The suicide of a 13-year-old boy in southern Japan after classmates systematically
bullied him - even making him "practice" suicide - while teachers ignored the abuse
or laughed has prompted soul-searching among educators across the country.
One of the boy's last acts was to text his tormentors and leave voice mails for them
to say, "I'm going to die." They texted him back to say, "You should die."
The middle school student, whose name has not been released, jumped from his 14
th floor apartment in the city of Otsu last October after enduring heartrending tales
of abuse at the hands of his classmates.
His father filed several reports with the police, but officers never accepted them, saying
that they could not prove that bullying led to his suicide, according to Japanese media
reports.
Details of the harassment are coming to light eight months later, following a student
survey conducted by the city's board of education. In that anonymous survey, students
write the bullying escalated to "punching and kicking" in September last year, about a
month before the teen jumped to his death. The victim was pressured into shoplifting,
had his legs and arms tied while bullies duck-taped his mouth. Students watched as
their peers pressured the teen into eating dead bees, "pantsed" him, and made him
"practice" committing suicide.
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