The parents of a 12-year-old who died by suicide after she was bullied online are now calling for schools to ban cellphones.
Dianne and Seth Grossman suggested Monday that school districts prohibit students from using cellphones during the day, calling it the ‘first step’ to address the bullying ‘epidemic.’
‘It’s not necessary for the kids to be walking around with cellphones in their hands or back pockets during the school day,’ Dianne Grossman said, adding: ‘I think that we have an unhealthy relationship with technology.
Their daughter, Mallory Grossman, took her own life on June 14, 2017, after being tormented by bullies on Snapchat.
The young girl had received cruel messages from her classmates at Copeland Middle School in New Jersey, which included ‘When are you going to kill yourself?’
Dianne and Seth Grossman, the parents of Mallory Grossman, suggested on Monday that schools should ban cellphone use during the day
Mallory Grossman (pictured) took her own life on June 14, 2017, after being tormented by bullies on Snapchat
In the aftermath, her parents filed a wrongful death suit against the Rockaway Township School District, accusing district officials and staff of failing to intervene after they pointed out the harassment their daughter had been facing.
The couple were awarded $9.1million in compensation last week — the largest payout in state history for a bulling case.
Dianne spoke of the impact she hopes the large settlement will have on school districts around the United States on Monday.
‘I think that it’s time for the schools to understand that we have an epidemic on our hands,’ she said on CNN This Morning. ‘I think it’s time for the schools to start to enforce their polices, and if they don’t have policies, now’s the time to write those policies.
‘This is a wake-up call for all school systems,’ she added.
When asked about what kinds of policies she thinks schools should adopt to prevent bullying, Dianne said: ‘The first thing that any school system can do, particularly middle school, is they can remove the cellphones.
She added; ‘I think that the schools, by allowing these cellphones at school during the day, whether they allow access to social media or not, you know, a video can be taken and shared hundreds of millions of times, whereas a story of a kid falling or getting hurt can only be told.
‘And I think the influencers that the kids follow encourage this type of behavior,’ she said. ‘So I think removing the cellphones is the first step.’
Dianne also suggested schools adopt a Parents’ Bill of Rights, which ensures parents or guardians are made aware of what is happening in a school and have the right to make a decision about their child’s education.
‘Parents need to be able to report what’s going on, and that’s the foundation of Mallory’s law,’ which amended New Jersey’s bullying law to include stricter mandates for bullying prevention in schools.
Dianne noted that New Jersey already has a Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying Act ‘but I think that we need more.’
‘There needs to be consequences in place — children need to be able to predict the consequences of their behavior,’ she said.
Dianne said she had reached out to school administrators for months about the bullying her daughter was enduring
Mallory was in the sixth grade at Copeland Middle School at the time of her passing
Mallory’s parents said they first started seeing evidence that their daughter was being bullied at the end of fifth grade.
By the start of the next school year, in 2017, Dianne said ‘we started reporting in writing to the guidance counselors, her teachers.
‘So we started really early on pointing out some of the things that would be defined as bullying, and we didn’t ask the school at the time to really define it, what we asked them to do is to make the behavior stop.
‘Their solution was to isolate Mallory further… and then put her in the guidance counselor. I don’t know any sixth-grader that wants to sit with their guidance counselor to have lunch,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t a solution.’
In her lawsuit against the Rockaway Township School District, Dianne also claimed she complained to school officials for months about the bullying — up until the day her daughter took her own life — but educators ignored them.
It was alleged the school ignored the ‘ongoing and systemic’ bullying, which was being directed at Mallory.
The suit cited at least 14 bullying incidents the family believes drove their daughter to kill herself.
In one, a classmate took a photo of Mallory and sent it to her with the caption ‘you have no friends’, according to the lawsuit.
Another student is said to have sent a similar photo of Mallory to others on Snapchat and wrote ‘U have no friends’ and ‘Poor Mal.’
Mallory’s parents said they first started seeing evidence that their daughter was being bullied at the end of fifth grade
Dianne and Seth filed a wrongful death suit against the Rockaway Township School District and its staff in June 2018 for failing to intervene
The suit did not name any particular teachers, but it said staff at Copeland had failed to provide a safe and secure environment for students.
According to Dianne, the bullying went on for months via ‘texts, Snapchats and Instagram’.
‘For months she was told she’s a loser, that she had no friends,’ Dianne said during a press conference in 2017.
Dianne also said she tried to reason with a mother of one of the girls who was bullying Mallory, but that mother didn’t take the extent of the abuse seriously.
The school district said it was ‘committed to protecting’ students at the school and denied claims it did not do enough to stop the bullying and slammed the allegations as ‘categorically false,’ according to NorthJersey.com.
Greg McGann was the superintendent at the time but he stepped down on July 1, 2018.
Mallory was remembered as a cheerleader and a gymnast, two activities her father said she ‘excelled at’
Seth described gymnastics and cheerleading as Mallory’s ‘safe place’ as she received hateful messages on Snapchat
Dianne and Seth produced a documentary about their daughter called ‘Mallory’ in 2020 and created a nonprofit organization called Mallory’s Army to highlight the dangers of bullying.
On Monday, Seth remembered his daughter as being athletic and extremely charitable.
‘She definitely liked sports, cheer and gymnastics, and she excelled at it,’ he said. ‘It was kind of her safe place.’ He added, ‘she was definitely a philanthropic child, even for a 12-year-old.
‘Some of the things she would do, I don’t know where she found it from or got it from, but she definitely liked to help other kids,’ Seth said in the interview with CNN This Morning.
He told how Mallory raised money for Camp Good Days, ‘which is a place where kids with cancer can go in the summertime to kind of escape everything that’s going on in their lives, to give them some sense of normalcy.
‘She was very empathetic as far as that goes,’ Seth said, ‘and she made her mark in her 12 short years.’
For confidential support call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
