(LibertySociety.com) – Fred and Solangie “Soly” Walters are suing their daughter’s New Jersey school, alleging the school did not take appropriate action regarding months of harassment and bullying from her peers that resulted in the 14-year-old taking her own life.
According to the lawsuit, after months of “intense bullying and harassment,” their daughter Jocelyn Walters, a tri-athlete and star goalie on a travel soccer team, committed suicide on Sept. 9, 2022.
The parents filed the lawsuit against Middletown Township School District, the school board, Jocelyn’s teachers, nurses at a local mental health clinic, and 10 John and Jane Does “who harassed, intimidated, bullied and/or otherwise abused” their daughter.
The complaint states that the school and the school board were aware their daughter was being bullied by students who made fun of Jocelyn on private social media pages, cropped her out of social media posts, removed her from group chats, shared her personal information, and attempted to isolate her from her and boyfriend and friends. According to the lawsuit, the school “did nothing to protect Jocelyn from harm.”
While she was hospitalized the first time she attempted to take her own life in March 2022, the students continued the bullying, with one student writing in a group chat that she would “keep instigating her until she actually does something to me that I can get her in trouble for,” according to the complaint.
In August 2022, a nurse at a mental health clinic, without knowing the dosage of antidepressant medication she was taking, “negligently doubled” her dosage and did not tell her “parents of her emergent condition.”
According to the lawsuit, the day before she died, she went to see the school nurse, “who failed to take appropriate action” or make her parents aware of her visits to the nurse.
The lawsuit alleges that school officials did nothing to punish the students who bullied their daughter. However, on Oct. 26, 2022, her parents received a letter from the school stating an investigation was launched as their daughter “may have been a victim” of bullying. However, the letter noted the school did not find evidence that she had been bullied.
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