Bullied kid w/ Muscular dystrophy commits suicide

[Kaneman]

This story inspired me to talk to my son about standing up to bullies and I'm posting it to appeal to parents here who have kids that are capable of standing up to bullies. Teach your kids, or have someone else teach your kids, how to fight, how to have confidence and how to stand up for peers that are weaker and may need some sticking up for. Schools are overwhelmed, understaffed and can't be counted on to protect the kids.

You can't stop bullying, you can't stop abusive alcoholic scum from reproducing and creating little monsters. But you can certainly create a culture where bullies fear from immediate and painful consequences...

Now, onto the buzzkill...





The father of a young boy with muscular dystrophy who committed suicide after being bullied and robbed said his son was afraid to return to school after the attack.

Eleven-year-old Mitchell Wilson, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, was attacked in November while out on a walk through his Pickering, Ont. neighbourhood.

His face and teeth were smashed into the pavement and an iPhone he had borrowed from his father was stolen.

Wilson was found dead in his bedroom on Sept. 6 – on the morning he was to start a new school year and one day after he was subpoenaed to testify against his alleged attacker.

Craig Wilson said his son felt tormented by bullies at school who picked on him because of disability.

He said his son grew uncharacteristically moody and irritable after the attack and stopped going on walks that doctors had said would help stave off the effects of muscular dystrophy.

"Subsequent to the beating that he took, he just lost that spark you see in a kid's eye. He had huge anxiety attacks about going outside and going for his walks and going to school by himself," Craig Wilson told CTV Canada AM on Thursday.

"He was OK when he was with someone, but being alone was not a good thing for him. His vulnerability was really brought to the surface, and how easily he could be taken advantage of physically."

A court appearance by a 12-year-old boy accused of bullying Mitchell was delayed on Wednesday after the Crown said it wasn't ready to proceed so soon after the victim's suicide.

With no one to testify at the trial, it appeared the charge of assault would be dropped. The delay will now give the Crown consider other ways to enter Wilson's evidence onto the record.

A new trial date has been set for Monday, Nov. 21.

Wilson said his son was in shock for days after the attack. When he finally came to understand what had happened he was embarrassed, and told his father he was ashamed he hadn't been able to defend himself against his attacker.

"He came to me and said, ‘I couldn't do anything to stop him, dad. I wanted to but I couldn't do anything,'" Wilson said. "He was saying sorry to me."

Days before his son's death, Wilson spoke with him about the upcoming school year. Mitchell assured his father he was ready to "give it a go" and said he would have no trouble making new friends. But Wilson says he now believes his son had no intention to return to school.

"I think he had sort of already come to peace with it, days before or weeks before. I don't know. But it's hard to think of it," he said.

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The bullying that her grandson suffered at his school, Westcreek Public School in Pickering, led the boy to lose his will to live, his grandmother said, breaking her silence on the case on Wednesday.

"He said to me, 'Mimi, my biggest issue is that I can't protect myself, and if a man cannot protect himself, then he is not a man,'" recalled Ms. Wilson.

"At the cottage in July, he said, 'If I have to go back to that school, I'll kill myself.'"

The last time she saw her grandson was the Saturday of Labour Day Weekend.

"He called me up and asked me to come over for a barbecue," she recalls. "We feel he had a plan. It was the kind of thing you do when you are leaving this planet."

At her grandson's house, she said, she suggested taking the dog for a walk. "Craig, my son, said, 'We can't find the leash.' And then in the morning, he found the leash, wrapped around Mitch's neck, holding the plastic bag in place."




With the help of his stepmother, he made huge progress, his grandmother recalled.

"She knocked 80 pounds off him," Ms. Wilson said. "The kid started to get more active, he went to karate, he went for a walk six times a day, until he got jumped by those two boys."

Last November, Mitch walked a few blocks from his home one evening and noticed two boys following him. He called his stepmother, Tiffany Usher, who rushed to the scene in her car, and found her stepson lying down, where the boys had pushed him, smashing his face into the sidewalk.

"I chased down these youngsters and got back the phone," Ms. Usher said Wednesday, in a brief interview. She declined to say more, noting that, with Mitch gone, she is the key Crown witness in its case against the boy.

Ms. Wilson, the grandmother, recalled that after that assault, her grandson lost his self-confidence; once, when his stepmother drove him to school, he stood banging his head into the van, yelling, "Help me!"




Ms. Wilson said the Wilson family has asked the Crown to request that Mitch's assailant, who cannot be named because he is a youth, be removed from the care of his mother, and placed with a foster family.

"My family feel that he's also a victim," Ms. Wilson

said. "He's a lost kid. He hasn't been loved, hasn't been cared for. We don't want to be a lynch squad. We want him to do community work with disabled people.

All we are trying to do is help this kid understand that his life is going to be zip if he keeps on the road he is on."