Four N.J. Teens Charged In Fight That Pushed To Classmate Adriana Kuch To Suicide
Ocean County prosecutors charged the four New Jersey teen girls who had beaten 14-year-old Adriana Kuch in a savage fight that her family claims pushed her to suicide.
In a heart-wrenching video that leaked publicly prior to Kuch’s death on February 3, the girls could be seen brutally assaulting Kuch with a 20-ounce water bottle and pulling her hair when she was walking down the hallway with her boyfriend, while students on the side looked on laughing or recording.
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All four girls, who remain unnamed, had been suspended before for smaller crimes,
Now, one is charged with harassment, another for aggravated assault and the remaining two for conspiracy to commit aggravated assault. It appears that the recorded fight wasn’t the first time they had physically and emotionally tormented their classmate, either.
Kuch was allegedly a victim of sustained bullying for a long time.
“Getting hit with a water bottle didn’t hurt Adriana – what hurt her was the embarrassment and humiliation, they just kept coming at her,” according to Kuch’s father Michael, who said that he had not slept for days trying to fight for justice on behalf of his daughter.
“My daughter actually blacks out and they don’t call an ambulance. They take her to the nurse’s office,” Kuch continued, stating that he ultimately had to take his daughter, who was then covered in blood, to the police station himself.
Schools Superintendent Triantafillos Parlapanides, who publicly tried shifting the blame for the suicide to Kuch’s own drug abuse and her father’s affair, cited school policy as a reason for not calling the police immediately following the assault.
He said that he doesn’t believe in “double-whamming” a kid if they were to be suspended anyway, suggesting that parents take it into their own hands if they want to involve the police.
The statement and violation of privacy triggered an earthquake of outrage far beyond Kuch’s family, and on February 8, over 200 students in Central Regional High walked out of class denouncing the district’s patterned unaccountability for addressing bullying and its failure to protect victims.
“I want that entire administration gone,” Kuch told the New York Post on Saturday. “The superintendent slandering people, bashing people. Calling Adriana a drug addict. What is wrong with this guy? He is incompetent.”
Parlapanides had stepped down as of Saturday.
A notice posted to the Central Regional School District Board of Education website promises that the administration is “evaluating” all current and past reported incidents of bullying and re-examining its anti-bullying policies.
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