Two Florida tween girls were charged with stalking after bullying 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick relentlessly online, eventually leading to her suicide.
The two girls, ages 12 and 14, were arrested Monday and have been charged as minors with felony aggravated stalking in relation to Rebecca’s death. National news outlets are not exposing their names, released by the local sheriff of Polk County, Florida, because they are minors.
Sheriff Grady Judd held a press conference on Tuesday, painting a vivid picture of the bullying complete with blown up stills taken of the girls’ various Facebook posts and online bullying attacks.
Sheriff Judd points out one particular post as showing a “total disregard for life,” that was written after Rebecca jumped off an abandoned concrete tower, leading to her death, in September: “Yes IK bullied Rebecca nd she killed herself but IDGAF [I don’t give a f—k].”
It was this shocking post that led to the girls’ arrests. The 12-year-old was booked Monday and has since been released to her parents, but the 14-year-old remains in a juvenile detention facility.
“We knew that there was total disregard for life, and if she would post those things after she bullied Rebecca and after the parents knew that, we had to act more quickly,” Sheriff Judd told Fox and Friends.
The 14-year-old alleged bully’s lawyer, Andrea DeMichael, insists that her client’s Facebook account was hacked and, in an interview, her parents were adamant that their daughter would never write such a thing. Her parents even declared that they checked her Facebook and cellphone daily to monitor her online activity.
The sheriff believes that the whole conflict started when the 14-year-old began dating a boy that had previously dated Rebecca and decided that Rebecca needed to be shunned. At the time the bullying began, the 14-year-old attended the same middle school as Rebecca. She encouraged her friends to make Rebecca a pariah, and groups of young teenagers began to harass Rebecca over a year ago. The 12-year-old who was arrested in connection to Rebecca’s death used to be Rebecca’s best friend and reportedly turned on her during the fight.
DeMichael says that her client did have a falling out with Rebecca, and there were some small spats, but nothing that could be classified as harassment or threats.
“She was actually upset at what happened to the victim,” DeMichael told CNN.
Sheriff Judd says that Rebecca was receiving multiple threats before she killed herself, including encouragements for her to commit suicide, such as, “drink bleach and die.”
According to the police, the bullying led to at least one physical confrontation at school, and the harassment was so intense that Rebecca’s mother pulled her out of school and enrolled her in a new school in fall of 2013.
The girls likely will not face any jail time, but Sheriff Judd hopes that their arrests and impending sentences will cause kids and their parents to think twice about how they act towards others.
“We’ve lost sleep over that child dying needlessly, and we want to see things change. We want to never, ever, ever investigate a case like that again,” Sheriff Judd said.
– Olivia Truffaut-Wong
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