Illinois Illinois | Page 30

AMANDA TODD

Bullying Tragedy: Amanda Todd ' s

Nightmare

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By BRANDON BAUR(@ brandonbaur) and REENA NINAN(@ reenaninan)
Oct. 24, 2012
It’ s a cry for help that’ s now been seen more than 17 million times-- Amanda Todd, 15, sharing her painful story with the world via YouTube.
“ Cried every night, lost all my friends and respect,” reads one placard Todd holds up in the video.“ I felt like a joke in this world I thought nobody deserves this,” reads another.
Todd, 15, posted the video called“ My story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, self harm” on Sept. 7 and was found dead in her home town of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia on Oct. 10.
Todd’ s small community held a candlelight vigil in her honor this past weekend.
“ You wouldn’ t know that she had any problems,” one fellow student said through tears.“ She was just so happy, like all the time, never sad, like you couldn’ t tell.”
Todd’ s death hasn’ t stopped her from being the victim of online harassment. Some have been attempting to profit from the enormous public outcry in support for her by setting up fraudulent websites that claim to be fundraising for the girl’ s family.
“ Taking advantage of a family’ s grief is despicable,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Peter Thiessen said in a statement.“ We want to get the word out that there is one real account and anyone who is interested can make a donation at any RBC branch to the Amanda Todd Trust Account.”
Dozens of tribute pages for the teen have been created on Facebook. The most popular one has over one million supporters and several others have hundreds of thousands of supporters.
Authorities are“ sifting through thou-
30 | Illinois Winter 2014 | abusemagazine. org
Source: abcnews. go. com