Facebook phony vilifies Sultan principal
Published 12:01 am Wednesday, April 20, 2011
SULTAN — Principal Robin Briganti can tell her students at Sultan Middle School that she knows the pain of cyberbullying.
There were times last month when the veteran campus leader didn’t want to go to school after someone attacked her reputation online.
Detectives from the Snohomish
County Sheriff’s Office are trying to track down who created a phony and sexually charged Facebook page under Briganti’s name. She told detectives that she was embarrassed and humiliated. The page suggested inappropriate sexual relations with students at the school, according to court papers.
“I’m sad that someone would do this,” Briganti said Tuesday. “I’m sad for the school.”
Postings on the page started March 18. It was shut down March 22 after school officials learned of its existence.
No one has been arrested or disciplined.
A Snohomish County Superior Court judge has been signing search warrants to help detectives gather information about the page’s creator from Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Online Services in California. The case is being investigated as cyberstalking, an offense that can be charged as a felony under certain circumstances.
Before it was taken down, the page listed 32 friends, many of whom shared the names of students in the Sultan School District. The wall posts purported to be by Briganti and included sexually explicit content.
Briganti and school district Superintendent Dan Chaplik aren’t jumping to conclusions about who’s responsible for setting up the account. They say it’s premature to speculate whether the person or people responsible are students or adults.
“We are determined to figure it out,” Chaplik said. “I’m confident we will figure it out in due time.”
Such investigations can take months.
After the page was found, school officials quickly realized they didn’t have the investigative and legal tools to discover the culprit’s identity, Chaplik said. That’s when they turned it over to the sheriff’s office, which provides police services to Sultan.
Briganti, who doesn’t have either Facebook or MySpace social networking pages, has found a silver lining in the frustrating situation.
Students have treated her with kindness and expressed sadness since some of them brought the page to school officials’ attention, Briganti said.
At an April 11 all-school assembly on bullying, students listened in respectful silence when Briganti informed them that she, too, had been hurt by cruel online comments. The assembly had been scheduled before the Facebook page impersonating her first appeared.
She said she hopes to lead students by example.
“Hopefully, they see you pick yourself up and you keep going,” she said.
The principal wants whoever is responsible to face sufficient punishment to send the message that such behavior is unacceptable.
“I don’t want any other teachers or educational staff to fall victim to this,” she said. “It is so hurtful. It has to stop.”
Briganti said she still loves the school she has led for a dozen years. Her own children went there before heading off to high school and college.
She hopes people who are bystanders to bullying either online or in person will learn to step forward and report what they see so other victims are spared pain.
“There has got to be a way to get this under control,” she said.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com
