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Amanda Todd
Amanda Todd posted a heartbreaking video on YouTube five weeks ago detailing her battle with online harassment and bullies, but this week the 15-year-old gave in to the battle and committed suicide.
Amanda uploaded the video entitled “My Story: Struggling, bullying, suicide and self harm” in September. In the video, she holds up pieces of paper which detail her story, a painful tale of online harassment and shunning at school, the Vancouver Sun reported.
Near the end of the video, she writes: “Every day I think why am I still here? … I have nobody. I need someone.”
Now Amanda Todd’s mother hopes the video can continue to serve a purpose.
“I think the video should be shared and used as an anti-bullying tool. That is what my daughter would have wanted,” Carol Todd, Amanda’s mother, told The Vancouver Sun in a message on Twitter.
Amanda Todd’s video noted that she was not trying to get attention, but wanted “to be an inspiration and to show that I can be strong.”
The video also delves into the depths of her bullying, The Huffington Post noted. It tells of how in 7th grade she and friends would use webcam to talk to new people, and, at one point, a stranger lured her into flashing the camera. A year later, the man contacted her on Facebook and threatened to send pictures of her topless if she didn’t “put on a show.”
The stranger knew all of Amanda Todd’s intimate detail, including her address, school, friends, relatives, and the names of her family members. Soon the naked photos were forwarded to all of them.
After the incident, Amanda Todd developed depression and anxiety disorders, followed by a path into drugs and alcohol. She changed schools and tried to make new friends, but the stranger struck again, making a Facebook page that used her naked photo as a profile picture.
“Cried every night, lost all my friends and respect people had for me … again … then nobody liked me,” she wrote in the video.
News of Amanda Todd’s suicide is reaching high ranks in Canada. Premier Christy Clark, who started her own anti-bullying campaign while she was a radio host, posted a short video on YouTube Thursday sending her sympathies to Amanda’s family.
“I want to say to everyone who loved her, to all her family and friends, how sorry I am about her loss,” Clark — who spearheaded an anti-bullying campaign while she was a radio host — says in the video.
“No one deserves to be bullied. No one earns it. No one asks for it. It isn’t a rite of passage. Bullying has to stop.”
Amanda Todd’s own message to people being bullied was to urge them to stand up for themselves and to help others facing bullies:
“If you see that someone is being bullied, don’t be afraid to tell the bully to stop doing what they are doing. Make sure to tell them that it’s wrong and that they shouldn’t bully other kids.”
Even after her death, Amanda Todd’s fight against bullying is drawing supporters. A Facebook memorial page in her honor has more than 11,000 people liking it with hundreds of comments on the site.
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