16-year-old Sladjana Vidovic’s last note told of her daily harrassment at Mentor High School. Students took time out of their days to bully her about her accent, throw food at her, and nicknamed her ‘Slutty Jana.’A boy pushed her down the stairs.
A girl slapped her in the face with a water bottle. Classmates would call in the middle of the night and tell her to go back to Croatia. That she would be dead in the morning.
Vidovic tied a rope around her bedpost and her neck and jumped from her bedroom window.
This was the latest and the fourth suicide at Mentor High School in a little more than two years that in some way involved bullying.
One was tormented for being gay, one for having a learning disability, and one who was a boy who liked to wear pink.
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The Vidovic family and one other are now suing the school for their inability to control bullying in the school. The Vidovic’s stated they made many complaints to the school about the harrassment of their daughter and they told the family they would take care of her.
When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers.
No official from Mentor public schools would comment for this story. The school also refused to provide details on its anti-bullying program.
