black bitch,’ ‘just die,’” Harris told the newspaper.
Harris said she’s speaking out about her niece’s death because she wants to promote anti-bullying.
“There are so many voiceless kids,” Harris said. “God is opening great doors for justice for my niece.”
Demopolis City Schools attorney Alex Braswell said the case is being investigated. He called the situation sad and senseless.
In a statement, school officials said: "Certainly our hearts goes out to the family and friends of Mckenzie and her fellow students as well as her teachers. Demopolis school system has provided grief councilors and crisis councilors at the school since this and ministers and youth ministers have been at the campus since the date of this incident."
"That was my angel," said Adams.
McKenzie's story is heartbreaking yet its unfortunately in line with what's happening across the board with our children. African American children are taking their lives at roughly twice the rate of their white counterparts, according to a new study that shows a widening gap between the two groups.
The 2001-2015 data, published May of 2018 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, confirm a pattern first identified...
...several years ago when researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio found that the rate of suicides for black children ages 5 to 12 exceeded that of young whites. The results were seen in both boys and girls.
Although suicide is rare among young children, the latest findings reinforce the need for better research into the racial disparities, lead author Jeffrey Bridge said Monday. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for older children and adolescents in the United States.
