On September 19, 2010, a thirteen year old boy named Seth Walsh hung himself. His mother found him and brought him to the hospital, where he stayed on life support for over a week. The story made headlines during an uptick in media reporting on suicides of gay teens. Seth was bullied relentlessly at his school and despite the fact that his family knew he was gay and accepted him, he could no longer take the abuse. His death raised all sorts of questions about bullying and a school's responsibility to stop it, about being hated for being gay, and it brought to mind the question of when, exactly, gay teens are supposed to feel accepted, and normal enough to want to stay alive.
Seth's eleven year old brother spoke out about his death, saying that bullying is never okay, that one word can make someone have suicidal thoughts. His brother, Shawn, spoke at his funeral:
Shawn joshed that his brother could be "a pain in the butt" at times but that Seth was "the best big brother in the world — no, the galaxy." Wearing a yellow (Seth's favorite color) plaid shirt, Shawn then, without mentioning the word, made a heartbreaking reference to bullying, the specter at the heart of his family's mourning for his openly gay brother. "I always wanted to protect him," said Shawn, as sobs broke out in the church. "I just wish people could have been nice to him like my mom taught me."
But they weren't. Seth's "effeminate appearance" and gender non-conformity were used as excuses to bully him to death. His school, which was made aware of this relentless bullying on multiple occasions, was negligent in its support of this kid against his aggressors.
Now, the Department of Education has ruled that Tehachapi School District was negligent in intervening in the harassment Walsh faced in the years leading up to his suicide. In a 20-page letter, the DOE details the multitude of ways Walsh was harassed and how the district was negligent in defending him from sexual and gender-based harassment under Title IX and Title IV[.]
And it's incredibly ugly. This is not something any child should face, not yours or mine or any random stranger. Could you imagine your child having to endure this day in, day out, with zero help:
According to the Complainant, when the Student was in fifth grade she first complained to the Student’s principal and teacher about his peers’ treatment of him, including calling him “gay,” “queer,” and “girl” as pejorative terms. The Student’s brother, who attended the Student’s elementary school that year, said that students teased the Student because his friends were girls and by saying that he acted like a girl.
Imagine this situation. Not only was Seth growing up in this "educational" environment, but his brother, who was in elementary school at the time, had to endure the daily stress of watching his older brother bullied and hounded and picked on.
As described by the Student’s friends and classmates, throughout his attendance at the School, but particularly in seventh grade, his peers routinely called him hostile and demeaning names related to his nonconformity with gender stereotypes and sexual orientation, including “sissy,” “girl,” and vulgar references to female anatomy; insults meant to question his masculinity, including mocking his clothing as “girly,” asking him, “do you sit down” to use the restroom, suggesting he should “get surgery” to become a female, and referring to him as the “girlfriend” of other male students; and anti-gay slurs and epithets.
Students also relayed language of a hostile and demeaning sexual nature, including derogatory remarks related to sex between men and crude questions about sexual acts and behavior in which they suggested the Student had engaged. The Student also was reportedly teased for being attracted to another boy at school. One student recalled a male classmate asking the Student out on a date as a joke. Others said that students spread hostile and patently false sexual rumors about the Student.
Many students also described physical harassment of the Student. This included bumping the Student out of the way as he walked by; hitting items such as food out of his hands; obstructing his path as he tried to walk by; throwing food, water bottles, pencils, and erasers at him; shoving him; and subjecting him to unwanted physical conduct of a sexual nature. This physical conduct was often accompanied by verbal comments such as those cited above. For example, witnesses described students grabbing the Student from behind while suggesting that he would be sexually gratified.
It doesn't matter the reason: this behavior is unacceptable. However, we're left with the unmistakeable impression that the behavior was not dealt with properly specifically because it involved sexual orientation. There is so much homophobia in the world, in our government, in our schools, that it makes it impossible to confront it: if you talk about it, homophobia causes people to freak out that homosexuality is being addressed in schools. If you don't, it makes things worse. And the closet we are forced into perpetuates this.
His family tried to stop this. In so many cases, families don't care. They even participate, when they're not kicking their children out, but family did care:
Even before he came out, he was teased enough, his grandparents say, that he was homeschooled on two separate occasions. His best friend, Jamie Phillips, says Seth, who told friends he was gay last year, was harassed long before: "Since it was a rumor that went around, everyone thought he was gay." "He started getting teased by the fourth and fifth grade," says Judy Walsh. "By sixth grade, the kids were starting to get mean. By the seventh grade, he was afraid to walk home from school because he was afraid he would get harassed. As he was walking by a classroom, a kid yelled out, 'Queer.' Stuff like that."
The bullying took every form. "It was eye to eye, over the telephone, personal, over the Internet," says Judy. "He spent a lot of his life frightened." Seth's grandparents say the breaking point came after what they believe was a bullying incident in a local park on Sept. 19. After the incident, Seth appeared to be acting normally at home. He then showered and asked to borrow a pen from his mother to write. Then he said he was going to play with the dogs in the backyard. His horrified mother found him later at the tree and fought to save her child even though she suspected it was futile. "Wendy told me, when she put him on the ground, she knew his soul was gone," said Jim. The medical response teams did their best to revive him, heliporting Seth to the county's trauma center, where he remained on life support before dying Sept. 27.
But even when your family cares, even when they accept you and want to help, it's still one family against an enormous institutional system designed to stamp out gays wherever they are, even if it is in the form of preventing protection for innocent thirteen year old boys:
As described by his friends, the Student suffered this conduct on school grounds on a daily basis, typically during lunch period, breaks, passing periods, P.E. class, and after school. Multiple students said that harassment often occurred in an area behind the snack bar in the School’s cafeteria. Friends described the Student’s avoidance of certain areas of campus where harassment tended to occur, and one friend said that she and the Student would frequently roam the empty hallways during breaks, a time when other students were socializing, and take other measures to avoid harassment. Another friend said that the Student often went to the library during breaks for the same purpose. Students indicated that harassment of the Student was widespread and perpetrated by dozens of individuals, and that students belonging to certain campus cliques were particularly likely to engage in the conduct.
And make no mistake: teachers were aware this was going on, and did nothing:
Students interviewed by OCR reported that when the Student was in the seventh and eighth grades, students often shouted insulting words about him in the locker room, including anti-gay slurs and comments suggesting that, because the Student was gay, he would try to engage in inappropriate sexual conduct with them. Students sometimes yelled out derogatory comments about the Student to the P.E. teacher.
Other students, however, said that the conduct was so prevalent and obvious that adults must have known, and close friends of the Student said that they were certain that some adults at the School witnessed it. Several students specifically stated that the security officers heard comments and saw physical conduct directed at the Student, but ignored it.
It didn't have to be like this for Seth and it doesn't have to be like this for anyone, gay or straight. I don't want to diminish the bullying that everyone could potentially face, regardless of sexual orientation, but this report, to me, is about the specific issues faced by gay, lesbian and gender non-conforming people: rampant homophobia, not just by families (as we've seen here, his family was unlike a lot of others in that regard) but by students, and schools leads to this. The closet as the "preferred" institution by which we can avoid discussions of sexual orientation leads to this. We have a deeply entrenched system working against LGBT people every day no matter what actions any of us take, and a conservative environment like a school where people want to keep students "in line" makes this problem worse. We have to be able to discuss these issues.
Seth was thirteen. He couldn't deal with these things by himself anymore. He clearly had nowhere else to turn.
Seth's suicide note reads:
Mom (Wendy); Amanda; Shane; Shawn
I love you. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. I know this will bring much pain. But, I will, hopefully, be in a better place than this shithole. Please, put my body in burial, and visit my used body. And make sure to make the school feel like shit for bringing you this sorrow. This life was a pleasure, mostly having you guys to pull me through the pain.
Hopefully I become the universe.
Seth