Once again, the nation is outraged that school bullying has claimed another victim. As news spread about the indictment of nine teens who are accused of relentlessly bullying 15-year-old Phoebe Prince to suicide this year, parents everywhere asked: "How could this have happened? Where were the adults?" I couldn't help but wonder why it always takes a tragedy to get the world's attention. The suffering of millions of students all across America, some of whom are being bullied as badly as Phoebe and who have been crying out for help day after ...

TAMPA - Eighth-grader Caroline Koch wants to change her school's image. "I just don't think it's fair to write us all off as bad kids," the Walker Middle student said today before a schoolwide anti-bullying presentation to classmates. "People make mistakes.'' She's talking about last year's incident in which four students were arrested and charged with sexual assault after another student told authorities he was attacked in the boys' locker room. It was a shocking case that took students, administrators and parents by surprise as they learned how serious bullying had become, not just ...

Jaime Escalante, the math teacher portrayed in the 1988 film "Stand and Deliver," died Tuesday after a battle with cancer, according to the actor who played him. Escalante, 79, was surrounded by his wife, children and grandchildren when he died at his home in Roseville, California, said Edward James Olmos. Olmos visited Escalante's bedside Monday night, he said. "We lost one of the true giants of education and inspiration in this country," Olmos said. "He really made us understand that it didn't matter what color, race, creed or ethnicity any of us are." Olmos disclosed ...

One teenager died after being stabbed near an Oshawa school Tuesday afternoon, while a second teen was seriously injured Tuesday night after being stabbed near a Mississauga elementary school. Durham police said an ongoing dispute between two Oshawa teens sparked the fight that ended with a 16-year-old boy being stabbed to death in front of a crowd of students at a bus shelter Tuesday afternoon. The victim, identified by friends as Mike McDonald, got into a fight with a fellow student from Monsignor Paul Dwyer Catholic High School while they waited for the ...

A gay teenager in New York wins $50,000 from a school district that failed to stop taunts about his sexual orientation. The Justice Department investigates complaints that administrators ignored racial bullying in a Philadelphia school. And in Massachusetts, a 15-year-old girl hangs herself after she is mercilessly harassed for months — taunting and threats that school administrators knew about but did not stop. Now, with nine students charged in the bullying of Phoebe Prince, who hanged herself at her family's home in January, questions have arisen about how accountable school officials should be for stopping bullying. Barbara Coloroso, a nationally known anti-bullying consultant, ...

There are ways to prevent or mitigate the damage bullying can do to a child, experts stressed after nine Massachusetts teens were charged with harassment in the suicide of a 15-year-old. "Adults can have better control if they know what to ask a child and how to ask it," said Barbara Coloroso, who has written best-sellers on parenting and how to have a healthier schooling experience. Phoebe Prince hanged herself in her family's second-floor apartment in South Hadley in northwest Massachusetts in January, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel said. The teen had ...

Nine teens have been charged in the “unrelenting” bullying of a teenage girl from Ireland who killed herself after being raped and enduring months of torment by classmates in person and online, a prosecutor said Monday. Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said 15-year-old Phoebe Prince was stalked and harassed nearly constantly from September until she killed herself Jan. 14. The freshman had recently moved to South Hadley in western Massachusetts from Ireland. “The investigation revealed relentless activities directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school. The bullying for her was intolerable,” Ms. Scheibel said. Six teens — four ...

Cops are investigating whether cyberbullies contributed to the suicide of a Long Island teen with nasty messages posted online after her death. Alexis Pilkington, 17, a West Islip soccer star, took her own life Sunday following vicious taunts on social networking sites - which persisted postmortem on Internet tribute pages, worsening the grief of her family and friends. "Investigators are monitoring the postings and will take action if any communication is determined to be of a criminal nature," Suffolk County Deputy Chief of Detectives Frank Stallone said yesterday. Alexis' parents downplayed the Internet role, ...

One-third of America's youth is now overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Norwood, Massachusetts, 14-year-old Maria Caprigno no longer wants to be one of those statistics. Maria has been overweight since she was about 3 years old and as she got older, she just got heavier. She told CNN her eating habits were to blame. "I'm a junk-food person and because I'm a couch potato I don't like to get off the couch," she said. "It's also kind of just like my genes: Both my parents are heavy and that's just the environment I was raised ...

The latest trend at teen parties isn't warm beer or prescription medicines pilfered from parents' medicine cabinets. Instead, increasing numbers of youths are turning to an herb-based product to get high, and unlike marijuana, it's perfectly legal. It's known as K2 or Spice, a synthetic substance that, when smoked, gives users a marijuana-like high, according to drug authorities. Its growing popularity is causing increasing alarm among health care professionals, law enforcement authorities and lawmakers, with one Drug Enforcement Agency official calling its use the equivalent of "playing Russian roulette." Should some illegal drugs ...