Blackfen School for Girls E Magazine Feb/March 2014 | Page 3

Lets stop
bullying
Amanda Todd still lives on in
memory.
When she was in the 7th grade, Amanda met a man in an online chat room who talked her
into flashing him her breasts. A year later, the man contacted her on Facebook and asked her
to 'put on a show' for him. He threatened to release a picture of her to everyone she knew if
she did not comply with his wishes. He knew her address, her name, where she went to school,
and who her friends and family members were. Amanda’s pictures were released and went
viral. Other kids at her school saw the pictures and started to bully and tease her. She became
severely depressed, developed anxiety and began to use drugs and alcohol.
A year later, after she changed
schools and found a new group
of friends, the man came back
and created a Facebook page,
using her topless photo as his
profile picture. Her new friends
started ignoring her, talking
about her, and bullying her. She
reveals her feelings in her video
on YouTube, describing how she
cried every night and lost all her
friends. Amanda began cutting
herself.
Again, Amanda changed schools, where a boy flirted with her. As a result, girls from the first
school came to her new school and beat her up, while people watched and filmed it. She
reveals, "I was left all alone and left on the ground." She managed to find her way to the road,
where she lay down in a ditch. Her father found her there.
When Amanda returned home, she tried to commit suicide by drinking bleach. Once again,
she moved to a new city, but the bullying continued. Therapy, combined with antidepressants, did little to help her depression and anxiety, and she continued to cut herself and
attempted suicide again.
In September 2012 Amanda wrote her story on flashcards and
recorded it on YouTube.
Amanda’s body was found at her home in
British Columbia, Canada on the 10th of
October, 2012.