Don't blame the bully, blame the system | Alix Lambert | TEDxKC

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

A string of six teen suicides prompted by bullying in Mentor, Ohio, led Alix Lambert to a horrifying discovery: the system and every single adult associated with it failed to act in the face of a clear and present danger.

This talk contains profanity and deals with adult issues like suicide, in a very direct manner.

Alix Lambert's feature length documentary “The Mark of Cain” was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, received an honorable mention from the French Association of Journalism, and aired on “Nightline.” She went on to produce additional segments of “Nightline” as well as seven segments for the PBS series “LIFE 360.” She has directed and produced two other feature length documentaries, “Bayou Blue,” made in collaboration with David McMahon, and “Mentor.” She has directed numerous shorts and music videos including “You as You Were” for the band Shearwater (Sub Pop) and “Tiffany” (POV).

Lambert has written for a number of magazines, including Stop Smiling, ArtForum, The LA Weekly, and Filmmaker Magazine, and is an editor at large for the literary journal Open City. She is also an author and director and is currently producing a segment for “This American Life.”

Toward the end of March, in 2012,
I opened my computer to see this:

"Choke on it."

It was a tweet
that was directed towards me.

The next thing that I saw was this:

"Fuck you, asshole. I'm a big bully.

Yeah, well, make a movie
about someone else, you ass.

Asshole, asshole, asshole."

It's also directed at me.

For days, and weeks,
and months, this went on.

Every time I opened my computer,
there were angry tweets,

there were hostile messages,

there were emails,
there were YouTube comments,

there were Vimeo comments.

There was once a string of maybe
60 tweets that simply said, "You suck."

There was also a very complex story
that posited that I was a pedophile

and I was running from state to state
to escape the police,

and that particular one had the hashtag
that said "#kidtoucherbitch,"

which caused my crew to nickname me
"the notorious KTB."

But also, you can see on that one
the hashtag that says "#killyourself."

So, what was it that I did
to bring on this onslaught

of hostile and angry messages?

Well, about a year earlier,

I had read some articles
about an alarming number,

five or six, depending on the article,

of teen suicides, allegedly from bullying,

that were all happening
in one school, in one town, in Ohio.

And both the school and the town
were ironically titled "Mentor."

So, I'm a filmmaker
and that's how I like to look at things.

And so, I decided to go to Mentor, Ohio,

and I found Mentor, Ohio,
extremely foreign to me,

but it was difficult for me to figure out

what exactly it was
that felt off about it.

And, as I stayed there
and observed the town,

it seemed like it was
a culture of conformity:

either fit in or get out.

So, I put a crew together,
a skeleton crew,

and we started going regularly to Ohio
and making a documentary.

And the more that I spent time there,

we wanted to talk to anybody
who would talk to us,

and I narrowed my subjects down
to two sets of parents,

the Vidovics and the Mohats.

Both parents had lost children to suicide.

In the Vidovics' case, their daughter,
Sladjana, had hung herself,

and in the case of the Mohats,
their son, Eric, had shot himself.

And both couples were bringing a law suit
against the Mentor School District.

I did try and talk to any representatives
of the Mentor School District.

I wanted to approach them
with an open mind.

I wanted to hear what they had to say

about the bullying problem
in their school.

Ideally, I didn't want to demonize them.

I would rather have worked with them

and try to find some kind
of solution to the this issue.

Every single member of the Mentor
School District declined to speak to me,

everyone of them.

The more I learned about these cases,
the more horrified I became.

Sladjana Vidovic's case
especially stood out.

In a lot of bullying cases,

parents don't know
their kids are being bullied.

Teenagers just don't tell
their parents everything.

But in Sladjana's case, she had been
systemically bullied from 8th grade on,

she had told her parents

and her parents had gone to the school
again and again and again to ask for help,

and they were ignored.

Now, every time that the Vidovics went
to the Mentor High School to complain,

they took their older daughter
with them to translate

because they did not speak English.

So, not only were they being vigilant
about the safety of their daughter,

but they were doing it
in a language that they didn't speak,

in a culture, in a country,
that was completely foreign to them.

And still, they did everything
that parents should do

in a situation like this,

and the school continued to ignore them.

The bullying got so bad for Sladjana

that she was eating her lunch every day
in a bathroom stall, crying,

so that she would not be in the cafeteria
where kids would throw food at her.

She was kicked down the stairs
by a football player.

She was touched inappropriately.

She was made fun of for her clothes,
and for her accent,

and for a mold that she had on her face.

Kids teased her for her name,
which they rhymed with "vagina."

She received death threats
on her cell phone after school.

She received death threats
at the pizza parlor where she had a job.

She could never ever get away from it.
She couldn't escape it.

And her parents were getting desperate,

and they were not getting help
from the school.

So, they sought outside help.

Sladjana had made a suicide threat,

and they decided to admit her
to an inpatient facility.

When she got out of this facility
and went back to school,

all the students had heard
that she had been there,

and the bullying only intensified.

So, her parents decided
that it was time to homeschool her.

Sladjana had always been really excited
about her school prom.

When she was going to be homeschooled,
she went to the Mentor principal

and she asked, "If I'm being homeschool,
can I still attend prom?"

And he told her,
"No, I'm sorry. You cannot."

And this was devastating news to her.

Soon after that, Sladjana took a rope,
and she tied one end to a bedpost

and she hung herself out the window
of her family home.

And her sister found her and cut her down,

and she was buried in the pink dress
that she had chosen to wear to prom.

When I heard that the bullies
showed up at the funeral parlor

and made fun of her in her casket
and created a MySpace page

saying how uggly the dress was
that she was wearing,

I had never heard anything
like this before,

and I was completely shocked.

I think if you are going to make
the argument that kids will be kids,

then, a teenager
at some point has to realize

that they have taken things too far,

and if a kid's suicide is not that moment,
then, I don't know what possibly could be.

When I personally received
all of these threats, and emails,

and tweets, and messages,

I had a mixture of emotions.

I felt very upset.

And I'm an adult, and I live
in New York City, far away from Mentor,

and I have friends and family,

and a really nice life
and work that enjoy doing,

and still, it was very upsetting for me

to open my computer
and see that every single day.

So, imagine what a 16-year-old girl,

who has to physically walk
into that environment

and endure bullying so bad that she's
crying in a bathroom stall every day -

imagine what she must feel.

But I also felt like, in case
there was any lingering doubt,

the community had made my case for me.

By turning their anger towards me,
they had handed me the evidence

that, yes, there was a problem in Mentor.

But I dont think that kids
behave this way in a vacuum.

I think that they learn it from adults.

And when I was receiving these messages,

I was not only receiving them
from students.

I received messages from parents,
I received messages from teachers

and I even received an email
from one person

who had no qualms about signing it:
"The Mentor Teachers Association."

So, I did have the names
of many of the bullies,

and I did try to reach out to them
and see if they would talk to me.

I was hoping that one of them
might be able to explain

how they got caught up in this kind
of behavior and what had happened.

None of them wanted to talk to me.

And often I'm asked, "Why didn't you put
their names in the film?"

Here's the problem that I have
with pointing a finger

at a bully who is underage:

I believe that it lets everybody
off the hook, everybody else.

I think it lets the people
who teach at the school off the hook.

I think it lets all of the citizens
of Mentor off the hook.

I think it lets me off the hook.

I think that it's way too easy to say,

"Mentor is a really big school. Of course
there's going to be a bad apple there,"

and then wash your hands and go home,
and forget about the whole thing.

And also, I don't believe that that's
what I was seeing happening in Mentor.

In fact, I don't believe
it's what happens anywhere.

I remember very well
when Columbine happened.

Time Magazine ran this cover,
and it said, "The Monsters Next Door."

And I cringed when I saw it
because I think when you point a finger

at two teenagers
and label them as monsters,

you absolve everybody else
of any kind of culpability.

The problem in Mentor was systemic,

but this is not just a story
about bullying.

And it's also not just a story
about a high school

that failed to take action in the face
of clear and present danger.

It's a story about all of our institutions
that failed to take action.

It's a story about our military.
It's a story about our law enforcement.

It's a story about our prisons.

It's even a story
about our global economic crisis.

Any time that we allow ourselves
to be lulled into the trap of believing

that a perpetrator caught
equals a problem solved,

then, we lose the opportunity to attack
society's problems at [their] root cause.

As Eric's father said to me once,

"You don't want to be
standing in my shoes.

You really, really don't want to be."

(Applause)