NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — Insults and threats followed 15-year-old Phoebe Prince almost from her first day at South Hadley High School, targeting the Irish immigrant in the halls, library and in vicious cell phone text messages.
Phoebe, ostracized for having a brief relationship with a popular boy, reached her breaking point and hanged herself after one particularly hellish day in January — a day that, according to officials, included being hounded with slurs and pelted with a beverage container as she walked home from school.
Now, nine teenagers face charges in what a prosecutor called “unrelenting” bullying, including two teen boys charged with statutory rape and a clique of girls charged with stalking, criminal harassment and violating Phoebe’s civil rights.
School officials won’t be charged, even though authorities say they knew about the bullying and that Phoebe’s mother brought her concerns to at least two of them.
Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, who announced the charges Monday, said the events before Phoebe’s death on Jan. 14 were “the culmination of a nearly three-month campaign of verbally assaultive behavior and threats of physical harm.”
Scheibel said the harassment was primarily in school and in person although some of it surfaced on Facebook and in other electronic forms. At least four students and two faculty members intervened to try to stop it or report it to administrators, she said.
Schiebel refused to discuss circumstances of the rape charges.
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