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    TheAngryMobAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 11:14am

    “died by suicide” has to be one of the sloppiest phrases I’ve heard in awhile. You commit suicide or you kill yourself. Suicide is a motive, not a method.

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      Anna MerlanTheAngryMob
      6/04/15 11:18am

      Nope. Best practices for suicide reporting recommend not using “committed,” which sounds like a crime or, to religious communities, like a sin, and “kill yourself” is just insensitive, crude, and poorly phrased. “Died by suicide” is the phrasing recommended by mental health professionals and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. And I personally started using it after writing about a woman who shared with me how painful it was for her to read headlines about her husband “killing himself,” or, worse still, graphically describing the method. There is a right way to do this, relatively speaking, although not a perfect way.

      https://www.afsp.org/news-events/fo...

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      BeccaonmarsAnna Merlan
      6/04/15 11:22am

      Worded far better than what I wanted to say.

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    MimiladyAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 10:59am

    Chopping off her hair. What kind of fucking medieval punishment is this? That’s what they did to women who slept with Germans during the French occupation. Getting drunk or whatever doesn’t warrant this hateful treatment. This is horrid.

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      LimaBeansMimilady
      6/04/15 11:08am

      I'm right there with you. The posting of the video is bad enough but there's something about the haircuttng that's really perverse and sinister. The poor child.

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      salttotasteMimilady
      6/04/15 11:16am

      During high school in CT, a close friend ran away by hopping on a train to NYC with another friend. I think they turned right around when they arrived at Grand Central. Too late though, the damage was done. Friend’s father cut off almost all of her long, beautiful locks. A rare Mormon family in a very WASPy town. Parents were psycho controlling, adult daughter has more issues than Vogue.

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    Pontypool's #1 DJAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 10:54am

    If she was being bullied at school, it makes it so much worse that her own father would do this to her. Did it never occur to him that those same bullies would see this and use it against her? WTF!

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      KayleeyoncéJaynePontypool's #1 DJ
      6/04/15 10:57am

      Or how betrayed she would feel that her own father, a person who is supposed to love and protect her, would become a bully too? She must have felt like absolutely no one would support and protect her. How terribly sad.

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      College GranddadPontypool's #1 DJ
      6/04/15 10:58am

      To be fair to that piece of shit, he probably didn’t even know. 13 years old don’t really talk to their parents about anything.

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    Violet BaudelaireAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 10:59am

    Oh my god. For anyone that thinks that hair cutting is not cruel, my mom force cut my hair when I was 10 and it wasn’t until I was in my 30s and had therapy that I could handle having it cut again.

    THIS IS MEAN. That poor girl. I hope this makes those shaming videos stop.

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      KK4BamaViolet Baudelaire
      6/04/15 11:01am

      An ex-coworker cut off her daughters long ponytail once for something ridiculous. It made me sick when she told me.

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      HesterMofetViolet Baudelaire
      6/04/15 11:06am

      My grandmother (otherwise wonderful woman who was a like a second mother to me) kept my mother’s hair very short most of her life, because it was less work to style. My mother didn’t like it, and even as an adult felt sad about having it cut when she didn’t want it done. These things are very meaningful to children, and it sticks with them for life!

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    BrightEyesAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 11:00am

    I just read through the comments section of the Tacoma Stories link and someone fairly close to the situation said that her father had threatened to put her up for adoption. If this is true, coupled with the hair cutting off incident, it paints a picture of an abuser who should be in jail.

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      Pontypool's #1 DJBrightEyes
      6/04/15 11:03am

      That is some disturbing shit.

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      BrightEyesPontypool's #1 DJ
      6/04/15 11:05am

      It sure is.

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    GinAndTonic Got Stuck in the BarneyAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 11:08am

    This shit that parents do is straight-up abuse. There’s no other word for it. All sorts of people will come out of the woodwork to, if not defend this dad (because the outcome is undeniably tragic), defend other parents who do other shaming forms of punishment, like make their kids stand on busy street corners with signs or post videos of humiliation. Or parents who hit their kids. Word to those people: just because YOU may have experienced this stuff with no lasting harm doesn’t mean all kids will. There are plenty of kids who will experience deep and lasting hurt from this shit.

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      FartJarGinAndTonic Got Stuck in the Barney
      6/04/15 11:14am

      I would argue that many of them that experienced it did end up being damaged, and just don’t know it. I would bet that the girl's father has some kind of past issues he is suppressing

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      GinAndTonic Got Stuck in the BarneyFartJar
      6/04/15 11:15am

      Totally. But they don’t have that insight.

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    GlassesJacketShirtFemaleAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 10:53am

    I really hate it when self righteous internet warriors start abuse campaigns against the parents of dead children. When you’ve lost a child, you can talk. Otherwise, “there but for the grace of god...” and STFU.

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      KK4BamaGlassesJacketShirtFemale
      6/04/15 10:58am

      But what if it was her father filming this video that led her to suicide?

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      CollectThemAllGlassesJacketShirtFemale
      6/04/15 10:59am

      Nope.

      This kid was getting bullied in school, and then her own father bullies her by doing this shit? I’m sorry, but that man is, at BEST, indirectly responsible and at worst, directly.

      I feel for her mother and what she must be going through. But her father? I’m finding I can’t muster a whole lot of give-a-fuck for him.

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    SterilizeAllRepublicansAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 10:55am

    I’m sure she “messed up” by having sex or smoking a joint with some friends, and good ol’ dad handled it like the child he is. Now he get to live with the fact that his immaturity drove his own kid to suicide.

    Great job, pops.

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      idonttrollSterilizeAllRepublicans
      6/04/15 11:00am

      I don’t think his public shaming was entirely responsible. She had other issues.

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      andthenshewaslikeSterilizeAllRepublicans
      6/04/15 11:03am

      Maybe, but you never know. Something similar almost happened in my husband’s family over his sister making unauthorized purchases of tampons, school supplies and candy.

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    thesquarerootofAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 11:14am

    Cutting off people’s hair to shame them was also a common tactic of both Nazis and Stalin era Russians, generally against those deemed too enamored with outside culture. So you know. If it’s good enough for extreme regimes, sounds like a great parenting technique.

    I’m sure arriving to school with your hair chopped off is a great way to combat one’s bullying, too, especially when we are talking about 13 year olds. This move is all the more likely to trigger their budding teenage empathy centers if one is shamed publically about it.

    This guy should get a parent of the year award. Nothing says I love you unconditionally like chopping off a part of your daughter’s body to prove a point. Sure, he may have shown weakness and chopped a part that doesn't feel (a truly loving parent would have opted for, say, a finger or perhaps an ear), but I think she understood the violence of that move nonetheless. Parenting medal for this guy!

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      amongthegoblinsthesquarerootof
      6/04/15 11:28am

      Yeah, nonconsensual hair-cutting as punishment strikes me as really creepy—an assault on the kid’s bodily integrity. I think it creeps me out as much as if he’d pulled her clothes off or something.

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      Charlie thesquarerootof
      6/04/15 12:06pm

      it was also used pretty heavily in ancient times in certain areas to shame women for various transgressions. so messed up.

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    CassiopeiaSDAnna Merlan
    6/04/15 11:51am

    OK, so, this is a tragedy. The victim here, undeniably, is this poor girl. No one’s disputing that.

    Should her father have publicly shamed her? Absolutely not. Is this why she killed herself? Maybe, we don’t know.

    But can we please dial back the hatred for the parents? Regardless of the circumstances, they just lost their child. I’ve even seen people hating “the parents”, despite the fact that there’s no indication that the mother did anything wrong.

    Let’s not pretend we’d care about this poor girl if she hadn’t made news. None of us knew her, or cared about her when she was alive. They did. Unless they are literally psychopaths (and there’s no evidence of that), they are more devastated by her death than all of us combined.

    This is a tragedy, and the best thing that can possibly come out of this is a national discussion about shaming and bullying. Trolling will not help anyone.

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      Blueberry JonesCassiopeiaSD
      6/04/15 2:24pm

      Is this why she killed herself? Maybe, we don’t know.

      A parent doesn’t just wake up and decide ot do something like this. I’m betting this kind of bullying and abuse had come from her dad before and was a major contributor to her loneliness.

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      J80CassiopeiaSD
      6/04/15 6:26pm

      Thank you! You said exactly what I was thinking. I went to high school with the parents and know they are good people who love their kids very much. I haven't seen them in years but know that this video must have been made out of frustration On his part. I was surprised he did that because it doesn't seem like his character. We don't know all the variables in what led to her death. The important thing is that these people just lost a child and are hurting beyond any hurt u could imagine. They are living every parents worse nightmare. Shame on all of the people casting their stones at them without understanding the full story.

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