Funeral services were scheduled for today in Ridge Farm, Illinois, for 10-year-old Ashlynn Conner, who committed suicide Friday, Nov. 11, after enduring taunts and teasing from her classmates and children in her neighborhood for several years, according to this report in the Chicago Tribune.
Ashlynn’s mother, Stacy Conner, told the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette this week that as recently as the day before her death, Ashlynn had complained about being taunted and harassed by classmates, and had asked if she could be home-schooled so she wouldn’t have to be around those who had bullied her.
The child’s grandmother, Lory Hackney, said that the taunts began when Ashlynn was about 7 years old, after she started cheerleading for a youth football league and got her hair cut in a short bob. Hackney said the other children would laugh at Ashlynn and call her a boy, and as she got older, her tormentors progressed to calling her fat, ugly and a slut.
Family members said although Ashlynn had been upset most of Thursday night, by Friday — when school was out for Veterans Day — she seemed in a much better mood. However, later that evening when the family realized they had not seen Ashlynn for some time, her older sister, 14-year-old Michaila Baldwin, went looking for her. She found Ashlynn in a bedroom closet where she had hung herself.
Sheriff Pat Hartshorn told the Tribune that while investigators are not ruling out the possibility of bullying as a contributing factor, they have found no evidence of the bullying so far.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 200 children between the ages of 10 and 14 committed suicide between 1999 and 2005, the most recent numbers available. But those numbers do not include the scores of children and teens who have killed themselves in the last 18 months in a spate of highly-publicized suicides — including the suicide of Asher Brown in Houston — that have focused the country’s attention on the problem of bullying.
It sickens me that parents really don’t talk with their kids about how to treat other people just as much as it doesn when I don’t see parents follow through with watching out for their kids. These are children. They need guidance in every aspect of their lives. I’ve seen parents make a mental list of what others see as normal and as long as everything is checked off, that’s as far as they go. Fed, checked, grades, check, sports, check, quiet, check, clothed, check, playing, check, out of the parents hair, check, doing something other than bothering the parents, check, not fighting, check. They are children who are dealing with problems and life without the skills of experience. On either end of this situation. How could it come so far without a solution for this little girl? It’s just outragious how manors and compassion are so absent in these childrens lives. Makeing excuses as if it makes it goes away doesn’t ever work. When are they suppost to learn about how to treat others, if it’s not when they are children? Parents get so busy trying to make a dollar that they forget they are suppost to be raising children to become adults. Every sad situation has a person or group of persons at falt…those who are guiding these children.
you are completely right nobody should have to deal with bullying and it does come from the parents. the parents are teaching them this and it needs to stop
This is horrible and sad bullying has to stop NOW!
speak up if you see this it’s horrible and no incident of bullying should have to result in death of any sort PARENT’S RAISE CHILDREN IN THE NAME OF PEACE,LOVE,AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. COMING FROM A CHILD LIKE ME THIS MUST BE IMPORTANT you parents these days have no control over you’re children take charge show’em who’s boss and never back down if you know a child is being bullied
stop bulling bulling is not rite don’t bulling
This is so tragic. Her death is not only sad, but it is sad that people raise their children to be (or allow them to be) so mean to others. There are a few resources for those who may have children who are being bullied. One is Respect U at https://www.respectu.com/ and the other is Bullycide in Ameria at https://www.bullycide.org/. If you know of other resources, please post them.