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Tina Greggo
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Cyberbullying:
A Victim Tells His Story
Story //
Alex Clearwater
W
hen kids started calling Jacob
of Chandler “stupid,” “fat” and
“ugly,” he didn’t respond to them.
“I never answered the bullying. I just walked
by and kept my head held high because I
figured that the less reaction they got out of me,
the more they would leave me alone,” he says.
To those around him, Jacob appeared
unaffected by the name-calling, but inside, he
was deeply bruised.
“I reacted to the name calling in a negative
way: by cutting myself,” says Jacob, who was in
seventh grade at the time.
Jacob’s parents sent him to counseling and
he gradually began to discover his true self-
worth and healthier ways to channel his anger.
“Therapy helped me cope by allowing me
to talk to someone who was unbiased and who I
knew I could trust besides my parents,” he says.
When Jacob started high school, he decided
to set up an anti-bullying website to help other
teenagers. He also made a YouTube video
reporting the death of a 13-year-old student
from England who hanged himself after being
cyberbullied. In this video, Jacob chastised the
cyberbullies who were posting their own videos
mocking the teenager’s suicide.
“Cyberbullying isn’t a joke,” Jacob says
in his video. “It’s like going to your next-door
neighbor and telling him it’s okay to shoot
himself and he actually does it. You’re an
accomplice to murder for not stopping it. You’re
online, masking your identity and…putting them
down for who they are.”
After posting the YouTube video, Jacob’s
website grew in popularity and began attracting
thousands of visitors daily and hundreds of
e-mail. It was also publicized in an English
newspaper.
“[My ful l name] was al l over YouTube and
the website for al l to see, which was a major
mistake on my part. I was part of MySpace and
Facebook at the time and took ful l advantage
of their privacy guards, but I now know
those privacy guards mean nothing,” says
Jacob. “My dad warned me there would be
backlash.”
Jacob’s video enraged cyberbullies from
around the world, including England, Asia
and Australia. For the next six months, the
cyberbullies launched a concerted attack
against him. Jacob received thousands of crank
calls, obscene e-mails and death threats. As
a result, he shut down his website and social
networking accounts, changed his phone
number and rarely left his house. Although he
filed a police report, they were unable to locate
the cyberbullies.
“It brought our family closer together
because it was affecting all of our lives, not just
mine,” says Jacob. “It was a damaging point in
my life and it knocked me down emotionally.”
Today, the 18-year-old’s l i fe is back to
normal and he has returned to helping teens
deal with bul lying. He spends a lot less time
onl ine and more time talking with kids face-
to-face who are looking for advice. Although
he’s back on the web, he maintains a much
lower prof i le.
“The advice that I would give other kids is
to always listen to your parents regardless of
[whether] you feel their advice or warnings are
stupid, or if you don’t feel like it could happen to
you—because I never thought anything like this
would happen to me.”
Names have been changed to protect the
identity of those involved.
98
maskmatters.org
SPRING
2011
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CYBERBULLYING,
VISIT
maskmatters.org.
✪
{
DID YOU KNOW?
}
Children who are bullied are more likely to
have higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression and illness.