Illinois schools sound alarm over rise in harmful cyberbullying messages

If you or a loved one is feeling distressed, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Line for free and confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. CLICK HERE for the warning signs and risk factors of suicide and CLICK HERE for more on the 988 Lifeline.

CHICAGO - Cyberbullying messages telling kids to "kill yourself" are becoming alarmingly common, and child health experts warn the emotional damage can have devastating consequences for some children and teens.

"For many kids, it's devastating," said Dr. Molly O'Shea, a pediatrician with the American Academy of Pediatrics. "When cyberbullying occurs in this way, and the messages that are sent are so painful, it increases the thoughts of suicide 12 times."

In a Fox Chicago special report, Anita Blanton looks at why this is happening and what is being done to stop it in Illinois.

School officers see online harassment daily

Patrick Eversole is a school resource officer at South Elgin High School. In this role, he sees a lot.

"We've had everything from kids getting caught with drugs in school to, you know, fights to psych evaluations," Eversole said. "There's no typical day with this."

But now, there’s something else he’s seeing more often, and it has law enforcement and lawmakers paying attention.

"So the harassment through electronic communications happens every day. Is it reported to me every day? No, but it happens every day between students, between students and adults, between students from other schools. It happens every day," Eversole said.

This school year, he says he’s handled multiple cases of students sending messages telling others to "kill yourself."

"I would say probably once a month for this school year. August, September, November, December, January, February. Once a month," Eversole said.

The case that drew national attention

One of the first cases to draw national attention took place in Massachusetts.

In 2017, a jury found 20-year-old Michelle Carter guilty of involuntary manslaughter for urging her boyfriend by text to take his own life.

It happened three years earlier, when both were teenagers.

"So, we see this much more than people ever realize," said Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser.

Mosser says her office usually hears about these situations either from school resource officers, like Eversole, or in police reports.

Why current Illinois laws fall short

"With juveniles. Juveniles, especially in middle school, all the way up through 25 years of age, where we know that they're still going through brain development. That's by far and away where we see the majority of these cases come through where people are talking about being harassed, but we don't have a statute to charge them with," Mosser said.

Since this behavior currently is not illegal, there are no court cases or arrests to gauge how big the problem is here.

And many cases go unreported because kids are too embarrassed to speak up. But there are other signs.

"We've seen this, especially with our therapists who have even seen an uptick in the amount of cases that have been referred to them. There's huge waiting lists now for juveniles because of behavior like this," Mosser said.

Experts warn many kids receive these messages

Rich Wistocki is a retired Naperville cybercrime detective who now travels the country training school resource offices and giving online safety presentations to students.

"So when I go in schools across the country, no matter where I'm at, especially in Illinois, of course, I ask this question," Wistocki said. "How many of you have received this text message over the, and I put it up on the screen. ‘No one likes you. You're so ugly. Why don't you just go kill yourself?’"

If he's speaking to an auditorium of 500 kids, Wistocki says about 80 of them — or roughly 15% — will raise their hands and say they have received that message.

"And then I ask a follow-up question. ‘How many of you received the message, received it, and you know who sent it to you and that person who sent to you is in this room right now?’ Two-thirds will keep their hands up," he said.

Cyberbullying and teen mental health

According to the CDC, suicide is the second leading cause of death for students between the ages of 10 and 17 years old and less than 50% of students who need mental health help get it.

Unit 32 spoke with several child health and safety experts who say they're seeing kids send these messages to each other.

They say it’s not just happening through texts, but also in direct messages, social media posts, voice mails, online gaming platforms and even face to face.

"A lot of parents are like, ‘oh, I want to press charges’, and I try to explain to them that the way the law works right now, there's really nothing we can do as of this point," Eversole said.

When kids receive a message like this, it’s considered cyberbullying. Part of cyberbullying is harassment.

Wistocki says our current state laws in this area are out of date. 

"So what the current law says under our cyberbullying statute making any comment requests, suggestion or proposal that is obscene with the intent to offend," Wistocki said.

He says cyberbullying now includes more than just sexual comments.

Illinois pushes for tougher cyberbullying laws

After working together for over a year, Wistocki and Mosser drafted an update to the state's telephone harassment law, expanding it to cover electronic messages, even if they are not obscene.

They then took their work to Illinois State Senate Assistant Majority Leader Linda Holmes. 

"My reaction, I think, was being stunned that it was actually perceived as being okay to use this phone to constantly harass somebody and tell them to go kill themselves," Holmes said.

Holmes sponsored Senate Bill 2741 earlier this year. The bipartisan bill passed out of the Senate in mid-April and is now in the House. 

"I think it's important because we see this actually happening. We know of cases. I mean they can tell you of cases where you are being harassed in such a manner and it doesn't have a sexual overtone. So that needs to be something that the police and the schools and everything can go back and talk to students and make sure this isn't happening. Parents had no recourse before," Holmes said.

Ross Ellis is the CEO and founder of "Stomp Out Bullying." It’s one of the largest anti-bullying prevention groups in the United States.

"We've heard about so many kids actually taking their lives," Ellis said. "A lot of them have done it because they've been told to by another kid. And a lot of them have done it because they cannot take the bully anymore. It's too traumatic for them. We've even had kids from out of the country contact us and tell us this is going on with them."

"They think they're being so wonderful and so popular and the more they say to someone go kill yourself, they feel good about it and in their minds most of them don't think that the kid will do it," he said.

Ellis says these electronic messages have been around for about a decade and began surging in recent years.

Parents sometimes minimize the harm

Lockport Township High School District 205 is home to almost 4,000 students. Administrators there have seen their fair share of these messages too.

"We see it when students walk into our dean's office and self-report," said District Supt. Robert McBride. "We see when other students either hear or witness via social media or text groups that bullying, harassment, threatening language is taking place."

He says they are getting up to four reports a week of students using this kind of language, and that’s just through their online self-reporting program called "Crisis Go."

"They understand the severity of what they're saying, but they don't understand the severity of impact. They're somewhat divorced, and I think a cell phone, because you're messaging someone who's not right in front of you. You're communicating however you use that cell phone from a distance. Your empathy is far less," McBride said.

When a student is caught sending these messages to another student, McBride says some are quick to dismiss it, claiming the other student misunderstood the message text or overreacted.

"It's not unusual in the most serious cases that we deal with that we might have parents who agree with that, who sometimes marginalize the behavior and will say, ‘kids say these things to each other all the time. Kids send these messages to each other all the time. My child didn't intend this to be as damaging as this person is saying.’ And that mitigates the damage, and that's where we need to kind of get parents on side to understand that the impact is really what matters the most," he added. 

Helping kids build digital resilience

"It's 12 times more likely that someone who's cyberbullied in this way will actually consider suicide than other forms of bullying or harassment," O’Shea said.

In her practice, O’Shea spends a lot of time focusing on kids’ behavioral health and social media.

"Building digital resilience along with actual real-life resilience is one protective mechanism. Having close relationships with friends and with family members, having a trusted adult in your life that you really do feel you can open up to does reduce that risk dramatically," O’Shea said.

She says parents and teachers can help their children develop these skills, and it’s important to do so. 

"It's also true, the kids who have strong resilience skills who are really centered in who they are, are not as likely to be targets of bullying either," O’Shea said. 

"No one has the right to make you feel bad about yourself online. No one has the right to make you do something you know you shouldn't be doing, like sextortion and suicide," Wistocki said.

Under this bill, Mosser says students who are caught sending these messages could be charged with a misdemeanor and would receive counseling.

The bill also extends protections to adults who receive harassing messages, including domestic abuse survivors and public officials.

If you or a loved one is feeling distressed, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Line for free and confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. CLICK HERE for the warning signs and risk factors of suicide and CLICK HERE for more on the 988 Lifeline.

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