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Overcast East Rockaway students learn from tragedy
L.I. man shares his son’s story to raise awareness of the consequences of bullying
It is a word we hear too often in discussions of schools across the country: bullying.
The problem is growing, as are efforts to combat it. The anti-bullying message is reaching many people, and inspiring them to raise their voices. One of them is John Halligan, who visited East Rockaway Junior-Senior High School on May 19.
Invited by the East Rockaway Coalition for Youth, Halligan, a former Vermont resident who now lives in Farmingdale, spoke to an audience of parents in the auditorium about the life-changing loss of his son, Ryan, who committed suicide at age 13 in 2003. A student at a middle school in Essex Junction, Vt., Ryan was ridiculed by his peers. He began receiving emails belittling homosexuals after a bully spread rumors that he was gay, and he was humiliated by a girl he liked who pretended to have romantic feelings for him. Ryan didn’t tell his parents, Kelly and John, about the online and in-school torment.
It wasn’t until after his death, when his father began sifting through Ryan’s online conversations, that the family discovered the truth. “My heart started to break,” John Halligan recalled.
After showing a video about Ryan, Halligan recounted the events that led up to his death. His presentation was emotionally moving, and parents in the audience were speechless, their faces sad.
“Parents, you got to pay attention,” Halligan said. “You got to worry about [your children’s] circle of friends … If they’re afraid to go to Mom or Dad, who else can they go to?”
He spoke of the warning signs of suicide, including his son’s use of wrist bands to cover self-inflicted cutting wounds before he took his own life. “You got to get them to open up, deal with the reality and get them help quick,” he urged the audience.
He told not only Ryan’s story, but his own as well. He spoke about the devastating impact a teen suicide has on a family, and the agonizingly slow process of recovering from such a tragedy. He learned many lessons, he said, including how important it is to monitor a child’s computer use — in essence, invading their privacy.
