HRC Blog

Today hundreds mourned the death and attended funeral services for Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old boy from Springfield, Mass. who hanged himself last Monday after being relentlessly taunted and bullied at school.  The awful tragedy of Carl's suicide becomes even more infuriating when you consider that repeated calls made by Carl's mother,  Sirdeaner L. Walker, to school officials about the bullying and anti-gay harassment were ultimately not enough to save her son, who did not identify as gay:

"I just want to help some other child. I know there are other kids being picked on, and it's day in and day out," said Walker, 43. "It was the worst experience of my life, and I'm a breast cancer survivor. Four years, it was four years ago I had breast cancer," Walker said. She phoned the school repeatedly since Carl began attending in September but the bullying continued, she said. Other students made him a target, daily calling him gay, making fun of how he dressed and threatening him, she said.

It's heartbreaking that yet another young person has taken their life because they saw no way out of the bullying they experienced in their daily lives.  And the response of his teachers and school administrators is just pathetic. Here's just another example of how vital it is for teachers and administrators to be trained to actively get involved to stop school bullying.  The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students. The organization lists these sobering statistics on its website regarding school bullying:

Two of the top three reasons students said their peers were most often bullied at school were actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender expression, according to From Teasing to Torment: School Climate in America, a 2005 report by GLSEN and Harris Interactive. The top reason was physical appearance.

"As was the case with Carl, you do not have to identify as gay to be attacked with anti-LGBT language," Byard said. "From their earliest years on the school playground, students learn to use anti-LGBT language as the ultimate weapon to degrade their peers. In many cases, schools and teachers either ignore the behavior or don’t know how to intervene."

Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT youth (86.2%) reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half (44.1%) reported being physically harassed and about a quarter (22.1%) reported being physically assaulted, according to GLSEN’s 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students.

In most cases, the harassment is unreported. Nearly two-thirds of LGBT students (60.8%) who experience harassment or assault never reported the incident to the school. The most common reason given was that they didn’t believe anything would be done to address the situation. Of those who did report the incident, nearly a third (31.1%) said the school staff did nothing in response. While LGBT youth face extreme victimization, bullying in general is also a widespread problem. More than a third of middle and high school students (37%) said that bullying, name-calling or harassment is a somewhat or very serious problem at their school, according to From Teasing to Torment. Bullying is even more severe in middle school. Two-thirds of middle school students (65%) reported being assaulted or harassed in the previous year and only 41% said they felt very safe at school.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation has also introduced its Welcoming Schools initiative to address anti-LGBT name calling and bullying and create inclusive learning environments from grades K-5. Activist and Massachusetts blogger Sara Whitman attended Carl's memorial service today.  Here's an excerpt from her poignant post on what his death can say to the LGBT community:

I went today with a friend. The woman sitting next to her told her it wasn't the first time. There had been two other students at the same school, who suffered the same taunting. One girl, one boy. The girl tried to kill herself, her mother found her OD'ed on pills and got her to the hospital in time. The boy left the school, to pursue music.

This is baked in, deeply rooted homophobia. And just like baked in, deeply rooted racism affects us all, so does the homophobia. Sitting in that church today, I knew one thing for certain- This community of African-American Pentecostal church members and the gay community have a great deal in common. A dead little boy. If there is ever a time to make that bridge, it's now. No where in the national media is this story. No where. Is it because he was poor and black? Maybe. Is it because he was called gay and we're just not going to deal with that? Maybe. I don't really care. I want to make that bridge. Because together, I think we can change things.

Sara is absolutely right. 

Our prayers and deepest sympathies go out to Carl's family and friends. Read Carl's obituary here.

Related article from MassLive.com: Hundreds of mourners turn out for funeral of Carl Walker-Hoover of Springfield