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Friday, October 8, 2010

Mentor Ohio High School Suicides: Mentor School Sued by Parents of Suicide Victims

In 2008, Mentor high school student Sladjana Vidovic, 16, tied a rope around her neck and the other end to her bed post and jumped out of her bedroom window. Eric Mohat shot himself in the head in March 2007. He was also a student at Mentor High. Meredith Rezak, just 16 years old, died by a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head after joining Mentor's Gay-Straight Alliance, just 3 weeks after here friend Eric Mohat died. Jennifer Eyring, a child with a learning disability, overdosed on her mother's anti-depression pills and died in 2006. It is believed each of these students were bullied.

Sladjana Vidovic

After Meredith Rezak, in 11th grade at Mentor committed suicide, a year later her 22-year-old brother, Justin, shot and killed himself. The remaining Rezak sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose in March 2010, at age 21.

The Eyring family and the Rezak family do not hold Mentor High responsible. The Vidovic and Mohat families have sued the school, but are asking for no monetary compensation.

Eric Mohat, 17, sat in a classroom and listened to a bully say out loud, "Why don't you go home and shoot yourself, no one will miss you."
Most of the harassment took place in math class and the teacher -- an athletic coach -- was accused of failing to protect the boy.
The father of a friend of Eric's, Dan Hughes, moved his son to another school, and said these students who died were "extremely bright," were "nerds" and were easy targets for bullies.
"What it boils down to is the football players, cheerleaders and kids with money have a different set of rules than everybody else," Hughes told ABCNews.com.
Eric Mohat

Throughout history, there have always been bullies at schools - probably at every school - everywhere. There are children who will suffer at the words and the fists of bullies, but suffering to the point of suicide...? Parents and school staff must do something about extreme bullying and parents must prepare their children to find the inner strength to get through it. We are the adults. What are we going to do about it - specifically when the school claims bullying is "not a problem." Read about Mentor's adoption of an "internationally known program - designed to prevent bullying" here. Read the entire story here.


©2007-2012copyrightMaggie M. Thornton