October 7, 2002.
A day that changed John Halligan and his family forever. On that day, John’s eighth-grade son Ryan ended his life. Ryan was a victim of bullying and cyberbullying at his school in Vermont.
“When you bully somebody, you’re not just bullying that person. You’re bullying their entire family,” Halligan said. “In this case, it’s as if somebody had dropped a bomb in the middle of my family. My son is dead, and the rest of us are wounded for life.”
In the decades that have followed his son’s death, Halligan has traveled the country, speaking at more than 2,000 schools, fighting against bullying and cyberbullying. On Friday, January 17, Halligan spoke to students, faculty, and staff at Pleasant Hills Middle School during grade-level assemblies.
The bullying of Ryan started when he was in fifth grade. One boy in particular and his group of friends, Halligan told the students, targeted his son because of his academic challenges and because he was not very athletic. There were no bruises or black eyes, only words spoken and typed.
The bullying escalated in seventh grade when Ryan came home one night and told his dad he never wanted to go back to his school. That year, Ryan had been bullied mercilessly, his father explained. That night, he exploded.
Halligan’s proposed solutions to “fixing” the problem – calling the school or the boy’s parents – were rejected by Ryan. He feared they would only subject him to more bullying.
That summer, Halligan said his son was spending more and more time online, primarily using AOL Instant Messenger. The popular messaging program meant the bullying extended beyond the school day and ended up in his home.
It was that program that provided answers for Ryan’s family after his death. There was no note left behind in his room or at school. Instead, there were conversations found on Ryan’s computer from Instant Messenger. Ryan’s father had access to these conversations thanks to his family’s “no secret passwords” rule. He discovered “nasty stuff going back and forth, back and forth.”
Halligan found conversations between Ryan and a popular girl, Ashley, at school. He believes his son approached her in hopes of starting a relationship with her so that other kids would stop making fun of him. Instead, when Ryan approached her in school his eighth grade year, she told him she was just joking and wanted nothing to do with him. She called him a loser and had copied their online personal discussions and shared them with all her friends.
“I can’t imagine the pain and the humiliation my son must have felt as he stood there and those girls laughed at him,” Halligan told the middle school students who sat silently throughout the one-hour presentation.
Ultimately, Halligan believes his son died from depression which he says went tragically undetected and untreated since the fifth grade. That is the reason he does not blame the girl at school, Ashley. After Ryan’s death, Halligan asked to meet with Ashley and her parents.
“I told her, ‘Ashley, you did a mean thing. But I don’t believe you’re a mean person,’” Halligan told the students. “‘I don’t believe for a second that you would have done what you did if you knew Ryan was going to do what he did. I do not want you to go through the rest of your life blaming yourself. It’s not your fault.’”
As for the boy who bullied Ryan for years, Halligan said he fought the urge for revenge. After an emotional meeting in the boy’s family room with his parents next to him, the bully tearfully apologized.
“My son is gone forever, but I have to tell you something,” Halligan said during the assembly. “At that moment in time, hearing that kid say he was sorry in a heartfelt and sincere way meant a great deal to me. It meant a lot.”
Halligan urged the middle school students to be upstanders, not bystanders, if their friends are bullying someone. A bystander, he said, is someone who passively stands there and laughs as a friend bullies someone. An upstander approaches their friend privately and tells them to stop.
“The adults in your school come up here and can lecture until they’re blue in the face about being kind and having respect for each other,” Halligan told them. “But nothing’s ever going to get fixed in the moment unless you step up and fix it because you’re in the best position. You have the most power, the most influence.”
The assembly ended with a challenge – a call to apologize.
“Is there anybody at any point in your life that you were cruel and unkind to?” Halligan asked the hundreds of students. “If so, today I want you to find the courage and the humility to seek this person out as soon as possible and go up to them and simply say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the way I treated you.’ That apology, that real heartfelt, sincere apology will be life-changing. You’re not only going to change the life of the person you’ve tormented, but you’re also going to change your life for the better.”
The presentations at the middle school were made possible by grant funding awarded to the West Jefferson Hills School District by the state to promote mental health. After Halligan’s presentation, educators from the AHN Chill Room at Pleasant Hills Middle School spoke with the students, reminding them that they are available if and when students need to talk.