Parents Sue Wealthy Suburb Over Bullied Son’s Suicide
Bart Palosz faced years of bullying before taking his own life in 2013, at the age of 15. Now his parents are suing their town and school district for not doing enough to protect him. (Photo: Greenwich Time/Hearst Connecticut Media)
The parents of a teenager who committed suicide in upscale Greenwich, Conn., nearly two years ago are now suing their town and the board of education for allegedly not doing enough protect their son from the bullying that had plagued him.
“We feel this lawsuit is important so that other students in Greenwich don’t suffer the same kind of treatment that Bart did,” said Franciszek and Anna Izabela Palosz in a public statement provided to Yahoo Parenting by their attorney, David Golub. Their son, Bart, was 15 years old when he took his own life on the first day of his sophomore year at Greenwich High School, in 2013. “It is our hope that this lawsuit will result in changes to how the Greenwich school system responds to students in need of help so that there will be no more needless deaths,” they said.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Superior Court, alleges that high school teachers and counselors were advised in writing that Bart was regularly bullied and in need of intervention but that the school system failed to provide him with counseling. Those written reports, Golub noted in the press release, are “a smoking gun. It shows that the school system knew but ignored the Board’s binding antibullying procedures.”
Town attorney John Wayne Fox did not respond to requests for comment from Yahoo Parenting on Friday.
News of the legal action comes the same week that a similar suit — this one against a Nevada school district by parents of a 13-year-old girl who killed herself after being bullied — was dismissed by a federal judge. Earlier this year, a California case drew national attention when the families of two teen boys settled with the family of Audrie Pott, who committed suicide at 15 after being sexually assaulted and then cyberbullied by the boys; a similar case seeking to hold a Florida school accountable for a bullied 12-year-old girl’s suicide is ongoing.
Bart’s family attends a memorial event in his honor in 2014. (Photo: Greenwich Time/Hearst Connecticut Media)
“We’ve definitely been hearing about more of these cases,” Justin Patchin, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, tells Yahoo Parenting. “To win them, [the parents] really have to prove that the school was deliberately indifferent and that they did nothing about the bullying — or else it’s a pretty tough call.”
The trickiest part, Patchin explains, is that there’s “still so much uncertainty as far as when schools and others can be held accountable for a lack of action, because there’s no clear standard.” The other side, he adds, is that sometimes when schools do discipline students for being bullies, they wind up getting sued for that — as in a New Jersey case settled just this week, in which parents claimed their young son’s civil rights were violated when he was wrongly accused by the district of bullying others. “I really feel for schools in this position because they’re in a tough position,” he says.
Psychologist Lisa Boesky, a teen-suicide expert and author of When to Worry, tells Yahoo Parenting that it’s “normal and natural for parents to view bullying as the sole cause of a child’s suicide.” But, she stresses, “Suicide is a complex behavior. Bullying can be a significant contributing factor, but there are often others, as well, including mental health issues and family problems.”
That said, it’s still vital for schools to not only implement a prevention program but also to foster a “positive climate” for these vulnerable teens — especially since being socially rejected is indeed a big risk factor for suicide. “A young person’s peer group and social identity take on a role of utmost importance during adolescence,” she notes.
As far as parents seeking to place blame squarely with the bullies or the schools, Boesky says, “The most common motivation is that parents want to hold schools accountable and also prevent similar tragedies for other students.” She adds, “If you view the bullying as the sole cause of the suicide, then it would make sense.”
Still, notes Patchin, filing a lawsuit in these cases is more of a last-ditch effort at justice or closure. “To the extent that it’s proven in court that a school did nothing to protect a child, it may send the message to schools that they should spend more on antibullying resources,” he says, “but I’m hard-pressed to think of it as being a direct remedy. It’s certainly not going to bring the child back.”
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