Another Sexting Suicide

Gene Lalor | December 3, 2009 

Nothing can compare with the excruciating physical pain and crushing emotional trauma of a parent losing a child.  Worse is the needless and senseless loss of a young child to suicide.

Thirteen year old Hope Witsell of Sundance, Florida was just a normal kid at Beth Shields Middle School, normal by today’s standards for a girl just emerging from tweenie status into the burgeoning maturity of full-fledged teenage life.

Hope almost literally had her entire life ahead of her until she made a grave mistake not atypical in twentyfirst century American culture.  She paid dearly for that error in judgement by hanging herself in her bedroom with one end of a pink scarf tied to her bed and the other to her neck.

It’s nearly impossible for any male, and moreso for an elder male, to understand the processes that take place in the female mind, and moreso in the inner workings of a young, female teenager.

I’ve dealt with two of those minds but that was in a previous generation when, as bad as it was in the sense of child raising and venomous threats and influences, in retrospect they now seem like halcyon days filled with all sweetness and light as contrasted with the dark temptations and influences of today.

Young girls have always been noted for their silly crushes, their wild indiscretions, their squeals of delight at the appearance of a Sinatra, the Beatles, or a Justin Bieber.

Before I’m accused of sexism I will say that so too did normal boys’ hearts pump faster at a vision of Marilyn Monroe, Brigette Bardot, and today of Beyonce, Taylor Swift, or Miley Cyrus.

However, from the perspective of an admitted amateur shrink, I think it’s fairly obvious that most teenie girls are far more emotional and much more sensitive than boys in that age category.

Some are even irrationally “boy crazy.”

Such may have been the case with pretty, little Hope Witsell who became so enamored with a boy in her school that she mistakenly believed she could capture his heart by sexting him–the new jargon for sending a revealing text message on a cell phone–a photo of her naked breasts.

See Hope’s mom’s video interview here: http://bit.ly/8PIFSG

At the very un-ripe age of 13, Hope was unaware that what she undoubtedly felt were good intentions often go awry.

Hope’s presumably first excursion into the seamy world of sexting went very awry when an unintended recipient viewed her picture and chose to share it with the universe.

That may not have been the intent of that recipient but by forwarding Hope’s very private picture to a classmate who, in turn, sent it on to an unknown number of others, her classmates effectively caused a living hell for Hope Witsell.

Not unlike the only other known American instance of sexting resulting in suicide, the matter of Jessica (Jesse) Logan, the Ohio 18 year old who also chose what she felt was the only way out from the cruel harassment she endured following her youthful, sexting indiscretion by hanging herself.

Hope Witsell chose the same route.

See Jesse’s story here: http://bit.ly/6aX9NT

Hope was somewhat different from Jesse, however, and a major difference was their ages.

Hope Witsell was just 13 when she became the subject of incessant taunts at Beth Shield’s and surrounding high schools. 

Called a slut and a whore by the same kids who had once been her buddies and who may have been tempted or did commit the same foolish act as Hope, Hope’s life changed permanently and, in her mind, her life was irretrievable.

By the end of the school year, “the taunting became so bad that Hope Witsell’s friends surrounded her between classes.  They escorted her down hallways like human shields, fending off insults such as ‘whore’ and ’slut:’ “ http://bit.ly/675cJp

That support from the non-hypocrites at her school  proved to be of no avail toward alleviating Hope’s conscience.

As she inscribed in her journal, perhaps in one last effort to convince herself that what she was about to do was not the wisest thing to do, Hope wrote, “I’m done for sure now.  I can feel it in my stomach.  I’m going to try and strangle myself.  I hope it works:” http://bit.ly/675cJp

It worked, all too well it worked.

What Hope Witsell failed to realize until she killed herself was that she was choosing a course of action that substituted a very permanent solution for what was a very temporary problem.

May she finally rest in peace.  May her parents somehow, in some way,  find some consolation in her death. 

And may the little, back-biting hippocrites in her school who turned on Hope when she most needed peer support live out their lives with the memory that they helped cause that sad, little girl to end her brief life.


Contributor's website: http://www.genelalor.com/



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