NEWBURYPORT — A recent case of cyber-bullying involving three local teens who police say took on a schoolmate's identity to torment others is not the first case of cyber-bullying Newburyport police have seen in recent years.
Police say the three teens created a Facebook page under the name of one of their peers and then posted negative comments about other students on the page.
Inspector Brian Brunault, who leads the department's computer crimes investigations, said he has investigated and filed charges in numerous cases of online harassment similar to the one headed to juvenile court next week.
All of them are slightly different from each other, involving young female and male teens in equal proportion, he said.
"It's not an isolated incident — absolutely not," Brunault said. "I've had my fair share — some have come to fruition, and some were requested to be dropped by victims. Some end up going nowhere, because you come to a dead end and you're not able to identify."
In any case of online harassment, when it involves anonymous postings of teens often driven by a need for acceptance, it can be brutal for the targeted individual, forcing police to take each case seriously, Brunualt said.
"Harassment in school is so huge today; you're either accepted or you're not accepted," Brunault said. "For a person to hide behind a keyboard and represent a person and cause a person more havoc when he's already going through enough as it is — it compounds the issue for this kid. We're all human, and we all have our tolerance level ... you never know what's going to happen. The authorities need to jump on this as quickly as they can."
The three students are being charged under a statute that makes it a crime to assume another's identity for the purpose of harassment. One of the students charged in the case is a Newburyport High School student and the others are students at a private high school.
Police are recommending to the district attorney that two of the individuals be remanded to a youth diversion program that won't leave traces on their permanent record because they are cooperating and have shown remorse. A third individual, at the direction of his former attorney, state Rep. Mike Costello, has so far declined to speak with police.
Costello said he stepped down from the case yesterday when he became aware of the victim's identity, saying he previously had represented a relative of the victim.
"Once I found out who the other party was, I let (my clients) know of my involvement, and I recommended several good attorneys," Costello said. "I think they'll make some decisions on how they're going to move forward."
According to the mother of the victim, who asked not to be identified to protect her son from further harassment, school authorities said they had no jurisdiction in the case because the acts happened outside of school. The school's resource officer referred the parents of the victim to the Newburyport police, which is standard protocol for the school, said interim Superintendent Deirdre Farrell.
"Bullying that occurs on social networking sites, such as Facebook and similar sites, is referred to the Newburyport Police Department," Farrell wrote in a statement last night. "In this case, Newburyport High School followed all appropriate protocols."
Derrek Shulman, director of the Anti-Defamation League New England Region, said victims like the one in this case, who was tripped in the hallway and isolated by students who thought he was targeting them on Facebook, need advocates in the state Legislature.
One of the bills before lawmakers addressing bullying is currently in House committee and has a good chance of passing, Shulman said. He hopes it does, as the repercussions of bullying are growing.
"They're as serious as suicide," Schulman said, referring to two recent cases in the state where youths 11 and 14 years old took their lives in the wake of similar bullying. "It can't get much more serious than that."
Even where students appear to be weathering the harassment, the repercussions include low self-esteem and overall reduced achievement, he said. Shulman said it's impossible to quantify how many cases are actually going on, but he said there's no question it's taken bullying to levels most parents can't relate to.
"Bullying no longer stops at the schoolhouse doors," he said. "They're getting cyber-bullied mercilessly."
As the state representative that represents Newburyport, Amesbury and Salisbury in the Statehouse, Costello wrote the segment of the identity theft portion of the law the youths are being charged with violating.
The mother of the victim in the Newburyport case currently being prosecuted said she was surprised that Costello had signed on to represent the student who was accused of bullying her son. She said it was difficult to fathom that Costello would advise the teen to stay quiet and not cooperate with police.
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