ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —The New Mexico Attorney’s General office is stepping up, taking a stand trying to prevent a specific type of bullying.
January 25th marked the kickoff of their 2013 campaign to combat cyberbullying.
In the United States, about 95 percent of teens have witnessed cruel behavior on social networking sites. Nearly 55 percent of them say they see that type of behavior often.
Lynn Southard, from the AG’s office, told Action 7 News they have done cyberbullying prevention presentations before, but what is different in 2013 is how many students they’re presenting too. They expect to show nearly triple the amount of students as usual the presentation.
Throughout the presentation, they show elementary, middle and high school students true stories involving struggle at school and at home, sometimes resulting in suicide. They discuss the consequences of harassment, impersonation and sexting.
“Believe it or not, sometimes this makes this shocks the adults,” explained Southard. “Mouths down. Depending on what school we’re in, it’s a shock to the adults which I think is across the board, sometimes I even wonder do parents know what’s going on with their kids?”
Southard said students are shocked, too, once they see some of the slides. One of them shows how quickly a picture posted online can spread worldwide, quickly becoming viral, and quickly becoming dangerous depending on what the photo is.
The Attorney’s General office will head to Sandia Preparatory School next and then to El Dorado High School. They still have openings, so they suggest if anyone would like to schedule a presentation at a school, to call the Albuquerque office.
The former owner of a “revenge porn” website has been threatened by hacktivist collective Anonymous.
Hunter Moore used to post sexual images of men and women without their permission, along with links to their social networking profiles.
Mr Moore said he will launch a new site soon, telling one technology blog he would also post home addresses.
He later said he was “misquoted”, but Anonymous has said he must be held “accountable for his actions”.
“We will protect anyone who is victimised by abuse of our internet, we will prevent the stalking, rape, and possible murders as by-product of his sites,” the group said in a media release.
It added: “Operation anti-bully. Operation hunt Hunter engaged. We are Anonymous, we are legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget, Hunter Moore, expect us.”
IsAnyoneUp
Mr Moore sold his old website, IsAnyoneUp.com, to an anti-bullying charity in April this year.
Until that point it had gained notoriety for publishing pornographic pictures of men and women from all over the world, sent in by disgruntled ex-boyfriends and girlfriends.
No I’m not going to take it down, and no I don’t really care”
Hunter Moore
So-called “revenge porn” is common online, but Mr Moore’s site angered anti-bullying campaigners further due to the inclusion of links to social networking sites – leaving victims open to large levels of abuse.
People who had made requests for the photographs to be removed were often ridiculed further, and the huge majority of legal threats against Mr Moore were ignored.
“I sold it because I hated what the media turned it into and it could never be what I wanted it to be,” Mr Moore has said about the closed site, which reportedly made him about $20,000 (£12,400; 15,335 euros) a month from advertising revenue.
Speaking about his new venture, which has not yet launched, he said: “This time I am doing it right. I am creating something that will question if you ever want to have kids.
“I am making something very scary but yet fun.”
Suicide
Mr Moore told technology blog Betabeat that the new site would “introduce the mapping stuff so you can stalk people”, but in a subsequent interview with Salon magazine he took back the comment, stating that he made it while “drunk”.
Anonymous posted a video featuring Amanda Todd, 15, who killed herself after being bullied
Regardless of his intentions, Anonymous published details about Mr Moore online, including the names of family members and his home address.
The group posted a video about their actions to Vimeo. In it, they showed pictures of Amanda Todd – a girl who committed suicide after topless photographs of her were circulated on the internet.
Prior to her death, 15-year-old Miss Todd created a YouTube video describing how she was bullied.
Mr Moore, who has said his new site has had thousands of submissions, has in the past said he holds no guilt over what he does.
“It’s anonymous to me. I don’t know the people – it’s just a little picture on a screen,” he told the BBC in an interview in April.
“If you’re just crying over some [picture] you sent to some boy you just met, no I’m not going to take it down, and no I don’t really care.”
Fifteen-year-old Maisie Kate Miller has been picked on by bullies before, and she didn’t let it get to her. But when a tormenter at school made fun of her hairdo, it was the last straw — and Maisie wasn’t going to stand for the insults anymore.
According to Today, the Massachusetts teen was mocked for her hairstyle by a girl bully, said to her: “Who wears pigtails still? What is this, kindergarten?” Maisie had been picked on for her clothes, boyfriend and body, but being mocked for her favorite hairstyle was a first.
“I turned around and she said, ‘Keep walking!’ I don’t know, I was having a hard week anyway, and by the time I got to bio, I was crying,” Maisie told the Washington Post.
Although she cried through her next class, Maisie didn’t dwell in her anger for long. She decided to stand up to her bully by wearing pigtails to school all week and encouraging her friends to do the same. She created a Facebook page urging others to join her effort. Clearly, she had hit a nerve: Hundreds of classmates responded within hours and showed up to school the next day wearing pigtails.
On her Facebook page, Pigtails 4 Peace — which currently has 1,500 likes — Maisie writes: “We’re forming this group to fight against bullies of every gender, race, domestic lifestyle, and social class.”
And it seems that her efforts are paying off already: The bully has backed off Maisie and several other students, and offered words of remorse through a friend.
In Canada, another teen has taken a creative approach to tackling bullying. Ottawa teen Megan Landry’s anti-bullying anthem “Stronger,” based on her own experiences with a clique of mean girls, has gone viral on YouTube since she posted it last January.
“I just stare at [the bullies] like they stare at me,” she told the Ottawa Citizen. “I look them straight in the eyes and let them know that, like, they can’t do anything to me now. And they know it too, because they are the ones looking down now.”
What do you think of Maisie and Megan’s anti-bullying strategies? Would you wear pigtails to support a bullied classmate? Tell us in the comments below or tweet @HuffPostTeen!
More from guardian.co.uk on Malala Yousafzai” href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/malala-yousafzai”>Malala Yousafzai, the teenage girl flown to Britain for treatment after being shot in the head by Taliban gunmen in Pakistan, has the potential to make “pretty much a full recovery”, her doctors have said.
She is able to stand with help and is writing notes, and although the bullet grazed her brain she has not shown “any deficit in terms of function”, doctors at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham said on Friday.
She was “not out of the woods but is doing very well”, said Dr Dave Rosser, medical director of the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS foundation trust.
Malala, whose age was given as 15 by the hospital, and not 14 as previously reported, was shot 10 days ago on her school bus after promoting the education of girls and criticising Taliban militants.
Initially treated by neurosurgeons at a Pakistani military hospital before being flown to the UK on Monday, she awoke from a medically induced coma on Tuesday afternoon and reportedly asked: “Which country am I in?”
The bullet, fired at point-blank range, struck just above the back of the left eye, went down through the side of her jaw, damaging the skull and the jaw joint on the left side, went through the neck and lodged in the tissues above the shoulder blade. Shock waves from the bullet shattered the thinnest bone of the skull and fragments were driven into the brain.
“The bullet grazed the edge of her brain,” Rosser said. “Certainly if you’re talking a couple of inches more central, then it’s almost certainly an unsurvivable injury.”
Doctors say she has memory but they have not talked to her about the shooting. “From a lot of work we have done with our military casualties we know that reminding people of traumatic events at this stage increases the potential for psychological problems later, so we wouldn’t do that,” Rosser said.
He said Malala was aware of her surroundings, and though she couldn’t talk because she had a tracheotomy tube, she had given permission for medical details to be revealed, and wanted to thank everyone for their support.
She was still showing some signs of infection, related to the bullet track, but “she was standing with some help for the first time this morning. She is communicating very freely. She is writing. She has a tracheotomy tube because her airway was swollen by the passing of the bullet, so she is not able to talk, though we have no reason to believe she won’t be able to talk once this tube is out, which may be in the next few days.”
The specialist doctors, who have expertise in treating soldiers with gunshot injuries flown back from Afghanistan, said it was a “fluid situation” and Malala had suffered “a very, very grave injury”. She will need a couple of weeks to rehabilitate before her skull will need to be reconstructed and work may be carried out on her jaw.
Rosser said it was too early to say whether there would be “any subtle intellectual or memory deficit down the line”. But in terms of function, “she is able to understand, she has some memory, I am led to believe, she is able to stand, she’s got motor control, she’s able to write. It certainly would be over-optimistic to say that there is not going to be any further problems, but it is possible she will make a smooth recovery. It’s impossible to tell.”
He said the hospital was trying to arrange for Malala to listen to her father, who remains in Pakistan, on the phone, though she would not be able to speak to him because of the tube. Hospital staff were communicating with her in Urdu, though it was clear she understood English.
“She is keen that people share the details. She is also keen that I thank people for their support and their interest. She is obviously aware of the amount of support and interest this has generated around the world. She is keen to thank people for that,” Rosser said.
Malala was shot along with two classmates as they made their way home from school in north-west Pakistan, in what the foreign secretary, William Hague, described as a “barbaric attack”.
EDITORIAL: This is heartbreaking to watch. I’ve been cyber stalked and bullied for almost 5 years now so I understand the endlessness that it can bring to a victims life but as children and teens, it can seem hopeless because they haven’t lived long enough to know life recreates as we grow. It’s not hopeless though and we need to get the word out that bullying and stalking online or in person is a crime that needs to be taken very seriously and laws need to be enforced to show America won’t tolerate any more bullying!!
Don’t give up if you’re bullied. Don’t hurt yourself. Instead, STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK!! Make our justice system take your side for you and FIGHT BACK AGAINST BULLYING!! It can be very empowering to live your life in spite of what bullies may do to try to hurt you. I have found that by exposing my stalkers and bullies, people watch and see how twisted and sick these criminals really are. Victims can be survivors. Take back your life!!
A teenager posted a heartbreaking video on YouTube chronicling years of bullying in school and online, cutting and humiliation up until she died this week.
Amanda Todd, 15, posted the video called “My story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, self harm” on Sept. 7 and was found dead in her home town of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, just over a month later.
“Hello, I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story,” the black and white video begins. Todd can only be seen from her nose down for most of the video, occasionally moving around so that her face is visible. She silently tells her story through a series of white cards with black marker writing on them.
She describes using webcam chats to meet and talk to new people online as a seventh grade student. She said that people told her she was “stunning, beautiful, perfect” and a man pressured her to flash her chest. One year later, she did.
Todd received a Facebook message from a man she did not know saying that if she did not “put on a show” for him, he would send the photo of her chest to everyone. Over Christmas break, Todd said police came to her house at 4 a.m. to tell her that the photo had been sent to everyone.
“I then got really sick and got anxiety, major depression and panic disorders,” she wrote. “I then moved and got into drugs and alcohol.”
ABC News
Amanda Todd, 15, of Port Coquitlam, British
A year after moving, Todd said things were going better until the man on Facebook came back and used the photo of her chest as his profile picture. Todd said she “cried every night, lost all my friends and respect people had for me again.”
“I can never get that photo back,” she wrote. “It’s out there forever.”
She described being called names, eating lunch alone and resorting to cutting herself. She also told the story of an incident where she made a “huge mistake” and “hooked up” with a boy at her school who had a girlfriend, but who she believed really liked her.
A week later, she said she received a text message telling her to get out of school and then a group of students, led by the boy’s girlfriend, surrounded her at school and said, “Look around, nobody likes you.”
“A guy then yelled, ‘Just punch her already,’ so [the girlfriend] did,” Todd wrote. “She threw me to the ground and punched me several times. Kids filmed it. I was all alone and left on the ground.”
Todd said she “wanted to die so bad” when her dad found her in a ditch. She drank bleach when she went home and had to be rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped, she said.
“After I got home, all I saw was on Facebook–’She deserved it. Did you wash the mud out of your hair? I hope she’s dead,’” she wrote.
Todd moved to another school in another city, but said the torture followed her through Facebook. Students posted photos of ditches and suggested she try another bleach.
“Every day, I think, why am I still here?” she asked towards the end of the video. “I’m stuck. What’s left of me now? Nothing stops. I have nobody. I need someone. My name is Amanda Todd.”
Authorities were called to a residence in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, just before 6 p.m. on Oct. 10 to investigate the sudden death of the tormented teenager.
While authorities have not officially called the death a suicide, Cpl. Jamie Chung of the Coquitlam Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement, “At this time it has been determined that the teen’s death was not suspicious in nature and that foul play was not a factor.”
The coroner is investigating the death, police said.
Teenager Documents Bullying and Abuse Before Her Death
Todd said in her video that she did not want to press charges against the girl who beat her up because she ?wanted to move on? when she moved to another city and school.
Police did not immediately respond to ABCNews.com’s question whether there was a probe into the man who used Todd’s Facebook photo in an effort to exploit her and then made it public.
Jonah Mowry: ‘You Can Be Happy… Just Have to Try’ Watch Video
Todd’s family has declined to speak, but Cheryl Quinton, spokeswoman for the Coquitlam School District, told ABCNews.com, “The family was wanting to pass along that several supports were in place for their daughter on the school, home and community levels. There was a lot of intervention and a lot of support. I know that is the message that they want to convey.”
Todd was in the tenth grade at the Coquitlam Alternate Basic Education School when she died. School officials would not release the name of her previous school.
Quinton said the death has been “very devastating” to the small school where resources are being provided to students in regards to suicide prevention and bullying.
“We typically, as a school district, don’t talk about such deaths but with the family’s endorsement we did choose to do so because it is important to point out the dangers associated with social media and cyber-bullying,” Quinton said.
By 
Hunter Moore used to run a notorious “revenge porn” website, but sold it to an anti-bullying charity
