Schools want to delete the cyberbully

For years, Kate Jenson's daughter was inseparable from her best friend, whether at home, at the movies or online.

Then, just before sixth grade, the friendship ceased -- replaced by a very different kind of contact online.

The former friend's e-mails turned nasty, calling her daughter a "bitch" and threatening to start rumors about her.

Jenson didn't have a clue until her distressed daughter revealed the hurtful notes.

"Somehow," she said, "the distance of e-mail made it easier to be cruel."

Like Jenson, Minnesota is getting a rude awakening to cyberbullying -- online harassment that as many as one in five teens have experienced. With another school year soon to begin, Twin Cities school districts are busily responding to the phenomenon, which has increased as teens have acquired cell phones with video and text capabilities and joined social networking sites that can spread rumors, insults and images in seconds.

The Anoka-Hennepin district, for example, has produced a video in which students detail the risks of texting mean or sexually explicit messages. Police departments are warning students that possession of certain explicit images can be a felony, and training school-assigned officers to trace offensive or harassing messages to their sources.

Cyberbullying often comes up when dramatic cases are in the news, such as the suicide this year of Phoebe Prince in Massachusetts and the harassing of Jessica Leonhardt, 11, after the Florida girl posted profanity-laden video on YouTube.

State officials say the problem is broader than the headlines suggest. Nine in 10 teens now have cell phones. Teens also are more tech savvy than their parents and teachers, and adept at accessing unapproved websites at school.

What they don't have, experts say, are coping skills to deal with the blizzard of insulting e-mails and texts when they become targets of bullies, who can be friends, enemies or even online pranksters who exploit teens' fragility.

Cyberbullying is an extension of old-fashioned schoolyard bullying. But it can cause more harm because the bullies can be relentless and because their messages can reach a wide audience and entice others to pile on, said Nancy Riestenberg, a prevention specialist with the Minnesota Department of Education.

"Because you don't see a person's face -- so you don't see a person's reaction to what you've done -- it's like you didn't really do anything," she said. "For a lot of people, seeing somebody's face stops them. They have this opportunity to empathize."

School discipline

Because cyberbullying often begins in or carries over to the classroom, school districts are enacting policies against it. (The Legislature in 2007 required schools to create policies but didn't set a deadline.)

The Education Department reported 40 cyberbullying cases out of 60,000 disciplinary actions by public schools in 2008-2009 that resulted in suspension or expulsion. That likely underestimates the problem, because some cases result in milder discipline not reported.

An infamous local case occurred in the Anoka-Hennepin district in 2006. Five middle school students were accused of creating an imposter MySpace page for a teacher they disliked and loading it with child pornography.

The district has responded with prevention strategies, including teacher training this summer and a student-made video about penalties for cyberbullying, texting in class and "sexting."

Black recently asked friends via Facebook if they had been cyberbullied, and was surprised to learn that three had been victimized. "It's kind of behind closed doors," he said.

For many districts, the dilemma has been whether to discipline students for bullying or sexting that takes place off school grounds. Anoka-Hennepin has found one way to pursue those cases.

"If the students used a cell phone [off campus] for the bully message or the sexting, and they bring that cell phone into the school, then we have decided we can react," said prevention coordinator Barry Scanlan.

Parent strategies

School officials say parents can prevent problems by talking with their children, setting clear rules and using cell phone tools that limit texting hours or disable cameras. Software is available that sends copies of texts to parents, or notifies them when their children send or receive messages.

The protective response is to take away kids' phones or computers. But that punishes the victims and discourages them from coming forward, said Nancy Lageson of the Minnesota School Safety Center. Formed after the Red Lake school shootings, the center is increasingly focusing on cyberbullying.

"They're scared their parents are going to take away their computer or phone privileges," Lageson said. "They are not going to tell you what's going on if they think that."

When Kate Jenson and her husband learned their daughter, now 12, was receiving harassing messages, they blocked the ex-friend's e-mail accounts. Jenson has become more observant of her daughter's online activities and "friended" her Facebook page to monitor it.

"I have long conversations with her that make her roll her eyes every time I read something about cyberbullying or sexting, God forbid," she said.

Felony?

Students often don't realize, as minors, that lewd images of themselves meet the legal definition of child pornography -- and that possessing or sending them is a felony, Scanlan said. That has shocked students caught with illicit images, especially those who didn't take them or ask to receive them.

Cindy Rost, a St. Paul school resource officer, said teens with sexting images have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct to avoid felony convictions that require them to register as sex offenders.

Sexting can end in cyberbullying, added Rost, who trained officers on the problem at a seminar in Eagan. Teens may send private images to one another when dating, but spread those images after a bad breakup. "They don't think of that."