School Abuse Leads to Another 11-Year-Old's Suicide

Another 11-year-old boy has killed himself, again because of physical and psychological abuse at school, again including the G-word.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

On Thursday afternoon, after returning home from school, fifth-grader Jaheem Herrera quietly went into his room and hanged himself. His 10-year-old sister, Yerralis, also a fifth-grader, discovered Jaheem’s dead body.

“His sister was screaming, ‘Get him down, get him down,’ ” said Norman Keene, who helped raise Jaheem since the boy was two years old.

When Keene got to the room, he saw Yerralis holding her brother, trying to remove the pressure of the noose her brother had fashioned with a fabric belt.

Jaheem Herrera
1997 - April 16, 2009

Jaheem was bullied relentlessly, his family said. Keene said the family knew the boy was a target, but until his death they didn’t understand the scope.

“We’d ask him, ‘Jaheem, what’s wrong with you?’ ” Keene recalled. “He’d never tell us.”

He didn’t want his sister to tell, either. She witnessed much of the bullying, and many times rose to her brother’s defense, Keene said.

“They called him gay and a snitch,” his stepfather said. “All the time they’d call him this.”

In an interview with WSB-TV, Bermudez also said her son was being bullied at school. She said she had complained to the school.

She said she asked him about the bullying Thursday when he came home from school and he denied it. She sent him to his room to calm down. It was the last time she would see him alive.

Bermudez told WSB she talked to Jaheem’s best friend about the situation last week.

“He said, ‘Yes ma’am. He told me that he’s tired of everybody always messing with him in school. He is tired of telling the teachers and the staff, and they never do anything about the problems. So, the only way out is by killing himself,’ ” Bermudez told WSB.

Atlanta’s FOX affiliate also covered the story.

Jaheem Herrera’s death comes ten days after Carl Walker-Hoover took his life, and the day before the National Day of Silence, a program to bring attention to school abuse and homophobia.

I have two things to say about this, because I can’t handle more right now.

1. How many times do we have to hear about school administrators and teachers not protecting kids? How many deaths is enough? How many little kids have to hang themselves before we hold the people who are supposed to protect them accountable for not doing their jobs?
2. I don’t have all the answers, but I think we can start by scrubbing the word “bully” from our vocabulary. If anybody else had treated Jaheem and Carl (and to be blunt, ME) like this, they would have been brought up on abuse charges. But since it’s “just” bullying, it’s seen as harmless “boys will be boys” fun. Let’s destroy that attitude.

Mrs. Bermudez, I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry.

On Thursday, Jaheem’s family asked for help in burying their son at their home in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. The family asked donations be made at any Wachovia Bank to the Jaheem Herrera Memorial Fund.