Emotional Presentation On Cyberbullying Given At Sachem East

John Halligan's son Ryan committed suicide after being by classmates at school and online. 

Halligan has been a leading advocate addressing the need for more education and prevention of bullying, cyberbullying and teen suicide, throughout the United States and Canada. He has visited at least 450 schools giving both student and parental presentations and made his way to Sachem High School East last week.

He initiated the Vermont Bully Prevention bill, which was signed into law in May 2004, just seven months after Ryan's passing.  He was also successful in leading the passage of the law pertaining to mandatory suicide prevention education in public schools in April 2006.

A presentation was also given last week to Sachem middle school students, the same age as Ryan, a student at a middle school in Essex Junction, Vt., when he died. 

"The kids respond really well to the program," said Halligan, who worked at IBM for 23 years before leaving to educate on bullying and cyberbullying full-time.  "The demand became so great.  The national attention became so great that I had a hard time saying no."

When it comes to bullying Halligan believes, "Technology accelerates the pain and amplifies the impact."

The first time he presented his son's life story to a group of students he was struck by the quiet, stillness, respect and tears welling up.  He could tell that everyone could relate to Ryan's story whether as those who were bullied, bullies or bystanders themselves.  He was later approached to put together a version for parents.

"There's material that I need to tell you that I wish my wife and I had known," said Halligan.

He shared his harrowing story, starting with telling those in attendance about Ryan, a boy, "whose smile was infectious.  It lit up a room." 

He was a sensitive child who didn't excel at academics or sports, but had a great personality; and loved music, drama, making people laugh and computers.

He began being taunted in the fifth grade.  A certain kid and his friends picked on Ryan's academic weakness and lack of ability in sports.  Since he was not being physically assaulted, it only involved words, his parents advised him to just ignore it, but the bullying persisted.

Ryan finally had a meltdown in seventh grade, begging his mom and dad to move or to allow him to be homeschooled. Halligan explained that he then wanted to go to the school principal to stop this once and for all, but Ryan insisted that it would only make things worse. Looking back, Ryan's parents wished they had taken the time to look into why their son did not trust his school administration to address the problem.

Ryan's early adolescence included "normal" activities such as swimming, camping, skateboarding, playing computer games and instant messaging.  He loved being online, and learning about computers.  This was a trait Halligan and his son shared, and one that his father encouraged as a possible future career for his son.

However, he felt compelled to protect his children from internet predators, which were the main publicized online threats at that time.  His safety precautions included no secret passwords allowed.  This would later serve a purpose he could never have imagined, in the aftermath of his son's suicide, while investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.

Halligan warned his children against talking to strangers online.  "I know a lot about computers.  I thought I had it under control."

The day his son died, he instinctively began rummaging through his things looking for a suicide note explaining why he would commit such an unthinkable act.  His parents tore his room and locker apart, but a suicide note was never found.

Finally, in a last ditch effort, and desperate for answers, Halligan typed his son's password into his AOL account, and asked if there was anything anyone wanted to share about why Ryan killed himself.

"The mystery began to unravel," said Halligan, "Kids who wouldn't speak face to face began opening up.  This generation is much more comfortable speaking behind technology."

The grieving father then found every chat conversation his son ever had.  "My heart started to break into a million pieces all over again," he said, "It was nothing but nasty stuff back and forth.  He was so desperately trying to squelch a gay rumor." 

His son never broke the stranger rule, but he was chatting with someone that was a stranger to his parents.

Halligan explained that Ryan had reconnected with a kid who had moved away and had "a very dark outlook."  They talked about hating the popular kids, and this troubled boy suggested that if Ryan killed himself it would teach them a lesson.  Ryan started researching websites on how to commit suicide.

He urged parents that if you think your child might be suicidal you need to ask. "Anything close to a yes merits an immediate trip to the ER," said Halligan, "You can't mess around with this stuff."

During the summer of 2003, Ryan approached a pretty, popular girl from school online and tried to establish a relationship with her, as a surefire way to stop the gay rumor before school started again.  When eighth grade began, Ryan approached his "new girlfriend" in person, only to be humiliated and rejected in front of all her friends.  She called him a "loser" and said she was only pretending to like him online.  After getting him to write a lot of personal and embarrassing things, she copied and pasted these private instant messages into exchanges with her friends, and they all had a good laugh at his expense.  Ryan said, "It's girls like you that make me want to kill myself."

This girl later attempted suicide after the whole school blamed her for Ryan's death.

Halligan believes that bullying through technology will result in a rise in teen suicide rates, and recent statistics show that teen suicide is on the rise again after several years of being in decline.

However, he made it clear that he doesn't blame Ryan's suicide on any one person or single event.  Ultimately, Ryan was suffering from undiagnosed depression, and that combined with the extreme bullying he faced resulted in this tragedy.  Adolescent depression often goes undetected, and is chalked up to typical teen angst.

Halligan defined bullying for the parents in attendance as anything that exploits an imbalance of power, be it physical, social or intellectual.

 He believes society has been missing a major component to combating bullying.  "A handful of kids are going for cheap laughs at somebody's expense, trying to impress an audience, bystanders, that's where the permission comes from."

He cited two critical bystander moments in his son's life. He said, "If just one of the girl's friends said, 'you've got to stop pretending to like Ryan; you wouldn't like it if a boy did this to you.'"  The other was with the original bully.  "If just one of the bully's friends said, 'This gay rumor thing is not really funny.' They would have listened to a friend a lot quicker than anyone else, and this could have been a completely different story."

Halligan encouraged families to get over the stigma attached to talking about suicide.  Ryan's school said he was the first suicide there and hopefully the last.  He informed, "Now statistics show he wasn't an anomaly, but the tip of an iceberg.  Anyone who was close to Ryan is never going to be the same."